Noticing: Chideziri POV

When i get back from V.p's office, where i went for a new set of markers, the class is like a coven. Which, i must admit, is expected. 

I can hear them three classes away, even SS1 can't boast of the level of noise pollution we manage to stew. It's a God-given gift, unmatchable. Being an L.F.A alumnus is like living with Mili militia addicts. At some point you get used to the sound of gunfire and bazookas slicing the air.

NB: I despise that game, from the depths, of the depths, of the depths of my faulty heart.

She actually smiles at me when i walk to our seat. She, being Chimamanda. I cant' think of anyone else in this hall being that ' she'.

Maybe's because i have spent so much of my time with everybody else they have lost their allure.Maybe i'm just being stupid, like with Celine. Maybe it's because she's hot– it's virtually impossible to unsee the looks and stares, even Juniors can't not notice her.

Or maybe i really like her. How do you even say that without sounding dumb, like you are proposing.

I heard Fawaz tell his girlfriend (some petite hottie in SS1) that she's his oxygen, and he couldn't live without her. He was lying. She believed him. Not a bad line there, but Bro, seriously? Isn't that extreme? Don't disrespect the element.

I don't want to go about telling people they are what they will never be to me, just to get them to like me.

Not after SS2, not after Frances left.

Not after i opened up enough to let one more person in after Mumsi and Tobi. Not after that person left town unceremoniously, without a heads-up–a call or even text. Just a weightless "hi" two months later on WhatsApp. I ignored it, i ignored her.

But man, i like this girl.

Deziri is humming I believe in miracles smugly. I quarantine him to the backstage of my mind. He can be smug there all he likes. 

Its almost 10:40, and the thought of the day's first class being double period maths–hot, rotten, fetid, utterly irredeemable mathematics makes me more down to earth, more present, and less chimamanda-crushing. My singlet is stuck to my chest, smudged in hot sticky sweat that's climbing the ladder-of-irritating at 2 miles per second.

 I hate sweating. Plain and pump. You want to know what i hate more than sweat? Sweating when i desperately need not to, for instance, right about now. 

Chimamanda is pulling notes out of her bag when i get to the desk. My notes. Our desk. 

I try to make small talk, and i say the first thing that comes into my head–a question, the dumbest question ever.

" Where you able to use the notes?" I ask.

 Jesus. I can already see Deziri slap his forehead with the flat of his palm.

"Yes, i was able to, thank you," she said, that husk reverberating my stomach again.

I usually am that guy that is like: if we're going to vibe we are going to, let fate do its thing. No-Pressure kind of vibe.

But it doesn't sit right with me this time. A voice, urgent and naive forces it way up to meet her's, to make acquaintance. It's loud and daring, and i'm not sure it's mine. I shove it down.

 She doesn't.

"You really should do more Japanese stuff, you know that right?"

" Eh." My brain is on airplane mode again.

She thinks i didn't hear her because she said it again

 "Your comic, deity, it looks more like anime than anything."

I heard, quite well. I am just drinking up the underlying coarse honey of her voice.

I told Tobi my comics will pay off one day, i told his disbelieving ass. Here we are now, my moment of rapturous glory.

It's short lived though, because i had barely opened my mouth to speak than Sir Etemire walked in, hands behind him, shoulders straight, chest thrust forward; a drill sergeant inspecting his troops.

"Good Morning Sir!" We're all on our feet almost immediately, grinding out that three-worded sentence that can save you from a punishment. Seniors and prefects or not Etemire is a force to be reckoned with. His guerilla teaching style sure is what earned him a nickname after the Igbo river goddess—whoever noticed the rhyme between Etemire and Itsemiri  is genius though.

First day we ever set eyes on him, SS1 third term, he hinted his evil capabilities. Fourth day of his arrival, we crossed paths with unhitched devilry. Half the class did frog jump laps around the field for 'refusing' to do his assignment. I'm talking about the main field here. We were all limping and hurting for a week. That week, if you messed up, your neighbour just smacks your thigh, and it's over.

He keeps us standing for a while longer walking through our ranks, observing. Nobody says a thing, not even a whisper of complaint after he tell us to "Sit!"

Deziri is a lot braver, he barks back and tells Sir Etemire to: get up out of here with his Kunta Kinte crap, and that he Deziri the Great takes orders from no one. And for the trillionth time, i revel in the fact that only i can hear him.

*

Her tongue  is drowned in orange flavour, a blotch of fanta over red. Sodden rust-red leaves litter the floor beneath the massive orange tree we are under, a few feet from the snack shop.

Crisp-clean rain moistened breeze whirls by and around us, until i can practically feel the wetness drip from it.

She's funny, and not funny in that 'savage-girl' kind of way, funny in that hilarious way. Bullying people has never been funny to me, you would believe me if you saw me lend Mekus a bloody lip for it in primary four. Her sense of humor just makes it extra hard to be defensive even after she dissected Echinabia, my last-two-pages-comic-hero.

"Okay, okay," i conceded "i agree, Echinabia is a meathead  with no sense of self control or restraint."

She grins "I wouldn't have put it like that o. But okay, if the shoe fits."

I give her a dirty look.

"So you want to be an artist?" She leaned back against  the tree's rough epidermis and almost immediately, she seemed to remember orange trees aren't very welcoming. Spear pointed pins pike out from a phalanx of bark.

I get that question a lot, that you-want-to-attend-art-school?  cow dung. Like Mumsi will let me. She wants me to study law, and there was a time, in my Js1's and 2's, when i wanted me to be a lawyer too.

Now, i simply don't know. Certainty is one of those things growing up robs you of.

I don't tell her that though. 

 "Nah, i want to study law. For me, drawing's just a hobby. My elder brother is an artist, he does portraits and small cartoon strips, i guess i just picked it up somewhere along the way."

She cocked her head to a side and squinted at me. We walk down the block at a leisurely pace, neither of us in a hurry to see that mad class soon.

I expect the questions that will follow: 

Can he draw me?

Is he in school?

Like how much older than you is he?

Nothing of the sort comes out. Instead "is he a pretty as you?"

If i had a drink i would have spluttered the whole thing out here, right on this damp soil. My face is suddenly hot. She knows, and is having trouble hiding it, by the lopsided smile that has curled it way around her lip like steam gasped out of a whistling kettle.

Her teeth flashes through, and somehow crooked teeth is my new definition of vogue.

"Handsome, you were trying to say handsome, right?"

She gets even smug-er. " No, you are not handsome, you are pretty, like girl type of fine."

I try, try very hard and fail woefully at trying to look as if at she didn't just call me pretty.

"You still haven't answered my question."

"Everybody says he is"

She gives me a brow. 

 "Everybody says he looks better." i finish

"Do you?"

The truth, the whole and nothing but the truth? Nahhhhhh. I tell her that, and for some reason it makes her grin even thicker. I swear i can't figure out this girl. 

I think it's a tie. Tobi has Daddy's body and Mumsi's peoples face; the perfect combo..doesn't mean i didn't put up fight.

She said "I know it's usually the other way around, but its like i'm going to have to come to your house with groom-price."

This girl basically said i'm fine (that is, me trying to ignore the Tobi part, Tobi is a ho, and he needs Jesus).

Masculinity, the almighty Y-chromosome, or whatever unspoken law of the universe says boys do all the talking, line dropping,make all the moves–in Port-harcourt speak–chaiking. Females just stay there, fronting. Really, that's another of the many things i never understood, one of the numerous things i may never understand. 

All i know is that it feels better to have someone coming at me like this for a change.