Hey guys. Sorry, I couldn't update yesterday, was busy with some things ❤️❤️

I shiver, thinking of how easy it is to be wrong about people, to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa.

Lauren Oliver

      ~SOPHIA~

I've been freezing and unfreezing.

I could feel my whole body getting drained of its energy,  slowly, slowly, slowly as if something was sucking the life out of me.

I felt like I had been plunged into the deepest piece of shit.

As if I had just... I shuddered... I couldn't believe what had happened or what was happening.

This was simply unbelievable.

I thought I knew everything. I thought I had Aminah all figured out but this? I did not see this coming at all.

I did not see this coming at all!

I did not know it was this bad, this horrible... This unspeakable.

I knew Aminah was bad, that Aminah was manipulative but I just did not know how bad, how manipulative.

I knew she did most things to hurt me, threw her relationship with Kunle right into my face in the guise of being the sweetest human being ever.

I thought I knew her... That I had her figured out... That I just had to play her game for her till we were done with school but I just did not know...
T

he idea of anything. I knew nothing.

She did what to who?

She used what to get closer to who?

Manipulated Kunle into thinking he's in love with her?

Because of me? Because of me? Because she felt I was too proud and stuck up?

I've always known she did not like me, that she'd give anything to see me miserable like she was always doing but not at the expense of Kunle, not by stringing Kunle along, not by weaving that kind of terrible life around him.

I thought at least that she loved him, that she could give him all the love and attention and care he had always needed. That was the only reason why I acted blind, why I pretended not to know anything, why I pretended to be stoic and blank even though it was hurting too much, so much.

But it was all a lie.

It was a terrible, terrible facade.

The noises my classmates were making weren't helping matters.

Suddenly, everyone seemed to have something terrible to say about Aminah. Someone was suddenly remembering how Aminah had snubbed them, or she had made them feel invisible, how she had done this, how she had done that.

They were all suddenly remembering things about her that they wouldn't have remembered if this whole dairy thing did not happen.

This whole diary thing...

It was like a bucket of very cold water was suddenly dumped on me, jolting me out of my reverie and just dragging me back to reality.

Kunle!

God! What was I going to do?

He wasn't in the classroom... He wasn't anywhere. When I left Adam, I had initially gotten a glimpse of him standing in the hallway, looking dead and eerily still but before I could maneuver my way to where I saw him, he wasn't there again.

Then, I had to look for him by almost turning the whole school upside down but I still couldn't find him.

I did not even know what I was going to say to him if I should find him.

Console him? Apologize for allowing things to get this bad and prolonged? Would he even want to listen to me? See me?

Considering the amount of pain he must be going through right now, I couldn't even imagine... Couldn't start to guess the amount of pain he must be going through right now. I was probably the last person he wanted to see, probably the last person he wanted to talk to but I still knew more than anybody that he shouldn't be left alone, especially not at a time like this.

And that was why I excused myself from class in the guise of going to the toilet just to continue looking for him.

That still proved to be a futile task.

There was simply nowhere in school that I hadn't checked and I still couldn't find him.

I was starting to think he must have gone back home, must have sneaked out of school to escape everything, the harsh reality, the whispers among our classmates, and everything.

I knew it was going to be too much for him to bear, to handle.

And then, Baby Kay too.

I had to force myself to exhale at that point. I knew... I knew... I've always known but then, I did not even know.

It was so easy to tell at first, from how exaggerated her niceness towards Kunmi was, how she was always quick to defend Kunmi when students said a bad thing or two about her that there was more to that friendship, that there was more to that niceness.

Because I did not understand why she'd smile to herself before standing up to defend her when Rahman was outrightly rude to her during that P.E period, why, when anybody wasn't looking, she always look at Kunmi with a mocking expression with something akin to repulsion in her eyes, why she had asked Rahmon to apologize to Kunmi for being rude to her despite knowing Rahmon would never apologize and that he'd find a way to body shame right to her face.

How she had smiled to herself after Rahmon outrightly refused to apologize to Kunmi that day on the bleachers.

I had stretched my legs out, making him trip because I had been outrightly annoyed at him but I was even more annoyed at Aminah. I did not understand why and how she could do that.

