We went to the assembly room. Our school had no assembly hall so we assembled in the unfinished science lab block every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We did not know that Mr Kamphambe, the deputy head teacher, had conversed with our form teacher, Mr Kaleya, about the issue. We thought it was over. They did not even ask Betty if it was something serious. They had authority after all, who could tell them what to do?

We were in the class after the school assembly. Benson was called out, but in a moment, he came back. He stood at the door and called me out. We went together to the deputy head teacher’s office. We entered and sat down on chairs facing him.

“I spoke with your form teacher about the issue.” The deputy head teacher paused.

My heart raced like an athlete who is determined to win in a last lap of the race. I just sat there silently listening to the conversation, otherwise my voice would have come out trembling. My friend was the one answering when asked the same questions we had previously answered before assembly.

“Did you want to rape her…?”

I didn’t know whether this one was an accusation or a question.

“No,” I responded. I had caught up with my breath, “We told you, we were not standing at the door. We were going out and she was coming in, we just met at the door, nobody seemed to give way. That’s what happened, no intentions on that.”

“You think I’m a fool?” he asked, looking straight into my eyes, “I saw you. You were standing on either side of the door. How could she pass through with you on the sides?”

We had nothing more to say. It would be absurd to argue with him. We could have defended our accusation much better than that, rather we chose to guard our morality. It’s always rude to argue with authority even though your arguments might be genuine.

“Your form teacher has told me to give you a stiff punishment.”

So they had already agreed to give us a punishment, wow, even without hearing the trial of our accusations. Really our pleading could lead us nowhere. On what crime would he punish us if our arguments were accepted? For sure we could not go free.

There was a triangular yard behind our block. It was big enough for the stiff punishment. Like that was not enough, other rules were attached. On top of slashing that yard to ground level, the slashed grasses were to be swept together and thrown into the rubbish pit, and it should be before first break time. If we passed the drawn timeline, the punishment was to double. It was quarter to eight, the first break would be at ten past ten. We had a few hours to execute our punishment, maybe it was enough time. We would see.

Tell us: Do you think they will finish in time?