The Second Path

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The following Monday, everyone was back to square one like nothing happened. Like Valentine's Day was not yesterday.

A few girls who had boyfriends in university kept boasting about the gifts they got from them. Most of which includes bend-down select clothes, second hand perfumes and stolen flowers gotten from someone else's garden. They didn't necessarily say it like that, but I'm just being a bad belle at the moment.

We had our usual Monday assembly, which includes us wearing our berets, before we got to our form classes for attendance. I got to class late with Fatima and luckily, Mr Zamani has not arrived to take the class attendance.

From outside the classroom, we could hear the noise coming from inside. When Fatima and I stepped inside the class, we were amused by our classmates craziness.

They were doing this game called 'blindfold dance competition.' From the name, it was already obvious what the game was about. Two people dance in the middle while they're blind folded with handkerchief. The rest of the class will be the judge while two other people drum on the table with their hands and make whatever beats come to their head.

Right now, it was Mary Barau and Bello, the tallest boy in class, that were the contestants. But the winner was obvious.

"Go Mary! Go Mary!" Our classmates chanted.

Mary Barau was one of the best dancers in our set and she was also big in size. She was twice my body size. She knew how to do all the dance moves, from Makossa to Yahooze to Alanta and she was a perfection at waist whining. And whenever she's dancing, you could see all the flesh on her body falling apart. That was how energetic she was when dancing.

Bello, on the other hand, was not a good dancer at all. He was dancing with mostly his head than his body. But some of the boys still tried to cheer him up because they were scared of him.

They were not scared because he was tall, but because he used to bully them when he was our senior last year. Bello was supposed to be in ss2 but he repeated ss1 because he failed in Science class and had to move to Arts.

Fatima and I joined the crowd of classmates at the corner of the class and chanted with them. For a second, I looked away from them and saw Mr Zamani outside the class. I didn't know whether to announce or not that he was here. But then... it was mr Zamani. He won't mind.

He was talking to a small fair Jss1 boy in front of the class window. I could tell it was a jss1 student because his uniform was oversized. Mr Zamani seemed very deep into conversation with the boy that he didn't realise the noise coming from inside the class.

I looked away from them and suddenly, he stepped into class. Our classmates didn't stop their drumming and chanting, instead they made it louder when they saw mr Zamani.

He stood by the door with his hands on his hips and watched us in amusement. It was good he didn't shout at us like other teachers would have done. His eyes widened when he saw Mary Barau's good dancing skills.

Our classmates laughed, mostly because of his reaction to Mary Barau's dancing. On hearing their laughters, Mary Barau and Bello stopped dancing and removed the handkerchief from their eyes. They weren't scared but just laughed with the rest of us.

"Me too let me do my own move." Mr Zamani said, casually walking to our side.

"Nooo!" Everyone shooed him away, knowing he was a horrible dancer as well.