The first half of the year drifted by like wind through tall grass. I passed my subjects, barely. I wasn't failing, but I wasn't trying either. My teachers said I had "potential," that word they use when they see something you don't have the energy to see in yourself. I guess I was just… floating. I paid attention when I wanted to. Daydreamed when I didn't. Still, somehow, I managed to stay above the class average enough to make my mom proud, enough to keep me out of trouble. Then came term three. The one that changes everything.
That's when I met him. The famous boy. Everyone knew him. The older girls whispered about him in the corridors, the boys copied the way he walked, even the teachers spoke to him differently. He was two years ahead of me tall, confident, with that easy smile that felt like it had already been practiced in the mirror a thousand times. And me? I was done for.
It started small.. the usual teenage things. Glances that lasted a little too long. My friends teasing me when he passed by. Him saying hi once, then twice, then three times. And just like that, the rest of the world blurred. My notebooks became sketchpads for his name. My grades became casualties of my daydreams. The school became a movie set, and I was the lead actress no one had cast but everyone could see falling too fast. Every morning felt like a scene picking what to wear under my uniform, fixing my hair twice, then thrice, as if that would change the way he saw me. Every time he smiled, my stomach felt like it had caught fire the kind that burns slow and sweet.
We talked sometimes. Just short conversations that somehow carried the weight of novels. He'd walk me halfway home once in a while, and I'd replay every word he said later that night like it was poetry. My cousins would have laughed at me, the village girl who once jumped into the sky now falling headfirst into teenage fantasy.
There were other things that made that term unforgettable too. The fights between friends over nothing and everything. The secret notes passed under desks. The laughter that got us in trouble with teachers. The days that felt like they would never end, and the nights that felt too short because I couldn't stop replaying them in my head.
Sometimes I'd catch myself smiling for no reason. My mother noticed. She didn't ask, but I saw the quiet curiosity in her eyes. Maybe she remembered being young once, being swept up in something that made the world feel lighter.
Life was… thrilling then. Loud in a good way. Messy. Honest.
But like everything else, the noise doesn't last. The thrill fades. Feelings shift. Life moves. And maybe that's the thing about growing up...we fall hard, laugh loud, cry quietly, and keep moving as if the world didn't just shake a little under our feet.