My name is Ada Eze and I don't do distractions.Seventeen years old. Scholarship student. My mother cleans toilets in VI so I can stay at Crestwood Academy. If I lose my grades, I lose everything.Then Tunde Bakare transfers from London.His family owns half of Lagos. His brother is a Cambridge legend. Tunde? He's the disappointment. Expelled from two schools. Fights. Skipped classes. The boy your mother warns you about.He sits behind me in physics. Never takes notes. Sleeps through third period. Scrolls Instagram during lectures.Then Miss Gloria posts the first test scores.1. Tunde Bakare – 92%2. Ada Eze – 90%He beat me without trying.Now Miss Gloria pairs us for the regional science fair. Build a working rocket or fail SS3. No pressure.I hate him. He doesn't care.But late one night, his notebook falls out of his bag. I open it. Inside are equations I won't learn until university. Quantum mechanics. Orbital dynamics. Timestamps in the corner.3am. 3:47am. 4:02am.He's not lazy. He's hiding. And his own brother will do anything to keep him from winning.Then his father calls me into the principal's office. Puts a cheque on the table. 500,000 naira."Tell the board that Tunde cheated. Take the money. My son doesn't lose to a cleaner's daughter."I tore the cheque in half.Threw water on his face.Now I'm in trouble. Scholarship on review. Mother crying. The whole school thinks I'm protecting a cheater.Someone leaked that Tunde bought the test answers. He says he didn't. I believe him. But if I stand beside him, I lose everything.If I walk away, I lose myself.Love doesn't distract you from your future. It pushes you to earn it.But earning it might break you first.