How she could stand right next to someone, smile at them, laugh at them while inside, she was destroying them, manipulating them, and ruining their self-esteem.

That was when I started looking out for Kunmi because I wasn't sure of what Aminah was capable of doing to her.

I was just a little bit wary of her at first. I couldn't warm up to her, couldn't accept her niceness, and how she was always keen to please me even when I was outrightly rude and mean to her. Especially when I was outrightly rude to her.

Then weeks to her birthday, I figured out her game, figured out how much that girl knew the intricate details of Sophia Williams. Like the things that'd annoy me, the things that I love, the things that could make me lose my mind, the things that I detest the most in this world.

I was shocked out of my mind, that someone could know me this much! Only God knows how much she had observed me, how much she had stalked me to know that much about me. That made me get the chills whenever I was around her.

There was always something I couldn't place about me, something eerily scary, something terrifying, something that made me always at alert whenever she was around because I had no idea what she was going to do next, what she was going to say next if she was going to subtly rile me up by doing or saying something only she knows how much I detested.

I figured out why she was always trying to rile me up later.

You see, Aminah was mostly terrifying, at least towards me and I couldn't even think of her real feelings towards me, whether she liked me, whether she hated me, whether she was just plain jealous.

But I could only hold on that much and that long because I thought she sincerely liked him. No matter how much Aminah scare and bother me, I couldn't just snatch that away from him.

Not when he finally met someone he liked so much, someone he could connect with that much, someone that was giving him so much happiness and love after everything with his mom.

I had to convince myself that I could take that away from him because of stupid teenage love.

But this? It was simply unfathomable. Unbelievable.

Did she manipulate Kunle into dating her because of me?

Because... Because... Because...

If I've ever doubted how Aminah felt about me, it was glaring now.

She had always felt outright hatred for me.

And that was terrifying... Very very terrifying. For someone I never talked to before she started dating Kunle, for someone whose name I was always mixing up with other classmates, it was terrifying for her to know that much about me, to detest me to the point of doing something so inhumane for reasons I did not even know.

I was still looking for Kunle.

I was still searching all the possible places he could be which was by far proving to be a very futile task.

It was like he simply disappeared from school or he was simply hiding well.

My heart skipped a painful beat at that thought. He had told me once that he had mastered the act of hiding himself properly as a child when the noises and loud arguments from his parents got overbearing when he had to block them out. That was during the whole divorce and child's custody issue when his mom had fought insanely for his custody and he thought that was love, that she couldn't bear to leave him behind with his dad. That she couldn't bear to part ways with her only son.

But that was just a cover, a camouflage. It took living with her for five years to realize that she probably never really liked him and would probably never like him. She only wanted his custody because of his insanely huge inheritance from his paternal grandparents that was going to be his once he was eighteen and then, there was this trust fund that had been set up for him since birth. The only thing she ever wanted from him was that money to keep up with her drug supply and to service her pimps.

From when he was 4 till 9, during the 5 years he stayed with her, watching her get high till she was barely conscious, watching young boys flood their apartment just to sleep with her, she leaving him all alone and locked up in that cold lonely house, all hungry and deprived of human's connection had affected his mental and psychological health more than even he would never know.

But she never even left him alone even after his dad finally got his custody. To date, she'd call him whenever she ran out of funds to blackmail him, to emotionally blackmail him into sending her money without his dad's knowledge. She'd legit abandon him for months, then call out of the blues to demand money and he always falls for that every time. He was that vulnerable, that desperate for her attention, even if that involved fake crying at the other end of the phone just to get him to do her biddings.

She knew just how vulnerable he was and she had always capitalized on that.

And Aminah, despite knowing all these, actually capitalized on it too, actually manipulated him based on this.

I legit got chills all over my body thinking about it. How could she? What kind of 16 year old was that manipulative?

What on earth was her deal?

***********

I finally found him.

After hours of searching the whole school and giving silly excuses to teachers who inquired about what I was doing, I finally found him.

He was at the basketball court.

When I initially peered in, I thought he wasn't there, that no one was there because the court was as lifeless and quiet as a graveyard. I was about to turn back when I noticed him.

