Another text from Beck popped up on my Instagram. "Hey, beautiful. I would like to be friends with you."
I smiled a little and responded briskly, "that'll be totally cool. Mind if I have your digits? Let's chat on WhatsApp instead."
"Great idea. I'm new to IG as you can see. My account is as boring as anything. I'm gonna delete this account soon so yeah, let's chat on WhatsApp."
I was consistent in improving myself to become an artist worthy of being renowned by the public on the socials.
As much as I wanted my life going perfect in there; having tons of followers, influencing many and making money, I never wanted those factors to control me and my deeds on the internet. I did my stuff on a low-key and accepted my 'fate'-less commendations, few fans, little attention.
Aisha approached me in enthusiasm. She had her phone in her hands, during school hours, unafraid of the repercussions.
"Let's hope the principal doesn't get you with your phone during school hours."
"You still bother about that? Babe, no one focuses on that anymore. Everyone but you brings their phones to school. Besides, our activities for today have not commenced."
Remi walked and settled in for he had just arrived in school. "Have you told her?" He questioned Aisha and she replied, "I was just about to."
"Tell me what?"
"I don't think she has an idea. Temi, when last were you online on Instagram?"
"Last week."
"Last week? Why?" Aisha asked.
"Because of my mental health. Look, I don't want to talk about it but lately, I've not been myself."
Aisha and Remi, with their gleeful expressions degraded, they looked at each other then returned to me.
"Well, this is the moment of your breakthrough!" Aisha exclaimed and pushed her phone into my face, showing me an Instagram content. I collected the phone and looked into the screen, watching a video for some minutes.
"No way!" The same gleeful expression they had, came up on my face, surpassing theirs.
"Yes way, sweetie."
"I cannot believe this. Finally! I've waited for an opportunity like this all my life. I'd finally get the chance to prove myself and be somebody."
"You can do this, we believe in you," Remi touched me affectionately with eyes of assurance. I smiled.
"Uh, there's going to be tons of people in this contest so train yourself. Be confident but not over-confident cause you're yet to meet all the contestants; you don't know what they're capable off."
"That's true," Remi seconded. Suddenly, he widened his eyes and held on to both my shoulders. "You haven't signed up yet!!"
"Oh no. There's only limited time. The contest entails about twenty contestants and lots of people will soon be flooding Zeph's corner!"
"When did he make this post?" I asked.
"Twenty minutes ago," Remi answered.
"Here, you can log into your IG account with my phone and hurry."
Just immediately, the bell signified the time for assembly.
"Darn it," I muttered while working my way through her phone.
Without warning, a sourbelly math teacher drew near us and snatched the gadget from me.
"When you hear the bell for assembly, you move."
"But sir, the bell only came in like a second ago!" I was cross.
He turned away with the phone and walked out on us.
"Why does the universe hate me this much?!" I lamented.
"Calm down. He'll return it."
"Uh, I don't mean to sound pessimistic but he won't," Remi said.
"I can't miss this opportunity, Aisha. If I did, I'd die. Oh Lord, why'd I have to be offline during a time like this? What is wrong with me?!"
"Pull yourself together! We'll find a way. You must enter this contest."
"The Queen has spoken!"
Zeph had made a post on his Instagram introducing a contest he had created for artists called "The Artists' Journal." It was an online contest. All the contestants needed to do for every day of a whole week was to make creative videos of their artworks, post it on their Instagram, and tag Zeph with a hashtag of the title of the contest.
He stated that on the evening of the second day of the contest, five people with the lowest votes would have to step down. And on the fourth day of the contest, a different set of five people with the least votes would have to say bye-bye. On the sixth day, another. Then on the seventh day, he would get to pick only two winners from the last five.
"Not only will I award you with nine thousand pounds, there shall be greater opportunities for you to be successful in your career by working with me. I just want young people to be established, starting now."
Several ways we tried to retrieve the phone but it was way impossible. 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦! (ノ＞＜)ノ
We had no choice but to hope in God, hope for the best and be patient until our dismissal from school. When that happened, we got Aisha's phone back and I prayed just as Remi instructed, before signing up for the contest. I switched to my account and signed up through the link that Zeph had provided. The entry was still open except with one spot left.
To me, that was very mysterious. I had zero idea of how that happened but I thanked the Lord and I signed up in a haste.
¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶
I resumed chatting with fine-looking Beck on WhatsApp. We chatted every night that I almost forgot about Oliver. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫.
I enjoyed his company so much, although he pestered me with texts and pictures all the time.
"Who's Beck?" Remi asked me as I was doing the dishes in the kitchen.
"A new friend I met online. He's British. He is so cute," I smiled.
"Oh really? So now it's no longer Oliver, huh? Beck, huh?"
