Last year at Saint Patrick's

Frenemies upon enemies

You remember vividly when I said I made more enemies than friends?
The truth be told now, I had friends equal to the number of enemies I had after a while. Enemies could be that senior who wanted the down fall of my classmates, seniors stylishly bulling juniors, those class mates who couldn't keep their mouth shut for everything that reached their ears and labour prefects that didn't share labour duties justfully and Festus was guilty of this.

It was the first time he had a prefect title and he didn't hesitate to punish rude juniors with the opportunity he had. That was when my dislike for him heightened because I couldn't imagine why anyone should be using their veto power for revenge, shamelessly telling then to their face the reason for doing that.
The situation now seemed like Labour prefect had become a merciless demi god that been given the power to destroy whatever came into his way. I never held back my displeasure and I bet he hated me for it because I had caused the other juniors under me to protest as well. Juniors who were there to watch the drama that madam 'holy art thou' Assumpta easily sorted out with a whimsical laugh that angered Festus the more because he expected her to support him. We were table mates and so the only way he thought he could win the battle was to defeat me at Na game.

My food was the smallest on the table the night after that drama. I didn't utter a word of protest and my silence should have been enough for him to read the signals that two could play that game where the other nine people who watch and beg that food should remain equal and ask us to stop the games.

To cut a long story short; I didn't carry out my revenge on him until that Sunday afternoon when he suddenly fell ill. Shared his food for everyone on the table and by the time the junior he had sent to get his food arrived, every one of us had dispersed. Mission accomplished. My mind became at peace.
You would think that this tale is all about me and my enemies but really it's not, it's just an opener—a fore tale—for the one who had had more enemies than I did and she didn't even worry if they cared about her or not.

Abimi didn't always have a good record. She was always seen for the worst and judged right from the moment she stepped into school. It was like all odds were against her. She didn't have much to call her own, she was only child with a struggling mother who constantly had pains in her joints and a father who wasn't always there when they needed him the most. She wasn't book smart like the rest of her mates, but she was smart to an extent but still dull when it came to choosing the right friends. Friends who wouldn't judge her no matter what she did. She was a sweet girl when she wanted to be nice, gave out without expecting returns, helped when she could but there was one little fault in her stars. She couldn't refrain from temptation. She couldn't keep her hands to herself and it got her a bad record till the day she left. I could swear that it pained me a lot when I heard boys talking about issues that sparked in the hostel and they would tag her for it, like what happened to that rule of what happens in St Maria Goretti stays in St Maria Goretti? For a long time she was stigmatized and pushed to a corner; like nobody wanted to be seen with her, it didn't seem fair to me but I tried to be friends and still draw a line which I didn't think she saw until an outburst from me one day. She took that nail hardener I used to make my finger nails to grow fast every week that got Master Felix going crazy every time he held my fingers and checked them with the surprise on his face. Nobody was supposed to have that in school and nobody was supposed to know that I had that and the smell of that hardener was a pungent one that couldn't be controlled and trust me I didn't want madam Assumpta's wahala. I didn't even know where to start getting angry from; first she entered my box and secondly took my hardener without asking. A deep breath and starting with the question 'why' made me sound rational unlike the scene I had crafted out in my head. I took collected the tube of transparent nail polish that had pink glitters from her, examined her own finger nails and helped her apply more. It surprised her a bit then I told her that I wasn't in the mood for keeping grudges, grudges only made me hungrier. I watched her smile with sincerity from her heart and it pains me to say that it was the last time I ever saw her smile that way with so much ease. Every other one was just fake, like she had a sad face masked underneath.

She had happy days but more of days where rumors battered on her like a heavy drops of rain. One couldn't tell if those rumours were true or not—I couldn't tell—but it wasn't enough that she got treated that way, like a stick in the mud. To an extent I would sometimes want to say that she deserved it. She deserved that hot slap Bernadette planted on her face one Thursday, the kind of slap that would land on your ears and you will begin to hear tunes from Christmas rice lights.

She deserved Amaka's public disgrace in the class after which the boys looked at her expecting a word in response to her so called friend's accusations then they jeered at her silence and called her a mumu. I think she deserved it all that because after they messed up her feelings she would run back to me and tell me everything they had said about me, everything that I wasn't supposed to know about that I would obviously overreact to.
It would feel like she wouldn't go back to them again to become friends but because I was me; a loner who preferred to do things on her own and totally different from the others who loved to clique everything in their lives, and because I didn't have four packs of refill milk and Milo for her to soak whenever she liked, she would go back to them and give them a reported speech of everything I had said about them just to comfort her. Still I didn't hate her but I made her feel like she had made an enemy more than the supposed friends she had. It was then that I realized, for the third time, that anybody could be just a friend but not a friend. And it wasn't supposed to be that way.

Maybe it was because I didn't want anyone to be able to completely predict me. Or it was something else that I wouldn't be able to fathom until I had left school and become all mature and experienced in the outside world. I never for once asked her why she chose to come out that way; going round in circles and crying a river when someone said hurtful things about her but again she deserved it she since didn't want to learn her lesson.
The countless fights in the hostel and arguments that drew attention and ended up as gist in St Martin boy's hostel and heated up attitudes between two or three people was proof that some people were better than me at this frenemies upon enemies thing.