Bound To The Stars

Ayman & Aliyah.

I felt my mouth getting dry as the chills ran through my body.

My mind couldn't still process what I heard.

Layla was a drug addict?

No there's gotta be a mistake somewhere, maybe she's just messing with me, it's just the pregnancy hormones messing with my hearing.

The tears ran down her cheeks as she said it again.

"Hanan, i used to be an addict."

I managed to voice a few words.

"What do you mean by addict Layla?"
I asked as looked in disbelief.

"There's a part of my life I never shared with any of my friends Hanan." Layla said.

"Before I was the smart calm girl you met in the university, my life was a mess. I grew up in a home where everyone was either a straight A student or had a remarkable talent, everyone but me.

I sucked at everything especially academics.

All I was good at was not being good at anything.

To top it all up, our parents were so busy during the week, we hardly got to see them and during weekends their attention was hardly on me.

They gave more attention to my brainy and talented siblings.

Seeing as my dad was a top notch doctor and my mum, a lawyer.

You can imagine where I'm coming from.

They all expected their kids to be like them and unfortunately i was the odd one.

For me, all i got was a casual attention. "Ina wuni mama, Ina wuni baba, adawo lafiya."

I felt maybe cause I was such a screw up, i didn't get the attention my remaining siblings got.

I wouldn't say I got used to it but I was able to live with that up until my junior secondary days.

No doubt I went to the most expensive school then, got the best reading materials, but that didn't make my grades look pleasing, when I was in jss2 I came last in the class I was so devastated.

I cried so hard till I passed out, my parents were so disappointed they ignored me for 2 days, but they cooled off eventually.

That was the longest holiday ever, I've never looked so forward to going back to school until then, as much as I hated school I preferred to be there than stay at home in that current situation and atmosphere.

Finally, we resumed JS3. I wasn't asked to repeat my pervious class. The truth is no school would repeat a child after taking a huge amount of money from their parents.

Life went on as usual, the normal screw ups nothing changed.

JS3 holiday was long, most of my friends where psyched cause of the idea that we're now going to be seniors,SS1.

For some reason, I wasn't looking forward to it at all. To me, it just meant more screw ups on a different level.

Ss1 was no joke, everything seemed so new, the subjects were different, the teaching method and so on.

Those reasons alone made me dread exam day.

Ss1 was coming to an end it was 3rd term already we finished our exams, result day a day I never look forward to, same outcome every term, as usual I failed most of my subjects but for some reason that day was different i ran to the back of the classrooms and I found myself crying so I hard I thought I might actually pass out like the previous time.