My lips remained against his despite his annoying reluctance to kiss back. I felt a light push as we broke the kiss. I stared at him. 'Did he just push me?' I wondered. Or was I so intoxicated I didn't know the difference between getting pushed and staggering.
I turned around attempting to leave but was stopped by something or someone. I looked back and saw Ifeanyi holding my hand.
"What is it?" I asked annoyed. If he had pushed me, why was he stopping me from leaving?
"Where are you going?" He replied my question with another one.
"Why do you care? You pushed me and I don't want to talk to you," I said frowning.
"I didn't push you, I just tried to break the kiss and you staggered back. Sorry for that," he said.
"You didn't want to kiss me?" I asked.
"It's not that. I have a girlfriend remember?"
"Yeah," I said actually recalling. "You two almost killed me the other day," I said nodding.
"Sorry again for that. Now can you call your ride to pick you up?"
I nodded searching around for my purse which I couldn't find. I frowned feeling the urge to cry although at that time it was because of the drink.
I tried standing but fell back falling on Ifeanyi. I adjusted on his laps, turning to rest my head on his chest feeling tired. I think I even fell asleep for a second before a voice jolted me out of my short lived sleep.
"Alya what are you doing?"
I opened my eyes to meet Ifeanyi's confused face.
"I feel sleepy," I said closing my eyes again. I heard him mutter 'shit' under his breath.
"Could you at least tell me where your phone is?"
I was about to speak when I was interrupted by a song.
Yeah, breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles
Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble
Lashes and diamonds, ATM machines
Buy myself all of my favorite things...
That was my ringtone and it was coming from somewhere near. I looked around only then realizing that I had a rugged jacket which was shrugged to my elbows as part of my outfit.
The phone was inside one of the pockets of the jacket. Ifeanyi took the phone and after a few minutes returned it to my pocket and lifted me up.
I only remembered Ifeanyi carrying me to the Benz waiting to pick me up and also catching a slight glimpse of Alesscia rocking Devan Mike with a crowd cheering on before I left the party.
****
I woke up with a heavy head and this really terrible headache. It took a while before I started recapping the things that happened last night.
I regretted having that fucking drink. I couldn't exactly wait to see Alesscia. I could break a couple bones in her body, not much but at least something.
I glanced at the time, it was nine in the morning which meant I would be staying at school for the day.
I guessed Alesscia wouldn't have attended either so I didn't feel so bad about being absent. I got up and had a shower feeling disgusted to have slept without a shower.
When I got out from the shower, I picked up my phone. I saw a couple of missed calls from my mother.
Just then, I received another call from her. I rejected the call before I could think it through. That same instant, I received a message from her.
'I'm worried sick 'bout you. Stop acting like a brat and answer my call'.
I rolled my eyes. I dropped the phone and picked up my tablet. I got a video call from her. I contemplated for a while before I accepted the call.
"How are you?" She asked.
"Fine? How else did you expect me to be?"
"I heard you came home drunk last night."
"You heard right," I replied with an eye roll. She gave me her usual disapproving look.
"When did you start drinking? Is it because you're still mad at the boy who left you?"
"Hell... No! I love myself way more than you think and I ain't fucking my liver cause of some dumb guy. Plus he didn't leave me."
"Keep consoling yourself," she said with a bored look. She didn't miss out on a chance to frustrate me.
"How old are you sef? Abi you're sixteen? Are you even meant to be drinking?"
I didn't reply, just waited for her to keep yarning.
"I don't ever want to hear that you came home drunk okay? In fact, stay far away from anything alcohol..."
"Are you saying that cause you care or you just wanna sound like a good parent?" I asked interrupting her.
"What do you think?" She asked yawning. I didn't respond.
"Once I drop this call, I'll ask Stephanie to get rid of everything alcoholic in that house..."
"I thought all those drinks were really expensive."
"Money can't buy my daughter's life."
"But it can buy me a mother right?"
She rolled her eyes in response. "Just don't get yourself into any trouble. I am really busy and I can't keep worrying about whether you're alright or not..."
"Between the both of us, who is in a better position to give advise?"
She kept a straight face. She didn't look angered by my question at all. My efforts to piss her off always failed terribly. Maybe she was always calm and patient with me to make up for not being there for almost my whole life. Either way, I couldn't just understand how she could tolerate my shit when even I had had enough of it.
"You have a problem," she said.
"Not the first time someone's telling me that."
She shook her head. "Take care of yourself," and with that, she ended the call.
I spent the rest of the day sleeping and reading. I got up really early the next day without any alarm. I took my time to get ready and when I was done, left for school.
I arrived really early even before the boarders. I sat down on my chair and listened to songs as I went through Ami's IG page.
I got so engrossed reading the comments on a particular post that I didn't notice when Chiamaka stood in front of my desk.
When I finally took my eyes off my phone, I saw her standing in front of me. I took off my earpiece. I felt slightly bad and terribly guilty when the memory of me kissing Ifeanyi flashed in my head but I waved it aside. It really wasn't my fault. Of course nothing would have driven me to kiss Ifeanyi Chukwuemeka in my right mind.
It was all Alesscia's fault. So I had more reason to kill her.
"Hi. Sorry I did not know you were here."
"It's okay. You were not in school yesterday. Was there a problem?" She asked with genuine concern? I didn't really know if she was actually concerned. I doubted.
"No," I gave a curt reply willing her to leave.
"Okay. I wanted to hand you notes and assignments from yesterday," she said. Wow! She was really concerned. I felt like an asshole at that moment.
"Thanks," I said with a genuine smile for a change.
"See you later," she said and left. Just then Alesscia came in looking like a mess. By a mess I didn't mean she was dishevelled. In fact, she looked organized, more organized than a lot of people present in the class. But compared to the normal Alesscia, she looked like a mess.
