The Ride

Episode 4

It started in small bits:

First, tales of how I was a part of a reading group in school, that required me to sleep over at Garba square, for overnight studies.

The first time I gave Aunty Chika this line, she asked for the phone numbers of my reading partners. There was certainly no reading

group, talk more of partners, so I went up to her room, deleted Ada’s number from her phone and gave her the same number as the group leader’s number. She called at exactly 12:01am to find out how the reading was going. We were still up; in fact, we had stayed up all night, waiting for her call.  And that was how my sleeping over at Garba Square became a regular.

Let’s talk Ada for a minute:

Ada isn’t the prettiest of girls (and she must not see this, else, she will skin and eat me alive!), but she had an attractive mind. She could hold a conversation with almost anyone and people liked her for that. As for her fashion style? Now that was top notch. She wore the latest trendy dresses and never held back from telling anyone who complimented her, that she was a QC girl and no one should expect less from a QC girl.

The more I spent time with Ada; the brighter the light at the end of the tunnel was. I finally started to have fun in this shitty city and I could not allow anyone take that away from me. I knew I needed to leave my Aunt’s, but I was scared to take that step. I didn’t even know how to go about it, until one fateful day:

I had informed Aunty Chika that we were to have a test at 7am on Saturday and that I had to sleep over at Ada’s, to afford us enough time to study for the test. My Aunt had come to dislike Ada, but she just could not stop me from being friends with her, so she allowed me go.

That night, we went clubbing at Barumba night club. It was a decent sized hotel that had a club house. Nnamdi, Ada’s boyfriend was our host for the night. Nnamdi was the guy Ada only agreed to date, because he had a car and was willing to spend all his money on her. Who would blame him though? He was just a 20-year-old guy, who had a lot of money to throw around and had never seen a 16-year-old girl that excited him like my friend did. One thing my dear Nnamdi did not know was that taking us clubbing that night will end up as a huge mistake.

The moment Ada got up to dance, Nnamdi lost his two weeks old girlfriend. She was the sizzle of the night. Every guy wanted to dance with her, they kept buying drinks for us, in the bid to win her over. It was fun to watch, I had never seen anything like that before and my friend loved the attention. She kept telling me that no guy had impressed her yet, until Kola came along.

Kola didn’t even try hard, he just danced with her for about 20 minutes and kept whispering things, I wished I could hear, into her ears. After the dance, I saw my friend dip her hand into his breast pocket, pull out his phone and type in her number.

You needed to have seen Nnamdi’s face. If he were white, he would sure have turned red all over. I tried to keep him engaged, but that was not working. Several times, I told Ada how  unfair her actions were to Nnamdi; but, my friend was not having that.

“Nkechi, I came here to have fun, so please, allow me do just that.”

At 1:30am, Ada came and sat on Nnamdi’s laps. She told him that she wanted me to have my first alcohol thrill that night. Nnamdi agreed and bought a bottle of Don Simon and Smirnoff Ice. I begged not to take it, but I finally took a sip and a lot more than a sip.

Nnamdi ended up carrying me back to the hostel.

At 12pm the next day, Aunty Chika had called over 20 times. I got to her apartment at 4pm that evening and she almost held a deliverance service for me. After a whole hour of scolding, I placed a call to my Dad and begged him to allow me stay with Ada in her hostel. The week after that, I moved in with my girl.

And my life officially began.

*************To be continued*************

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