Zainab,
I saw you with Mr K yesterday.
He's old enough to be your father so tell me, how much is he paying you?

-S.B.

**
Zainab Danjuma was the sugar baby.

My heart pounded as I read the new tweet that S.B just posted.

I don't know why that surprised me. It shouldn't. I had expected someone like Jacinta to be it but Zainab? It just did not add up. Her father was well to do and she could not even have any boyfriends at school because they were all scared of Idris. He might not speak but he packed a good punch for his sister. Did he know about it?

My heart sped up again as I realised that, Zainab might be the killer. The people mentioned on the last tweet, except from me of course, could very well be the killer. I only knew that the ex was Hakeem but Hakeem was innocent, but I couldn't be sure. The mute was Idris but I also could not be sure. The only thing I was now sure of was that Zainab was connected somehow.

"Have you seen Zainab?" I ask the girl close to me but she shook her head and scurried off.

I saw one of my classmates, whose name I could not remember for some reason though I know it starts with a B, and I asked him, "Have you seen Zainab?"

"Omo, if she show face today, make I bend. The girl dey follow old man, shey you don hear?"

His voice is grating and I'm sure that my ears are bleeding by now, "Get a life, Babatunde."

"It's Bamidele," He yells after me but I pay him no mind.

Where could Zainab be hiding? The tweet was realeasd immediately after the assembly and I knew that she would have been in school before then because she was a punctuality freak.

As I run, I bump into a hard chest and I am a bit flustered when I meet Idris's gaze. He steps away from me and makes a move to walk past me but I stop him.

"Wait Idris. Have you seen Zainab?"

He raises an eyebrow at me as he takes in my garbled words. He's sceptical of me. Why wouldn't he? I have not spoken two words to the guy ever since I saw him that day stealing mango in jss1. And it was no secret, except to her, that I hated Zainab's guts.

"The tweet. I want to ask if she's okay," I say and his eyebrow only goes higher as he reaches into his pocket for his phone.

Shit! He did not know about the tweet yet. Me and my big mouth.

I watch his face as he reads through the tweet and as his usually bored mask slips and his dark face is one of unbridled anger.

Well, don't I just love to ruin things?

He pushes past me without another word and I almost scream in frustration. Back to square one.

If my deepest darkest secret just got exposed on the web, where would I hid? I'll tell you, I'd rather kill myself. Then, I'd hide in the girl's toilet.

I'm a freaking genius.

I literally sprint to the girl's bathroom and I'm filled with a strange sense of satisfaction when I see Zainab hunched over the sink, throwing up.

So this was what it felt like to be right.

"Zainab," I say carefully, not sure which mood she would be in because if I was her, I would be in breaking down mood.

"Please, just go away," Her voice cracked as she spoke and I could see how badly her lip trembled in the mirror. Definitely in break down mood.

"Zainab, I just want to talk."

She turned to me slowly, her eyes wet and puffy, her lips swollen from how hard she must have bitten it to keep her tears at bay. I looked away to avoid bawling with her.

"Who else knew?" I say, cutting straight to the point, needing to be away the aura of darkness and depression.

"Knew what? That I'm fucking my dad's friend? Oh everyone now," She says bitterly and I have to keep my surprise at bay. Zainab rarely showed any anger. She was a ray of sunshine. A fake one. But a ray of sunshine, nonetheless. Seeing her like this was... scary. It meant things were changing for the worst. Everything. The sinking feeling made me inhale sharply.

"Before the tweet, Zainab," I snap at her but I could not care less.

"Nobody!" She screams at me too, tears falling from her face so she resembles a psychopath. Just an observation, not that she's a psychopath. Not that I would know. "No one knew. Idris knows now. What will he think of me? He'll hate me!"

The pain in her voice keeps tugging at my heart but I do my best to ignore it, "Think, Danjuma. Who knew?"

My cold voice seems to wash away her hysteria. She purses her lips, searching my face and then searching herself mentally trying to remember anything. When something like recognition crosses her face, I almost scream in triumph.

"Jumoke! Jumoke knew!"

The feeling of dread washed over me once more at Zainab's revelation. Jumoke? So Jumoke was connected to this? I don't know if I was supposed to be happy or sad.

"What do you mean 'she knew'?"

Zainab sighed, sitting with half her butt on the sink before she spoke to me, "It was in ss2. We were at a club, Kehinde and me, and he kissed me. I thought I saw someone watching us but I thought that I was paranoid. I thought it was just nerves you see, I'm always nervous in public. When I turned though, I saw Jumoke and she was staring right back at me with the most evilest look on her face."

I refrain from telling her that evilest isn't a word.

"I excused myself and approached her and she told me then that she did not want to talk much. She wanted the solo leads at the school musical plays and she was going to get it. If she did not, she would make my relationship public."

I stare dumbfounded at Zainab. As I process her words, I realise how it all made sense;

Zainab had an angelic voice for singing. She could blow whistle notes and when she was on stage for the school musical plays, it was easy to look past her loud attitude. It was also easy to forget that Jumoke Adegoke existed, even if it was just for one hour and thirty minutes.

Jumoke's voice was only mild. It was not even close to Zainab's voice. Zainab also knew that this was the only place she could beat Jumoke so everyone had been surprised when she dropped out of the drama club. Jumoke got all the lead roles of course.

I had tried to pry about it, I remember, always asking Jumoke if she had had something to do with it. She had always shrugged in the way that let me know that she had everything to do with it.

"Well, shit," I say, still shocked to my core.

"Shit is right," She stood up from the sink and walked over to a wall, banging her head lightly on it.

"Did you, um, sleep with only Kehinde or there were others?"

It's a weird question to ask but she doesn't seem fazed. She answered back without flinching, "It was only Kehinde."

"Did you kill her?" I realise what I have said before I can take it back.

She turns around so quickly that I am afraid that she'll break her neck, "What?"

"I am just asking."

We stare at each other for a long while before she starts laughing. The laugh is borderline crazy but she does not stop and I have to tighten my lips because I wanted to laugh with her too, at the absurdity of it all.

"I wish I did," She says finally when she is done, with a scary far away look in her eyes. "She caused me so much pain. She threatened me everytime as if taken the only thing I loved doing was not enough. I wanted to chop her to bits and then feed her to my dogs."

The toilet is silent at this revelation and my mouth hangs open as I take in her words. She speak again, not missing a beat;

"Even if I did kill her, Faithy, you are as bad as her, I wouldn't tell you."

"I'm not," The words come out small, unconvincing, but Jumoke catches them anyway.

"You're right. You are good, Faithy. I like you. Jumoke on the other hand was a demon. She deserved it. I hoped she suffered through great pain, she probably did."

I stare at her as she picks up her bag, swings it over her shoulder and stalks out of the toilet.

I am still standing there in confusion when the second period bell rings, listening to the comforting drip-drip sound from the tap.

**
A/N:
In the previous chapter deb-iwrite  commented "That's it?" and I saw that the chapter ended a bit abruptly. A lot abruptly. To be honest, I did not want to write about Kehinde and Zainab. I wouldn't want to get into the details of their relationship because it is WRONG. And I'm not going to try to make it seem right since it's going to be from Zainab's perspective. Zainab is in a rough spot and has no loving father and Kehinde took advantage of that. He's an asshole. So that's why the ending was like that. I hope you understand.

Shout out to Debi though, for always commenting. I love you, truly.

Also, I'm shipping Idris and Faith for some reason.

Anywayssss,

Xoxo,

Ciao.