The Hidden Toxin ✔(#6 in the Our Side of The Dice Series)

Chapter 11: Boxing the Rock

Songs for this chapter are:

Suicide Nets - Nobigdyl. ft Emily Allman

Yoga - Tay Iwar ft Asa

Psycho Heart - Nobigdyl.

Bad motives - Nobigdyl.

Pressure - Nobigdyl., John Givez

Still fighting - Lee Chan Sol

Ebun

Ebun was able to graduate from high school.

The printed sheet that contained answers to her examination questions helped immensely and they were indeed the correct answers. Josephine had successfully moved away from her bad book. When the results for the final exams were released, Ebun saw that she got grades that were good enough to meet up to any pass mark required from any university of her choice. Even around the world.

Ebun's mother took a good moment to cry on the day of the release of the result. She was the happiest to see that her daughter could finally graduate from school. But how did Ebun, the celebrant feel?

Well...she wasn't overly excited about it. It was more like a simple intake of fresh air for her. Finally, she was out of the school that was responsible for her six years of misery and intense trauma. Everything that existed in that premises presented itself as a demon that gravely tormented the realm of her senses.

Tree branches hiding white masks, distinct but hollow noises and shrieks that she often time blamed on auditory hallucinations, dark, strange shadows that always seemed to hover around her, a low guarantee of safety. Everything.

Even the people.

Yes, no one knew about her trauma and what had happened which was great but their ignorance didn't help matters either. Everyone expected her to be okay. So she couldn't scream, run or hide if she saw, felt, or heard things that others were oblivious to. She couldn't react the way she would have wanted to.

There were sometimes when she just needed to sleep or go home. Times when she didn't feel like engaging in any activity but unavoidably had to stay back for group meetings or presentation rehearsals. Trying to think of an excuse not to stay back was another causative factor of stress and it put a strain on her mental energy.

Most times, she made those situations avoidable by skipping such meetings but she came back to school the following day to get scolded either by affected classmates or subject teachers because she was putting her group members in academic trouble as they lost marks due to her absence.

She could not share her story so the weight could be lifted off her shoulders. Hence all she did was stare, sob, and apologize for all the tongue-lashing and scolding she got because she couldn't say a word. But all of that was over now.

On the day of her graduation party, her family came as expected. No one was absent except Cassandra who was abroad. Her mother being the extra drama queen she was, gathered about five tables and decorated them with many table cloths, napkins, cutleries, dishes, gourmets, and flasks.

Her outfit was extravagant. She'd most certainly dropped hundreds of thousands at the garment maker's shop to have such loud regalia adorned by her body. She looked beautiful regardless. Ebun had to admit.

However, Ebun could not understand why there was a big feast even though the occasion was worthy of celebration. It still seemed a little too extra. Why five tables? It was too much for just one family. Yes, she had many siblings, Yemisi already had children so she brought them along with her husband to her graduation. It was still a lot because Ebun didn't have friends that could come around to celebrate with her and fill the tables.