This chapter is dedicated to ahanstasia for being a wonderful reader and supporter 😂
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I woke up in the dead of the night.
My room was pitch black and I could hardly see a thing, although I could hear crickets chirping and frogs calling outside my window.
Nigeria and her incessant power outage.
Yawning, I rolled out of bed and reached for my phone which I had kept under my pillow.
I powered it on and stared at the time.
12:30 am.
How long had I slept? I hadn't even had my dinner yet.
Just then, memories from our talk about my encounter with the Keke driver and Tony Lanre to the quarrel between Chelsea and I earlier this evening flashed in my head.
I let out a deep sigh, put on the torch on my phone, stood up from the bed and walked over to my table. I would apologize to Chelsea first thing tomorrow morning.
I picked up my laptop and walked back to my bed. Plopping down, I powered it on, deciding to do what Chelsea had told me.
Log into Linda Ibe's blog and see people chasing clout.
I logged into my Instagram account and searched for her blog. It took only a maximum of three seconds for it to pop up and I joined it immediately.
I read the most recent update in which she wrote on how Mr Akintola, a lecturer in the Literary Arts department was caught shagging a student within the school's premises.
Whoa, I had not seen that one coming.
The name of the student was Chechi Daniel, a 100 level student.
There were over three hundred comments bordering on how the girl had been naive, stupid and all that.
I read on to another update from last week in which one Mrs Adade, another lecturer at school, had been falsely accused of tampering with student's exam scores and scripts and had almost gotten sacked for it.
Damn, and I never heard of any of this?
Chelsea was right. Where had my social life gone off to?
I continued roaming through Linda's blog, having forgotten, completely, about the main reason I had logged into it at first—to search for the Bolanle Deji thingy.
I saw another post of how Rita Wunmi, a final year student had been found dead in her lodge about a month ago.
I had heard about that one. I was told that she had been killed from blunt force trauma, rigor mortis, and then raped afterwards. For almost three weeks since her death the police had no lead whatsoever of who could have committed such an atrocity, then, two days later, Dave Ikenna, her ex-boyfriend walked up to the station on his own accord and turned in himself, claiming he was the one that had murdered her.
It had been said that he confessed to her murder because he couldn't "stand hearing her voice everyday". Apparently, he confessed because he thought Rita's ghost was haunting him. Long story short, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at 23.
I went on to her next post, not minding that I was loosing track of time the more I moved on to a different post.
It was already one o'clock.
The headline of the next post brought me back to the reality of why I had joined the blog in the first place.
The headline read in bold letters,
The Tony Lanre and Bolanle Deji Debacle!
Bolanle was a dark skinned second year student with "the full package". She was in the law department, but rarely attended lectures.
In the first week of resumption, someone had thrown a, sort of, homecoming party at Leilani Hotels, a hotel nearby the school.
Everyone had attended the party. It had been a blast. I knew this because I had gone too.
The post told of how Bolanle had claimed to have had sex with Tony Lanre in one of the hotel rooms during the party. She even shared pictures of two people under the covers and told everyone that she had a video of it too. Threatened to upload it.
Jesus. How could someone be so...brash?
I read further.
It had been said that when the news of how Bolanle had been using Tony's name to chase clout got to his ears, he hadn't even been mad. Or anything remotely close to that.
Instead he had simply replied to her post on twitter with a three sentenced message.
There was a picture of a screenshot of his reply below the post.
I read,
"First of all, Deji, I had been drunk at that party and spent most of the time passed out on a couch. And even if I hadn't been, you still wouldn't be my speck. Find someone else, bitch.
#BolanleDeji—clout chaser.
Beside it was a yawning emoji.
Damn. Talk about public disgrace.
The post continued on to say that that had ended Bolanle's false story and had deflated her "ludicrous self to a flat balloon".
Talk about double public disgrace.
I moved on to the next post.
The headline read,
James Adebayo, Sabrina Ikeji, Compatible or Nah?
I blinked, feeling the blood drain from my face at once. Closing my laptop with a loud slap, I counted to five and then opened it again.
The post was still there, staring back at me almost mockingly. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
Why?
How?
I read it's content. It centered mainly on the number of times James had asked me out and the number of times I had turned down his request.
The last sentence in the post read,
Is Sabrina playing hard to get or is she just uninterested?
I took in deep breaths, trying to quell the anger and hate stirring up inside me toward James. All I had wanted was a drama-free third year at school and nothing more. Was that too much to ask?
I lost my blogging appetite immediately and left Linda's blog, my mind still reeling from what I had just read.
I powered off my laptop, dropped it beside me on the bed and crossed my legs, thinking.
If I could just drive it home to James that I wasn't interested, he'd let it go. He had to let it go.
But, how?
It wasn't as easy practically as it was theoretically. After all, I had already told him off several times but still he was persistent.
Just then there was a knock on my door, startling me.
"Sabrina, I know you're awake. I heard you moving around in here, please open up," Chelsea's voice came to me from the door.
I shot up from my bed at once, took fast strides to the door, unlocked it and threw it open.
I didn't give her a chance to say anything before I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pulled her into a tight hug.
"Oh," she breathed. "Okay."
"I'm sorry I overreacted earlier." I pulled back from her.
"I think I should be the one apologizing," she told me.
I was about to speak up when Brian's deep voice came to us from the kitchen.
"One tub of vanilla ice cream coming straight up."
I remembered Chelsea telling me he would be coming over so I wasn't so surprised he was here.
"Hurry up, Brian!" Chelsea called.
"Ice cream? We don't have any ice cream," I raised my eyebrows.
"I got you some," she smiled.
Just then, Brian moseyed up to us, a huge bowl of ice cream in his hands.
"You simmer down already, Sabrina?" He raised one of his perfect eyebrows. "Or else I'm might have to dump this whole bowl on you."
Chelsea elbowed him in his ribs. She collected the bowl from him and walked past me into my room.
I followed her, Brian close by.
"Is it all for me?" I asked, wide eyed.
She placed it on my table and looked at me. "Yeah."
"No way!" I shrieked, scooting over to the ice cream.
It was a full tub.
"But, if you wanna share..." Brian began shrugging.
"Well, duh." I told him. "You don't really expect me to finish all this alone."
In about ten minutes time, Brian, Chelsea and I were all seated on my bed, digging into the ice cream like our lives depended on it, already on a train to a giant brain freeze.
"Ah, Brian, take it easy ni," Chelsea fussed when he dug his spoon into the bowl three times, simultaneously.
"Eating ice cream by one in the morning is a once-in-a-life-time thing, babe. You only get one chance so make good use of it." He scooped up more ice cream.
And that was how we spent the next one hour suffering from brain freeze, me having forgotten completely about the problem at hand—James Adebayo.
And we were supposed to be the average young adults.
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*Translating foreign words*
Akintola: Ah-Keen-Toh-Lah
Adade: Ah-Dah-De
Wunmi: Woo-N-Mee
Ikenna: Ee-kei-N-Na
That should be all.
See ya.
Love,
Thea🐇