"Don't be absurd. I and Ollie are still friends... We're just not too close anymore," I felt pinched by a feeling of rue for saying that. Oliver was a really good friend. Funny how my crush turned my best friend and my best friend turned... Well...
"Wait! How do you know Beck?"
"You left your phone unlocked."
"You intruded my privacy?!"
"No, I met the screen on and my attention was drawn to it and... I may have seen your text. I'm sorry."
I sighed, "it's fine. There's nothing special about it anyway. He can be a pest sometimes that I'm almost forced to think that he's a fake wanting to scam me. Pretty Britain boys don't drool over Nigerian females."
The contest was to begin in a week's time and I was brainstorming on ideas of stories to tell through my artworks.
I informed my parents about it and during the weekend, I went out with my Dad to shop for professional art tools.
I was more anxious then ever. It was finally a time for me to compete with professional artists from different countries and prove myself.
Aisha and Remi were there to help. Aisha promised to gather an army of voters for my sake while Remi mainly worked side-by-side with me. 𝐎𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞.
He was my 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡𝒉-𝑒𝑦𝑒 and my guide even though his knowledge of art was very scant.
Remi inspired me for some artistic materials I could use to tell my story outside the conventional art tools. He also inspired me of some stories to tell through my work that would really prick the heart of my audience and give them a memory of me.
On a Saturday morning, I moved every one of my art equipments into an empty room as well as the equipments I needed for shooting a flawless video. It wasn't just the artwork that mattered but also the quality of the video that displayed such work of art.
I wore a white jumpsuit that got me looking like a "handyman" as Remi commented, and I wore a black beret over my hair.
The wall was white and free, not until I did justice to it by painting a wall mural for a nice background. It was of a lovely girl with blue eyes, holding on to a blue and huge flower that covered half her face. The painting covered a very large part of the wall as it was gigantic. Behind the girl were some trees and butterflies and animals; nature.
On another part of the wall, I painted the woods; on another part, shadows on a black background, on the last corner, a blue sea and its creatures. Remi filmed every bit of it. It took us the whole day to accomplish. He had to return home late at night. 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭, 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭.♥╣[-(⋆ʾ ˙̫̮ ʿ⋆)
After the whole task, I was super duper exhausted that I went to bed without even taking dinner.
I was to upload a video of my work every single day and I was aware that it would totally drain me, particularly while juggling school activities at the same time. So on Sunday, I thought of making my first drawing and video then uploading it on Monday. I planned to wake up really early every morning to shoot and upload my videos before going to school. Then Remi suggested that I pick out one of the videos from the wall murals and make it my first video. I agreed. He even went as far as getting some of his friends who specialized in video editing, to edit my videos and he payed them all for it.
"So, each video you shoot every morning you shall send to Damien here and he'll edit it for you based on your description. He's very good at what he does as you can see."
"Oh, Remi, what would I ever do without a sweet cupcake like you?"
"𝑌𝑒𝑎𝒉𝒉𝒉, don't call me that." [-_-]
I uploaded my first video, being diligent and hardworking just as I was when I went all slutty on TikTok the last time.
On the second day of the contest, I made a 3D painting of an enormous phone with a wretched boy protruding from the painting of the phone on the wall. His face spoke terror while his arm was outstretched. It was magnificent and outstanding. The others made typical drawings, some of which they didn't solely own. When I saw the works of the nineteen and how half of them couldn't completely stand a chance with my level of creativity and knowledge, my mind was at peace.
I was so glad that I spent all those times watching YouTube videos to enhance my skills. Little did I know that it would pay off this much!
On the evening of the second day, Zeph went live and announced the successful fifteen. And fortunately, I made it to the third round! I wasn't a part the "𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑒-𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙-𝑓𝑖𝑣𝑒" !
Surprisingly, I had votes from people I didn't even know on both videos. I was therefore unperturbed.
More stunningly, Sam kept sending my videos to his status and begging his audience to vote for me, every minute of the day.
"You've made it to the third round," Aisha said to me, "the fourth round is when the next five people get kicked out. Why are you so relaxed?"
"I don't understand." I shifted my attention from my phone to her.
"So far, I've been the one gathering people around to vote for you. You haven't been making ANY efforts."
"But I'm too busy with other stuffs. It's not easy to go around asking people to vote for you, pressingly," I was slightly irritated by her claims. "You know how early I awake just to make one video, sometimes it takes hours. Afterwards, I've got school and when I get back, I attend to my homework then prepare for my next video."
"That's not even an excuse cause you show up online at different intervals but not to gain votes. Well this should be one of the stuffs you're busy with because it's the most important."
"No it's not. I've got talent. My talent will gain me votes."
