The situation at home changed. I no longer got the little pocket money I used to get from home to by myself some sweets while playing with other kids, and to me I thought it was because I was no longer a newbie. The various home meals we used to have the previous year were cut, and we had less of the things we used to have at the time. I, on the other hand, kept on doing what I was expected to do, which was being the number learner in our class.

The new friends I had made were not some of the best performing kids in our class, and it was obviously caused by their daily habits. I was in danger of becoming like them because I started being with them most of the time, doing what they did every day. They were not doing anything out of line though, except for being too playful.

I was the most influential one in the group, and most of the time, I was the one who decided on most things. I took the decisions on things like where to sit during lunch and other things similar to those. My attention started getting divided because I had so many things to think about at the time. I did not drop my performance at school though, but I was no longer in a position to compete for grades.

The girl I had been competing with in the previous grade had moved to a different school. I thought it was over, but there came a new girl in our class, Kgahliso. She was very bright, she spoke English fluently, and she was a very smart looking girl. I knew that she was definitely going to be a competitor.

In school, it is easier to make new friends if there is something special about you, or if you have something that everyone else does not have. Kgahliso had almost everything every girl would like to have. She had the looks, the brains, and the personality. She made friends quicker than one would anticipate, and when she made friends with average learners in our class, I knew they made a very powerful and a strong team. I then knew that I had to start my own team, but there was no one to recruit for my group.

During the mathematics period, which was my favourite of them all, we were given activities and tasks to do individually. The Mathematics teacher promised to read out our marks. I had gotten 90% and she had gotten 98%. Everyone in class spoke about how I had met my match, and even the Mathematics teacher herself said it. I then started isolating myself from everyone, and everyone started attaching themselves to Kgahliso. I started focusing on my books like I had never done before. I was getting good marks, but I did not realise that I wanted to get marks better than the new girl, because I believed that no girl could perform better than me.

Kgahliso, on the other hand, started being close to the mathematics teacher, and she even became the one given activities to write for us at the chalkboard. I really wanted to redeem myself because of that, but every teacher started talking about the bright girl who was fluent in English more than any learner, and I refused to make peace with the fact that she was better than me.

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Tell us: What do you think the narrator needs to do in order to improve his marks?