Naya and Vince

50

On the evening of Valentine's day, I was lying on my belly on Jessica's bed. I was busy flipping through a fashion catalog I saw on her desk while Jessica sat at her desk, skyping with her cousin living somewhere outside Nigeria. The girl had begged all of us to skip school today then come over to her home to get dressed and leave for the love fest together. It was an evening event. After the love fest, we were supposed to sleep over at Jessica's place. Amanda and Aliyah agreed at once and I thought it wasn't a bad idea, except for the skipping school part. I went to school and Jessica came with her driver to pick me up.

I felt like a princess. I wished my life would continue like this– coming to school and going home everyday in a private car with the most comfortable seats and an air conditioning system. The best part was that I wasn't galloping around because of potholes on the road. If there were any, the car did a good job at absorbing the shock. What would a private jet feel like? I had to wonder. Money is good, no cap.

I said yes to Vincent's request,  Stephen said yes to Jessica, Aliyah claimed the senior Hakeem had asked her to be his val while Amanda was going with Peter. I noticed a little chemistry between those two ever since Peter confessed that he was very big fan of some authors whose names I didn't bother memorizing.

Jessica shared a room with her stepsister, Kristabel. I wondered how the adults could come up with such a terrible idea. The room was large then it was demarcated into two. The part belonging to Kristabel was painted purple while the part belonging to Jessica was pink.

And I'm not even capping when I say it was pink.

Everything from her wall, to her bed, to her laptop, to her wardrobe, was all shades of pink, like a unicorn or something vomited there.

When I got bored of looking through her fashion catalogs, I borrowed Jessica's laptop, which had an unbelievable amount of excessively cute stickers, and sat at her desk to play the candy crush game.

I heard the door open and swivelled on Jessica's pink office chair to find her stepsister standing at the door looking at me. Jessica went to get a few snacks so she wasn't with me. I already understood why Jessica always called her a man-girl. Kristabel was on low cut like me but unlike me, she gave off this tomboy vibes. She rocked a pair of extremely baggy trousers and an equally baggy vest, headsets on her neck and her phone dangling from her pinky finger by a sort of elastic string.

"Hi again," She said and went to her corner of the room.

When me and Jessica arrived at the house, the girl had been in the sitting room with her mother. The dark skinned woman and her daughter both smiled at me and her daughter went ahead to say 'hi'. I expected them to scowl, glare, tell me to get out and every other things wicked stepmothers and stepsisters did. The two did not fit into Jessica's description of them at all. I didn't greet them back because Jessica chose that time to shout;

'Welcome to my home Nairobi. We should go to my room.'

She shouted like I wasn't just beside her then she practically dragged my up a fleet of spiral stairs. Jessica's home wasn't unreasonably huge like Vincent's but it was fancy.

Kristabel definitely thought I snubbed her which wasn't really intentional but then did I really want to befriend Jessica's supposed enemy?

Someone kicked the door open startling me. Jessica came in giggling as she brought a tray of snacks into the room. Kristabel just rolled her eyes and blocked her ears with her headset. Jessica sat cross legged on the pink fluffy rug at the foot of her bed then opened a tall red can and started munching from it. I went to join her on the floor.

I opened a short bread and poured a glass of fruit juice for myself.

"Do you want Pringles?" Jessica asked, stretching the tall red can to me.