Noticing: Amanda POV

Tuesdays

 Tuesday: the best day to be a student at L.F.A.

Tuesday is the one day in the whole week we get to go out to the sun. 

The horizon is a peak of clear blue with sheets of white for clouds. So far up south-south you wouldn't think the sun could shine like this, in glittering gold-dust tendrils of light. 

Green; rows and rows of translucent green cover the field's perimeter, resplendent beads of water dot their fringes. Queen's greenery ran a marathon round the school, like an over-sized lawn at a giant's, it touched every patio, every block, every front door. Lorita and i used to lie in the grass at school behind the tuck-shop, when it just got mowed.

It's always like breathing in sea-salt in a forest, all rolled up in a drop of sunlight. Lorita and i usually had splotches of dark green on our uniforms after. It was worth it.

There's a small crowd around the field, and an even smaller crowd inside it; boys covered in sweat, their skins bright with perspiration chasing a ball. You could easily tell the juniors apart from seniors. They are leaner, mostly, lithe-r than the bulky frame of my classmates, and are a lot less swagg. No chains or chambalas adorn their wrists, no excessively cool fades, no swagger in their steps.

If they could see themselves through my eyes right now, huge able-bodied male specimen grunting and shoving after a circle of hardened rubber.

Boy-girl is in tow, i recognized him from the jump, more because he is as light as a feather than anything else.

I'm beginning to lose count of the number of times he's gotten air-borne.

The last one really seemed to hurt, because he struggled to his feet, called for a replacement, grimaced and lumbered out the field right–toward me. 

He's so close i see the leafs of green in his hair, there is sand on his elbow, and he's limping.

At the last moment he throws me a bright "hey" and makes a turn, to the thick-necked boy next to me, just within earshot. 

" Oga, your kind ball sef," the boy said with a mean chuckle "e dey tire me." Pidgin obviously is a thing around here.

Chideziri sipped from the large-size aquadana bottle that appeared out of no-where. He laughed, bright, jingly and sunny.

"Your own na to dey make noise anyhow, if them give you ball now you no go play."

"Guy, you know that if i hold ball here, na Messi all the way"

Chideziri eyed him like a rotten chunk of dead rat.

" Abeg close mouth."

" You know it, you just cant deny it, guy."

The boy slung his arm over chideziri's shoulder, his PE uniform is so wet with body-water that it sticks to his skin and i can trace the outlines of his singlet through the light fabric.

He lets the boy, they trudged to the admin-block, out of the sun's heat, on to shade.

*

Fast-foward and we are back in class. It's 10:35, five minutes to the first period. Class is a circus and i'm beginning to understand where all that confetti comes from.

There's loud chatter everywhere and all-where. Chideziri is not in class, but the boy from outside is, along with an enormous cast of noise-makers. He's at the back seat doing a nightmarish rendition of Davido's Aye from back then. 

Together, they sound like a pack of hyenas. An angry pack of starved mutated hyenas.

The girl beside me, the one that has a army camo bag and a pin-sized tribal-mark just above to her eye cringes, covering her ears. I want to, too, real talk.

She belong to me and i belong to her o.

Oh baby you go kill somebody.

They say love is blind but i dey see am for your eyes oh.

For your eyes o.

She no want designer, she no want Ferrari

Voices ride the cacophony of madness to its peak. He saw me looking, and smiling—was i really smiling?–and he faced me, moving his hips in a makossa-ish dance. 

Trying to write 'names of noise makers' will be  hellish here, probably was for whoever had to do that dirty job when they were juniors. Everybody is loud. And anyone who isn't is next to someone who is. You might as well have to hand everyone over.

Art class of 2018 really is a gig. They are boldly noisy, like wearing screaming colours at a funeral, like good news on the cover page of a news paper.

It's contagious, I straight off laugh. If anything L.F.A is fun. At least here i don't have to think of Mom, or Dad, or that cloud of uncertainty that hovers, haunting me. I can just lose myself.

At least here i'm safe.