Made Out of Plastic (Fake)

You were made outta plastic (fake)
I was tangled up in your drastic ways
Who knew evil girls have the prettiest face? — Lucid Dreams, Juice Wrld.

Not just evil girls. Evil men also have the prettiest face!

And by pretty, I mean, very preeeety. But let’s go to the beginning of the story. But before we do, we must go a year back, when this man came into our lives.

It was a new session. I was in Senior secondary school one and for the first time, I resumed on the first day of the week. Ah! Throughout the holidays, I thought of how I was now a big girl. I felt like I’d grown some inches taller and a little bit fatter, but it was that my ego had risen to the PVC ceiling of our unpainted bungalow.

Well, you can’t blame me for how I felt. You felt it too. Maybe not as much, or maybe a little more — that feeling of pride when you leave junior high/secondary school. I can’t be wrong!

Anyway, I ironed my new skirt and shirt for one week straight till the folded edges were shining. I also polished the new black shoes I had spent two weeks begging my mum to get me.

My dad had shut his own doors, insisting I continue with my previous shoe. “What was wrong with it?” he asked, even when the dye had washed off. It now looked like a baby that bathed himself roughly, in dusting powder. The front had opened and looked like it was waiting to consume an unsuspecting crawling fly.

The devil was a liar though. I was going to sparkle on my first day of school. It was the only day I could make a statement.

After that day, I knew one thing or the other would make me look ‘unfresh’, especially coming to school with tear marks on my cheeks — marks that would soon be covered with another round of tears that flowed for no reason.

First day of school and I’m almost the first to get to class. I always set great records on the first day, but the rest of the session? Well, you know already.

I was always punished for late coming. This is how I knew early in life that the saying “It’s how you start that determines how you will end” or something like that, was a pure fallacy.

Okay. This is where we meet the demon in white!

We had just settled down after wasting some minutes, exchanging greetings. Greetings came to me. I didn’t go to them. So, I was basically on my seat, chilling and greeting.

Then our principal, Mr. Big Belly, as we called him, walked in. A tall man in his mid-20s walked behind, looming over him like a tall shadow in the morning. It wasn’t just his height that made us speechless, but the face. Dear God! If I were to describe him in one expression, he was looking sharp!

Everyone saw. Even the boys did. Our principal did too. It was in the way his semi-bald head, which usually sits stone-fixed with pride, hung low today.

That’s how we were introduced to Mr. Eric Alao, and I bet more than half of us, including me, didn’t hear his name or anything the principal said because we were transfixed. Our collective stares could bore fifty holes in his skin.

After the introduction, he began teaching us. He taught Economics, and that was the first time I couldn’t remember a thing I was taught in economics class afterwards, being my favourite subject.

Well, that’s how our story began — Mr. Eric, Fegor, and I.

Fegor was no friend of mine, especially because she was the strongest contender for Mr. Eric’s attention. But before then, I didn’t like her much. She had this usual look of disdain in her eyes that made me want to pull those dark brown eyeballs out of their sockets and crush them.

I guess by now you have deduced that I was in love. Or so I thought. It took a few weeks to realise that Mr. Eric had become the subject of my romantic fantasies. I was always at his office during breaks, asking one question or the other. From what I knew, I was his favourite student till Oghenefegor poked her unkempt cornrowed head into the staffroom, and from that day on, it was a tug of war — or love.

But I must appreciate the huge role she played in tearing our blindfolds till our eyes were struck with the horrible image of a growling, shapeshifting beast with claws, ready to dig our hearts from our chests.

Okay, that’s a crazy description, but that’s how I saw him from that day henceforth — the day truth left the dark walls of solitude and came to dance at the forefront.

The day we knew Mr. Eric was plastic (fake).

To be continued,

Narrator.