THE EXTERNALS

Chapter Sixteen

Before his eyes could get the chance to drill a hole in my face, I asked for his mom. In response, he told me she was dressing up in the master's bedroom and offered to let me sit in their living room and wait for her but I turned him down. Soon, the woman came out to attend to me. She was willing to help me get what I wanted because Omma was her good friend and companion. I thanked her for that, gave her the money for the sportswear then turned to leave.

By the time I got back to the field, Aza and Joe were already racing against themselves. I thought the former was going to win because he was taller than him. Unfortunately, he didn't make my desires come true. I was surprised that the latter could make it to the finishing line before him.

Even though the distance between the duo wasn't much, I still teased Aza about losing a game to a junior. Each time that happened, he would tell me that it only happened because he was distracted by Jess who was about to engage in a conflict with some thugs who were disrupting their training. They also wanted to play a match on the field at that very moment.

In the long run, he got the punch that one of the thugs threw at her when she was vulnerable. Jess wanted to fight him back but Cleo prevented her from doing so to avoid causing more problems. Thereafter, Master Gbenga gathered everyone to make sure we were complete and ordered us to go home because he was worried about our safety.

If the school's broken fence had been restored, we would have been able to stay there for as long as we wanted without anyone worrying about our safety. I was angry at the government for not attending to this issue on time because I was sure the management of the school must have written a petition.

For chrissake, many students were caught using the broken fence as a medium of running away from school. Besides, what if those thugs really harassed us?

Well, the government doesn't actually care about anyone else but themselves which is quite sad!

"Are you okay?" Ada noticed I was lost in thought, while we were passing the same route home.

"Sure", I adjusted my bag strap.

"Am I supposed to tell my mom the truth about my black eye", He asked me naively.

"Sure. You did a good thing. You saved a damsel in distress. You're a superhero!" I laughed but was actually serious about what I said to him.

"She's not going to believe me. She's going to think I've turned into a bad boy", He expressed concern about his mom's attitude.

"Deep down, you know that's not your kind of personality. Shouldn't that be way more important than what any other person says?" I told him.

That sounded like encouraging him to disregard his mom but I would never tell him to do that. My only wish was to see him do things without worrying too much about his mom. He needed to be independent of her, to think about the repercussions that his decision will cost him first, not the effect it will have on her.