He was just leaning against one of the walls of the court and from where I stood by the door, he seemed to be playing with his hands.

Wait, he was playing with his hands? I stood still, watching him. He was playing with his hands. He was legit twisting and turning his hands, this way, that way.

What on earth was he doing?

I started walking towards him, the sound of my shoes echoing in the quiet hallway that it was impossible for him not to know someone walking towards him but he did not look up from where he was looking at his hands, did not even show any inclination that he could feel someone else's presence.

My heartbeats slowed down when I got to him and I saw what was in his hands.

It was a Rubics cube and the anxiety that was starting to build up started to lessen. I couldn't even start to think of the insane thoughts that I had when I thought he was doing just that with his hands.

That anxiety was soon replaced by an even higher level of anxiety. Now that I was here, not that I found him, I had no idea what to say to him.

Was I just supposed to apologize for allowing things to drag out this long? Console him? Just stay here with him?

I don't know...

"Hey," My mouth worked by itself and it uttered that word but the boy in front of me did not even flinch, did not even give any inclination that he heard me. He just continued solving the rubics cube, meticulously as if there was some sort of prize attached to solving it on time.

He legit finished arranging it, reshuffled it, arranged it into another pattern again.

He was so focused on it, so focused, too focused that it was starting to make me feel uncomfortable. Him playing like that, that fast that the colors of each square were practically merging into each other, him playing that meticulous, that focused made chills run through my entire body.

"Kunle," I called out again and I got the same result. He did not answer... He did not show any sign that he heard me. His hands just continued working magic on the cube in his hand. If I did not know better, I'd think he wasn't conscious of my presence but I knew better, this was him just outrightly ignoring me.

He hasn't even moved a spot from where he stood.

"Will you at least say something?"

That seemed to do the trick. His hand stilled around the cube and he started to look up, slowly, slowly till he was staring right into my eyes and that almost knocked me out of my feet.

His eyes... Contrary to what I was expecting wasn't cold or livid with anger, they only looked numb, empty, blank. He was staring at me as if he couldn't see me, as if he was staring right into thin air.

I had to remind myself to stand properly.

"What do you want me to say?" He asked in a very quiet voice, one that shocked me to the core. I opened my mouth, ready to say something, anything but I only ended up closing it because I couldn't think of anything to say. True, what was I expecting him to say?

He kept staring at me as if he was probing as if he was scrutinizing while I was trying hard not to show how uncomfortable his gaze was making me feel.

I've never felt this uncomfortable with anyone. It was always the other way around.

He regarded me for another brief moment before he started to return his attention to his rubics cube.

"I'm sorry, I should buy have..."

"Yeah, you should have but you did not so I don't see a point now."

The damage had been done already. He already found out in the worst way possible.

His whole attention was back on cube and I just felt like a complete fool, standing in front of him, without knowing what to say, without knowing what to do.

"Kunle..."

"Don't!" He suddenly gritted out, surprising me with the anger in his voice that I staggered back while he pushed himself off the wall and he started walking towards me. "Don't say any other thing. Do you have an idea, how many times I asked you, begged you even to tell me just one reason why you never even tried to like her, why you couldn't like her but you always come up with a silly excuse but all these while, it was something this huge? Something like this?"

I did not say anything, I could not say anything. The things I was supposed to say were clogged up in my throat and he took two staggering steps back, his face morphing into a look so painful that it almost made my heart stop.

I've never seen him so crushed.

"You know, all this while, I was hoping that this was going to be just a huge misunderstanding on my part, that there's no way you'd know and allow me to live a lie, to live a facade for that long..."

"I had no idea it was this huge... I just thought..."

"But you knew she did all those things to intentionally rile you up so I'd snap at you for treating her like trash, you knew almost everything that she did under the guise of an angel... You knew... You knew..." He wagged one of his fingers towards my direction, "You knew why she fell that time during sports practice, hmm?"

I...

"Good! You had no idea how much she insinuated that you had something to do with her falling, she wouldn't stop talking about bizarre it was for her to fall, how you've been acting nice to her during that time, how you allowed her to drink from your water bottle a few hours before the race." He stopped to take a breath and he started pacing around as if he couldn't bear to stand in a single sport.

