THE EXTERNALS

Chapter Twenty-Four

My change of attitude didn't go unnoticed by the principal who was also our class teacher. On Thursday, he gathered everyone in my class in the school hall so we could sort out the issue between us but that only resulted in a more serious argument because neither of us wanted to admit our fault. Eventually, he asked us to kneel as punishment for disrespecting him by being rowdy in his presence and didn't release us until we had to enter the hall for our Agric examination.

Every theory question we were asked to deal with in Agric was bulky. Still, I was able to push through because thriving to read, understand and recall the words written in my Agricultural notebook was part of my after-school agenda. Around me were my dumb departmental mates who were sweating profusely though it was raining heavily outside. They never considered reading bulky notebooks a priority. All they ever did was cram the answers to all the objective revision questions given by the subject teacher and answer one or two of the theory part by relying on each other for support.

About twenty minutes after we started our agric exam, Omma reached out to me in a whisper. I ignored her several times because I couldn't afford to let them get what I worked several days to acquire on a platter of gold yet she kept pestering me. The junior student sitting beside me also joined her in doing so since they were family-related so I had to give in to her request. I told her the answer to question 2c which included some of the safety precautions to take before cutting down a tree and she distributed it to our departmental mates. That got me pissed so I quickly submitted my script and went out of the hall to save myself from answering more questions. I didn't even crosscheck it for the third time like I usually do.

"Lily, you made a mistake. The answer for number 24 is C", Omma found an excuse to talk to me in the staff room where we were helping the business study teacher mark the objective questions for her pupils after our exam.

"Thanks", I answered and corrected my mistake, hoping it won't be frowned upon.

"I'm sorry for everything that happened", She begged me afterward.

"It's fine", I sighed.

"Hope you'll finally be able to pick up Zach's call? He's not been talking to me because of that", We both laughed.

"How can he be so childish?" I said while arranging the scripts in a file, forgetting that I also refused to talk to her because of what happened.

"Love is to blame for that", Omma replied but I pretended not to have heard what she said.

Before the day ended, Kenny and my other departmental mates also apologized to me for what happened the other day. During lunch, he got me some hot eggrolls with a bottle of cold zobo from our school's snacks seller to bribe me. I was very excited because I never thought he was capable of doing such a thing for me. He didn't even buy anything for Halima. Well, his reason for doing that was because he didn't have much on him that day and still wanted to make it up to me.

Zach too showed up at the school gate during our closing hour because he couldn't wait to see me anymore. However, a message from one of the kids living in my neighborhood shortened our meeting. She told me my aunt needed to be home on time to open the door since she forgot her keys at her shop and my uncle who also had another copy was in the process of carrying out an official assignment.