The Story Continues…
Akua was not at her usual seat.
I quickly scanned the classroom and noticed her sitting in a corner with her friend. I think her name was Ama. Both their eyes were red, like they had been crying.
Every fibre of my being screamed, “LEAVE!!! Save yourself!”
I could. They hadn’t seen me.
I walked right over. Foolish boy.
My mind raced. Had the worst happened? Could it be? Did my Akua drop Atico?
My heart pounded with every step.
I got to the desk and she finally saw me. Sorry, they saw me.
Akua didn’t even smile; that was a first. She must be really upset, I thought.
“Oh, Akua, what’s the matter?” I asked with all the concern in the world.
“Ama dropped Atico”, she sniffled.
Ama seemed kind of annoyed that Akua just gave me such privileged information, however, if that was all I had to deal with I would have been fine. It’s what happened next that killed me.
“Oh, thank God! I thought it was you.”
Time froze…
The gravity of my words dawned on me immediately: I’d messed up.
I had been insensitive towards Ama, I’d insinuated that I thought Akua was possibly a poor student, and I’d done all this right in front of both of them.
My tongue got all tied up. I tried to explain; I tried to apologize, but I just stuttered. “Akua- I- I- … Ama, I didn’t mean- I- I’m- I-”
Usually this would make her laugh. Not today.
“Kodzo,” Akua cut me off, “I think you need to leave.”
Herh! My chest!
It wasn’t so much about about her asking me to leave; it was how she said it.
She seemed so… so disappointed. Like tolerating my presence any longer was exhausting.
How I wish she would have lost her cool: I could have had a basis to play a can’t-you-take-a-joke card. Her diplomacy disarmed me. Ama wasn’t helping either, she just turned on the water-works. Akua hugged her tight.
I can’t stand to see girls cry.
“I’m sorry”, I offered, then I turned and left quietly.
This is not how our second term was supposed to start.
Oblivion – A Worse Fate than the Friend Zone
The weeks that followed were disheartening to say the least. Akua wouldn’t talk to me. In fact, her whole posse wanted nothing to do with me: she had these four friends she rolled with, including Ama. The term before,they used to giggle whenever I was close by. This time around, it was just cold silence, or at best an occasional “Mtcheeew”; teeth-kissing that was obviously meant for me.
I tried sending notes. If Akua ever saw them, she never replied.
As far as I was concerned, all hope was lost. I tried to stay sane by occupying myself: I even joined the Motown cadet (story for another day), but nothing seemed to work. Deep down I was heart-broken, and it was all because of my big fat mouth.
Everyday felt like a rainy day.
Ewwww, I feel like I’m writing a soap opera now.
A Glimmer of Hope
Weeks had passed.
It was break time. I was sitting in my class with a loss appetite and trying to solve a three-set Venn diagram problem: I had to do something with my life.
“Kodzo.”
I looked up, quite startled. It was one of Akua’s friends, Nhyira. Actually, they called her ‘Nhyie’, but that was just them being bougie.
“Oh, hi Nhyie”, I began, “what brings you here? Am I in anymore trouble?”
“Shut up and scoot over”, she commanded, “I can’t afford to be seen with you for long; you’re the enemy.”
I obliged, and she squeezed her small frame next to me behind my desk.
“First of all”, she started, “let’s lay a good foundation: you’re a fool, and you hurt my friends.”
Ouch! For a tiny person, she was quite assertive. I’m not one to diss myself, but she was right. I just wished they would stop making me feel bad for it; I’d already beaten myself up over it.
“But I like you”, she continued, “and-”
She saw the look of confusion on my face. “Don’t be silly”, she addressed my thoughts, “Not the way you’re thinking. You’re not my type. I don’t do lanky.”
Did I feel insulted? Heavens no! I was relieved. You should be familiar with my qualms about short people. I mean, petite is cute, but…
“Anyway”, she continued, “I like you, and I can see you’ve been a little distressed, so I’ve decided to help you make amends with Tabitha.” (That’s Akua’s first name, in case you forgot.) “You can thank me later. Val’s day is coming; prepare yourself and wait for further instructions. Don’t contact me, I’ll contact you.”
And with that, the little lady got up and left. A woman who could take charge; I liked that, although she legit scared me.
“Prepare yourself…” I was not sure what that meant. I would later learn that Valentine’s Day is a day to be approached with a lot of financial caution, especially in the area of savings.
The problem was, this happened on Wednesday, and Valentine’s was going to be on Sunday. How was I going to be ready in four days? This was obviously not Nhyira’s problem.
Thursday, 11th February (3 days to go)
The next day, I saw a note on my desk. In a very neat handwriting, it read:
Deliverables:
1. A bar of chocolate, preferably Mars or Snickers (Kingsbite is unacceptable, but Pebbles may suffice)
2. A very beautiful card with a poem in it (MUST be perfumed)
3. If you can get a teddy bear or a cake (complete with icing) you’re redeemed. This is optional, but how bad do you want this?
All the best,
N.
My heart skipped a beat when I read number 3. Teddy bear?! Cake?! Did this Nhyira girl want to kill me?
It was clear what I had to do. I walked up to Sandra, Science 4’s chief day student and almost literally emptied my wallet. I added my orders to the list of items she had on a foolscap sheet.
A lot of boarders had already contracted her to acquire certain merchandise before the weekend.
Sandra had only one rule: she did not return change. She had been buying waakye for the boarding house students for months, and she never defaulted on this golden rule. I was never going to see that money again.