"... But she did that intentionally. She fell intentionally, sprained her ankle that badly because she knew we were drifting apart because she knew she could manipulate me further if she was hurt. God!" He stopped talking and pacing together and he cackled with his right hand rising to rub his face.

"How could I have dated a psychopath without knowing? What person would hurt themselves that badly just to..." He trailed off suddenly again as if he just realized or remembered something and whatever he just remembered, made him look at me with a look I couldn't decipher before he started to walk away.

He was walking away, the sound of his shoes echoing loudly in the quiet hall, filling my ears along with the pounding of my heart which I almost didn't recognize. The fading footsteps started getting closer again and before I knew it, he was standing in front of me again, hands shoved into his pocket and his expression as blank as bleakness.

"In her dairy, Aminah said you've liked me since forever... That, at least isn't true, is it?"  He asked gently, eyes probing and prodding and I remembered everything now.

How easily it'd have been to tell him about Aminah, to confess my feelings to him, to allow him to make up his mind, to choose by himself but what did I do? What did I do?

I remember all my emotional outbursts... How it all started. What started as an innocent consolation turned into something more. It had always been what I wanted and it'd have been perfect if he did not have a girlfriend. I remember all his blame and self-guilt and confusion. He never wanted to hurt Aminah and Aminah was someone who was bringing out the best in him, who has filled him with so much love and happiness. She was just the right energy he needed and no matter how much it was hurting me, I couldn't... I just couldn't...

But looking back now, I probably should have... I definitely should have.

He nodded slowly as if he had gotten his reply from my silence as if whatever expression was on my face had answered him and he opened his mouth, started to say something but he just closed it back without articulating a single thing.

"You know just how much I blamed myself, how much I loathed myself for..." He trailed off, ran his two hands through his hair and face before he chuckled. "I've never felt more of a fool than right now. I was just totally played by both of you. Good! Good! Perfect even!"

"But you... You were happy with her."

"I was happy with a lie, a facade! What a perfect kind of happiness that is."

He started to walk off again and I just don't know why but watching him walk away... It felt like he was walking away.

"You know, it hurt more, that you of all people allowed this to drag out for this long."

"I just wanted you to be happy. I thought... You deserved... She..."

"Of course I'm happy," He turned back suddenly, his face looking like sadness and pain, "Can you see it?" He stretched his hands out, then, gestured it back to himself. "I'm so fucking happy that it's overflowing, that I feel like my heart is going to burst out of my chest with so much happiness."

I've never seen him that defeated, that crushed, that sad, and I couldn't help but think to myself, I allowed this to happen.

I watched this happen.

Then, he scowled before walking away, this time without a pause till he got to the main door. When he stopped by the door, I thought he was going to turn back or anything but he just stood there, face to the adjacent wall to the door before he threw the rubrics cube against the wall. The sound it made echoed in the quiet hall and it made me jump. He walked out, leaving me alone with the thousand pieces of the cube.

*********
  ~KUNMI~

These diary entries would haunt me for life.

My phone was lying right in front of me, all the floor but I couldn't bear to pick it up again. I had put it on airplane mode when the calls got too much.

From Adam.

From Sophia.

What was I going to say to them if I should pick up their calls? What were they even going to say to me?

I kept staring at my phone as if it was some kind of doom. I wished I could turn back the hands of time, that I could unread everything I just read.

That everything wasn't... That is just couldn't be possible.

Every time Aminah had been nice to me kept replaying in my head. In the beginning, she had always made me feel so seen, so loved, so normal but deep inside, she was just laughing, she was mocking me, making fun of the pathetic fat girl who couldn't do anything on her own.

I remembered how quickly and easily she had flared up because of that two boys who openly exchanged letters about me in a Yoruba class when I first joined the school but she had done that on purpose. She had purposely brought that up because she knew just how I'd feel uncomfortable, how much that'd make me feel so low but she did it anyway.

Because she never liked me.

I can't even imagine myself to be a source of ridicule like Kunmi was today with two of our male classmates. I wanted to find out if she'd feel as uncomfortable as I thought she'd feel if I should bring it up and I was right, she did feel uncomfortable when I casually brought it up. That crushed look on her face is something I'd never forget.

