Timothy`s boarding school

Chapter 9 - Who am I?

After that incident at the dining hall, I basically turned into a robot. Love no longer existed in my life; I now ignore all feelings of love I feel towards anyone excluding my mother of course. Why put my heart into the world only for it to be broken? Love was just a fix, which gets you high for a moment and then brings you back down to this shitty world to face the hard boiled, cruel reality. You cannot run away from your life as a wise man once said "One often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." I was born to be this smart nerdy guy with zero love life, boring friends who are too scared to do anything fun and spend a lifetime reading when others are having fun. Maybe I was not so different from Theo after all.

The siren signalling for the end of study goes but I stay behind as others exit. When all the shuffling noise of desks and students dragging their feet ends, now thinking I'm alone, I look behind me. Theo is sitting in a corner wide eyed and he seems like he is going nowhere. He gives me this enigmatic look I can't decipher, it has no smile, no hate, no anger, just this plain face looking at me. It certainly gives me the chills. As this was starting to look like a staring competition, I look away. I continue reading all the rubbish and nonsense they teach us here at school, seriously who needed to know this stuff. Reading about how a guy who lived ages ago died in some baseless war, some things just needed to stay in the past. Bringing them up only rattled old bones unnecessarily

I extend my study by just over an hour and retire leaving Theo to it; there was no way I could compete with him, I preferred reading qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively. In the next room I notice Jacob is also hard at it although he was half asleep. He barely registers my presence in the room. I throw a muffled paper at him and he twitches up, definitely alarmed I notice, I conclude he was actually sleeping. "Ooh Tim wassup? Thanks for waking me." I nod and proceed to exit the study center, from the windows I could tell the girls had since left the dining hall, where they studied, a while ago. With only a week left, this term's mid-term exams were going to be hot, with this much studying, I had to keep my game on point definitely.

I reach the hostel definitely exhausted and I'm made to wait another ten minutes outside my own room because no one wanted to open the door. When someone finally unlocked the door, I'm met with more than a dozen more eyes. Everyone is looking at me; the laptop on the desk is the only thing separating us. What were all these guys doing in my room? I walk towards them and turn around after I pass the laptop. I'm shocked beyond words. All these guys, forth-formers to be specific had come all the way from their rooms just to watch porn."Tim smile a little." Yayen says nudging me "don't act like you are not liking what you are seeing." So he had brought the p**n? Who was this guy? That was definitely not my friend. I'm both disgusted and disappointed at the same time. As is often said there are two sides to a coin, so this was his other side. I was going to have none of it. I move people away from my bed, get in my pyjamas, plug in my earphones and get in my sheets.

I immediately drown the explicit sounds and the evil, cheeky laughs the other boys are making. I can't believe Ryan is watching this nonsense also. I get up; open the windows wider as I was beginning to drown in premature teen sperm ejaculation odours.

The morning bell wakes me up from my deep slumber, last night I had totally slept like a log. I didn't even wake up to read this morning. I guess this continuous over studying is taking a toll on my body. I wake up; get hot water as we now had an element in our room and head to the showers. I and Hallaz are the first ones in the showers. Hallaz used to be my best friend before Jack but we sort of drifted apart with time. I guess the older we got, the more we knew about each other, we just didn't have the same principals anymore. Our break up wasn't an ugly one, we still talked from time to time like we were still best friends although limiting the amount of sensitive information we shared.

I finish my morning routine and go for breakfast.

"Hie" says Kimberly over the breakfast table towards me. I simply nod in response and continue sipping my tea. It was official she was now dating Michael. After that night I caught them kissing, I generally ignored her now. She had looked at me and Yayen in shock when she saw us looking at her. I think she saw how devastated I looked and probably felt my pain. Ever since, she has been trying to reconnect with me but I'm not biding my time with her. I have moved on, I tell myself every day. Lindsay feels the tension on the table and says "Tim, I'm sorry to say this but I think you are smart in the wrong areas." She bursts into laughter after saying her poorly constructed mean joke. I simply nod again, as my new mantra, I'm done with drama.

Theo is reading some notes on a pamphlet on the other side of the table and is actively ignoring the one sided conversation going on. He lifts his head from time to time to put bread in his mouth and sip tea. Jack is trying to flirt with Charmaine, who is not responding to any of his advances. Michael comes over to our table bringing bacon to Kimberly and me but I push mine away. Jack seeing the opportunity, he grabs my share of the bacon and starts swallowing it away. He says "Thanks boss" towards me, in between his chuffing. "Don't mention it" I say with a grave face, trying to add some sarcasm to it.

I go for class after breakfast. As my classroom was on the second floor, I could clearly see people walking on the pavement outside and sometimes it would help me as I could see when a teacher was coming from the staff room which was in the administration block but most of the time it was just a way to escape reality. Stacy waves her hand in front of my face breaking my mindless stare.

"Hey" she says looking a bit shy and trying to brush off hair covering her face. I smile at her and greet her back.

"Sorry to disturb you, can you please help me with this math problem?" Ooh how could I forget, girls usually talked to me when they needed help with something. She tilts her chair to face me. I help her and she turns her chair to face the front immediately afterwards. Great, even skinny, not so pretty girls did not enjoy having a little non-school related chit-chat with me.

