I spend the weekend being freaked out. My mother wants to know what’s going down, but there’s no ways I can tell her. She’ll take my phone away. Lerato and I hang out together and try and work out what to do. I change my password on my phone. It was my birthday – 0110 – so Lerato and I decide it’s got to be something else. I make it my mother’s birthday – 2407. I try and get money from my mother to buy a new SIM card and number. There’s no ways that works – not even close.

Then there’s trying to work out who would do this to me. This is what freaks me out the most. “Why?” I say to Lerato.

She shrugs. “Are you sure it’s not you, chommie? Like, even as an accident?”

“No!”

Lerato continues: “Some dude’s got it in for you. Maybe you ignored him, and this is his way of getting back at you.”

“It’s got to be someone who’s a techno freak.” Lerato agrees. “There are not many techno freaks around. There’s Solly, the dude with no hair anywhere on his body, like no eyelashes even…”

Lerato nods. “There’s also that group of girls who always hang together.”

“And there’s Figo!” We say it together.

“Seriously? You think he’d do that to me?”

Lerato shrugs. “You have turned him down more times than even I can remember.”

***

The next day, after spending the whole morning with people staring at me and whispering, I go up to Figo. As he turns to face me, a girl makes me trip and I go sprawling on the uneven concrete. Her friends laugh and Figo helps me up. My knee is bleeding.

“Here.” He takes out some tissue and begins to clean my knee. But I pull it away from him, wondering what kind of dude carries tissues in his bag.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are, seriously, not fine, Tha… Nothando. You may need stitches.”

I sit and hold the tissue to my knee until it stops bleeding. He sits next to me. “You okay?”

“Do I look okay?!” I almost shout back at him. “Andile thinks I’m stalking him and I’m not. Someone’s hacked into my phone.”

“What was your password? Let me guess: 0110.” I begin to feel sick.

“How do you know that?”

He gets a shifty look. “It’s your birthday, right? Most people use a number that they know they’ll never forget, like their birthday.”

“How do you know that’s my birthday?”

Figo shrugs, saying, “The class birthday list, dude. If I know that then there are other dudes who know that too. You okay now?” He looks at my knee. I look at Figo, the sweet geek with the spectacles – and suddenly I’m wondering how sweet he really is.

“Hey, Figo, you wouldn’t …?” I can’t get the words out, but I don’t need to. He knows where I’m heading.

“You think I’d do that to you? Listen, no matter how stupid I think you are for lusting after that pathetic Andile, there’s no ways I’d ever hack into your phone account.” He storms off.

Lusting? That is so not true. Not only do I still not know who’s doing this to me, I’ve got a bleeding knee, and a wrecked reputation. I feel like the girl on the Yorkshire moors, looking at her dead puppy.

***

Tell us what you think: Can Nothando trust Figo?