I had my first crush in Form 2. It happened in a flash, right in front of my eyes.

It is one of the school holidays. And because I was raised by a teacher, I am sent to holiday tuition. Reading, and school work, is serious business in my father’s household. A few teachers from the area run this holiday tuition from a local polytechnic. We learn Math, Chemistry, and Kiswahili. Or at least those are the ones I remember.

I am in one of the classrooms in the institution. I do not recall what lesson is about to start. Perhaps because all other memories were erased to create room for a teenage crush. As usual, I am seated on the side of the wall with a door. I unconsciously always end up on the side with a door. Wanting to be on the edges of the rooms I occupy. I enjoy these tuition classes more that my regular schooling. It is not as constricting. The teachers are strict, but there is more freedom than actual school.

Just before the lesson starts, a girl in a red dress walks in hastily, across the front and settles on the opposite side. I do not see her face. But that brief moment stays on my mind. I have not seen her in class before, so nothing familiar registers in my mind. I go back to this lesson that I do not recall.

When it ends, I linger a bit. As I turn looking for my friends so that we can head out, I see the same red dress from the corner of my eye. Then, I see her face. And I am overcome by a tingly feeling spreading all over my body. For a minute, I am lost as my eyes follow her as she walks to the door. The light coming from the door illuminates her frame like stage lights in a pageant runaway. A cat walk, for my eyes only.

Her walk to the door barely lasts a few seconds, but it is in-scripted as a lifetime in my mind. I am overcome by a raw, unfiltered adolescent desire for this stranger. I feel an irresistible pull. In that moment, I am the moon, and she is the earth. Pulling me towards her. The chains are broken and hormones are roaming free. Thirsty. For a girl in a red dress. She is all I think about in the following days.