"Economics, Civic, Foreign languages, Food and nutrition, Agric, huh? Agric? Arghh"

I was already getting frustrated. I had been trying to cram our stupid time-table for close to thirty minutes now. You could guess that I hadn't made any progress. I was still on Monday!! Monday for crying out loud!!
Did my memorization skills go on vacation or what?

We were on break. I asked Joy and Enny to go on without me since I had "work" to do. Why did that witch have to put me through this much suffering? Worse is that I was scared she was going to pop in at any time and ask me to recite the time table.

"Who died?" I hear a voice ask from behind me interuppting my inner turmoil.

I turn around to face the owner of the voice. It happens to be Philips. He was holding a bottle of Coke in his right hand and a meat pie in his left.

"What do you mean 'who died?'?" I hadn't even noticed he was in class. I was too focused on the little assignment Mrs Akinwunmi gave me the day before.

"I was referring to your facial expression. Like you just lost someone." He replies shrugging.

"Godforbid bad thing"

"Then what happened? Why do you look so worked up?" He asks again.

"Nothing. I've just been trying to cram the class' time table and I'm not getting it." I sigh feeling defeated.

"Why? If it's because of Akinwunmi, you know you don't have sense shey?" The way he called her Akinwunmi without the Mrs made me laugh despite the insult.

"How don't I have sense? And if you like allow her to hear you calling her by her name."

"What's there? Will she beat me?" He asks or more like boasts hissing.

"I pity you. So why don't I have sense?" He hadn't answered me the previous time.

"Oh yeah if that's it then you don't have sense. Everybody knows that woman has short term memory. She's totally going to forget about you." He says leaning back in his chair and taking a huge gulp from his coke.

I watched his huge Adam's apple move up and down as he swallowed. It was so funny watching it move. I felt like reaching out to play with it.

"What's funny?" Philips says bringing me out from my thoughts. "You've not seen a fine boy drinking coke before abi?"

"Ode" I reply laughing. "I was looking at your Adam's apple. It's so funny and stupid." I say pointing at it and laughing more. I watched as he smirked,shook his head and then chuckled. He must think I was so immature. My laughter died and then we were quiet for a bit. I considered going back to my cramming despite all Philips said but he broke the silence before I could do so.

"I believe you owe me an apology."

"For?"

"Yesterday. During break? When you yelled at me for no reason. In front of many people."

"It wasn't for no reason. You spoke to me like I was one slave. And you yell at people like that all the time so..."

"First of all, I've never yelled at anybody in public. I'm too chill for that. Second, I didn't speak to you like a slave. I said 'help me'. If I were have to have spoken to you like a slave I would have said 'go do this or go this that'. I wouldn't say 'help me'." He says calmly.

"You're talking rubbish guy. Leave me alone."

I didn't even know why we were talking. When did I even start talking to him or when did he even start talking to me?

"Just accept you were wrong and apologize, finish."

"If I have to do that, you also have to accept you were wrong and apologize." I tell him back. He shouldn't have sent me on an errand like I was his junior or something.

Personally, I know I was wrong. I shouldn't have yelled out like that. I was just so hungry but he was also wrong so I'd also demand an apology.

"Fine, I'd apologize but you have to apologize to me first." He says

"Uh no. You offended me first so apologize first." I say back. I honestly didn't know why I was dragging this conversation with him but something felt nice about talking to one of them like this.

"No. Ladies first, remember." He says smiling making me smisle too.

"Okay fine. I'm sorry for shouting at you unnecessarily. Your turn."

"My turn? For what?" He asks trying his best to look clueless. This boy. Now I knew why he was friends with Nonso. They were so alike.

Samuel, Nonso and Stephen enter the class just then arguing about a movie, I think. They make their way over to where Philips was and drag him to pick a side.

I couldn't help but shake my head and laugh. Boys.

I sigh turning around to face my front and-

"Holy sweet mother of Jesus" I shriek loudly.

"What the fuck now?" I yell at my two best friends as I threw my hands up exasperatedly. They had been bent so close to my face wearing creepy smiles.

"You almost gave me a heart attack." I complain as I watch them clutch their stomachs in laughter.

They reminded me of Lupita Yungo's daughter's doppleganger from that horror movie "Us".

"You-you-you looked like you wanted to d-die." Joy says between laughs as she wiped stray tears from her face.

"I know right. She looked so scared. My God." Eniola says too laughing, as she sits on the floor. See this girl o. Her boyfriend is in the class and she's sitting on the floor. I steal a glance at the boys and see they were still deep in their movie argument.

Nonso, Philips and Samuel were on one side while Stephen was on another side. He looked desperate to win the argument so I bet he wouldn't notice even if Eniola was rolling herself on the floor.

I looked back at the girls and they were still laughing.

"Ha ha very funny." I say trying to sound angry and failing as I joined them in their laughter.

We got a lot of stares from our classmates and the ones that saw what happened just laughed along with us.

"What is going on here? Where is the person I asked to memorize the time table? Come out now."

Blood of Zachariah

•••

A/n

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-lisa ❤️