NOT THE ONE || Completed✔

19: Before now

The day Joy joined Gracefield High was like any other first day of school for a new student: she was welcomed by the staff, who assured her of the school’s technical and professional competency; the students had looked at her with various expressions on their faces – surprise, curiosity, confusion, while some didn't just care.

When she was asked to sit somewhere, she picked the only vacant seat, which was beside Oluchi's.

Then, all she wanted was to be left alone, not greeted with an enthusiastic wave by her new seatmate.

“Hi. I’m Oluchi, but you can call me Chi for short.” Oluchi had introduced, and Joy briefly nodded at her before facing the board.

But her brief answer had only been misinterpreted by Oluchi as shyness and not evasion.

“Whenever you are lost or need help,” Oluchi went on and Joy turned to look at her, while trying her best to hide her annoyance. “I’m here for you. OK?”

Joy simply nodded again and turned back to the board.

A minute hadn’t even gone by before Oluchi spoke up again, “This one you’re not talking, did-”

“Oluchi.” The teacher in the class called. “If I hear your voice again, I will send you out of this class. Is that clear?” He stated, narrowing his eyes to thin slits as he sent her a threatening glare.

“Yes, sir.” She murmured and Joy quietly chuckled.

Joy had not only found Oluchi to be an amusing character, but a confusing one as well. Back then, she never understood why Oluchi never retaliated when being attacked. Instead, she either recoiled or behaved like she was never attacked at all, and that was why it was no surprise to Joy when Oluchi told her she wouldn’t be coming to school today.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen Blessing attack Oluchi. A week after she became a student of Gracefield High, Blessing approached her to collect her classwork note, which had just been returned to them.

If Blessing had just 'approached' her, it would have been appropriate, but that wasn't the case.

She could still remember that day clearly. Blessing had, with so much boldness that irritated her, walked to her seat and snatched her book from her hand.

“What are you doing?” She had protested and was on her feet.

Blessing, who ignored her question, flipped through the pages, while chewing a gum in her mouth.

“I said, what are you doing?” Joy repeated and was about to collect her book from Blessing, when a hand slapped hers.

She retrieved it immediately and rubbed it with her other hand. When she looked up from her hand, she saw an unfamiliar face glaring at her with a daring brow cocked.

That face, she had later gotten to know, was Aliya's.

For a moment, she tried to remain calm.

Bullying had never been one thing she sided; the fact that it was happening to her almost made a vein pop in her head.

“9 over ten.” Blessing said after stopping at the last page that had been used. “You missed the one I got, and I missed the one you got.”

“I am going to warn the two of you for the first and last time-”

“My friend, will you keep quiet.” Aliya snapped at once, rhetorically.

It was a rhetorical question: one that could be nowhere near offensive if used amongst friends during a joke, but now, it was an infuriating sentence that made that single vein pop in Joy’s head.