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TAMMY:
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Today was the absolute worst!
I had a headache, and I hardly ever had headaches. I didn't want to get up this morning, and my mum seemed convinced that it was best I stayed back but no, Ifeoluwa had to butt in on everything, and now I was at school, rubbing my temples with my fingers and hoping the medications I took would make the headache go away quicker.
Perhaps Ifeoluwa refused to let me stay back because he know, for a fact, that I had stayed up until 3 AM last night, watching a series and had only slept for two hours before I began to prepare for school.
I've learnt my lesson.
"Ifeoluwa." I groaned, my lips in a pout and my eyes, shut.
The English language teacher fell ill today, we therefore had no class and I decided to go see Amorette and Ifeoluwa.
Isat on Amorette's seat in their classroom, resting my head and doing absolutely nothing other than that. Amorette herself sat on the desk before me, tapping away on her phone again, and I noticed these days that whenever she used it, she got really jumpy and protective of it. That alone was suspicious.
"Hmm?" He replied, not taking his eyes off his commerce textbook as he sat on the seat beside me.
"My head hurts soo bad." I groaned. "I hate you."
The corner of his lips went up and he averted his gaze from the textbook to me. He stared back at me with an amused smile.
"Really?" He asked. Then, he leaned forward and pinched my cheeks. "You're so cute when you're mad."
I pouted and glared at him, pushing his hands away from my face.
I turned my face to meet Amorette's to find her still on her phone.
I raised a brow. "Are you gonna marry that stuff or what?"
She looked up at me, startled someone had spoken to her and then, confused at my question.
"Huh?"
"The phone." I nudged my head at her hands. "You're always on it. Take a break."
She stared at me for a while, letting my words sink in.
"Oh." She said, and smiled. She didn't say anything other than that and she was back on her phone again.
I sighed and turned my gaze to Ifeoluwa. I watched him stare at his textbook for a while, until something in my head clicked and I remembered I had something to talk to him about. I pulled my chair closer to his seat and sat beside him. I watched him for another while until, finally, he sighed and looked up at me, shutting his book.
"Can I help you?"
I leaned forward and said. "I can't be the only one to have noticed that strange little Junior girl, have I?"
He raised a brow at me. "What girl?"
I sighed, thinking for a while on how to describe her to him.
"She's kind of small for her grade, she's Mandel's complexion.." I trailed off and thought for a while. "She's alone most of the time."
He, too, thought for a while. "I don't really take note of the Junior students in this school. So, I don't really follow." And then, he shrugged.
I sighed. "I saw her by the stairs some days ago. Well, she fell down the stairs and I met her laying on the floor. I was shocked, scared for her life and I screamed."
I continued after a short pause. "She sat up briefly after and just stared into space, clutching her knees to her chest. Just as I was about to walk down and help her up, some girl in our grade walked up the staircase below me and began yelling at the girl. She screamed, and complained, and insulted. Do you know the most shocking part?"
I looked at Ifeoluwa and he looked back at me, curiosity screaming through his eyes. "The most shocking part was that the little girl didn't give her even an ounce of her attention. The older girl kept yelling and insulting but the little girl remained seated on the floor, staring into space with her knees to her chest."
I paused again. "Then, the little girl stood up and turned to walk downstairs. I was shocked to see her startled, as if she had just noticed the older girl had been with her the whole time."
I looked at Ifeoluwa. "I want to talk to that little girl, Ifeoluwa, but it's as though she disappears each time I try."
Ifeoluwa remained silent. I looked down at his desk and said, lowly, "She's too young to be that sad, Ifeoluwa." And then, I looked up at him, into his eyes. "A little girl like her shouldn't look so lost and forgotten."
I kept talking. "I hardly know her but, God! That little girl is a mystery in human form, and I couldn't help but.. feel bad."
He sighed. "Well, the only way to feed one's curiousity is to confront whatever aroused it, isn't it? You have to find that girl if you really want to talk to her. If you wanna go further and help, your choice."
I stared at his book, my cheeks resting on the palms of my uplifted arms, thinking about what he had just said. "Sure."
I looked back at Amorette who looked as though she had been watching Ifeoluwa and I the whole time. She looked different, odd, and her expression was hard to decipher.
She had that look that reminded you of a homeless staring through the window of a house, with people centering the fire place on a cold windy night.
It reminded you of the poor, trying to get hold of items the rich had abandoned and regarded useless.
We looked at each other for a moment and I gasped in utter surprise and pity.
She had a look of longing, as if we held what she couldn't.
"Amorette?" I called lowly, slowly. "Are you okay?"
She remained silent for another moment, and almost too quickly, her expression changed to that of happiness and excitement and she beamed at me.
She laughed. "Tammy, you're funny, of course I'm okay."
I searched through her eyes, but I couldn't see the happiness she portayed, all I perceived through it, were sad emotions she tried to conceal.
She must have grown uncomfortable with the way I stared at her because she suddenly looked away and went on to talk to a classmate of hers.
I looked back at Ifeoluwa, whose eyes were, once again, captured by the words of his textbook.
"Please tell me you saw what I saw." I told him.
He looked up from his textbook, looking confused for awhile. "What?"
I groaned and playfully pushed his head. "Ifeoluwa." And I glared at him, he replied with a cheeky smile.
"Uuh!" I rolled my eyes and stood up, heading for the door. I expected him to walk after me and try to stop me but all I heard was laughter, hysterical laughter. I huffed and walked further towards the door.
