I’d only worn the ridiculous hot pink bikini my mother bought to shut her up and it was safely hidden under my shirt and jeans, where it would stay until I got home.
‘Naleli, you can’t keep hiding,’ my mother had pleaded. ‘Wear it just in case?’
Just in case what? Just in case my skin magics its way to being one colour? Just in case my peers suddenly become less ignorant and dickhead-like?
I watched the newly freed final-year students of Maloti Valley Secondary dip their legs into the cool water or lie together on blankets on the neat turf, not having to think twice about their bodies or what they were doing with them, tangling themselves up with each other as if trying to compensate for the inevitable separation that graduation would bring. I was fine where I was, sat on the brick wall observing, under the cover of a tree. On the wide patio in front of the glass doors of the rondavel-inspired mansion, the royalty of Maloti Valley were glowing and gorgeous as they flexed their bodies beneath the sun, basking in its rays.
I looked away from their glow to roll my eyes at my best friend. ‘You’re funny.’
Letsha turned to me and lifted her shades so they sat on her intricate blonde-and-black cornrows, which fed into waist-length plaits.
‘I’m serious.’
‘Letsha, please, I came here. For you. Isn’t that enough?’
On the patio across from us, Keeya and her ladies-in-waiting preened unashamedly. Keeya looked like an angel on celestial rumspringa in her tiny white bikini. She swung her long, glossy pressed hair and extended her phone towards the sky. At first, she took selfies alone, and then, when satisfied, she magnanimously allowed her friends to bask in her glow （with glinting lipgloss and screeches of ‘Eesh, Lindelani, can’t you see you’re blocking my light?’）。
To their left was the chief of the bunch, Khosi. Khosi Nkoli, who threw this party, Khosi Nkoli, who was Captain of the track team, Khosi Nkoli, who could, in theory, be described as a snack. Khosi Nkoli （Head Boy）， who was in an extended situationship with Keeya （Head Girl）， because of course he would be one half of a tense will-they-won’t-they relationship with all the peaks and lows of a glossy American TV show, where thirty-year-olds play seventeen-year-olds. On the school website, Head Boy and Girl were described as individuals who were voted in according to ‘dedication to school spirit and who would best represent the interests of the student body to faculty’。 In actuality, the Head Boy and Head Girl mandate was decided by how many people wanted to bang them and Khosi and Keeya were easily coronated Most Bangable.
Letsha smirked, following my eyeline to the couple. ‘Yeah, sure. Let’s pretend it was for me.’
‘What?’
Letsha ignored me. ‘Anyway. High collars, long-sleeves . . . it would be cool if that’s what you wanted to wear, but I know that it isn’t. I see the clothes you stare at in stores . . .’
‘I just think they’d look good on you!’ I interrupted.
Khosi was sipping from a plastic cup, his tall, athletic and theoretically bangable body glistening under the bright sunlight in his lemon-yellow swim shorts. His body was all hard ridges and angular definition, but his face was soft; he stood in the midst of his court looking slightly disorientated. Keeya yanked at his elbow and forced a shimmering （was that body glitter?） arm through it as he regaled his crew with a story. Khosi chuckled but then reached up to run a hand across his head and, in doing so, extricated himself from Keeya. His eyes drifted across his kingdom lazily and caught mine. I almost fell off the wall. His eyebrows furrowed in surprise before they rose up in tandem with the corners of his mouth, hauling my heartbeat up with it.
‘Why not you?’ Letsha asked quietly.
The prickling sensation that I felt beneath my shirt was becoming distinctly sharp, the heat coming up from deep below the surface of my skin. ‘You know why.’
Khosi and I had been friends in another life. As eight-year-olds, back when my mother worked in his mother’s salon, we would play together after school in the heat of hot combs and steamers. At ten we developed a secret handshake that necessitated advanced dexterity. At twelve we would sit together as he read his comic books and I read my novels and we would take turns explaining the wonders of our worlds to each other, bringing each other in, merging them and creating our own universe. At thirteen it was clear that hormones and puberty had re-shifted our world, pushing us into a new epoque: The Teen Age. Khosi grew taller as his muscles got tauter and his voice got deeper. My evolution, however, saw pale pinkish patches grow on my deep brown skin. First on my face, then on my arms, until it was almost everywhere, impossible to hide. I had cried back then, scrubbing at my skin until reality sank in. Khosi never said a word about it. His smile remained at the same wattage whenever he saw me, and it was somehow a balm for the sting of the comments other kids made （though Letsha always ensured they never made them again）。 There was also our basic social shifting; I was book clubs, he was sports clubs. Girls wanted to be with him and girls rarely talked to me. Boys wanted to be him and did not seem interested in me. His membership of the track team gave him a pre-set clique with the athletes, and Keeya, as netball captain, was very ready to be his match.