Last year at Saint Patrick's

Happily back to school

Finally the bus is here! Maryanne squealed alerting others who had been awaiting the arrival of the junior students—that's if anyone really felt happy about their arrival.
We had spent exactly one month alone in the school premises strolling, playing games that became boring over time, going for prayers when the time came, oversleeping when we didn't have external exams or anything to while away time and sneaking out of school to buy chewables that weren't at our disposal until
Father Ashade gave a  double-take one day while he drove past us—we the girls—taking a walk to Maria Goretti's house as it was too close to school; what was the reason for leaving? To retrieve Master Scogun's laptop so we could watch the Wedding Party he claimed to have downloaded for us. I expected him to reverse, stop us and question us and perhaps report the matter to Fr. Isah upon his return but we quickly rushed into the bushes that led to Goretti's house and never wet out together like soldiers at the war front.

There were also nights where we stayed up watching sequel and recaps of series on Zee World because Amaka and Lolade refused to release the cable Tv remote so we were all forced to watch King of Hearts and Twist of fate every forty minutes till master Frank showed up to send us all to bed. And all those quiet time and rations of food we didn't get on a good day—all would disappear because they had to resume.

"So these pesky juniors are back again?" Lolade didn't hold back her displeasure at all with the way she hissed like the regular mama Osun women in white laces moving aimlessly along the Mushin markets. She was the hostel prefect and God knew that by Monday she would have to resume the duties she had abandoned for a while. She threw the edges of her pashmina scarf around her body as he moved across the half broken table tennis the junior players always knew how to fix whenever it fell after someone sat on the table and dismantled its shape and stepped out for s better view.

I sat on a table behind the SS3 classroom with the wall of fame on my right hand, the grey and pink paint on the wall seemed white-washed as every nickname that had been carved with dividers and compasses glared sharply from Boyo to Zake, JOIN, Thoniee Cruz, Ossy, Cassandy and Portholes and others I didn't know the owners to the recent ones I knew Rugedy, ChopChop, Jayleo and Gasky. They all had one thing in common—'waz ere' always ended the carving
The big red 'Mapoly' bus as it was popularly called took a turn from where I sat and stopped at the small table tennis court, the tires hissing and chattering filled the space at once. I saw Lolade's facial expression and guessed it meant Ughh noise, again!

I could see from the look on their faces that a good number seemed thrilled to start a new term, boys with their clean shaven hair looking sharp, young girls with neat corn rows that didn't deserve to be loosened after two weeks; all looking like fattened lambs. I laughed a little and waved off the flash back to my first year in secondary school. It was never St. Patrick's to begin with, it was Our Lady of Apostle, Ijebu-Ode and to be really honest going back to that past seemed depressing because my mind always started from the entrance of the school. The old coconut trees that must've been planted before my father was born, the statue of a girl with books in her hand propped to a pedestal during the fifteenth or seventeenth sets before mine. It also had to be covered before July 1st  as against Agemo festival.

Rumor had it that if the statue wasn't covered up, one girl and two other female staffs were likely to die. I considered it fetish and discomforting because I didn't create the system and neither did I screw it up to deserve the treatment we got when the festival began; we were prohibited from loitering around the convent areas and that was the only less depressing part of OLASS that gave the feeling of being outside, asides being in the dormitories with friends. And at the end of my second year, I made my mother pull me out not mainly because I didn't get enough attention but my self-esteem she had built in just a year at Corona School Ikoyi, disappeared like a star swallowed up by a black hole, my grades were poor overtly because the teachers only focused on the smart ones and left the dull ones to themselves hitherto I was happy I left.
I had four blissful years to myself without having to think about the 'bunk shaker', Miss Koi Koi and the sound of her heels and the bush baby that cried every night—the many stories they told boarding schools—senior girls to be precise, spread rumors that the baby that cried every night from the bushes belonged to a certain reverend sister that had gotten pregnant and could only get rid of the child by leaving it in the bush. As terrible as the story was I did away with the rumor and prayed against it instead when the stories began to haunt my dreams; then the last thing my eyes saw one night, the seemingly malevolent figure that strolled into the room right after a shrew screeched and an alarm rang. God knew the fear that consumed me made my entire being tremble and could also make the bunk shake.