Timothy`s boarding school

Chapter 7 - Where is the love?

I walk towards Chido, on my way passing the other form 4 boys looking rather sharp in their number one uniform, sitting on a fallen tree trunk facing the gate. They seem to be making fun of each other as I hear a lot of funny sounds, the ones that angered someone. Brian sees me going towards the girls and yells after me "Don't fall on your fall Tim, remember this is not physics". Another of his nerd boring jokes. The other boys burst into laughter. I wave the middle finger at him, not turning to see his reaction.

I reach Chido; she grabs my hand and says "Where have you been? I have been looking for you." She doesn't give me time to respond and continues "Kimberly has been looking for you since the start of visit. You should probably go see her, it seemed urgent."

"Did you see which direction she went?"

"Try the school hall; I did see her heading that way a while ago"

I thank her and walk towards the hall passing Theo who was sitting with his little sister Christine and his parents on the lawn in the round-about. He looks at me and I immediately look away. I have to admit, her sister was quite pretty. She was just a form below us. I turn and step on the pavement to the hall. Just a few feet from the entrance I notice Michael talking to Kimberly. I'm immediately alarmed.

The two see me and Michael calls to me, edging me to come over. I tentatively walk towards them and come to a halt when I'm just an arm reach from them.

"Wow Tim, why do you look so tense? Loosen up. We don't bite." He manages a chuckle and grins at me afterward. Kimberly looks at me "Yes Tim, you seem different. Are you okay?" I wish she only knew what the bastard beside her was making me do.

I put up a nervous smile and salivate my lips, still in shock from seeing this two together and say "I'm fine, just nervous about seeing my mother today."

"That's great. Was just telling Kimberly here how great I treat you little boys at the hostel. I'm the sweetest and kindest prefect ever. Tell her Tim." He gives me a sharp look, from his lips I could tell he was mouthing the words don't mess this up Tim or else. Trapped in a corner I nod in agreement and say "We are so lucky to have him as our form prefect" giving a sheepish smile.

"Wow, you really are one of a kind. I heard rumours that the boys' prefects were bullies. I guess I was misinformed since Tim supports you so much" Kimberly says not looking too convinced. "Michael bought me this lovely watch, isn't it pretty?" she says waving it in my face.

"I have to check on my mom" I say totally ignoring her last statement as my eyes were almost watery and my voice shaky. I couldn't contain the shock of seeing these two together. I had lost the girl of my dreams to this creep. How could I lie so blindly for him like that? She can't see me like this. I take my leave and rush behind the hedge in front of the wall. I sit against it, not minding getting my uniform dirty on the dry parched soil. I notice that I'm hyper-ventilating. Seeing her with Michael had totally messed me up and the way Michael treated me like a little boy with outer disrespect makes me even more furious.

"Hey, what is going on? Are you okay?"

I look up and notice Stacy looking at me with concern. She was the girl who sat right in front of me in class. She was light skinned, not that pretty and skinny but she really did have a good heart and was very sweet. She was kind of talkative, in class you could hear her talk even if she was at the back of the class.

"I'm fine, just got some dust in my eye" I wonder why love hated me so much. All the other boys had so many stories to tell about how they dated this girl and how they broke up and so forth. I had nothing to tell, I couldn't even ask a girl out and not to mention that I even liked her. Now here I'm talking to this girl who I don't even like and of course this is attributed to peer pressure. Dating a skinny girl was the most embarrassing thing ever, you would be referred to as being gay. As they said the girl had nothing to offer, she was just a guy in a girl's body. They reckoned inner beauty was a way ugly girls comforted themselves from the harsh world.

I brush my watery eyes with the back of my hand, stand up and dust myself.

"Thanks for asking, got to go check on my mom right now. Don't want to keep her waiting." I say and walk away towards the school grounds. Chido meets me as I'm about to leave the road leading to the roundabout.

"How did it go lover boy?" she says with a smile, nudging my shoulder with her index finger. I was really not in the mood for all her fun and games but I had to put up a cheery facade or she was going to see right through me. I smile back at her, my smile definitely brittle.

"Nothing much, she just wanted to say hie."

"You don't seem that thrilled why? Did something happen." She says, now looking at me directly in my eyes. I have to stop this conversation or she is going to see through my disguise. Just as I'm about to make some lame excuse, I notice Chido's mom walking away from the gate, towards the grounds. I point at her. "Look Chido, your mom is here" her face brightens up, without even saying good-bye she rushes to help her as she was carrying a lot of stuff. With luck still on my side, I move away fast, before she can further interrogate me.