That was there too, in her handwriting, in her dairy.

I found myself cuddling even more against the wall with my hands wrapping around my knees as if that was going to protect me from some sort of external attack. I could feel myself trembling all over, could hear the pounding of my heart till that was the only sound in my ears.

Each time I remembered a time she made me feel seen and what her true motive was, I would feel myself shattering even more and the weight pressing against my chest growing bigger and bigger that I couldn't breathe, till I was suffocating on air.

Like the time she wanted me to pick swimming as my P.E and she wanted me to join the cultural club, her true motive was right there, in her diary, in her handwriting.

This is me wondering how she'd look in a swimsuit, how the other students would point fingers at her, taunt her, make side talks, and openly laugh at her. I just need to coerce her into joining swimming classes to see this happen.

I shuddered again, involuntarily and I had to fist a hand into my mouth to stop myself from screaming out loud. She had a reason for everything, she had a crazy reason for every time she was nice to me.

How could I have deluded myself all this while? How could I have believed that someone like her would befriend someone like me without any prior notice? How could I have been so dumb to think I could fit right in with that group of friends with the way I look?

How could I have thought?

Tears were streaking down my face now till I was crying, till I was sobbing almost hysterically. My whole body was shaking, quaking badly as I couldn't control the tears from falling. There was a lump in my throat, choking me, suffocating me till I couldn't breathe properly, till my breaths were coming out in wheezes.

I couldn't... I just couldn't stop the tears from falling.

It hurts so much. It hurts so much like someone was axing away part of my body... It hurt so much that I just... I couldn't...

                                *********

A loud knock on the door jolted me out of my reverie and for a minute, I just stared around, confused.

I was sitting on the bare floor, knees raised to my chin and hands wrapping around my legs but that still did not make me remember where I was or why I was there.

I was just so honestly confused until I saw it.

My phone.

I started to pick it up when I remembered everything.

Aminah's birthday.

Her dairy.

The contents.

I dropped the phone as if I was suddenly scalded with a hot iron and an involuntary scream left my mouth.

"Kunmi!" Came Adam's voice from the other side of the door followed by a loud bang on the door. That made me jump involuntarily to my feet.

"You are in there, right?" He asked, sounding relieved and I imagined him pressing against the door and his shoulders slumping with relief.

He must have been looking for me since I ran away before he could even reach me in the hallway earlier this morning.

"Just open the door, please, and... And let's talk."

Let's talk.

My feet started propelling me towards the door until I stopped suddenly midway. It was dark at the corner of the room where I was, too dark that the window there had become a mirror.

That I could see myself clearly without peering.

I could see myself, my real self.

I could see everything. The fat, the rolls of my neck, the stomach that's never going down. I was all flaps, all rolls, all fat.

It was something I'd never be able to change, something that wasn't going to go away no matter how hard I tried.

Who was I to delude myself for that long, that I was something I could never be?

La sigh 😢😢

My poor Baby Kay 😭😭😭😭😭💔💔💔💔

Kunle is just... A major heartbreak 💔💔💔😭😭😭

And Kunmi is just a MAJOR major heartbreak. Honestly, I don't even want to be in her position. If a so-called friend should fuck me up like this, I honestly don't know what I'd have done sha.

If you were in Kunmi's position? What would you do?

Do you feel Kunle has a right to be angry at Sophia?

What do you think is going on in Aminah's mind right now? Where do you even think she is? What do you think she's doing?

Who thought Sophia had something to do with Aminah falling during that sports practice? 😂😂😂💔💔💔 Forget all the hard girl, hard girl, Sophia can't even hurt a fly.

I once asked who y'all think is the most observant person in the book and well, no one mentioned Aminah's name. She's the most observant person ever! She can legit press her phone throughout an entire conversation and she still wouldn't miss a single word that was uttered during that conversation. Now, think of how she played dumb from the beginning of this book till now and think of the havoc she wrecked on the guise of being dumb 💔💔💔💔

Some readers are concluding that she might be a psychopath 🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️well, is that possible? We'll find out before the book ends.

See you guys sometime next week ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️