***
Our driver pulled up in the parking lot, where barely a dozen cars had taken their parking spots. Once Cynthia and I stepped out of the car, he swung back in reverse and zoomed out of sight. While Cynthia headed for class, I lingered in the lot, distracting myself with a glossy-black power bike. I wanted her ahead of me, breathing in fresh air that didn't have my breath contaminating it. She mounted the stairs, out of my line of sight. I followed at a snail's pace.
Two pairs of eyes looked up at me as I stood in the doorway of my classroom. Confidence and Adamu - the last people I wanted to see at the moment. Sat together, Confidence scribbled in her note while Adamu punched the keys on his calculator. They seemed to be solving a math problem. But with a slut like her and a jerk like him, nothing good could come out. I turned to leave when I heard Adamu snort.
"Hey, come put us through ..." I walked away, letting Confidence's voice trail off. I wouldn't want to start my day in their company. Not unless I planned to ruin it before it even began.
The corridor seemed good enough for some quality me-time. Perching my feet beside the classroom's exterior wall, I rested my hands on the parapet, breathing in the cool morning breeze. Cars and students streaked in through the gate. Once in ten minutes, the shuffling of feet would steal away my attention. I'd turn around, hoping to find Amarachi or Flora, but would find some random jerk I didn't want to waste my voice on in the name of 'good morning.' So I'd just nod at them and look away.
My thoughts settled on Doreen and her Bloody Miri tale. Everything about it just seemed surreal. Impossible. I shook my head. No way in hell would I believe this. For twenty-one whole years, this game had been going on. What did Miriam's so-called ghost see in 2017 that forced her out of hiding, answering the call she'd ignored all these years?
What if Doreen had fabricated that story in an attempt to cover up for her attacker because exposing her came with a price? Either that, or she'd tried to kill herself. Or maybe that had been one episode of a madness to come, and many would come where that came from. But Bloody Miri? Bloody hell.
Doreen didn't strike me as a crazy one though. Without a second thought, I ruled out the third possibility, leaving me with just two. I thought back to the second. Suicide.
She didn't strike me as one who would try to kill herself. Like every other kid in our school, she came from an affluent family, so she had close to everything she could ever need.
Why then would she try to kill herself? Suicide attempts mostly stemmed from depression and a very chronic loathing of one's self. For an adult, the triggers include unemployment, divorce, inability to find a mate, and a number of other factors. But for a teenage girl, I could only think of a few.
Perhaps she'd been bullied and decided to end it all? Although bullying ended a few years back, thanks to Sir Amadi's drastic measures, it wouldn't be wise to rule out the possibility just yet.
I moved on to the next possible trigger. Perhaps she did not receive much attention from her family and thought it best to escape to a better place?
A more troubling question took dwelling in my mind. What if she had a boyfriend and he had expressed an unchanging desire to leave her, perhaps for another? In that case, wouldn't she take out her aggression on the boy himself, or perhaps on the other girl? What if it happened the other way around, with Doreen as the other girl, and the ex-girlfriend of the boy in question had taken out her aggression on her?
Either way, we had a murderer amongst us, or at least one capable of it, and until we unmasked her, we stood the risk of being attacked. Each and every one of us.
"Do you believe the Bloody Mary shit?" I jumped at the sound of Raheem's voice, and hit against the hardness of his chest.
"I'm sorry," I said. I bit my lips, hating that I'd just apologized to him. Even more, I hated that I'd put myself in a position where I had to apologize to him.
"You won't tell me this is what I get from sneaking up on you like that?" he asked, leaning against the parapet with his back and elbows.
I shuddered at our close proximity and took one thoughtless step to the left, only to crash into the wall whose presence I had forgotten.
I would go to the other side of the parapet, but it would only make obvious my need to get away from Raheem. He chuckled. A light, musical sound I never thought I'd hear firsthand.
Our meeting in the sickbay seemed to have changed him somehow. The Raheem I knew would never try to engage me in a conversation. Somehow, he had cast his old self in the shadows. For a reason I dared not identify, this brought a smile to my lips.
"Many students are scared of the restroom now," he said. "It's crazy how they all believe the place is actually haunted."
"Indeed."
"Do you believe this Bloody Mary shit?" he asked, lifting himself to sit on the parapet. My breath caught in my throat as an image of him tumbling over and falling many feet below flitted across my mind. Curse my fear of height. I could never sit on the parapet. And anyone who knew me knew better than to perform this stunt in front of me.