"Hey, Tammy."
The voice stopped me and I turned to the direction of the voice. Daniella walked towards me with a smile on her face. I rolled my eyes.
For the love of God.
She giggled for some reason and stepped directly in front of me, stopping me from walking out the door.
I raised a brow.
Was she really going to do this, now?
I expected her to throw an insult at me, seeing as her smile already had me suspicious as to why she was near me.
She handed me two pink glittery cards. I looked down at it, confused.
"I'm having a girls slumber party this Friday. You and Amorette are invited." She said.
I looked at it for a while, then at her, back to the card and her again. I laughed.
And I laughed. And I laughed.
Eventually, my laughter died down and she looked at me with an expression akin to annoyance and confusion.
"Oh, you're serious." I tried not to laugh again. I looked at the cards for another moment, then took them.
"Don't make me regret going to that stuff." I said. "I don't do drama."
She beamed at me with a strange gleam in her eyes. "Oh, a regret won't do justice to an event like. Trust me, it'll be.. memorable."
Then, she walked away to hand out more invitation cards.
I turned around, only to see Amorette already grinning at me and staring at the cards. I laughed and walked towards her.
She squealed in excitement as I handed her one. "This Friday."
"I know." She said, giddily. "I heard everything."
Ifeoluwa pouted. "How come I don't get to go?"
"Because you're not a girl, duuh." Amorette laughed. I smiled.
My thoughts took me back to Daniella's earlier statement.
"Oh, a regret won't do justice to an event like. Trust me, it'll be.. memorable."
And at that, I felt a knot tangle inside of me, I felt my heart plummet into my stomach and a slight feeling of unsettlement washed over me.
But, I chose to ignore it, and decided to go anyways.
~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~
Just as Ifeoluwa and I stepped into the cafeteria, a plum tall girl turned around and squealed in our direction and raced towards us in a rush of excitement. I gasped and moved to stand behind Ifeoluwa to be shielded from the girl, but she ran right past us and when I turned around, I saw her hugging a surprised Amorette.
"No way." She said.
"Yes way." The taller girl said.
Amorette's eyes raked her body rather slowly with her lips parted open and an expression of disbelief.
"What're you doing here?" She asked, breaking into a smile.
The tall girl beamed at her and said. "I transferred here. We just moved here and I'm changing schools weeks towards the exam period."
She laughed but I didn't see how that was supposed to be a laughable situation.
Amorette darted her gaze to Ifeoluwa and I, looking at us like she'd forgotten we were there the whole time.
She took the girl's hand in hers and twirled her around to meet our gazes.
"Maidaki," She said. "This is Tammy and her twin brother, Ifeoluwa."
Then, she told us. "Tammy and Ifeoluwa meet Maidaki, my friend that I hadn't seen in, like, two years."
I nodded and Ifeoluwa smiled. He stretched a hand out to the girl. "It's nice to meet you, Maidaki."
"Yeah. Me too." I said and waved at her, smiling. The two girls, Amorette and Maidaki went on talking from there and we decided to leave them to let them catch up.
Ifeoluwa walked with me to my table just so I wouldn't sit alone. I smiled at that.
I had such a sweet brother.
He ate from his spaghetti and I ate from my meat pie. For a while we didn't say anything and he looked lost in thought.
I wondered what he was thinking about that made him so silent. I was about to ask just that when he looked up at me and voiced his thoughts.
"Do you like Aidan?"
The question took me aback for a moment and I momentarily paused, staring at my brother who looked back at me in anticipation.
I cleared my throat and said. "Of course not. We're friends."
He raised a brow at me. "Are you sure? You guys spend an aweful amount of time together."
I scoffed, folding my arms. "Since when?"
"Since he came back from that trip of his." He said. His voice came out low and calm, but his eyes spoke otherwise.
"Why do you care?" I asked, raising a brow.
He looked at me for a while, slowly narrowing his brows. I hadn't seen my brother look pissed in a long time and the fact that Aidan reeled him up startled me.
Suddenly, he shut his eyes and sighed, running his hands through his face, and then, looked at me.
"Tammy, be careful." He told me. "Your last crush.. it didn't work out so great. It broke me seeing you give up something you really loved because of some, some idiot.. "
His voice broke and he looked at me with sad eyes. "If you're hurt, I'm hurt. I don't want you going through messed up stuff again."
He looked into my eyes, pleadingly and I sighed.
"Just be careful, Tammy."
I smiled and placed a hand on Ifeoluwa's.
"I take it, you don't like Aidan. You don't have to worry about anything." I assured him. "We're only friends, nothing more. And liking him or anyone is the last thing on my mind."
He sighed and looked at me with an uneasiness and uncertainty I couldn't describe. Then, a corner of his lips tugged up and he nodded.
"Just be careful, okay?"
I nodded. "I will."
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Oh, well.
Next chapter continues from there.
I dropped some pretty obvious hints in this chapter and you guys should keep these things I keep dropping in your head, lol. Try not to forget, because it would come to a time y'all would slap your heads and go "Oh my gosh, that's why that happened!" 😂😂
What are your thoughts on Amorette? What do you think goes on in her little head?
Do you suspect she's up to something good, bad, or somewhere in between?
And the slumber party, I hope you guys enjoy the time it'd be written in😃cuz😂😂
I hope this doesn't make you guys like Ifeoluwa any less. He's just trying to look out for his twin sister... Or is he?
😂😂I have to go now,
Aloha,
Benzita13 ❤️