Entangled Hearts

3. Jinna

                    Jinna

               
                    It was eleven thirty already and Jinna had barely forty minutes to get to motor park where she would get a morning bus heading home.
            Morning buses were cheaper, more road worthy and faster. Missing it meant that she had to settle for the private buses that came at a much later time and at a much more tuned up price than the government owned buses.
            It wasn't that the government buses wouldn't still be there in the afternoon but by then, they would have become much fewer and getting into one needed more stampede, more pushing , more shoving, much survival of the fittest skills. Even more sweat especially when squeezing through a dozen other bodies, more like a giant soup ball of different scents and bodies with all the body heat and sweat. 
Something she knew she had no energy for at the moment.
           " Do you really have to go?", Fikemi asked again for the hundredth time that morning. In a tone that sounded more like a whine.
           " What's wrong with this one, don't tell me you are already missing your baby sitter", Adesua teased from where she sat on Fikemi's bed. It was a joke, one that expected no answer. To be ignored, like it already was.
           Adesua was their other friend. More of Jinna's friend than to Fikemi. All Fikemi ever related to was Jinna. Adesua and the others just came along with Jinna. The baggages she had to put up with. To share her friendship with Jinna but then there was no doubting that Fikemi liked Adesua as a friend.
          " Yes dear, I have to but I'll be back soon on Monday morning", she replied, exactly ignoring Adesua's sacarsm laced comment. She looked at her watch again.
          " I'll have to start going",
          " Ok", Fikemi replied looking thoughtful.
           " I guess I have to start going to the bathroom then", Adesua said getting up from the bed. " Have a safe trip", she added before leaving for her corner.
           " Tell Ngozi, I've gone oo!, She called after her. Adesua replied in a slight wave which meant she would.
            Ngozi was their other friend. The one that was more of Adesua's friend than to Jinna and Fikemi. She would have also sat by Adesua on the bed if she hadn't gone too bathe. She was also called " Zik", for short.
            " Don't stay too long", Fikemi said when they had come out to the corridor.
  Jinna smiled in reply.
             The corridor was seemed much more neater with a few wraps of snacks and tins of beverage littering the fry floor. The cloth lines looked raptured with a few clothes hanging on it. Courtesy of the reduced population. Very few girls stood idly at the corridors, chatting or doing their laundries. More people were still going to go for their weekends, so the hostel was going to be less noisy and emptier by  Saturday evening.
           " Ok, I have to start going now , I have a lot of running to do", she said looking at her watch.
           It was eleven forty five and she still had twenty eight minutes. Ten minutes of jogging, running and run- walking. Then she would take a cab that would take her to park. The plan in her head still existed in an uninterrupted straight path.
           " I'll miss you", Fikemi mouthed handing Jinna her bag.
           " Me too, stay safe Sis", she replied pulling Fikemi into a hug. A short one, before running off. Willing herself not to look back . She didn't want to see Fikemi standing at the corridor with her puppy face pout.
           The wind hit her sides as she ran into the tarred road lined with pine trees on both sides. She was breathing fast now. Six more minutes and she would be at the school gate.
           This was the short cut she normally took, when ever she went for her lectures alone without Fikemi or Adesua. Going through  the route meant passing the lodge area. The pace were the lodges were, the ones that were nearest to the campus. The tall storeyed buildings that always had people perched on its balconies. She had wished she could live there but she knew she couldn't afford it .
           Other than that, she felt a kind of inner peace when she used the pathway. She walked when she did, listening to the calm rustling  of the pine trees but this time she was running and in a huge hurry. Her pace had terribly slowed.
           She was doing something between run- walking and jogging and she was thinking too. Running felt easy when she did it with thoughts racing through her head.
           She decided to think about home because she rarely did and since she was going there, this could be the time to. Thoughtd about home were always sad thoughts anyways. Sad hopeless thoughts. Thinking about home always gave her those thoughts. The thoughts of her sick father lying on his bed or on the three seater couch in the palour. She thought of something else. Of how easy life had been in the past when she was just a little girl in the primary school. When the tragedy that caused her father's sickness had not yet happened. When her mother's face still had a smile and her siblines.... A car tooted noisily. Disrupting her train of thoughts.  It sounded too fast. Angry, like an emergency break. The one drivers gave when their cars lost control. When they were about to knock someone down.
            She was standing in the middle of the road and in front of a car bonnet when she came out of her reverie. She had covered a lot of ground thinking and in her unconscious state had kept to the middle of the road.
            An angry tooting car meant only one thing.
           She had almost run into it.
           She had just missed death or an injury by a hairs breath.
           Her mouth gaped open and her duffel bag fell off from her hands.
           She heard a car door slam. She thought she did or maybe it was so.
           " Are you sick or something?", a sharp preening voice cut her from her shock.
           Jinna looked up to the totally unfamiliar but yet beautiful face. At the girl standing  in front of her in bum- short and singlet. The girl had an angry scowl but she still looked pretty. She needed an apology. Jinna willed her self , her mouth to open, her tongue to wag and give her one but they all stayed put, froze instead. She was still shocked and at a loss of words. The girl's face did a snarl before she advanced towards Jinna. She was visibly very mad . Jinna  was too shocked to do anything. The girl took her pound of flesh.
          The slap sent her almost reeling to the bonnet of the car. At first her cheeks felt heavy as she looked at the sleek piece in front of her. Her numb senses awakened.
          The side walks were empty. Devoid of students or any other form of human life unlike how it had been in week days.  It was just her , the pine trees, the car and the angry girl. Her heart beat tripled.
           The pine trees seemed to have stopped their gentle whistling. They seemed quiet. Solemn as if they were about to witness her death. The girl looked violent enough to do that alone. To beat her to stupor if she wanted but she wouldn't allow it happen. She quickly picked up her bag from where it fell, before making her dash.
           A car door slammed again or rather she slammed into it.
           " Oh my God Debbie you shouldn't have..
          Jinna looked up at the source of the voice , momentarily forgetting the pain her body felt from the impact with the car door that had suddenly opened in her short run.
          She had seen female blokes before. Those tomboyish girls that she secretly thought as cute looking but she had never seen one that looked so feminine but yet was masculine in a very cute way.
          The fair smooth skin. The locs, long and brown. The almost thin lips. The nose that stood in a straight line, a thin ridge. Then the soft small doe eyes that stared back at her softly. Intensely.
          They had locked eyes, momentarily.
          The girl was apparently the driver. The owner of the car. The signs completely stood out. The eyes were still staring back at her. Freezing her, like she was a deer caught by headlights. A deer in the headlights. The one that would soon fall to the hunters gun. She remembered the angry girl behind her, a few inches away perhaps.
          Tightening her grip on her duffel bag, Jinna willed herself again, once more. This time her body listened. She dashed past the girl. Her heart beat tripled as if it was letting go of something. Something it really wanted. She sighed. She felt foolish for the first time that year.
            

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