My sitting place was basically sandwiched by girls. During the Geo lesson I did try to have a conversation with Monica who sat right behind me. The Geo teacher had decided not to come today, she reckoned we were bad kids as most of the guys slept in her lesson. I certainly don't blame them, she spoke in a very low melodious voice, it sounded like a lullaby. Monica was my first desk mate in high school when we were just juniors. I asked her why girls talked about school with me every time and never seemed to want to flirt with me or anything else. She reckoned it's because they respected me and didn't take me to be that kind of guy who dated and stuff. In simple terms I was no fun, period. She tried to say it in many different ways but I was no fool I could see right through her, the reason was plain simple. I was boring. I followed every rule to the dot, got very high marks which intimidated most girls and generally spent my time reading, even though there was no teacher in the classroom. I certainly needed to relax a bit, hit the brakes for a while, but the situation with my mom at home always made me think otherwise. She needed me to be successful, so we can get out of the poverty we dipped from time to time.

I go out of the classroom during tea break as I was supposed to meet Chido outside. I open the door and my eyes I met by these black empty pair. She was looking at me with such mystery that I stood at the door frozen not knowing what to do. Hillary our class monitor broke this bond we were sharing when she pushed me off the door way. I continued my way towards Chido, l and the girl looking each other in the eye as I walked down the stairs. This girl had definitely moved something inside my body, unfortunately she was Theo's sister, but never the less I was going to make my move.

I take Chido to the tuck shop and buy her a pie and Rodney is there as always splashing some money. I wondered where he got it from; I tried to give him the benefit of doubt to the nasty rumours which were being perpetuated against him. We slow walk as we talk.

"So do you like Theo?" I ask, trying my best for it to sound as casual as possible.

"Why are you asking me that?" she responds, trying to act shocked.

"I saw you during visit looking kind of cosy with each other." I say now staring her in her eyes. She turns away, looks at her pie and says "No, we are just friends and what you saw, was nothing."

"Nothing" I repeat after her "I hope this nothing won't turn into something" I giggle a bit at my statement. She giggles too but kind of over doing it. I drop the subject immediately after.

We talk about other things including how lonely we were. The siren rings breaking our daily dose of unfulfilled yearnings, we so much talked about every day. I go through the day's lessons with each teacher repeating the one before about how there were going to drop the person who failed their test from the first class. Their threat is now getting so monotonous that students are now actually begging to be dropped from the first class. From time to time, me and Theo exchange blank looks, I never could understand him really. He was weird.

During hometown I manage to catch Christine standing in the foyer leaning against the window overlooking the entrance to the buildings. The sun is shining on her light brown skin, making it glow, she looks so beautiful. I give myself a few claps before heading towards her, only to pass her and talk to my friend Tariq who was standing a few steps behind her. Was I love struck? I couldn't even talk to her or just say "hie", why am I such a loser? What is happening to me? My hands start trembling and Tariq can clearly see how nervous I'm. "Are you okay dude? You seem like you are having a nervous breakdown." Tariq says holding my shoulder with his left hand, with a look of concern. "I'm fine" I say nudging his arm away. I turn, walk past Christine, ignore Theo who is standing by our class's doorway and walk down the steps almost falling over after I had skipped a few.

Jack catches me on the ground floor, leaving the girls that were surrounding him. "Wait dude, where are you rushing to? Come say hie to the girls. You might be lucky" he says holding my forearm completely surrounding my non-existing muscles with his hand.

"I'm not feeling it. Let me go." Now getting a little infuriated. I hated being told what to do.

"Dude don't be boring? Why are you always like this? Grow up man, I know you are smart but trust me this is not it" he says himself a little infuriated. We lock eyes now, sizing each other's anger. Rodney sees us and immediately rushes over and grabs Jack's shoulders.

"Come on Jack, let him go. Can't you see his angry? Let him do what he wants" Rodney says toward jack. Jack makes a sound with his mouth and lets go of my arm "You will regret this. Trust me." He says. I drop my gaze on him and look at Rodney and turn, glare at him one more time before I start walking towards the hostel.

Walking towards the hostel, I can't stop thinking about how complicated my personality was. Jack offers me a once in a while offer to go talk to the girls and what do I do? Turn him down with rage. What was wrong with me? I had thrown my golden goose into the bin. Every time I cry about being a loser and not having a social life but when it comes knocking on my door I turn it down. All I'm good at is going after girls I can't have. Christine was never going to be mine as long Theo was still at this school. Why am I always challenging the impossible? I just can't stop myself, I have to get her at any cost. I vow to myself. Kimberly was just a phase, I'm sure Christine is the one for me. I won't give in this time, this is my second chance. Am I psycho? I wonder for the rest of my journey to my room.

The hockey practice today was poorly attended. Only a handful of seniors came and a bunch of juniors. The juniors' muscle and skill were like jelly, there was no way I was going to run the team on such a poor foundation. I had to encourage more seniors to come. I think their poor presence is largely attributed to the fact that we haven't had a game for the whole first month ofthe term; I seriously had to talk to Mr Stevens about it. At least Tk was here although he was beginning to go Theo's way on what drills we should do and the issues of governing the team