The Wrong List

The notice board outside Moremi Hall was a battlefield. Three hundred first years pressed against the glass, elbowing, shouting, searching for their names.

Ifunanya Eze did not elbow. She stood at the back with a cheap suitcase, a bucket, a mat rolled under her arm, and a folder that held the most important sheet of paper in her life: her scholarship letter. She had travelled eleven hours from Enugu on three buses, the last one without a roof.

"Excuse me. Please. Excuse me."

A girl in tight jeans looked her up and down, and moved aside one inch.

Ify found the sheet. Block C. Room 214. She read the name beside hers, and read it again.

Chidera Obi.

"That is a boy's name," she said aloud.

"Could be a girl," said the girl in tight jeans.

"Chidera is not a girl's name."

"Madam, I know a Chidera who is a woman."

Ify did not wait. She grabbed her bucket and went hunting for the porter. Block C smelled of boiled indomie and deodorant and wet cement. The corridor was a river of slippers. Somebody was playing Burna Boy through a speaker the size of a refrigerator. She counted doors. 210, 212.

Room 214 was open.

Inside, a young man was lying on the bottom bunk with his feet on the wall and a pillow over his face, singing off-key to the music from next door. He was long and thin, in a vest and a football short, with a scatter of textbooks across his chest like a blanket.

"Hello?" said Ify.

The pillow lifted. A pair of amused brown eyes appeared. "Yes?"

"I am looking for Chidera."

"You have found him."

"You are Chidera Obi?"

"The one and only." He sat up and grinned. He had a gap between his front teeth and a dimple in one cheek, and the whole effect was so annoying that she wanted to hit him. "And you are?"

"Ifunanya Eze. I have been assigned to this room."

The grin died. "No, you haven't."

"Yes. I have a letter."

"This is a male room."

"I know! Your name is on it!"

"And your name is Ifunanya! You are a girl!"

"I am aware!" She dropped the bucket. It made a very satisfying clang. "I did not cross the whole of Nigeria to be told by a boy in a vest that I do not exist!"

Silence. Down the corridor, someone cut the music. A head peeked around the door, then another. In a hostel, a quarrel is a theatre.

Chidera stood. He was a head taller than her. He looked, she saw, entirely sincere. "Wait. Hold on. They did it again."

"Who?"

"The housing office. They did it last year to a girl from Kaduna. She slept in the reading room for a week." He rubbed his neck. "Okay. You can't stay here. But you cannot go anywhere else either, because they are full. Everything is full. Matriculation is on Friday."

"So where do I sleep?"

He considered her, then the bucket, then the mat. A strange, quick softness crossed his face. "Give me one hour. I will fix it."

"How?"

"I'm class rep for Law. It's what I do. I fix things, and I annoy people while I'm doing it." He picked up her suitcase before she could protest. "Come. At least let me carry your bags."

"I can carry my own bags."

"I'm sure you can. But it's embarrassing to watch."

She followed him down the corridor in a fury, past the staring heads, and into the stairwell. Halfway down, he stopped.

"Ifunanya."

"What?"

"Welcome to Unilag." He smiled again, that gap-toothed, impossible, devastating smile. "It's chaos. You'll love it."

She did not say anything. She was too busy being angry. But somewhere under the anger, in a small cold room she had not known she had, something stirred. She told it to be quiet.

The housing office was a bungalow with a broken fan and a queue out the door. Chidera marched in at the front of it, announced himself as Law Class Rep, and within twenty minutes had secured a mattress, a bed in the female hostel's overflow room, and a handwritten apology on university letterhead.

"You were quick," she said grudgingly, afterward.

"I'm good at talking."

"That's not a skill. It's a symptom."

He laughed so hard that he had to lean against the wall. And Ify, to her astonishment, was smiling too.

It was the last time that year she'd smile at him for free.