"Ha!" She gave a short laugh. "Do you have any idea of what this contest is even about? I don't know what Zeph was thinking when he made votes determine the winner in a bid to 'establish the young ones' but that ain't really what he's doing. Didn't you see Tosin's drawing and how dazzling it looked amongst the others? Still he was kicked out! Why? Because votes determine your win, not talent! People are making it to the next round not because they are so good but because they have just enough votes which is probably from their persistent efforts to gain enough votes! You're talented, I agree but your confidence shouldn't recline on that alone. Do what you have to do."
To me, it didn't make any sense. I wished that I could have been able to give a word to Zeph about his inappropriate decision to make the contestants approval based on votes even when they weren't qualified. I truly yearned to prove myself; to prove that I was worthy. I didn't want people to say things like, "she won the contest based on votes. Zeph didn't pick her himself."
In fact, I wanted to be noticed by Zeph, to prove that talent and fervour is all one needs to succeed. 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐲. (¬_¬)
I ceaselessly worked hard to top my game and beat the rest since they were seemingly becoming better and tougher. Everyone was unique in their own way.
I was constantly practicing and thinking of new ideas to make not just the artwork so creative, but the video which displayed it.
At some point, I had to take a break from responding to texts online even though Beck continued to bug my life! I almost blocked him; he was getting on my nerves!
𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥!
¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶•°¶
My hardwork payed off—I made it to the semi finals-the fifth day! It was on the sixth day that everyone would get to know the fare-well-five. It was just two days left to end the contest and I was more anxious than anything in this world. I was on edge brainstorming on ideas for mind-blowing artistic works.
This actually made me famous at school and it increased the number of my followers online.
My unexpected progress made me receive a really tight hug from Remi. He squeezed me so tight, intentionally to make me feel slight pains.
I extricated myself from his firm grip and slapped his arm.
"You are just amazing. I can't believe that you made it to the semi finals! I'm so proud of you!"
"I can't believe it either. I've got this conviction that I'll win. Have you seen my works compared to the rest? Have you seen the comments on my contents? Man, I'm on fire." I was so confident in myself; over-confident.
"It's only by God's grace that you reached this level without fussing too much about attaining votes like the rest."
"It's not God's grace, it's talent-"
"Which was bestowed upon you by God," I spotted a slight frown on his face.
"You know, a lot of social media stars, influencers, talented and popular people who happen to be successful on the internet, they don't have to give all the credit to some Being to be that way; they don't have to be so religious."
Remi looked into my eyes for some seconds. I couldn't tell what his mien was saying. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, turned around and walked away gently.
I took a deep breath and walked home.
Ultimately, I made it through the semi finals; I was among the last five on the seventh day. This time, I drew a HD portrait of Zeph and his entire family all from my imaginations; without any reference. 𝐈 𝐛𝐞𝐭 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭.
I knew that this move would definitely draw Zeph's attention to me.
It was the last day and we were done with our works. Zeph informed his audience that he would announce the winner on the evening of that Sunday, by 7:00pm.
As soon as it clocked 6:30pm, I discharged sweat profusely. My heart battered in an intense manner. I could barely breathe. It felt like my whole cause of existence depended on that one proclamation.
I sat with my friends and parents on my living room couch, staring into my phone's screen at the appointed time. When it reached 7:00pm according to the British time, Zeph went live to announce the winners.
I grasp the hand of Remi tightly and looked up at the ceiling to mutter few words of supplication like God was hanging up there.
Zeph held on to a mini artsy-craftsy card with the tag, "The Artists' Journal" and he read from it.
"Remember, it's your votes that counts, not my preference. Let no one say I was biased. Every single one of you were exceptional out there but then, I need just two lucky winners. Do not give up on your dreams. Keep pushing.
"Fifth place goes to Travis! Thank you so much, Travis, you've been great all the way. Fourth place goes to Reina! Reina, you are unique, never forget that."
"Yes!" My mother exclaimed in excitement. We were all excited; three more names to go and I wasn't out yet!
"Third place goes to..." There was a drum roll for about a minute.
"Come on!" I cried impatiently.
"And the third place goes to one of my favorites-Temi!"
"What?!" I and my friends exclaimed at the same time.
My hands trembled. My phone dropped to the ground.
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⚘𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐂𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘⚘
*𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐇-𝐄𝐘𝐄*
ΩSomeone who serves as a check on the activities of another.
ΩOne's spectator; a guide.
∆He was my 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡𝒉-𝑒𝑦𝑒 and my guide.
::♥• 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐉𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐒𝐎𝐂𝐈𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐀 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐀 𝐇𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐓𝐀𝐆 "𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐌𝐂"
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::♥•𝐅@𝐓𝐞𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐞