THE SCEPTICAL BOND

Juliet's pov

Attaining a secondary education, especially on a scholarship was a dream come true for me. A few months back even my mum never imagined this to be possible. Here it it was.I Juliet, I mean me. I i finally in school. The school of my dreams. The school with three brown storied buildings and a stadium with pavilions. Something I had never thought I would achieve in such a short period of time. I was living a part of my dreams already. It was hard to believe, but I had to.

The school was good. I felt Like I fitted in quickly. I was an extrovert. Making friends was not such a big deal for me. But I had decided to stick to one, with whom I would socialize. Her name was Mary. She was from a high class family, but she was also an extrovert like me. Her mother was the country director of Oxfam. Her father worked as an auditor in the office of the auditor general. We became friends on the day my mother took me to school. Over time we had become inseparable.

Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, months to terms, terms to years. Finally we were in senior three. A class feared by every student. One that needed high levels of concentration in order to be passed. It is the first term of the new school year.

Two weeks into the school term, being an evening, Mary jumped around the class balcony in excitement. Evening prep had just ended. We were among the last students remaining in the classroom block." Juliet have you heard?" She asked enthusiastically.

I was not giving her much attention. She was always blabbering about silly things- things that did not matter much to me. The cutest boy in school, the richest boy in school, and all that sort of nonsense." Juliet, Juliet......" She continued, shaking me to earn my attention.i ignored her, taking the stairs to head for the hostel. She had no choice but to follow me silently to the hostel.

On teaching our hostel room, it seemed like all girls talked about a boy. None of them knew his name, but they praised him like he had been sent from above.

He was handsome, they said. They also said that he was bound to be the richest boy in school . Mary said that he had been featured in the buzz teen magazine last month, and that they had ranked him as the richest teenager in the country. His net worth was valued at half a billion shillings. " Leave a line the money given him by his father." That was his own hard earned sweat." She added, keeping the gossip alive.

I hated it when the girls gossiped about boys. How did it matter whether the boy was rich,or not. Whether he was handsome, or not. Tall, or short. Dark skinned, or brown. It was all the same to me. He was a student, and as students we were equal. No one was to be placed higher than the other.

I had a quick shower, quickly ignoring the hot gossip and getting into my bed. It didn't take me long to fall asleep. I was tired. I had had a long day, and I had to rest.

I forgot to tell you about my daily routine. I was the type of student who was never at school gatherings and functions. I liked my own space whenever it came to things like movies, games at the dove stadium and kadankes. I hated all the things students treasured the most. I had two comfort zones in the school. If I was not researching on the library, then I was in class fidgeting with math, a subject I dreaded and failed miserably

I was not the type of student with a lot of money at my disposal.
BRAC gave me a termly allowance of fifty thousand shillings. Many times I found myself broke, and out of cash. My mum could not send me money, and I wouldn't ask either. despite the situation at home, she never wanted me to lack. She would go the extra mile to give me something little whenever I had run out of cash. On my own I would never ask her for any support. I felt guilty that I was putting her on pressure.

It was one of the days that I scheduled to practice the math numbers. The teacher had introduced a new topic on vectors two weeks back. I had not understood the concepts. I had practiced it the whole of last week to no success. I was getting frustrated, but I knew I could not give up. I had to fight on. If I did not, I would fail the subject, and there was a high chance I would not be offered a science combination at A level.