Mum was standing in the kitchen in a purple night robe when I walked in, stirring her cup of tea. She turned to me with a tired smile and raised a brow asking, "What're you doing down here, Tricia?"
"I came to get water." I replied, walking towards the fridge.
She peered at my face. "Were you sleeping?"
In any normal family, if your mother asked you if you were sleeping at 11pm, the right, obvious answer would be 'yes'. But in my family, normal rules flew out the window.
I shook my head in response to the question. "No."
She laughed lightly. "It's alright. I used to doze off a lot too when I tried to pull an all-nighter. With a bit of discipline, you'll get used to it." She said in encouragement.
After taking out a bottle of water, I shut the fridge and turned to her. "Actually, the Debate Club asked for my help with some research. I got started on it after I finished studying, but I had no idea it would run this late."
She raised her brow and tilted her head to the side, and the action made more of her locks fall onto her shoulder. "Are you sure you have time for that? You're too busy with your classes and all your other responsibilities."
"But what if I made time for it? I'm sure I could manage it just fine."
"If you think so, go ahead." She shrugged. "We won't stop you. Just know that at the end of the term, we are expecting your grades to come back up, so that it won't be too much of a struggle to push you into a good university afterwards. But if I may be honest?"
"Please."
"I think this is just an unnecessary distraction." She took a sip of her tea and smiled. My heart sank. "Your school's Debate Club hasn't done much in recent years. Trying to help them is like fetching water into a basket. On the other hand, look at all you have achieved through Model UN and the STEM club. I want you to put more of your focus in those areas, to become more productive in those fields. They are your areas of expertise, anyway."
"Oh." My resolve to help Astrid had been shredded and scattered in the stillness of the night. "I had just wanted to try something new."
"Mm." She pushed off the counter she was leaning against and walked towards me. "Focus on what's most important, Tricia. Our dream is not for you to just spout meaningless words to face-off with others. We just want you to be happy."
"Okay." The water bottle suddenly felt too heavy in my hands.
"Goodnight, love. Turn off the lights on your way out."
...
One subject that always came surprisingly easy to me was Social Studies. It was one of the few subjects I was inherently good at and ironically, one of the few my parents held no regards for, despite pushing so hard for me to join a club that was primarily centered around its topics. Since it was one of the four core subjects, they didnt bother me when the saw me looking up world news or paying more attention to political conversations than I ought to.
Our teacher had decided that the best way to welcome us back to school after the break was to give us a quiz, to make sure that we could remember everything we had studied in the first half of the term, and perfectly understood it.
I breezed through questions about youth and development with ease, the tip of my pen gliding across the paper as I wrote in a stream of consciousness, pouring out definitions and concepts I didn't need to memorize and ideas that had actually been interesting to ponder.
I handed in the test without having to fake my confidence, and was filled with a small sense of satisfaction as I waited for Math to begin.
My confidence didn't last as long as I expected it to. That small sense of satisfaction disappearing with each step the math teacher took into the classroom. No one noticed as I gripped my pen tighter than usual, trying to recall everything we had studied before the mid-term break had begun.
It didn't come as effortlessly to me. It took a couple of discreet page flips and skimming to renew my understanding of the previous topics, pulling out the principles of the concepts from the dark recesses of my mind.
"We will resume our studies on derivatives." The teacher said, turning to the board as we pulled our notebooks out. "I hope you didnt throw your notes under the bed and forget about your studies during the break?"
Murmurs of 'no, sir' arose from the room. Page after page, what we'd studied came back to me. Questions solved with growing ease, examples I'd battled with and equations I had begun to grow weirdly fond of. Spending so much time studying it had actually led to me liking Math.
Adam leaned forward with a hand up in the air, just as our math teacher turned after writing a few questions on the board for us to solve.
"Yes, Head Prefect?" Our teacher called.
Adam's shoulders rose, heavy with pride. I discreetly rolled my eyes at him. "Are we going to do the derivative of trigonometric functions today, sir? It comes immediately after what we're currently studying.
Our math teacher set the book in his hands down on the table as my mates leaned forward to hear his answer while simultaneously glaring daggers at the Head Prefect. "Let's deal with this first." He replied patiently. "Most of your friends still have trouble understanding derivatives from first principles."
Adam turned to sweep the class with a small smirk. When his gaze caught mine, I looked away. "Sir, how about we come up to the board and solve the questions?" He proposed.
Dread lined my stomach and my legs turned cold. He did not.
Judging from the groans sounding all over the room, most of my mates shared my sentiments. Adam wasn't fazed. "I'll do the first one, and...Tricia can do the second one."
My heart skipped a painful beat when our teacher's gaze landed on me. "Do you agree, Tricia?"
I nodded, aware I held everyone's attention. "Yes, sir."
"Good."
Adam rose from his seat and confidently strode towards the board, picking up the marker from the teacher"s desk. In less than three minutes, he had the question solved and was walking towards me with a smirk I wish I could slap off his face. I rose shakily to my feet, my palms slippery with sweat as I took the marker from him and made it towards the board.
The tip of the marker touched the board, and I shakily began to write out my solution. When I was done, I stepped back and went through it along with our math teacher. My handwriting looked like a hasty, barely legible scrawl next to Adam's elegant script.
"Satisfactory as always, Tricia." The teacher said with a small smile, taking back the marker.