It's almost one o'clock now and my mom must be close. I move towards the gate and I spot her as the guard is letting her in. She is holding a couple of plastic bags and I so hope she cooked her heart out for me. I wait for her to reach the roundabout as I did not want people to see me with my mother. She sees me coming towards her and drops the plastic bags slowly to the ground.

She speaks from a heavy breath, looking exhausted "Took you long enough to see me. Didn't you see me entering the gate?" I shake my head, definitely lying. She hugs me and I pick her luggage from the ground and point her towards the lawn behind the hedge in front of the hall as there was some shade and it was not really that crowded. There were a bunch of form 1 juniors with their parents. She takes out a sheet from one of her bags, spreads it on the lawn and we sit on it. I immediately rush to take out my phone from her hand bag.

I switch it on and rush to my i********:, it seemed I had got an extra ten followers over the last month, not much but soon enough I will reach two hundred followers. It was quite sad how my social life was very poor, most of my friends had long surpassed a thousand followers long back. Maybe is the way I presented my account, there were a few home photos that had less than ten likes and a bio that said Living life as it is (with a smiley emoji). What does that even mean? No wonder people didn't follow me back; I was following over two thousand people.

My mom calls for my attention and brings out some of her home cooked delicacies. "I made your favourite" she says "roasted chicken with rice and I even added a bit of my secret green salad on the side". She is smiling now admiring her work. I look at the food; it looked quite good and even smelled better. I thank her and start eating whilst she reproduces our neighbourhood's monthly gossip. She tells me about the death of my uncle, who I don't know and have never seen so I think. She tells me how he used to visit when I was little, definitely don't remember any of that, I tell her. I liked the smile on her face as she talked and I listened nodding appropriately and adding one or two things here and there.

I leave her for a minute as I go with the grocery she had brought me to the hostel, just a couple of corn snakes, juice and other junk food, for me to eat in between the main meals of the dining hall and during my late night studies.

On my way to the hostel I meet Tamie, the girl Jack wholly wanted with all his heart but could never have as she was dating an upper six named Wellington. Wellington was very muscular, dark skinned and he was a guy you basically didn't want to mess with no matter what. Ironically they were best mates and played soccer together, Wellington being the vice-captain of the team.

I just mentioned how pretty she looked and moved on as I needn't want to mess with this girl. As part of our guy code, you should never date or have an intimate relationship with your bro's crush. Therefore I generally tried to keep my distance.

When I walk in to my room, I'm met with a crowd. I see Peter's naughty little brothers sitting on my bed, Martin getting a scolding from his mother on how scruffy he is, Nick's bed is filled with grocery, some even falling over but he is not in the room. Jack is in his casual hostel wear and looking kind of sad. I place my parcels under my bed and walk towards him. I sit beside him and ask what was wrong.

He looks at me and immediately turns away and heads towards the windows and looks outside. I follow and stand just behind him and he turns and says "Don't act like you don't know"

"What? I'm not a magician or telepathic, I can't read your mind."

"My dad is not coming" he wipes a tear from his eyes. Jack's parents had broken up a while ago when he was in primary school. His father had remarried but was still Jack's financial provider. His mother was a nurse working for the government which of course paid meagre wages; therefore she was often working overtime with night shifts as she had to take care of both Jack and his sister who lived with her. The role of visiting Jack and his school issues was therefore left to his father, who lived in a city just an hour and half away. His step mom had bore a child with his father and she hated it when he gave attention to Jack instead of her child, therefore she always made her child get everything he wanted in expense to Jack. I think she was the one who had delayed or made up something for Jack's father not to come.

I take out my ear phones and place one in his ear and the other in mine, I play Nicki Minaj's Va va voom. He looks at me and smiles "Are you kidding me? Play another song I'm not like you who listens to girl songs" he grabs my phone and plays a song by Drake In my feelings. I knew a quarrel over song choice would bring him back to earth. Peter calls at us "Can you two love birds come grab some of this pizza before my brothers finish it". We rush over and grab each a piece of his pepperoni pizza. I exit with Jack and we stand on the veranda on the entrance to the hostel. We see Theo struggling to carry his grocery; he reaches the veranda and jack says "Hello boss" looks at me briefly before turning back to Theo "Let me help you". 

"Hello Jack" Theo says in a heavy breath, smiling and looking happy. He totally ignores me. I wave my hand towards Jack and proceed to go back to my mother.