The bright mornings first started with a cold moist at the early hours and with students reluctantly getting out of bed, showering with the ice cold water in their buckets from overnight, rushing for morning prayers before rushing again to class for morning prep. They would return after an hour of reading, to take breakfast, finish up their chores and then prepare again for classes.

Martins had walked up to Mary after an embarrassing reoccurrence of eye contacts. He had a steady aim, shooting his stares to the target in the most subtle yet steady way.

"Hi," he had started.

"Hi," she replied. She had been busy fiddling with the pages of a textbook that had formed dog ears by the edges.

"Can I borrow your Biology note?" He asked.

She reached into her bag and using her slender fingers to scan some books, she made to draw out a note book when she said instead after a short stare with Ashley at the front seat, "I don't have it with me. You can ask Ashley for hers."

He smiled and asked again, "What about your Civic note?" His gait, unchanged. The rowdiness in the class was distilled by Ashley's repeated banging on her wooden desk and instructing they all kept quiet. Her voice wasn't faint like most other girls', it was thick, but not too thick.

Her fingers reached again but she stopped halfway remembering where it had been, "It's with Deborah at the other class," she said, standing up to go for it. He had locked his hands on her chair at the last seat and another desk beside which was Stella's. He moved away, detaching his firm grip from her seat and creating a small space for her to pass through. Her arm brushed through his shirt that had few buttons popped open and the extra thickness on the hem of his singlet came into display.

She walked out of the class to step into the next that was just situated right in front of it- the both classes shared a wall, such that if you leaned close enough to the space left on the wall where the white board with marker stains was hung, you could hear whatever happened in the other class. Kelvin had been watching Martins' move. He noticed the smile he had on whenever he spoke in a way aimed to attract, the unwavering style girls had grown to love. His eyes met with Stella's, when he deviated it down her way and the latter quickly pushed her eyes into the book laid open in front of her which she pretended to be interested in.

Stella seemed keen and observant to very little details. She could perceive the rapid eye exchange Martins always had with Ashley and the many times Mary and Kelvin exchanged long stares when they hung out. She could tell who liked whom and always knew all the birthed gists even though she didn't waste time talking about it.

The Civic teacher walked in with an elegant demeanor and the class stood up to greet after Ashley tapped her desk with a rhythmical bang. The lady smiled on entrance, but you could easily tell it was forced and not as freely released like Miss Evelyn's. She wiped the board scarcely filled with a Math solving and wrote Civic on the board while drawing a thin line underneath. Her skirt tucked her fat thighs and then poured into floral folds below her thighs. Her dressing seemed crude yet somehow professional.

Turning to the class of settled students, she continued, "Umm... So Kings college boys," a grunt in response followed, "I was hoping you guys would move back into your school before the assignment I wanted to give, but since you're still here, you'd join in the group presentation. Ashley," she called and Ashley stood up immediately. "I told you about the group presentation right?" Ashley nodded. "How many are you in this class?"

Ashley rolled her eyes to each occupant of every seat, nodding slightly as her lips whispered numbers, "Thirty-five ma!"

"Good! You would share yourselves into five groups. That is seven people in each. We are going to be treating the whole five subtopics under Peace and Conflicts in the next class, OK?"

"Yes ma!" They echoed.

"So I won't be staying long today, but don't make noise during my period. Engage yourselves OK?" She said, she repeated the word 'OK' as though they needed to reaffirm their confirmations every time. As though they would never understand if they weren't asked repeatedly. "Use this time to form and know your groups, get resources from textbooks and engage productively, OK?"

"Yes Ma!" They replied.

"I'll see you all in the next class. That's on Thursday, right?" She asked.

"Yes ma!"

"Ashley, you know what to do. No noise," she placed her fingers over her lips, before carrying her books and aiming for the door.

As she walked right out of the door, indistinct murmuring followed. They hummed in unison like bees and it was impossible to single out the source of the noise. Ashley implored the aid of Thelma to write down the subtopics into tiny pieces of squeezed papers until it reached the whole class. Placing all the scrunched paper strips into her straw hat with it's lacy blue and white strips at the side, Ashley sauntered the classroom from seat to seat, placing the hat on her thigh so that each person could pick a folded strip.

"I pray we end up in the same group guy," Dayo said as he turned towards Kelvin. "Nothing wey I sabi for this subject."

Kelvin smiled and broke into a short laughter, and turned towards the empty seat at the other end where Mary's slender body was supposed to occupy. He wondered silently within himself if Ashley had included her as she counted and intended counting the heads over again, when Mary walked in. He wanted to walk towards her and ask why she had a hurried breath, why sweat beads glided down freely from her forehead, hoping it wasn't a punishment that met her on her short journey to the other class, but instead when he walked over to her, he asked, "What group did you pick?"

She was startled at first by his voice when he breathed too close to her neck, obliging the hair strands on her neck to sway and then clueless, looked into the folded paper.

"Peace," she said. "What about you?"

"Conflict resolution."

"Oh!" She said, not knowing what words to have let out instead. She had only just asked the girl by the door where the teacher went and had been informed about the grouping. The class drowned Ashley's voice into an unsettling round of murmuring as she helplessly slapped her wooden desk to get their attention.

"Please you all should meet me so that I can write down your groups and you can know your group members."

They clustered around her desk within minutes as they warmed her up while she choked in and parted two girls so she could hear what someone at the back tried to say to her.