Friday, 12th February (2 days to go)
Sandra walked into the chapel late on Friday morning. Her bag was conspicuously bigger, and she seemed to be struggling under it’s weight. My stuff (and that of many others) was in.
An hour later, I had safely retrieved two snicker bars from Sandra, and a beautiful card if I say so myself. After months of smuggling waakye, she was very professional in her dealings so nobody saw the transaction, plus she added a beautiful gift bag which I hadn’t thought about. Talk about a woman’s touch. Things were going according to plan.
Saturday, 13th February (1 day to go)
I spent all two hours of Saturday morning prep crafting the best poem I could. There’s no Google in Motown, and I couldn’t tell anyone. I was on my own.
A lot of you are thinking, “Oh, but you are a good writer.”
Ha! Now… I am a good writer now. Two hours of writing did not cut it for me at age 15.
At the end of prep, I went to 1 Arts 1 to see Danny, a Livingstone House boy, for help. I’d heard he was good with literature, and a bit of a romantic. He was still in class. Yes!
I quickly introduced myself and explained that I needed a poem.
“Are there any special details to be considered in writing this poem?”, Danny asked me.
What? Details? My confusion was obvious.
“Yes, details”, he answered the questioning look on my face. “I need to make it more personal for you. Her name, maybe?”
“Errmmm, I can’t give you that”, I replied, “I need to keep this hush-hush.”
“My friend, help me to help you”, was his curt reply.
“Oh chale, make you no bore. Don’t you have anything generic? Any old poems that are still gold?” I asked hopefully.
Danny thought for a while. “There just might be one.”
He pulled out an old notebook and flipped through till he found what he was looking for. “Aha! I wrote this a while back.”
I skimmed through the poem quickly. The title was Tell Her But Don’t Let Her Know. It had an air of mystery about it, and it was really deep… so deep I didn’t understand half of it 😂. It started like this:
She wants to know who she is
With every single stare
In my eyes like the wiz
With patience and with care…
(You can read the rest here. Yup! It’s a real poem)
“I like this one”, I half-exclaimed.
“Good. That will be ten cedis.”
Ei, this guy. “Ow, bro. Wo nua ne me oo. Help a brother out”, I begged.
His reply was pretty funny, “Normally, I would, but I wrote this poem with sweat and tears. It’s not free.”
Herh! The guy had a look I couldn’t bargain with. I pulled out my last five cedis. “Chale, my last this. Adey beg waaaaa.”
He seemed so insulted. Without another word, he picked up his bag and notebook and left. Talk about dramatic.
I was back to square one.
Sunday, Valentine’s Day
The day was here. I had two bars of candy and a beautiful card, but no poem.
At breakfast, people were eating chocolate. The sermon in the chapel that morning was about love. The girls oohed and aahed throughout.
I got to my desk after the service and found a note from Nhyira:
Bring the stuff to SU today.
I hope you wrote a killer poem. She’s a sucker for those.
N.
My heart sunk, I couldn’t even study. I just slept.
Lunch Time, 1 hour to SU
A funny thing happened during lunch with this third-year girl in MacCarthy House who was really popular.
I was sitting at the Aggrey form one table sulking when I heard a loud shout followed by a stream of insults.
Everyone’s attention shifted. Here’s what had happened:
Some form one boy, someone’s poor child, had been sent to deliver a cake to this girl as a Valentine’s Day gift. However, the cake was made of gari, and her name was written on it in red toothpaste. A gari-and-toothpaste cake was a really big insult,the lowest of practical jokes.
The girl insulted the boy till he ran away. The whole dining hall erupted in laughter.
As for me, a lightbulb came on in my head. Laughter! So I couldn’t write a deep poem, who cares? Maybe I can write a funny poem.
I decided to write a limerick, you know, one of those funny five-line verses with an AABBA rhyme scheme.
I had an hour to come up with five lines to make Akua smile. Anything for those dimples, chale, anything.
And so I thought… and thought… and thought… and thought… all through siesta period, I thought.
Finally, at 2:55pm, with just five minutes left till the start of SU, I penned my limerick down, borrowed Gbewee’s shomi, and perfumed that card well-well. I sealed it in the pink envelope that came with it, and wrote legibly on the front: AKUA.
I dropped it in the gift bag with the Snicker bars and dashed off to SU.
Nhyira was waiting for me near one of the assembly hall entrances.
As soon as she saw me, she frowned. “I don’t see a teddy bear, or a cake”, she stated. “People are smuggling in necklaces and rose bouquets, and you couldn’t get a common teddy bear?”
This girl was determined to give me grief, but she was not lying: with my own eyes I saw that someone had bought a G-string for a girl, and I’m not referring to guitar strings here.
A high school student buying G-strings, oh well, I was not his father.
So what if I couldn’t get her a hand-drawn portrait like everyone else? I decided to trust in my Snicker bars and poetry bars.
“It was the best I could do on such short notice”, I explained.
“Oh well, let’s pray it’s enough. Also, if this works, you owe me big time”, she threatened, as she grabbed the bag from me and walked away.
My part was done. At this point I could only cross my fingers and pray. Where better to pray than SU? I entered the assembly hall and joined the opening prayers with all vim and vigour. My story had to change, by thunder, by fire!
Wait! Wait!
Y’all didn’t read my limerick yet. * clears throat *
I’ve been silly, my speech was improper,
When I see you I get nervous and stutter,
But the last time I tried,
I made Ama cry,
I’m sorry. What is life without Aqua Akua?
Forgive me, Kodzo
Not bad for my first poem, huh?