Purple Bougainvillea

Six

The next few weeks saw Jumoke’s aunt very busy and dedicated to the planning of certain rallies; all talking about a certain ailment that Jumoke had never heard about.
It was leukemia, a blood disease; her Aunt's organization was trying to educate the public about it and its symptoms.
But Jumoke got roped into this again because her Aunt needed some help and Vera refused, as usual, to offer the required help, so it was Jumoke to the rescue. She was so busy with things that she didn't notice that Kelly was not in school the last week. When she noticed, she walked to his house to say hi to him.
It was Saturday; by this time last week she was at a rally but now she was free. Free from all the stress that came with it.
She finally got to his house, the door was slightly opened. She knocked and he answered, telling her to come in.
She walked in, staring at a figure that seemed to be Kelly’s. His eyes were sunken, his figure was lean and he looked way different from the Kelly she used to know.
“Hey, what happened to you??” she asked as soon as she confirmed he was actually the one.
“Hey, long time. You came to see me” he said obviously not wanting to answer her question. She gave him a funny stare that made him smile showing his dimples. She smiled too but shrugged it off making a resolution that she wasn’t going to leave him because he smiled. He did that a lot, that is, smiling when you’re talking about something pretty important so that you’d forget and leave him be.
“It’s not funny Kelly; you look like death paid you a visit”
“I’m fine, trust me” he said relaxing into the chair
“Where’s your mum?” she asked and his smile totally faded, He sat up and shrugged
“She’s busy with other things, work and all”
Jumoke’s mouth formed an ‘oh’ as she sat beside him. Surprisingly, she hadn’t sat since she arrived.
"Kelly, I want you to talk to me. What’s really going on with you??” she asked placing her hand on his shoulder.
It made him want to tell her everything, talk to her, cry on her shoulders so that she’ll comfort him. But that would never happen; he knew that she might run out right through that door the moment she hears about his problem.
Jumoke was a good person, he could tell her anything, but this, he didn’t think he could.
“Its just a fever” he said obviously lying
She knew he was lying, she figured she couldn’t force the truth out of him.
“Do you need anything?” she asked him and he looked at her and smiled
“Now that you ask, I think I need a drink. There’s orange juice in the fridge”
She went to get the drink and came back fast handing him a chilled orange canned drink.
“But if I ever find out that you’re lying to me, I swear it won’t be funny” she said and started gisting him about all the things that happened at school the week before.
He told her that he wouldn’t be in school the next week, he needed time to recover and gain flesh because he had lost a lot of weight.
He didn’t want people to be scared of him when they saw him, yeah he looked that bad. She promised to help him with his notes so he wouldn’t have much problems catching on when he was back. She made him promise to take care of himself and he promised to call her if he needed help with that.