My High School Life

Chapter Eighteen

Jumoke

It's been one week since my outing with Jerome. The exams had already begun and we started with Agricultural science.
The questions were very easy, Agric is a very easy subject though, the easiest of all subjects.

The next day we had English language. It was easy too except the summary part, I wasn't quite good at summary questions.

Today, being Wednesday,we were to write Mathematics,the mother of all subjects and Data processing in the afternoon. The question papers had not yet arrived so we spent the little time solving some questions and memorizing some formulas.

The sitting arrangements were done alphabetically and we were mixed with students from other departments  whose surnames started with A and part of those whose surnames start with B.
All together, we were forty in the class. Twenty seats, two students on each seats. It was four seats in a row and five seats in a column.
I sat on the third column and the third row, on the left part of the seat.

Chioma sat on the last column and Sandra wasn't in our hall because her surname started with O.

Beside me was a dark, petite girl from art class whose brain was as empty as a disposed Milo tin with debris of Milo particles glued to the body of the tin, in her case, her brain contained debris of primary school knowledge and a whole lot of utter foolishness. She was duller than dullness itself.

If you knocked her head, you would hear the sound of emptiness.
Exaggeration, I know.

Behind me was our dearest Kay Savage with a fair skinned Igbo looking girl who talked a lot and brought foul smelling food. Kunle had once complained about her saying she acted like a village girl and she was a pain in the ass.....insult!

On the row beside me, which was column two, Elizabeth sat with one of her chicken gang, what was her name again?

Ever since she heard I went out with Jerome, she gave me a cold shoulder. Although she had always given me cold shoulders but this one was colder, in fact ice shoulder.

Sometimes, I caught her glaring at me and I would look back at her like I was looking at spoilt Eba.

Jessica, Jerome's ex had heard about it too. She bumped into me purposely when I was walking down the hallway with a lot of books belonging to my classmates. She looked at me with a sinister smile and walked past me, hitting my shoulder.

The beating I gave her the last time has not yet reset her brain.

"Put your books away and get prepared for your exams," the invigilator had already arrived.

I took a pencil, a rough sheet, mathematical set, calculator and a pen before keeping my bag at the back of the class.

"Now, lemme warn you. If you are caught cheating, I won't take it easy on you. So put anything you know will implicate you. No side talks please," the invigilator warned.

We were to do objective questions first.
The objective answers were to be shaded on a sheet which is to be marked by a computer. The theory was done on a small booklet with your names boldly written on the first page.

He gave us the objective question and our shading sheet. I skimmed through the questions, they were quite easy, it was most of the things I read.

Immediately, I set to work. The empty Milo tin brain girl was still looking at the questions like they were written in Spanish and chewed the bottom of her pencil like her life depended on it.

The last fifteen questions were kinda hard so I did eeni meeni mani moe and shaded anything. Who doesn't do that in exam?

"Who's that one that is singing eeni, meeni, mani, moe there?" the invigilator asked as he laughed, the class laughed too, not just because it was funny, but because they wanted to take a break from the maths. "See let me tell you, if you don't know it, shade anything and submit. Don't waste your time, you have only two and half hours and one hour is already gone. Be fast!"

******

We were done with the objectives and we had already started theory. Section one was difficult it contained four hot questions.
Section one constituted forty percent of the mark while section two constituted sixty percent.

Section two was quite bearable.

I looked down and noticed a crumpled paper beside me. Jesus! Who put this here?

"Hey.....that girl, what are you looking at?" the invigilator asked.

"What's that on the floor?" he questioned further and all eyes were on me.

The invigilator approached me and picked the crumpled paper and inspected.

"Stand up!!!" He barked. "So you brought expo to the class and forgot to dispose it properly. Gimme your paper. The exam is over for you."

"Sir....it...it wasn't me who put it there. I just met it there," I argued.

"So, I'm lying? I saw this paper beside you and you are saying it's not you. Gimme your paper now before I slap you." His eyes had already turned red.

"Sir...let me see the paper." I took  the paper from him and saw that it wasn't my handwriting. "Sir, this not my writing and besides this is written in black pen and I use blue." I showed him my pen.

"Then some one gave it to you to copy. Gimme your paper now!" He barked.

"Sir," a student from the back called.

"Yes?" the invigilator looked back.

The boy stood up. "Sir, she wasn't the one who wrote that..."

"I know that....she asked for the answer," the man argued.

"No sir. She was busy writing when the girl beside her threw it to her in order to implicate her. I saw it all." The boy explained.

"Who's the girl?"he asked.

"That girl," he pointed to.......ELIZABETH?!

"Hey you, stand up," the man commanded.

"Sir, it wasn't me o. I didn't throw anything. Are you mad?" Liz turned to the boy.

"You are lying. I saw you when you threw it." The boy argued.

"What's your name?"the invigilator asked.

"Elizabeth."

"That boy cannot be lying so confidently. So tell me the truth. Did you throw it to implicate her or what?"

"Sir...I....I did not do anything."

"For the last time. Did you do it? Say the truth now or else...," the man threatened.

There was silence for a while before the man barked again. "Did you do it?!".

"Y...y..yes sir," she confessed.

The man banged her table. He collected her paper while she protested. "Sir...it wasn't me."

"But you just said you did."

The whole time I kept quiet. Too shocked to speak. Is she this cruel?

"Go outside and kneel down. After this exam, you are following me to the principal's office. You're in big soup. I'll make sure you are punished for this. Trying to implicate your peer purposely, how cruel. And you still lied confidently and you know how much I hate lies. Go and kneel down. Your exam is over."

Hehe!
No weapon fashioned against me shall prosper.