She didn't have her usual glow, her hair was not braided but was rather held up in a very loose bun which looked like a comb was only run through it once out of formality. She wasn't wearing any jewelry.
This might seem normal to you, since this was school after all, but for someone who wore a lot of earrings, it seemed really odd.
She had at least five piercings on each ear and this was the first time I was seeing them devoid of earrings.
Her face also looked extremely pale. I looked around and noticed that every other person in the class was also staring at her, all of them looking very surprised.
She ignored the stares as she moved to her seat. Even the way she walked was different. She wasn't catwalking or imagining the class as a ramp, she was actually dragging her feet on the floor.
It seemed as if walking was a punishment for her. She eventually got to her seat. She sat down looking like every atom of life had been drained from her.
She started unpacking her books. I logged out of my instagram and switched off my phone. I waited for the class to stop staring at her and resume their activities before I turned to her.
"How are you?" I asked. I wasn't interested in knowing and I could easily tell that she was not fine at all by looking at her, but I still asked anyway.
"Isn't that obvious to see?" She replied answering my question with another one.
"It is," I agreed. "I just wanted to know what was in my drink, the one you gave me at your party."
"Nothing."
"Nothing?! I started acting weird after taking the drink. I did a lot of stupid stuff and I kissed that Clinton guy."
She kept a blank face. "Don't sound like you were the only one affected. I also did things I wouldn't in my normal senses."
"Oh really! Things like?"
"I rocked Devan," she said and I let out a hysteric laughter.
"You rocked your boyfriend? Big deal? Haven't you guys done worse things?"
She looked at me with cold eyes. "That's the one thing I don't like about you, you're quick to make out whatever you wish to."
I stared at her now very confused. "You're not making sense," I said.
"How?" She asked as if she was the one who needed an explanation.
"Isn't Devan your boyfriend? At least you didn't kiss a total stranger who didn't have the best intentions," I said trying to keep my voice down as I remembered we weren't alone.
"Yes, Devan is my boyfriend," she replied to my rhetoric question.
"Then WHY are you ACTING LIKE YOU'RE A VICTIM?" I asked now yelling. A few of our classmates turned to look at us.
I kept quiet until they looked away. "You wouldn't understand", she said sighing. Understand? I felt like ripping my hair out. I wished it wasn't braided so I could run my hands through it without bothering about ruining it. Better still, I could rip Alesscia's hair out of her skull.
"Understand what? Did you fight with your 'perfect' boyfriend? Is that what all this is about?"
"And who told you he is perfect?"
"I swear if I had your time, I would pull out all your old instagram posts where you guys are always doing one stupid 'cute' thing or another. Captions like: "he completes me", "can't live without him", "LOML" and every other trashy..."
"Exactly! It's all trash. It's all an act. All for the screen. I'm fucking tired!" She said pulling her hair out of the bun. It fell across her shoulders as she ran her hand through it.
I imagined myself doing the same. Fuck these box braids.
"What do you mean?"
She rubbed her palms on her face. "Can we go outside?" She asked looking at me warily. I went outside and waited for her to come out.
She didn't take long. She was now putting on a pink hoodie. I really hated the color. She leaned against the wall.
"I'm sorry that you got dragged into all this. The drink... It wasn't actually drugged if that's what you're thinking. It was more like a stupid mixture my little brat of a sister was trying. From what she said, it included a mixture of all the sweet tasting alcoholic drinks she could think of according to their alcoholic percentages until it summed up to a hundred percent.
"She also said that there were also some other things in it and a little drop of something that makes you sober. I don't think she actually knows what she mixed in there and I am definitely sure that she's lying but she said that she got the drink mixed and sent the waiter to bring it to us as a prank," she said.
"That's very easy for you to say since you weren't affected," I stated.
"I was affected..."
"You weren't! Screen or no screen or whatever trash you were talking about, fact is that both of you are still in love and whatever happened at the party, you would have enjoyed it..."
"He is not in love with me! It's one-sided. This whole thing started when my manager suggested that I would increase my fan base if I were to date a teen model, someone with lots of fans like Devan. My parents were not in support of me being in any relationship. I agreed to have nothing to do with him, we'd just feed the public with a couple of cute stuffs to aww about and of course announce that we're together.
"Go on a couple of public dates, post things about our relationship and act like we're in love. Nothing more than that, I wasn't allowed to get close to him apart from when on screen, they was my parents' end of the deal. He was also made aware of the deal and he was more than happy to accept it.
"He was free to be with as many girls as he wanted on his own part of the deal. Later on, I developed feelings for him. I was just so stupid to think we could actually have a real relationship.
"He is well aware of that fact but still hangs out with other girls and even makes out with them in front of me.
"This relationship is nothing more than a deal to him. Sometimes he claims to have feelings for me, he just keeps playing with my emotions. And I can't even break up with him."
By now, a few tears had slipped from her eyes. She wiped them with the back of her palm.
I actually felt bad for her for the slightest of moments. But then, her whole story was just dumb. No one can actually just let other make decisions for them like that.
She had the ability to free herself if she wished. If only she wasn't so foolish.
She created a mess for herself, trapped herself in it and feigned helplessness. Stupid if you asked me.
"Is that all? That's what you've been going on about being affected?" I asked. She stared at me in disbelief for a while obviously dumbfounded.
She wiped her tears. "I actually thought it was better to have you around as a friend than to be surrounded by fakers since you're blunt and obviously not interested in faking what you're not."
She sniffed and continued speaking, "I was actually wrong. It's not about you being blunt or real, you don't actually have a human heart. I always knew you didn't like me but never for once did I think that you disliked me to this extent. I think it would be better if we went back to not being friends."
After her dramatic speech, she entered the class leaving me to stand there alone.