Your Hand In Mine

They met on a bright, sunny Monday morning in January 2019.

Monday:
I saw her as soon as I got on the bus. I'd never seen her before. I walked past her as I joined Lisa in the back of the bus. The girl was sitting in the front next to Martin, a guy from the other class. She was probably new in our school. Her dark skin shone as she tilted her head to look at the person who stepped onto the bus behind me. She was the only black person in the bus. Instantly, I felt bad for having such thoughts. I was convinced that skin color didn't matter to me. Why did I even notice something like that?
As I continued talking to my friends, I couldn't stop stealing glances at her. Her hair was braided into thin little braids and hanging down her back. Some of the braids had golden clasps around them, catching the light coming through the window. Her hair was held away from her face by a black headband. How would she even wear a ski helmet? Our whole grade was having a six-day skiing camp in the Swiss mountains, in Zinal. We were about forty people on the bus, two classes and five teachers. One of the teachers was just now talking to the new girl. Martin stole a glance at her, and I saw that he was checking her out even though he hadn't spoken a word to her since we had left Lausanne. I wanted to slap his smug face. "You all right?"
"What?"
I had completely tuned out the conversation going on next to me. Lisa was asking me about my weekend. I detached my eyes from the pair in the front seat and turned towards my friends.
When we arrived at the parking lot in Zinal, my class teacher stood up and asked us all to be silent.

"This is Dayo," she said, pointing at the new girl, "and she will be joining Mr. Johnson's class after this week."
Dayo turned her head. She was visibly embarrassed that we were all staring at her, but she smiled a little. Automatically, I smiled back. I felt like she was looking right at me.

It was a great day for skiing. Sunlight and fresh snow everywhere. I loved skiing, and I was good at it. One of the reasons why my parents had chosen to move to Switzerland was because there were almost as many mountains as in Norway. Since I was little, my parents and I had gone to our chalet almost every weekend during the winter season. Two years ago I had started to train to be a ski instructor. Naturally, I loved ski camps. But I had to admit it wasn't only about skiing. I loved showing off. I loved being in the group with the sportiest guys in the grade. I loved competing with them. I loved watching them become even more competitive because I was around. It was so amusing to watch them follow me when I tried to find the hardest jumps possible. It made me feel powerful and in control. How I loved that feeling!

We were done all too soon. The teachers had decided to go to the camp house. As always, there was a lot of waiting and an extremely high noise level until everybody was finally settled in their rooms. We were twelve girls in our class. Five of them were already in a room, so the rest of us got a room with eight beds. We were all busy claiming our beds and taking off our ski clothes when suddenly Mrs. Marks came into our room. Dayo was following her.

"Hi girls! I hope you are all well settled in. There aren't enough beds in the other room. Dayo will be sleeping here since there is an empty bed in this room. And she can get to know all of you as well, all right?"

"Yeah sure," we all answered.

I felt bad for Dayo. One of the girls from the other class could have come over to our room and saved Dayo the embarrassment of being shipped around like that.
When Mrs. Marks had left, there was a short silence. As usual, I was the first to start talking.

"I'm Live," I introduced myself.
The other girls introduced themselves as well.
"Where are you from?" Lisa asked Dayo.
"I'm from Nigeria."
Again, there was a short silence. We were all waiting for more information, but we didn't dare ask. Usually when someone was new at our school, the first thing they talked about was what their parents did, where they lived and where they came from. There were a lot of expats at our school, people from all over the world, Asian, South American and a lot of Russian and French people. My friends all had very different origins. None of them were African.
Before it got too embarrassing, I took up the conversation I had with Lisa and the other girls before Mrs. Marks came in. We were talking about Nico, a guy from the other class Lisa had a crush on. They had met by chance this past weekend at a party and Nico had kissed her. Lisa was hoping that more would happen during the camp, but until now he had completely ignored her.
Lisa was my best friend. She was eighteen and she had a lot of experience with guys. Everything I knew about those things came from her. But I loved her for a lot more than that. I admired her for her kindness and her perseverance. When she moved to Switzerland six years ago, I liked her instantly and she had become a part of our group of friends very quickly. She was telling us in detail about how Nico came up to her on Saturday and started flirting. Despite her talent for telling stories, I was only half listening to her. My other half was absorbed in watching Dayo. She had started to unpack. Her clothes were almost exclusively black.