"THE BOY IS MINE."

I was in a very good mood- For some one that was in boardinghouse that is. You know, sometimes you just get in this mood where nobody and nothing can bring you down. I was there. The Math test which we’d just gotten back was the cause of my joy. The test had been tough. No doubt. And when we got our tests back very few people were happy. My girl, Uche included. The teacher had actually written ‘See me’ on Uche’s test. It was that bad. I was one of the lucky two or three that had gotten over eighty and we'd left the rest of the class behind. Well. So I was feeling pretty good but I had to be careful not to let it show too much. You know how when you’re doing well in something your good friend is failing miserably, you don’t exactly want to rub their face in it.

Uche was in tears. To make matters worse, some junior girl had reported her so after school, she had to go to Matron’s house to discuss punishment. Her day wasn’t going well at all and I felt really sorry for her. She was dejected through out the day. In the evening though, things started to look up. Her boyfriend came to school to see her. When I was in high school, there was always a group of ‘reigning’ boys every year. The reigning boys were the ones who used their allowances to buy suya and Five alive and cookies and then dressed well and borrowed their fathers cars and bribed our gate men so they could come to our school to chase girls. They used to screech and speed like it was going out of style. I was talking about it recently with one of my friends and he told me that they’d been told we thought it was cool. They hadn’t entirely been misinformed. Anyways, Dozie was one of those boys. Just a few days ago, Uche told me that she’s not sure that ‘boyfriend’ would be the right term to describe the relationship that Dozie had to her- Whatever!

Anyway, this particular day, Dozie did his tired speeding and screeching routine into school to see Uche. Complete with Suya and all. He came with three other guys. While I was talking with the car full of boys I saw my father’s car drive into school... Needless to say, In less than two seconds, I was under Dozie’s car... I’m just kidding. I didn’t actually go under his car... I just got into his trunk... Yep, My popsie was bad like that. It was a false alarm though. It was just the driver. My mum had sent him to me. It just kept getting better. My mum used to send me food in this large blue cooler with a white cover... A-ya-yai! I can never forget that cooler. The mere sight of it resuscitated me more than ten times. It was all there. More provs, more money and home food? What else could a girl want?

After our driver and Dozie and his posse had left, Uche and I headed back to dorm with all our food. Smiling.

I was like “Uche, se you were crying this morning because of that stupid Maths test. Now you’re smiling because of rice.”

“Leave me, jo!” She was back in a good mood. “The yama yama part of my day has passed, you hear?!”

I think that was where she jinxed herself.

Later that evening Uche and I went to Isioma’s corner to try and see if there was any way we could make it up to her because rice and Dozie’s stuff had not reached her. One Belema girl was in her corner. Neither Uche nor I used to talk to the girl that much but I noticed that that evening, she was trying particularly hard to snob Uche. Later on, she started going out of her way to snob me too- I figured whatever was up was pretty serious. When she started getting Isioma to snob us too (Or maybe Isioma was still pissed off because the rice hadn’t reached her...) Anyways, at that point, I decided it was time to leave Isioma’s corner.

We had a Math assignment due the next day and Uche wanted me to go over the answers with her so we went back to my corner. After gisting for another 2 hours in my corner without once mentioning the word ‘math’, Uche went back to her own dormitory. As I was getting ready for bed, Isioma came to my corner. She had ‘hot gist’ for me- Belema had just given her some real top secret tori that she couldn’t wait to tell me- Belema was doing the freaky with Dozie. Hellooo?? As far as I remembered, Dozie and Uche were in a ‘monogamous’ relationship... By the time Isioma was through relaying every last detail of Belema’s story to me I was in shock. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Uche would react. To tell or not to tell. That was the question. But what if I told Uche and it wasn’t even true? Besides, Uche had already had all her ‘yama yama’ for the day so I decided to wait until morning.

Thirty minutes later, Uche came and woke me up. She’d just heard a rumor- that Belema was also going out with Dozie. She was very upset about it but she didn’t do anything though. Except dedicate the next couple of hours to relentlessly cursing Dozie and Belema- the hootchie.

The next day, Dozie didn’t come to school and Uche still didn’t say anything to Belema. The day after that, Dozie came to see Uche. After he’d left, She came and told me that she’d asked him about Belema and he’d been like “Who is Belema?”

