Naya and Vince

37

NOT A DATE

Walking on the street of my hood with Chijioke made me notice so many things I had never really paid attention to. The way sewage water leaked into the street and formed stagnant puddles. How empty sachets of water and nylon spotted the whole street. The awful stench from the gutters and the naked buttocks of the kids as they played around the dirty floor and pretended to catch fish from the dirty gutters.

It was a total eyesore.

Even I was beginning to get irritated by the sight I had thought as normal before I was blessed with Regal high's scholarship.

One of the kids, a girl on worn out pink panties, kept staring at me and Chijioke and it unnerved me. I scowled at her but unluckily I didn't intimidate her.

"See as you face worwor monkey banana," she retorted loudly. I was speechless. It was one of those moments when a kid insulted you and you couldn't just say anything because you would look like a fool exchanging words with a kid. The girl went ahead to stick her tongue out at me and mocked me with her group of filthy kid friends. I just wished I could slap the laughter from their ugly faces.

"Are those kids jeering at you?" Chijioke asked, a sort of amusement in his voice.

I glared at him. Well, it was his fault. Why didn't he drive into my hood like I thought a rich kid would very much like to do? He unfortunately decided to be humble and order a taxi instead. And now we had to trek to a certain junction where our ride was waiting for us.

"I hate most of the children here." Constance was the only child that I ever really liked. Kids are annoying.

"Erm. . ." Chijioke trailed off.

I have been expecting Chijioke to throw a bad comment for ages but all he did was try to ignore how terrible this environment looked and throw small questions at me. Who was he trying to impress? I saw the look on his face when he spotted kids floating paper boats on muddy water. I heard him grumble about how they wanted to ruin his kicks when he had to hop over puddles on the road. It wasn't even rainy season and there were puddles, that was sure to piss someone off.

"You don't mean that. Do you?"

I just shrugged. We were already at the junction where we were supposed to get our ride.

"So what do you think about my. . .area?" I asked slowly making sure to take note of his facial expressions and body language. I was so uncomfortable at the reality that Chijioke was here.

Chijioke looked at me and rubbed his forehead. "You've been waiting for a nasty comment since, haven't you?" He chuckled lightly. "See the way she's looking at me like a hawk."

"It's weird na. How can you not throw a negative comment? It's impossible."

"I'm your friend and I'm sensitive too. I can't go around commenting on how wrong everything is there when I know you'd feel it," Chijioke told me walking straight to a grey corolla pack on the side of the road. "You grew up there didn't you?" Chijioke turned slightly to ask me.

"Y-yes."

Chijioke exchanged words with the driver. Figured he was our driver. I got myself comfortable at the back seat and felt the song playing from the speaker touch my soul. It was so calm and serene and I could even feel the artiste's emotions. It gave me goosebumps.  I was used to loud songs that only talked about stupid things and I was tired of it.

"Do you know this song?" I asked Chijioke when he entered beside me.

"Yeah. Eyo by Asa. I think" he listened for a while. "Yes it is."