PLASTIC #AwakenYourLiteraryMind ...........By Bomi

She always walked amongst them, watching quietly, unseen, unnoticed; as if the idea of her existence was inexistent.  She wanted to be accepted, she wanted someone to call her name, Bisi, to start a conversation, to talk about her hair and ask if she just had it made. Then that Thursday after classes, as she pretended to mind her own business, Kate, the popular girl with the large, round bottom and tissue paper augmented breasts, turned to her, smiled at her and said hi.

She paused. She blinked. She said hi twice.

‘I think you’re cool, come here, walk with us.’ Kate said. The other girls in Kate’s circle were beaming. Bisi was exhilarated.

‘Thank you. Thank you.’ She said.

She became popular, like them, plastic, like them. When Kate told her to skip classes, to join them in scaling the school fence, to go for a party, to have a little alcohol at the party, she did. When Joy, another plastic girl, told her to lock the bathroom door as Ifeoma took her bath, she did, and Ifeoma sat stuck in the bathroom for hours crying, begging for the door to be opened, the plastics laughed.

Then one Wednesday morning during breakfast, at the school dining hall, Ifeoluwa, the shy girl who had pimples all over her forehead and couldn’t see without her glasses, spilt orange juice over Kate’s new Neiman Marcus’ dress with the pink, satin sash and the word ‘excellent’ written on the chest region. Kate screamed. Ifeoluwa promised that she didn’t mean to, she didn’t see Kate coming, she wasn’t looking; she was sorry. She said she was sorry.

Later, Kate gathered all the plastics, they came up with an ingenious way to make Ifeoluwa pay for her stupidity; they would take her bag wherein she puts her notebooks. They would hide the bag where it would be impossible to find. She would not write for the rest of that day and maybe beyond.

Bisi was told to steal Ifeoluwa’s bag; she did. She and Joy and Remi hid it downstairs, next to the flowerbed at the back of the school. During Economics, Ifeoluwa’s asthma attack began and her inhaler was inside her bag. She searched frantically for the bag while trying her utmost to breathe in. Some of the students noticed and told the Economics teacher, ‘sir, something is wrong with Ife.’

The teacher figured it was asthma and joined in searching for the bag. ‘Who has Ife’s bag?’ He asked. The plastics looked at each other, Kate grinned, Joy grinned, Remi grinned, Bisi wanted to grin, too, she couldn’t. She wanted to get up, to go get the bag but Kate gave her a look.

Ifeoluwa was having a seizure now. Bisi ran downstairs next to the flowerbed and retrieved the bag, but when she got back, everyone was looking worried, the plastics were looking frightened, the Economics teacher was screaming at Ifeoluwa to wake up. 

image credit- Studio Bueno