high school chronicles

The transition from "new girl" to "main character in a staffroom soap opera" happened so fast I barely had time to unpack my dictionary. As an English enthusiast, I’ve always appreciated a good plot twist, but I didn't expect to be the one living it.

My teacher, Mr. Simiyu—a man whose cheekbones were sharper than my grading curve and whose Luhya accent made even a lecture on "Subject-Verb Agreement" sound like a soulful ballad—was the school’s unofficial heartthrob. Every girl in Form 3 sat up straighter when he walked in. I, being the top student and apparently his "muse," received enough lingering eye contact during poetry analysis to make my notebook sweat.

Then there was Miss Brenda, the junior Geography teacher. She didn't just have a crush; she had a full-blown topographical obsession. She started "befriending" me, which mostly involved her cornering me at the canteen to ask, "So, does Mr. Simiyu ever mention... igneous rocks? Or maybe... me?"

I went home for mid-term break, mostly to escape the suffocating scent of Brenda’s desperate lavender perfume and Simiyu’s smoldering gaze. But when I returned, the tension hadn't just simmered—it had boiled over into a full-blown cinematic catastrophe.

I walked into the English department to hand in...