The Ghost Of Ever

04

As the days went by, Winifred had fairly become adjusted to the new curriculum which seemed to have reached a higher degree of difficulty.

The principal and teachers never missed a chance to remind class three students that their Junior Certificate examinations were just a few months away. Meanwhile, Nana was truly keeping up with her task of getting into Mr Ever's good books. With the amount of times the gang ran into and spent chatting about trivial topics with him, Winifred was certain that Nana King was already number one in that book.

However, the same could not be said for Winifred Usifoh for she had perfected the act of pretending that he wasn't in her line of vision. He went from verbally reproaching her for not showing her respects-which attracted a series of laughs from Chizoba and co-to not talking at all. The sudden tight pressure on the skin on the back of her hand brought her back to the present. Fair long nailed fingers withdrew from her hand. One of them, the thumbnail, whose discoloured, chipped, and bumpy surface dragged her attention. It looked as if an attempt was made to crush the finger with a heavy rock. She looked up, hoping he could not sense her curiosity.

He smiled and tilted his head. His gaze was as if he was silently warning her not to forget her manners as if she were one of those kindergartens. She hastily greeted him, "Good day, sir," and moved away from them. He behaved just like the elderly people she rode by on the way to school every morning; mother's friends needed their daily dose of greetings to start their day, it seemed. And somehow, through these interactions, she grew comfortable around his presence and even didn't seem to take offence at whatever Nana spilled through her glossy lips;

"So sir, you see," Nana waved her hands for emphasis, "to protect yourself from your haters, you must put on a no-nonsense attitude and bite back at them with twice-no thrice the venom. Not everybody can do that though. All they know how to do is cry like a three-year-old."

The five laughed. Mr Ever only said, "Hm. Is that so?" in a modulated voice.

Winifred laughed, and could not get those words out of her head for more than two days, picking out and analysing every sentence and body language Nana had exhibited while delivering them. The brief look Nana, in the middle of her speech, had sent Winifred must mean that she was referring to her.

As if Nana had ever seen Winifred cry!

And if she did bite back at Nana King-wait. Bite with what exactly? Maybe it was her morals holding her back or perhaps it was her lack of knowledge of the art of insults but there was nothing, in her vocabulary, that she could use against Nana. Not even the phrase 'damn you' that she'd picked up from her father whenever he was mad at his employees can be utilised. Besides, anyone who uses curse words would be given sixteen strokes of the holy cane-rule number thirty of Tranquility Institute.

Her case was a hopeless one.

Then on one Wednesday afternoon, on another mid-period shopping and bumping into Mr Ever Spree, she spotted that basketball player of class four, clad in the aerobic garb of brown joggers and a white shirt. One leg was attached to the fading white wall behind her, hands folded as she watched him watch them. He had stood up on the short staircase, by the wall, a basketball between his hands as his curious gaze danced back and forth from Mr Ever to the circle of pupils around him, and then it landed on Winifred. She tore her gaze away, feigning interest in her bracelet, and looked back as he passed her to the next building. Seeing him up close now . . . He was just there.

Damn it. Who am I deceiving? She'd thought with a smile that she fought to hide during lessons but failed miserably since Chizoba, who sat beside her, pinched her arm and told her to stop acting like a crazy person.