"What group are you in?" Dayo asked, his face stuck on Martins'. Martins had returned from leaning on the wall just before Ashley's desk and whispering his group to her while she struggled to keep her thin mouthed pen in motion. Something about his voice slowed her down. Perhaps it was the cool deep feeling of rapid chills it sent her way that made her heart race within its bony cage.

"Peace," he replied, flinging his bag over one shoulder plastered with slight humps of extra tough skin.

"Are you saying peace because you're going to the hostel or because you're in the group?" Dayo asked, while Kelvin hoped it meant the former.

The metal coated ball within the dome shaped bell accidentally hit the metal, giving off a warning that the close of day bell would soon be rung. Two periods were woven and were stretched into one long one as they hadn't noticed the time slip away. The time keeper in the second floor, steadily held unto the wooden handle and rang the bell repeatedly.

"Peace, as in that's my group," he placed the thin paper on Dayo's desk and a scantily surface written word Peace stared back at him. It had to be Thelma's writing, because Ashley's was more inscribed and was engraved deeply. The pen pushed the soft paper leaves to the next page whenever she wrote.

Martins stared keenly into Kelvin's long face, which hardened with unexplainable emotions. It was the kind of look he gave whenever he got something Kelvin didn't. It was the same look he gave Kelvin in primary four up until Ss2 when he would come first and Kelvin, second with a very narrow margin. Dayo tagged behind at third in primary school, but lost grip and fell out and into the double position margin of tenth and eleventh on good days and twentieth once. It was the same look that he now gave Kelvin, informing more directly that he had intentions of getting the girl Kelvin had shown all manners of interest in. It was the same look Kelvin had grown to know which made him say, "Let's switch places."

"Switch? No! I've already written my name with Ashley."

Dayo, even though he had the recent news of all the happenings in school, sometimes never understood the tense long stares they stopped to exchange. He would search Martins by fixing his eyes on his and then roll it back into Kelvin's to be left more dazed.

"Well, my own group is History of Peace," Dayo said after a yet again futile attempt to understand the duo, as he gave a response to a question no one asked.

"It's just a two paragraphed text," Kelvin said, hoping his words did more encouraging than the flat tone he said it with.

"Two paragraphs filled with all these historical dates. I can't wait to enter uni guy!" He said. He hallowed the university like one would heaven. It seemed to temporarily drown out all worries of life as he busied himself with the good stuffs- The independence, the choice to or not to attend lectures. He thought about the continuous parties he could host. He thought about how grand living the picturesque life would be. "I just can't wait to enter uni! All these wahala would stop."

"Please all those in Conflict resolution should wait behind," Ashley said, spelling out their names as she tapped her folded notebook with her pen cap, which rested on the bottom of her pen for emphasis.

Another group converged at the back and spoke in low tones, hoarding their ideas so that another intruder would not steal their secrets.

"So we are not going to reference only notes and textbooks, we will browse some ideas to include as well. I would go through the old Civic textbook my school mum, the head girl has. I heard it's a lot comprehensive than ours." Ashley always reiterated and informed those who dared to forget, how grand being a head girl's school daughter was by continually saying it. It seemed she spent more time in drawing the words than actually passing the message. "Stella, would you mind going with Kelvin to the Computer lab to browse?"

"Actually, I think it's best I go to the Library instead. I have a library card and you don't. Plus you're better at using the computer than I am," Stella said, even though those weren't her actual reasons.

"Ok, you have a point. Well, I guess I'll go with Kelvin to the Lab then. The rest of us should please form extensive notes for the presentation."

*****

"What secret?" Detective Uju asked.

Sister May fell back unto her leather seat and clapped her hands over the pile of paper work laying on her table. She released a weak sigh, green veins stuck out from her wrist and her cream skin had been reddened by the way too generous sunlight beams.

"Mary had been meeting me for advice before she disappeared. She wanted to be a nun and apparently I was the best fit. She told me about her life and how she ended up liking two boys and if it was normal to have those feelings. Of course I told her yes, but it's what we do with the feelings that defines us. When I saw her with a boy I read to be one of the boys she spoke about that day, I let them be because I wanted to see how she would react. I would have stopped them if anything ensued, but nothing did and so I left them." She paused and added,  "There you go! Her secret is my secret Uju, I have nothing to hide. My oath encapsulates protecting these children and so I can't have a hand in her disappearance," Sister May replied.

"What about the pencam?" Uju pressed.

"I saw him with a pen quite alright, but that was it. I would have never believed that was not as ordinary as it seemed. My reactions when you showed it to me again, was genuine," Sister May replied.

Uju stood with her arms forming a perfect triangle as her fists rested on her waist. She didn't deem it fit to apologize because for all she knew, it could be a part of the repeated loops the principal had formed in her head while she took extra long unnecessary breaths. Uju turned to leave when she stopped, slowly.

"Did you see any other person there too?" Uju asked, faintly recollecting Martins' voice. She remembered meeting the pen cam in the office when she arrived. There were no traces of who the sender might have been.

"None," Sister May said. Uju nodded and bowed slightly as she turned to leave, when Sister May said, "Wait! I saw someone on a silver dress."

Uju scanned through the visual replay of pictures in her head. There were multicoloured dresses visible from the pictures taken, but silver stood out in grace amidst other overused repeated gowns. There was only one person on silver.

Ashley.

*

Author's note: Please don't forget to vote this chapter by clicking on the star button underneath. I would always reply to your comments so please keep them coming.

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This chapter is dedicated to bisolalayo

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