Thursday, February 13, 2014
To Do List:
- Survive school
- Supper
- Help Sarfoa with homework if she has any (make sure she studies for an hour if she doesn’t)
- Study
The pew was empty when I got to the assembly hall but right after assembly, Chidi was by my side.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said back.
It was the first time we had spoken in school.
“Are you better?” his eyes had an intensity to them that made their colour stand out more.
“Who told you I was sick?”
He looked away. “You didn’t come yesterday, so I asked my father to call your father and he told him you were not feeling well.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
He took out an A4 paper from his pocket. “I mean if you’re not a hundred per cent better, I can hold on to this because this needs real brain power. It’s not for weaklings.”
I snatched the paper from his hand. “See you at break.”
I noticed two things right away when I looked at the puzzle.
The first was I was going to have to do it with a pencil. The second, there was no way I was going to finish before break.
I was still working on the puzzle when Chidi came into the cafeteria. He had a smug look on his face when he set his tray next to mine and sat beside me. His lunch consisted of four cupcakes and a bottle of coke. I was having red red.
“Give up?”
“The caveat was I had to finish before the end of the day. Not the end of break. So you better have your money ready and quit looking over my shoulder.”
“You talk the talk but can you walk the walk?” he asked, biting off half a cupcake.
I ignored him. After his meal, he left.
Dad was early. He was already waiting for me when school closed. I’d spent the greater part of the Science period working on the puzzle and I’d finished it. I stuffed the paper under one of the windshield wipers of Chidi’s car before joining Dad.
“You must have had a really good day,” Dad said. “Why?”
Dad was smiling, “You’re smiling, with your eyes. What happened?”
“I solved a puzzle.”
“Sudoku?”
“Yeah.”
“Difficult?”
“Not very but I didn’t have a lot of time to do it.”
“Well, I hope you get to solve more of them. I love it when you’re happy.”
I boiled rice for supper and made a stew with sardines. Now that Mom was gone, supper was one of three things—yam and plantain, rice, or spaghetti. Sarfoa was doing the dishes and I was going through some WASSCE pastco when the doorbell rang. Two minutes later Dad stuck his head around my door.
“Chidi’s here to see you.”
“Chidi?”
“Yes. He’s downstairs and he asked to see you.”
I followed Dad downstairs and he went into the kitchen.
“Hi,” I said.
Chidi was in jeans and a T-shirt that had I Rep GH written across. He was studying some of our family pictures on the divider.
“Hi,” he said back. Then he took a one cedi coin out of his pocket and handed it me.
“This could have waited until tomorrow. It’s not like I need one cedi or I lost my wallet and it’s about to rain or something.” He just smiled his smug smile and said, “I’m a man of my word. Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow, God willing.”
“God willing.”
“Say bye to your dad for me.”
“Okay.”
Dad came out of the kitchen the minute the front door closed.
“Is he gone already?”
“Yup.”
“Oh.”
I looked up at him. He had a huge smile plastered across his face. “What are you so happy about?”
His smile got even broader. “You. Your eyes are smiling again.”