Next week came and she told me a story about her grandmother being sick. I knew this was obviously not true, her eyes said it all. Something bigger was going on. Was it because she saw that I was in love with her and she was not, and so wanted to end the relationship so she could avoid those awkward moments? I don’t know! Only time would tell.

This was troubling me and so I would tell my friends about it just to feel better. Jake and Moses would advise me on what I should do, but always found humour in my debacle. It is funny when a guy is having complications with a girl, especially when she is not his girlfriend. I would always want to talk to Nomathemba during short breaks or during class and after school.

I loved walking her to the taxi rank after school. It was considered a taxi rank but it was too small to be considered as such. I’ve never seen more than four taxis parked there and I have never seen a taxi rank on a street pavement. But I would always get annoyed by the noise her companions made behind us.

We would walk slowly, and they would walk slower behind us so they could talk about me behind my back, about how imperfect and a nuisance I was to their friend. But anyway I didn’t care much. I felt happy when I was walking alongside her after school.

I would always be prepared to tell her my story, how much I loved her, how much I cared about her and how she meant everything to me. But I would always fail to do so because of the earthquake I would feel on the left side of my chest. And God damn! It destroyed the walls of Jericho.

There was this one friend of hers she was always with, Khethiwe. Initially she had no problem with me but this other day she out of the blue lashed out at me. She was asking me a whole lot of unanswerable questions one after the other without giving me a chance to answer.

“Answer! Do you want Nomathemba? Do you love her? Why do you always want to talk to her when she is with me? Huh? Are you retarded or what? Answer me, dammit!”

I was shocked and speechless. I felt like she would reach into her bag and take out a bazooka. Luckily one of my friends, Siphesihle, tried to intervene and lure me out of the inferno Khethiwe had created. But it did not matter to her, she wouldn’t budge. I felt like there was something big I had done, but I couldn’t think of any. This now explained Nomathemba’s behaviour towards me.

She had been indoctrinating and feeding her with nonsense so that she left me. It made sense, didn’t it? But I later realised that maybe she might have been protecting her friend from a beast that is me. That was one of the reasons me and my friends called her ‘The Bodyguard’. Every time I went to see Nomathemba, she would always be there with her.

After the exchange I had with The Bodyguard, I decided to give Nomathemba a break. I ignored her to the best of my ability. I ignored her even more when I realised that she was hurting, at least that’s what I thought. After school I would feel like I needed to talk to her. But as soon as the clock hit three o’clock, she would immediately rush with sweat and stinking armpits so that she could get her favourite back seat in Rambo’s taxi. I wondered who named this harmless-looking guy Rambo. I mean he looked like those guys who usually died first in the movies. Damn if I had a machine gun, I would have eliminated him.

***

Tell us what you think: Why do you think Nomathemba is treating Kwenzakele like this? What could have changed?