I smiled back and went back to my seat. I was getting better at this, I told myself. I ignored the utter lack of excitement I felt, focusing on the fact that I was becoming more and more like the person my parents wanted me to be.
With the little sleep I'd gotten the previous night, it was no surprise my eyes were beginning to droop by the time first break rolled around. To avoid falling asleep during the fifteen-minute break, Astrid and I went to get drinks from the canteen -coffee for me and Fruity for her -and she tugged me in the direction of the expansive football field at the back of the school.
"Come on. I need to speak to my cousin."
I wasn't complaining; I needed the short stroll to keep me awake.
The boys' senior football team was out practicing on the grassy field, which was bordered on four sides by bleachers. The team consisted mainly of Form Twos and Ones from the senior high classes. There were a few Form Threes around, but all of them were in uniform instead of the jerseys the juniors sported, because by the time the inter-schools sports competition rolled around, we would have graduated.
We'd had our fun in January.
I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun while Astrid squinted in the direction of the northern bleacher, zeroing in on her cousin.
A number of students were perched in the seats to watch the players practice. On the lowest row, I spotted David sitting with one of our P.E teachers and our football coach, their heads close together, talking seriously. A pair of white headphones hung around David's neck, gleaming in the sun, and he reached up to slide them off, fix his collar, and replace them.
Astrid reached down and tugged on my hand. "Come on."
I tapped the screen of my watch, bringing it to life. "We have fifteen minutes left to fourth period."
"This won't take up even ten minutes." She replied, pulling me along. Her steps were determined, and I could only imagine what she wanted to discuss with her cousin and why I had to be here anyway.
"Hey!"
David looked up. Even from this distance, I could see his exaggerated eyeroll as he said something to the coach. The man nodded, allowing him to excuse himself and make his way to us.
"If it's not important, turn around and don't waste my time." He stopped about a foot away, outwardly calm, but with a general aura of displeasure at our intrusion.
Astrid looked dumbfounded. "Where do you get the energy to be so hostile in the mornings?" She asked, reaching out to poke his arm. "I ask out of genuine curiosity."
"I'm not hostile." He deadpanned. "I'm just -Oi!" I flinched at the unexpected shout and glared at him, but his eyes were locked onto something.
The players were now running laps around the field with the coach keeping time, and our dear sports prefect, Benjamin Etornam Tetteh, had taken it upon himself to pick up the ball and kick it around with his friends. At David's shout, Benjamin dropped the ball and turned to him, eyes raised with a faint smirk, an unspoken challenge in the air.
"What's the problem, Ampofo?" Benjamin jeered.
"You know the rules." David said, refusing to take the bait. "Don't touch the ball unless you play the sport. You and your goon squad destroyed the last one."
"Oh, come on." The Sports Prefect rolled his eyes. "We paid for the damage. Besides, we have a right to be here on this field, don't we?"
"Yeah!" His boys cheered behind him.
"Seriously." David murmured. His hands were in his pockets, but the veins in his forearms were tight against the brown, sun-kissed skin, snaking up to his elbows.
Astrid stepped forward before he could, placed a placating hand on his arm, then turned to Benjamin. "Ben, you know he's right. Besides, Coach is here. You don't want him to catch you messing up, do you?"
Benjamin snickered. He leered at her before returning his gaze to David. "Happy your pretty cousin is standing up for you?"
"Fucking thrilled." He drawled. "Just put the ball down and leave. The juniors are wrapping up practice and they'll need to take that back to the Sports Room."
Benjamin clenched his fists and shot David an annoyed look as the boys behind him began to trickle off. One of them even kicked the ball towards an approaching junior. My lips twitched. For some reason, Benjamin had wanted to start a fight with David, and he was pissed because he wouldn't be getting his way.
Astrid sighed with relief. "That went well."
"Why are you here?" He asked. His cool facade was starting to crack. Benjamin's shenanigans combined with our continued presence here was using up the last dregs his of patience and I wanted to leave before he lost it.
"Well," She smiled sheepishly, rubbing her hands together. Her cousin narrowed his eyes. "I was thinking about our conversation during the break. You know, on Sunday I spoke to Adam and he asked me to-"
"This is why you wanted to speak to me?" His patience had finally run out. If the look in his eyes could cut, Astrid would have been minced meat.
Her tone turned pleading. "I'm doing God's work here, David, help me out."
"By being the devil's advocate?"
"I'm trying to get you two to..."
The field was gradually emptying out as the students got up to leave for their various classes while the players cleaned up. I tapped my watch's screen. Five minutes.
"...I don't want to discuss this." David was saying when I brought my attention back to them.
She huffed and folded her arms across her chest. "Why are you being so stubborn?"
"Break is almost over. You should go."
"Yeah." I took that as my opportunity to intervene. "We have just five minutes left, and it'll take that long to get back to class."
Astrid opened her mouth to say something more, but he just ignored her and settled that partly annoyed, partly curious gaze on me. "I've been meaning to speak to you." He said.
"Can't it wait?" The words were out of my mouth before I could think them through. All that was on my mind was getting to class early so I could settle down and have enough time to go through my notes. The mere thought of being late had a bitter taste developing in the back of my throat.
"It can." He nodded. "It's about Model UN. I'll find time to discuss it with you."
"Sure." I tugged on Astrid's hand. "Let's go."