Two Sides Of A Coin

ASHIRIN DA' DAYA

SIMEON

Simeon sat down and watched, as the dining hall was in chaos. It was one of those days in school; that the teachers didn’t interfere, and allowed his mates the full authority to exercise their power especially the prefect. The reason was so that, people would be able to gauge their performance as shadow perfects. As usual, the SS1 students weren’t making it any easier, because of the following reasons:

One was that, most of them were taller and bigger in size than the SS2’s who are his mates, so because of that they were a tad bit disrespectful. 

Secondly, some felt that it was injustice for  them to be punished because they were now also in Senior Secondary school, so they were the same level with them.

The third and annoying reason that added to their insolence was the regular senior-junior dating issue; because the girls in SS1 who were being dated by the SS2’s and even the SS3’s felt like they couldn’t be touched. And this was, due to the fact that their partner(s) were either his mates or his seniors.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t care about such, because it wasn’t his interest, and his disinterested attitude made his admirers back off; but that didn’t stop some of the bold Ss1 girls from stacking his locker in class with letters. Neither did they stop sending him messages, while others used sly methods by asking to be his school daughters, but he always politely declined, and he wasn’t interested in having school children because they were dramas.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand.

He looked around the hall, as his mates were trying to control everyone; he could see how angry the headboy was, with the way he kept on clenching and unclenching his hand around the cane he carried, while trying to calmly talk to a bunch of students and explain his point.

Towards his left hand side, from where he sat, the dinning prefect was shouting to the SS1 boys to drop their phones, and form a line to collect their food.
Simeon wasn't surprised that they would bring out their phones because there were no teachers, however; on one or two occasions, where the Ss3's stepped into to help, courtsey of the teachers, he noticed that nobody dared to bring out a headphone, talk more of a phone.

Such a difference, he thought.

He turned and saw another prefect outside the hall, talking to some students, while they were on their knees and pointing to some dirty area. That must be the labour prefect he guessed, and with the way Hakeem had a pure blazing look on his face, that would mean that the students didn’t do the work they were assigned to do. He knew that it wouldn’t take long, before one of his mates snap,  due to frustration and punish everyone out of anger, which wouldn’t end well for both sides.

So before that happened and he will get caught up in the whirlwind of things, he stood up and walked directly to the headboy, who was now standing side-by-side with another prefect and was trying to control the situation.

Surprisingly, as he stood up, the people around him noticed and started whispering and mumbling. ‘what was he doing?’,  ‘where was he going to and what did he want?’. His mind didn’t even notice to care, because he was trying to help a situation. When he stood in front of the headboy, he went straight to the point and told him, to signal the prefects to calm down, while they try and think of a solution, meanwhile, those that he knew were innocent, should go to their respective classes, while the trouble makers and the law breakers, should wait behind. Though Lawal didn’t really understand what was going on, and he didn’t like how things were getting out of control, he still told the prefects the plan, and they did it. 

In twenty minutes time, more than half of the hall had left. Lawal then turned to Simeon in a what-next-gesture, and then Simeon calmly asked the dining, the labour prefects and headboy to follow him. The funny thing was that, the innocent ones who were told to go back to their respective classes, still hung around, to see what would happen, and what course of action the prefects were going to take. When they agreed to follow him, albeit reluctantly he turned and  flashed a cunning smile to the headgirl and told her to be in charge.