Garbage eggs

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        ~~S H A P E  O F M E~~
School was terrible. Actually, school was never not terrible but this time it was extremely, overly and extraordinarily terrible. My hatred for school had increased a hundredfold and nothing, absolutely nothing could make school seem any better.

"E ku osan ma!" I greeted from the doormat as soon as I stepped into the house.

"Tope, e ku abo my dear." Mami said from the kitchen. I could hear her straining her voice over the loud music Tunde was playing from the basement and I wondered how his head hadn't been bashed with a frying pan yet.

"Mami." I called for no reason as I headed into the kitchen.

"Yes my dear?" She answered knowing fully well that I most likely didn't have anything to say.

"What are you cooking?" I asked and immediately perceived the sweet smell of one of my favourite things in the world—garbage eggs. "Yes!" I exclaimed Mami flipped the egg in the pan.

"Shey you like it?" She smiled at me and I returned her smile on a larger scale.

"Yes of course Mami." I grinned even more with my lips almost stretching out of proportions. Fridays were for garbage eggs and garbage eggs were for Fridays. There was literally nothing not to like about it.

In all honesty, 'Garbage eggs' was the only thing I ever experimented with in my life. You could say it was the single way I could be adventurous. While Mami sometimes made them for us when she was home, I made them myself most of the time and I made sure to also keep my adventurous spirit burning.(I meant that literally too as I almost set the house on fire with one of my recent escapades.)

You might be wondering why they're called 'garbage eggs', and no it has nothing to do with garbage. We called them garbage eggs because we could put anything and 'everything'–that made food sense–in the eggs. The thrill was getting to taste what you had never tested in eggs before. I mostly used ingredients that normally would never go together; like pineapples. Please don't ask how that got into the eggs. It was absolutely awful. But it was interesting to try something new every once in a while.

Today I could smell Jalapeño peppers, curry and tomatoes sizzling in with the eggs and it made my mouth water in anticipation. There was no way today's garbage eggs could taste like garbage. Well, nothing Mami made ever tasted bad. Garbage eggs weren't any different.

"I'm going upstairs to take off my clothes. Then I'll help cook the rice." I announced as I hurried up the stairs.

"Make sure you arrange you and Titi's room before you come down." Mami poked her head out of the kitchen and I groaned before I disappeared into the room I shared with my sister.

It was funny how food had made me almost forget the bad day I had at school. I had almost forgotten how humiliated I was today when I was supposed to be 'learning'. I had almost forgotten how mortified I was to find out that everyone knew about Malik and I. I had almost forgotten everything, but I found myself recounting all the scenes that happened.

While at school, I found it aggravating that they only knew about half of the story. All they talked about was my blinding crush for him. I could hear it being whispered in the hallways, being shared in the cafeteria and even passed on pieces of papers in class. Everywhere I went, I could hear my name hanging on the corners of people's lips; I could see fingers pointing at me like I was a criminal and I could feel bitter looks, nods and glares darted my way.

It was almost suffocating. There was nowhere to hide. It felt like the whole world knew and it was exhausting as they didn't know all of the truth. No one knew about our kiss and I was sure they didn't want to either. All they wanted me to do was crawl into a hole and bury myself. They wanted me to disappear from his life and even the face of the earth if I could. I was a joke to Croner's High School.

My phone pinged as I received a new message. It was from Sherrandah: "Believe me Tems, I never told Zye about anything between us. I would never betray you like that."

I flopped on my bed, face planted into my sheets and sighed deeply. I wanted to believe Sherrandah desperately, but how could I when there was so much contradicting her words? How did Zye know if she didn't tell him? That was a question she couldn't answer and it made me doubt her more.

She thought I didn't see it in school. But I saw it all. I caught glimpses of the looks and sick smiles she exchanged with Zye when she noticed I wasn't paying her any attention. It made me furious to think that she might had betrayed me. It was a baffling thought, and although I wasn't sure what to believe anymore, I did know Sherrandah wasn't telling the truth—not all of it at least.

"Tope Mami said I should ask you if you have finished arranging your room." my reverie was interrupted by a pesky visitor.

"No. As if it's not both our room." I groaned, then lifted my face off the bed that already had the shape of my face temporarily imprinted into it.

"But I don't sleep here every time, so it's more of your own. Mami said I should tell you to finish it and get your butt downstairs so you can take your food. She is already cooking the rice." Titi said and I rolled my eyes at her. She was annoyingly demanding and it was anything but cute.

"Aren't you too old to be wearing those socks?" My eyes caught the same socks she always wore which had Dora and Boots' faces smiling stupidly at me. I really hated those socks.

"No." She replied defiantly.

"I think you are. You are going to be ten soon and you're still wearing that rubbish."

"And you're going to be seventeen soon and you still don't have a boyfriend." She shot back and I threw my pillow at her as she ran away. This was exactly one of the reasons my sister was irritating to me. I hated having her around most of the time as she always looked for ways to roast me.

"Oh gosh." I sighed again, sitting up straight. I knew I was only vexed because she was saying the truth. The truth hurt sometimes, even almost every time and it was also embarrassing. But at least I could comfort myself with the fact that I didn't have Dora and Boots' faces on my feet.

Getting my room in order didn't take much time as my room was mostly clean. I was careful about the order things were kept as I hated having to look for anything. This was the reason why I hardly lent any of my stuff out.

Having common sense was so uncommon in our house that my dumb siblings aka Titi and Tunde couldn't figure out that they had to return whatever they borrowed from me or put them back where they saw it. It was really one of my biggest pet peeves.

I gave my room a last look before I headed down to get some food. "Thank you ma." I said to Mami as I grabbed a plate of eggs in the kitchen and made my way back to my room. I didn't really feel like eating rice.

"Make sure I don't see any crumb of food in that room or somebody will cry today." Mami yelled as I trudged up the stairs.

"Yes ma." I replied weakly. I felt too tired to say anything else.

Ping!
Ping!
My phone cried as soon as I entered my room. Was I becoming popular or something?

"Hey it's Malik." The first message read.

"Open your window."

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