I didn’t see Jasmin again that day although I searched for her at break. I tried to keep away from Letitia and her group of minions. I made sure to sit as far away from them as I could in class, and I was the first to leave class when the bell rang. I didn’t want to deal with them; they were not the kind of girls you wanted to be friends with.

On the bus ride home, I started thinking about Jasmin and how she stood up to those girls. Letitia seemed to be afraid of Jasmin but she didn’t want the other girls to see her fear. At least I had made one friend, I thought as I took the bus home.

My brother was at home when I got there; mom was still at work. I greeted and went to my room to change. “When do you want to start with dinner?” I asked him, coming back and joining him on the couch. He was watching the cartoon network channel and I wished he would change it. “Aren’t university students supposed to be above the whole cartoon thing?” I teased him, reaching for the remote.

“Nice try,” he said grabbing it before I could. He was weird; second year law student at UWC and still watching cartoons. What a geek. The show ended and he stood up and went to the kitchen.

We started on dinner and were almost done when mom came home.

“How was school?” she asked.

“Ag, you know,” I said, shrugging.

“Wow, and I thought the whole reason you changed schools was so you could string a sentence together, my brother teased.

“Ngcali,” my mom warned him, and then turned to me. “So, thetha, speak. Did you at least make friends?”

“Yeah, there was this one girl, Jasmin. She’s really nice,” I said, making sure I had a mouthful of food so no-one would ask me anything more. But I was dreaming. This is my family we’re talking about; we are a bunch of chatterboxes.

“Yabona, I told you. One is all it takes,” my mom said with a smile.

“So how are your teachers? Do you have a favourite yet?” Ngcali asked and my heart started thumping. It was just the thought of Mrs Groenewald. She was mean, like Letitia. I didn’t want to have to tell them about her. So I just shook my head.

After dinner, Ngcali did the dishes and I started covering my books. I was concentrating and not wanting to mess up the task, because it was just the kind of school where they would make you redo them so they were super neat – it was probably written up in the Code of Conduct.

***

Tell us: Do you think Chwayita should tell her family about what happened?