Sunshine

19| for you

Dedicated to Kezie18

In front of the hall was a platform where two chairs were arranged before a high table. A man took a seat behind the high table.

"We call up Maxwell Fiifi Banks and Nana Yaa Afrakoma Frimpomaa. They're the two winners in draws. Wherever you are, please come up here and take your seats so you're quizzed and the winner is brought out."

There was a deadly silence so loud that Nana Yaa could hear her own heartbeat. She glanced around, surprised to find out that everybody was also looking around, watching for the two science champions.

She stood up on wobbly legs, and someway somehow she made it to the platform and sat on one of the two chairs, and someway somehow she sat on the chair without knocking herself over to the floor. She could feel a thousand pair of eyes watching her every movement.

She let out a shaky breath, heart still pounding. Her eyes met with the Exams Director's for a brief second before she closed them.

She convinced herself to take it easy, to calm down, and took deep breaths even as her eyes remained close. She opened her eyes only to see Maxwell taking his seat. He looked absolutely gorgeous in his glasses and perfectly ironed uniform. Behind his glasses, his eyes shone bright and clever. His lips...

Focus.

Her heart leaped, yes it did.

This was going to be a tough one. Max was a distraction enough. And she was about to compete against her own... Friend? This wasn't easy at all for her.

And she knew it wasn't easy at all for Max either. Who would win? And most importantly, who deserved to win?

He had to win for his school, for his family, for himself. And she had to win for a dead grandpa. It sounded silly, but if anyone would judge her, all she would say was "till it happens to you."

It sounded silly, but it was true. It was real. And another real fact was that she was about to contest against her ally now. How are they going to handle it?

She met his eyes... and the melancholy sadness that overcame her was so great that she choked on it.

Yet he did something unexpected...

He winked at her!

Then he mouthed, "you got this."

It was a friendly thing, the wink. Something playful. And for the "you got this", he meant to reassure her even in her toughest time. Even in their toughest time. Just for this, she owed him so much.

She watched as he removed his glasses, wiped his face with his hanky and put them back on again.

"Attention, please."  Mr. Piesah, the quiz master who first took his seat boomed out. Immediately, the room went deadly quiet. Then he continued, knowing he had attention. "We just want to separate the two and get the winner," he said, "so we are just asking a few questions. Immediately one of them gets an answer to a question wrong, then that does it. The other would be declared the winner." He allowed a couple of seconds of murmuring to pass among the students before finally saying, "we begin the quiz."

Here Nana Yaa was, about to compete with the head boy of Presec-Legon. Whooaatt.
She felt her heart thump so wildly against her chest that she was sure everybody in the hall could hear it.