Ordering my mind away from Raheem's fear-triggering seat, I returned his question. "Do you?"
"I thought when I added shit to Bloody Mary, my stand was already clear." Silence crept in between us, punctuating his not-so-friendly response.
I could see the old Raheem crawl into the picture. In no time, he would take dominance. It seemed I wasn't the only living with double personalities. Raheem shared this similarity.
"Doreen herself seemed pretty convinced that she'd been attacked by Bloody Miri," I said.
"Mary," Raheem corrected, disgusted by my apparent inability to correctly pronounce 'Mary'. How pathetic could his arrogance get?
'The problem with people is they believe they know it all when in reality they know nothing.' I loved these words, not only because of the meaning they held, but because they had come out of dad's mouth, woven in the richness of his deep voice. Now, though, watching these same words apply to Raheem made my appreciation soar even higher.
"It's Miri," I said. "Short for Miriam."
The look of confusion on his face told me I had to explain. "Twenty-one years ago, we lost a student."
Raheem nodded. "The nurse's sister."
My lips parted to ask how he knew of Miriam's relationship with Stella. But the question never made it past my lips. I only managed to breathe out an "Oh."
"I read wide," he said, answering my unasked question. "So let's see...A certain Miriam dies, and students come up with a game taken after the popular Bloody Mary and name it Bloody Miri? How clich?."
The bell for first period rang, freeing me from his company. I turned to leave, but his next words gripped me, making me stop dead in my tracks.
"We will be meeting with Doreen during break. The sooner we find out whoever tried to kill her, the better."
"Huh?" I asked. He had involved me in his plans without giving me an opportunity to accede or do otherwise? What gave him the impression I wanted to sleuth around with him in the first place?
"I don't see myself doing this with anyone but you," he said.
Anyone but you. Those words sank deep in my heart. I didn't want to, but I found myself locking them away in a place safe enough for retrieval sometime in the future.
"Take Cynthia," I offered. "She'll be thrilled to-"
"Don't even mention her," he said. "It disgusts me how she thinks she can win me over. And sadly, many other girls think like that. Is that how little they think of me? A dog that can be bought with an emaciated bone?"
Rue-cheerless and a mix of disgust stole him over. For the next few moments, he stayed quiet, clenching and unclenching his sculptured jaw. Maybe I could lighten up the mood?
"Well, there's Mary," I said.
"Of course," he said. "There's good ol' Mary. But was it Mary and I who stayed by Doreen's side while we waited for the nurse to show up?"
Once again, silence ensued, splitting my eardrums with its deafening shriek.
; Raheem broke the silence. "Look, I don't know about you, but I'm keeping this in the dark from anyone else. At least till we see ourselves making progress. So, are we meeting during break? The sooner this takes off, the better."
"I'll?uh...think about it," I found myself saying.
Raheem clicked his tongue. "This isn't a date, Toria."
Toria? As much as I loved the sound of my new nickname, I didn't want to get used to it.
"Don't call me that," I said.
In an attempt to elicit a similar response from him, I designed the prefect nick for him. "Rah."
Raheem grimaced. "Don't."
Mission accomplished. "That settles it then."
"Of course, Miss Brown." With his words came a short-lived fluttery sensation in my stomach. No one had ever called me Miss Brown.
The smile on his face told me he knew of my emotional turmoil, and that he'd seen it coming. "Shall we seal the deal?"
Outstretching his right hand for a shake, two things sped into my focus. His well-trimmed nails. And the second, a memory of his hands ducking into his pockets when Cynthia had invited him for a handshake. It wouldn't hurt to give him a taste of his own medicine, would it?
I looked away from his outstretched hand and folded my hands. Fist clenched, he withdrew his hand. "Some other time then, Miss Brown."
Smirking, he headed for the classroom. Four girls waved at him. Standing outside the class, they'd been holding a meeting about God-knows-what. Looking straight ahead as though they didn't exist, Raheem swaggered off into the class.
The girls turned to glare at me, apparently wondering what I'd done to make Raheem talk to me while he didn't even know they existed. If they pushed aside their egos and approached me for help, I would give them the simple tip: help him revive an unconscious girl and he'll love you forever.
With Raheem's departure came a sudden realization. His coming had triggered no symptoms of my allergy. This only meant he had used a different cologne; one I actually found pleasing to my sense of smell. Had he realized my reaction to the other one? Had he come close to me only to test my reaction to his new spray?