"Salma, will you go to the dining hall?" Mona asked behind me. The bell had been rung for lunch and students were slowly, but surely leaving their classrooms like ants going to hunt for food. I turned around to face Mona and she was holding a pack of chips with a bottle of Coca-Cola.
"Yes," I responded off-handedly, fishing my phone out of my breast pocket. Phones weren't allowed in class, but they were allowed in the dining hall. Mona quickened her pace and fell in step with mine. We walked to the dining hall, bumping into other students to whom we mumbled some apologies.
Soon, we entered the vast dining hall which was sometimes turned into an assembly hall for public announcements. The seats were being filled up and I spotted a few students queuing up for some snacks. If I hadn't been in a rush this morning, I could have gotten some snacks from Mom's kitchen, but now I had to take the school's own. Everybody knew the school's snacks weren't that good.
"I'm going to find some seats while you get some snacks." And with that, Jennifer sauntered to find a table for two. I grumbled as I joined the queue of students collecting snacks.
The dining hall had a staircase. The top part was where we collected snacks, then you descended to eat. The tables and booths were painted grey while the chairs were white. The walls felt stony, just like the school's name. The floors were tiled with marble tiles of white and grey colours. Everything felt retro, old, yet clean.
Maintenance culture of Ghana.
While the line progressed, I busied myself with my phone. Aaliyah was still MIA on me, and although Mona's words made sense, I was beginning to get tired of sending her thousands of messages without a single reply.
From: Salma at 12:13 p.m.
To: Aaliyah
Hi, can we talk?
I pressed the 'send' button and made up my mind that this was the last message I was sending to Aaliyah. If she did not respond, fine, but it would be damn good if she did.
"Hello?" I felt a hand wave over my face. I snapped out of my reverie and looked up to see a light-skinned boy a few inches taller than me with curly hair cropped neatly. He was giving me the biggest smile ever and even though it irritated me at that moment, I was still gazing at his stupidly handsome face.
"What?" I questioned him, finding his smile which was still growing wider irritating. Weren't his cheekbones hurting?
"Um... choose the snacks you want to eat." The boy said shoving a few packets of chips and biscuits in my face. I smacked them away and he chuckled.
"A large bag of plantain chips and a bottle of Coca-Cola," I said, rummaging through my purse for some money.
"Alright, that will be 5 cedis," the boy said handing me the chips and keeping the bottle of Coke in black polythene.
"No, I don't need it," I replied, stopping him from destroying the environment with a bag of plastic. I handed him a crisp 5 cedi note and took my snacks. Just as I was about to leave for a booth where I spotted Mona munching on her chips, the boy stopped me.
"This semester, you get a hug after taking your snacks," and with that, he spread his arms wide like Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. I backed away from him. Who gives hugs to random strangers in a dining hall?
"Okay, first of all, eww and secondly, who even made that damn law?" I questioned him, planting my hands on my hips, the dripping water from the bottle of Coke making contact with my skin. The chips crackled a bit and I can feel a few people turning to look in our direction.
YOU ARE READING
Salma's Epiphany
Teen FictionWhen her father dies, Salma feels her world has been blown up by an atomic bomb. She caves into the grief and becomes a shadow of her once bubbly self. Her mother tries all she can to help her grieve 'healthily', but Salma doesn't want any of that...
