Periwinkle raised his hand. When Mrs. Oluwatosin called on him, he said, “I want to be chief of the police force.”

“So that people can be dashing you money all over the place?” Jibaku asked.

More laughter.

Periwinkle nodded. “I plan to have many, many wives, so I’ll need to make extra money to keep them all happy.” He winked at Jibaku, and she sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes.

“You’ll be lucky to even have one wife,” she retorted. “With your fat head.”

Sunny chuckled, resting her chin on her hands. Jibaku’s meanness was certainly funnier when it wasn’t aimed at her. She shut her eyes for a moment, feeling sleep try to take her. In the darkness behind her eyes she felt that thing again, like something was pulling her to the left and something else was pulling her to the right. It was unsettling, but for a moment she tried to analyze it. Doing so made her stomach lurch. She felt her body sway and was about to open her eyes when she heard snoring.

Oh no! I’m asleep, she thought, quickly opening her eyes, sure people would be staring at her. No one was, thank goodness. Apparently her snoring had been in her head.

“Orlu,” Mrs. Oluwatosin said. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Sunny perked up. Orlu was at the front of the class so she couldn’t see his face. She’d barely had a chance to say hello to him this morning, but it seemed Orlu had gotten a fine night’s sleep. She wondered what his mentor, Taiwo, had him doing last night and how he’d been able to return early enough to sleep well.

“A zoologist, I think,” he said. “I love studying animals.”

“Very nice,” Mrs. Oluwatosin said. “That’s an excellent career. And an exciting one, too.”

Sunny agreed. Plus, Orlu was already like a walking encyclopedia when it came to creatures and beasts, magical or non-magical.

“Sunny? What about you?”

Sunny opened her mouth and then closed it. She didn’t know what she wanted to be. A professional soccer player? she thought. I’m good at that.

For the past few months, she’d been playing soccer with her male classmates when they gathered in the field beside the school. Proving to them that she was worthy enough to play with them had been easy. All she had to do was take the soccer ball and do her thing; it came as naturally as breathing.

However, it was explaining how she could have albinism and yet play in the pounding Nigerian sun that was trickier; she certainly couldn’t tell them that her ability to do this was linked to her being a Leopard Person. “My father had a drug delivered from America that makes me able to be in the sun,” she told the boys who asked. She was such an excellent soccer player that they all accepted her answer and let her play. When she was on the field, she was so so happy.