Femme Fatale.

23

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Matuga Girls' High School.
The school is set on sixty two acres. Apart from classrooms,dormitories, offices and all buildings essential to a girl's boarding high school,it is with portions for poultry and a no-nonsense, geometrically neat square of splendid vegetables,everything the headmistress, Mrs Omar, thinks suitable for the students to consume and what remains to sell.
But Carla sees none of this. She has no more than a blurred impression of cold polished stone floors and achingly clean,sensible walls of well-scrubbed white paint.
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Songs for the chapter:
Perfect strangers - Jonas Blue ft JP Cooper
Girls - Rita Ora ft Bebe Rexha & Cardi B

CARLA:
My skin prickles, not just with the damp chill which pervades the hallway but with the damp chill in the matron's voice. A short, round woman with a protruding stomach - the likeness of a pregnant woman. She carries a bright torch, almost blinding which casts a circle of light on narrow stone steps, a narrow bare corridor and finally a narrow and scrupulously neat bed.

"This is Jamhuri,the dormitory in which you will sleep," the woman says briskly. "Say your prayers quietly, the rest are asleep so make no noise if you please." And then she is gone, closing the door quietly behind her.

The silence, broken by the breathing of the sleeping girls, is deep and black for it is a moonless night and no light penetrates the small,high windows. I strip down,wear my nightgown and lie in the bed,still and scarcely breathing like a deer hiding from a hunter behind the concealing leaves of a forest.

Daylight is breaking when I finally doze off but the sound of a bell wakes me. I am to live by that bell for the next four years. It will summon me from bed in the morning and tell me when I should switch off my torch last thing at night and in between, it's clangour will inform me exactly where I should be at every minute of the day.

. . .

I eat my breakfast, plain,nourishing and plentiful, my eyes looking neither left nor right, my ears closed to the muted conversation which goes on about me. When I am done eating and I get up to leave,a cardigan is thrown at me and bound tightly around my waist from behind. Startled, as anyone else would,I whirl around to see what the fuss is about and my eyes lock with a pair of brown eyes of a...a prefect and a fourth year - I can tell by her green long sleeve shirt. She faces me,a humble politeness in her eyes but her lips, unsmiling, are pressed in a scowl.

"You bled through," she whispers, "now don't stand here gawking. You should be thinking of freshening and tidying up so I can have my cardigan."

The truth of it is I am not really "gawking." I just stand there,my eyes shuttered, my pale face blank, mortified beyond thought!

"Oh you are a cute one. Now a " thank you" would suffice! But worry not,heroism is not always rewarded after all." Her somewhat serious face dissolves into laughter, and mine melts in relief. But then it resumes solemnity again and an awkward silence falls over us.

"Come on,don't make me drag you now,smoky eyes." She takes my hand and we walk out of the dining hall,her fingers fitting perfectly in the spaces of mine.

"So what's your dorm,smoky eyes?" She smiles down at me.

"Carla,if you please."

"Oh won't you look at that, never heard of that name and I've been here three years now. This is my fourth!"

"Don't be daft. Carla's my name. The dorm's Jamhuri."

"I know. Saw you go in last night. Oh I'm not a creep now! Was just on duty last night." She purses her lips,her eyes darting nervously as we walk, hand in hand to my cube.

I am buttoning my skirt when I feel a hot gaze burning my exposed skin. I look up only to be met with vivid brown eyes -same shade as Rhoda's - smiling down into mine, stirring with lust, filled with an astonished admiration, it is as though I am a musical instrument and her glance is the passing of a hand over it.

I dare not move in case I break the spell.

For a moment I stare blindly at her then I start to take in her features. Her face is like a creamy candle, her complexion so light,her skin almost transparent and her eyes which were light and clear brown have turned to amber,coated heavily with lust. Her neck is long and smooth and her pillowy breasts...

"Where did you spring from?" I ask the girl,my voice expressionless, my eyes showing no hint of my thoughts.

"Sorry...Carla,is it? Didn't meant to startle you. She left,she's still on duty so she assigned me to check on you,she says you are having your monthlies...I thought you might be new to it so well...just checking?"

"Name is?"

"Lucky Mambo," she stretches out her hand to me and when I don't greet her,she pretends to smooth out the pleats of her skirt instead, "you can get pills from the nurse's if you are experiencing any kind of discomfort?"

"I am fine,thank you. I'd be off now, if you were not in my way?" My voice is quiet,my eyes steady.

"Irritable. One would understand, considering your condition."

"My condition? I did not twist my neck or break a knee."

"I'm in Form Four Green. In case whatever has possessed you cools off and you need a friend. First year can be very lonely." She offers,her voice soft,unutterably kind. Her face lit with the loveliest expression which I ,without a doubt, choose to ignore.