I was thinking “My God, he didn’t actually go there...”

But apparently Uche trusted her man. She said he’d told her that Belema was probably just jealous and trying to mess up their thing. After we’d carefully studied the facts we decided it was logical. After all, he’d been coming to school to see Uche not Belema.

But...

During prep that night, we heard that Dozie had come back to school to see Belema. When Uche went to check it out, she saw Dozie’s car driving out of the compound. And she saw Belema- with a bag of Dozie-ish goodies and a ‘now you tell me who won’ look. By the time Uche came back to class, she was half-dead. I could tell that she felt as if her intestines had been rinsed in groundnut oil. She still didn’t ask Belema anything though. She decided to chill until the following day, then ask Dozie why he’d come back to school. Instead, she just went back to cursing Belema. She went on and on till my ears hurt. “She needs to give it up. I’ve had about enough. Its not hard to see the boy is mine... I’m sorry that she seems to be confused, he belongs...”

Hmm... okay... well... maybe not in the exact same words but the message was pretty much the same...

After prep, Uche decided to go to Isioma’s corner to try and see what she could find out from her about Belema’s relationship with Dozie- if at all they had one. Belema was there and this time she was directly trying to pick a fight with Uche. Unfortunately though, my girl wasn’t down with the Jerry Springer type stuff... Okay, okay... so Uche tried to sever Belema’s body with a knife but hey, she didn’t succeed... Belema managed to get away- every single time...

By the next time Dozie came to school, Uche was determined to find out the truth. Dozie still maintained his story- to an extent. ‘Okay, so maybe he knew a Belema but he didn’t remember. He could have met her somewhere- he didn’t know... and he certainly didn’t care because he loved Uche and yadi yadi ya. Uche swallowed. As they say ‘love is blind.’ He gave her some b/s about how he’d only come back to school to check if he’d dropped the key to his room. I wouldn’t have fallen for that one. Damn- I’d hooked my own love up with a pair of very strong glasses, complete with double-lenses and all. But Uche and I were different. She swallowed it all.

Meanwhile, everyone in school had their own interesting hypothesis. They knew more about each relationship than Dozie himself. Valentines Day was just around the corner so everyone agreed to let whatever happened on V-day determine who Dozie’s real Girlfriend was. V-day was the following week. School was hyped. A handful of people were already getting V-presents. I’d gotten a ‘pre-valentine gift’. So- yes, I thought I was all that and a bucket of wings. But Uche was seriously stressing. She was scared of what might happen on V-day.

Finally, it came. She was tense all day- Until she got her present from Dozie. He got her a nice card and this funny looking ‘teddy-bear-wannabe’ stuffed creature. I have to say that Aba people didn’t do a good job on that one. It was NOT nice at all. As Uche read out the poem Dozie had written for her in the card so I could gasp and ‘Na wa oh!’ over it, I looked out the window and saw Belema coming. She was carrying Uche’s teddy bear like stuffed animal... and that was really weird since Uche’s teddy bear was beside me on Uche’s bed... Belema was smiling. She’d come to Uche’s dorm just to make sure that Uche saw the present that Dozie had gotten her. When she saw, a replica of her present on Uche’s bed she nearly passed out.

Apparently, Dozie had gotten a good two-for-one deal so he’d gotten both Belema and Uche the exact same gift. Right down to the card and the hand written poem. Only then did Uche finally realize that Dozie was ‘two-timing’ her. It was one huge scandal. They both broke up with Dozie but still, Uche and Belema were the laughingstock of the school. They were constantly being mocked and nasty cold things were said about them all time- They were the ones who had ‘not come to school to read but to follow boys.’ The good thing was that Uche and Belema became friends. Still, Uche was heartbroken. She couldn’t believe her sweet boyfriend had cheated on her. And he hadn’t even respected her enough to take the pains to ensure that the chances of her finding out were slim. Uche refused to laugh or eat or talk or sleep... She swore never to touch any other guy with a ten-foot pole...

Now, six hundred and thirty nine boyfriends later, she has the nerve to tell me that ‘ex-boyfriend’ is not the word she would use to describe Dozie’s relationship to her... Yeah, sure... Whatever!