Xanthous Feelings[ONC 2023]

I

I was tired of playing the child and acting the way many of my friends did__the ones who are afraid that love is impossible without even knowing what love is.

P. C

***

DARA COULDN'T BREATHE. He couldn't for a while now. That's what being around people felt like. Suffocating. God he hated parties. He hated the stench of fermented sweat like expired palm wine,the obnoxious music that played loudly on his eardrums and horny teenagers who've had too much to drink.

The beats coming from inside the club mimicked his frantic heart. He never planned to show up but he promised Jola he'd make an appearance. And even though the girl gave him headaches with her town crying voice, He gave her his word. When will he ever have common sense?

Being the outgoing headgirl and typical queen bee Jola thought she had some sort of claim over him and the rest of the schools population. Why did people desperately want to control him?

The conversation he'd had with his Dad the day he'd seen his JAMB score mocked him through his minds eye.

"OmoDara, why must you choose to disgrace me ? " His father's words were like lashes on his heart. Would ever be enough for this man?

"Tell me what university will allow you study law with a score like this? " Dara would rather die than be caught in a suite and tie studying law. But he couldn't find the courage to tell his father that.

Dara was such a coward.

The moon, it dangled from the night sky and Dara would have been content to just sit at the entrance if he hadn't sworn not to chicken out. Never in a thousand eons would Dara had imagined spending the night before his graduation ceremony in club. Oh the mighty have fallen.

And while his classmates were sad to leave, he just wrote his final WAEC paper and never looked back. Because Dara had held his breath for six years, and even though he was going to be crowned Bethel highs overall best student and outgoing head boy, Dara still couldn't breathe.

*******

The first time Dara saw her, he panicked. She was slow dancing to Lust Ranger by War sheep like she was a pilgrim enjoying a religious experience. And while everyone else twerked, whined and violently moved their limbs, her eyes were closed as her hips swayed to the words of the song.
She was ethereal before his very eyes, celestial and so bright in his mind, he couldn't look away. And yes he knew he was being a creep.

Dara stood there, watching this girl and he swears the world stopped to breathe her in because.......God she was beautiful. And no his heart didn't skip a beat, it picked up like an athlete running a marathon. Suddenly, he is so alive, living and breathing for this girl in a xanthous dress. Yellow was Dara's new favorite color.

"Don't let your girlfriend catch you staring at another girl like that" Ishaya took a sip from the red plastic cup he was holding, gesturing to the girl Dara had been looking at. Ishaya was one of those people who knew everything about everybody but couldn't be bothered to care. Dara was surprised he made it to their final year bash, though he could say the same for himself.

"I wasn't staring"

"Yes, and I'm Dangotes son"

" Jola isn't my girlfriend"

"That's not what I've been hearing sha" Ishaya shrugged like it was common knowledge.

"Well don't believe all you hear"

" Guy, just go and talk to her"
Now she was laughing at something the female bar tender said and __Jesus. He's positive a flower bloomed somewhere.

"Who said I want to talk to her ?" Biggest lie he's ever told.

"Your eyes guy, you looked like a blind man seeing light for the first time" Well that was one way to put it. Dara eyed the liquid in Ishayas cup.

"Are you sure you're not drunk right now?"

"Maybe" He grinned like it was completely normal to be drunk in club. Oh wait, it was.

"She doesn't even go to Bethel high, I've never seen her before" he said

"Yes you have" and Dara's shocked because there's no way he had seen this girl before.

"You don't remember Yemi ?, she was with us in junior class"

Yemi

Dara tasted the word and the name felt right in his mind. It was familiar the way the sun was, bright and warm on his skin.

How could he forget the girl who wasn't afraid of the dark, they'd held hands and danced under the rain together, he still had scars from the whipping they'd received.

Now Dara was never good with words, but he could go on and on about her golden brown skin .Her hair was in a thick midnight bun on her head, it wasn't braided with long extensions or hidden under a wig like the other girls.
And in that moment, Dara wanted nothing more than to know her. To write her name with fresh paint on the canvas of his memory.

***

They said Yemi was crazy, that her village folks had used her brain cells to cook beans and that she was an ashawo. They said she was a witch and flew inside eggshells to meet up with her coven every night, that she tried to kill herself, She's probably a lesbian, and that she's never been kissed before. (Though Dara doesn't see a problem with that)

"She doesn't even relax her hair" Amaka, or was it Ngozi ? said, ( he really couldn't be bothered to remember her name). Like it was a taboo to not have her hair straightened.

"She's just too weird abeg" the guy with black nail polish and mascara had told him.

He was warned to stay away, to stop asking the wrong questions about the wrong person because people like Yemi weren't pretty, they'd make you bleed just by talking to you. They said she spoke with tears in her eyes and that she was too emotional. But Dara couldn't find it in him to care.

Because Yemi was life, she was the sun, and all the elements that makes up air. Dara could finally breathe again.