UNILAG Runs Girl's First Day - Story By Umari Ayim

Patricia looked down at herself in dismay, and struggled with the top of her low neck blouse, trying her best to conceal her overflowing cleavage. The elastic band of the neckline of her cotton blouse stretched half an inch and snapped sharply back into place.

“Stop that!”

Her hand dropped sharply to her side and she stood straighter at the rebuke. Clara who had invited her and the other three girls who stood in the room for a night of party looked at her in annoyance. Her face was contorted horribly in anger.

“How many times will I tell you that it is for your own interest to let your assets show during the party, ehn?” Clara asked, her hanging lower chins quivering in anger. She moved with effort around the room, her squat four feet five inches looking like a cannon ball as she rolled past each girl, checking for any flaw to point out. Patricia looked at her ‘assets’ once again and tried to ignore the brown shadow peeking past the neckline of her blouse.

“Sorry. I..,I didn’t know,” she said, biting down on her lower lip. Clara said nothing. She checked her wristwatch again.

“Wetin dey do this Paw paw sef?” she asked no one in particular in Pidgin English. Patricia remembered that the guy Clara called Pawpaw was the light complexioned driver of the Toyota Camry that picked her from the campus. She looked at the other girls. They hadn’t said as much as a word to her since she squeezed into the car with them that evening. She wanted to ask a lot of questions. She wanted to bond with them. If anything, their fates seemed intertwined that evening. One of the girls with rows of white beads on her neck caught her eye. Patricia tried to smile, but got an unfriendly stare instead. Oh well! She thought, looking back at the thirty five inch plasma television in front of her. Can’t say I didn’t try.

She was nervous. Tonight was the first time she had decided to join the hordes of girls who left the campus every night in search of money. Money that came from one night stands with men they didn’t know. Runs was what the girls called their trade, but Patricia and her best friend Onyinye liked to call it prostitution.

“I am now a call girl.” She whispered almost in awe to herself.

“What?” Clara was coming towards her, her phone held out in front of her. Patricia looked at the phone, wondering how fast it could be turned into a weapon. Clara didn’t seem too pleased at the moment.

“Nothing.”

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