So I was missing lunch to be here,

Missing lunch alone without my best friends and most especially without Rooney, for the first time ever since I joined I was alone.

"And a one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four..." Mrs. Elohor chanted, her voice bouncing off the walls in the almost empty, huge auditorium.

  This was the only rehearsal she was going to be present at.

Mrs. Elohor already made it a norm to only appear once a session and on the first and only day when she had to appear, she chose ‘supervisors', three SS3's(Twelfth graders) to 'supervise us juniors'

If the students she'd selected didn't have to graduate into universities she wouldn't even be showing up at all but, she had to do this since she had to replace them.

So basically, Mrs Elohor was kinda like a scam who did nothing but take glory end of session for all "our hard work"

Basically.

  "That'll be enough for now." she stopped her chant while staring at her phone and almost immediately it began to ring.

Coincidence? 

I believe she sets a 10 minute alarm, right before she walks into the auditorium so she could act like her phone was ringing and conveniently walk off without ever returning, and well since she was now so predictable I knew exactly what she was about to do next.

"Faith, Precious and Perfect. You three are in-charge ." she winked at each of them then answered her 'call' and walked out one of the numerous mirror glass doors in here.

Goodbye Mrs. Elohor.

Till next session I guess.

"I'm in charge." Senior Perfect smirked, his voice booming as he talked.

"No. We're in charge. " Senior Faith interjected.

"Either way. You all are aware that we ain't seeing her till like eh," Senior Precious said before laughing.

"I swear. She's gone, she's gone. Till further notice." Another senior piped up and then they all started laughing.

  The doors suddenly opened and silenced them quickly, the flexible hinges stopped it from slamming on the wall and breaking into shards of glass.

Kenelum Orji walked in first, his eyes met mine for a mini second before I looked away.

I do not like this boy at all!

He always had that evil glint in his eyes, like he was up to no good, brown skinned with pink lips and broad shoulders, I'm sure a lot of girls would term him handsome.

Not me though.

  Dominique Bago; SS1B, was behind Kenelum on his right side and this dark skinned boy's presence was for sure intimidating, he wasn't the tallest but he was certainly the biggest and not in a fat or obese way but in a muscular way, his face was built like a greek god and I would definitely call him handsome, but he had a secret and if I'd not dated Rooney last session, I would've never been able to guess; he was just a big softie.

Nonso Fejiro was on Kenelum's left side, when I think of Nonso I think of a trouble maker who has made me laugh countless times—against my will, he was just a generally funny guy who made jokes at teachers expenses while they taught, tall and with such a lovely shade of brown skin he was definitely attractive, he even had a little patch of hair growing on his upper lips, but would I ever admit in public he was handsome? No!

Dominique and Nonso were all tall in their own way but the guy who walked behind Kenelum and Dominique was taller...

Arthur. Arthur Dike.

Arthur was... Different, he easily stood out in the midst of his handsome friends and I knew it wasn't just because he was taller, no. Arthur looked like a bad boy and not in a rugged manner like Kenelum, no in an Elite way, the shape of his eyes were so beautifully made, the way they slanted down and not upwards like mine, his nose was small yet so defined and he was already sprouting a mini moustache of some sort above his full dark red lips, his jaw was also well defined and his face was always slightly up in a way that showed off his throat, like it was his prized possession and I guess it was, there was just something attractive about his throat, maybe because it led to his broad shoulders or something.

  Kenneth Dinta, also in SS1B, was walking behind Arthur on his left, Kenneth was dark skinned but his lower lip was so pink it gave him a beautiful contrast, he too looked like he was growing a moustache but his upcoming beard was more visible.

Segun Abiola was on Kenneth's right side, I think I'd describe him as the darkest, he had an 'I don't give an f about life' aura around him, and his slanted up eyes always looked bored and uninterested in things, he had smallish eyes with the darkest shade of brown I'd ever seen, his lips were dual colored with his top lip almost as dark as his skin and his lower lip the right shade of red.

All of them walking in front of Chidinma Onoh,

Chidinma, the only girl in her friend group but her gender was irrelevant because she was one with the boys, she even liked girls too.

Chidinma was almost light skinned but Melanin said no, so we were pretty much the same skin color only that she was more 'goldish', she had small eyes and a long thin nose that I admired, her lips weren't pink but a color closely resembling her skin tone, almost, she had such a thin face that felt like cat-fishing to me because her body was anything but thin, she was thick, very thick, big boobs, round hips, thick thighs and a big butt, she was very endowed and I was jealous 'cause I was the opposite of endowed.

I was flat.

If Rooney was still here, he would've walked in first with Arthur by his side, laughing over stupid things.

But he wasn't anymore and they've rearranged their walking position.

Sometimes I wondered if they planned this 'walking style' or did they just all naturally fall into place while walking?

"What's that supposed to mean? You dudes just walked in here like you owned it." Ngozi suddenly shooked herself (involved herself) loudly, and she wasn't even in SS3 (Twelfth grade).. She was in SS2(11th grade),

  Ss1's hated SS2's and vice versa.

  Since I was in 7th grade and they were in 8th grade.

  It was just an unspoken rule that we adapted to.

Well, it also didn't mean that every single one of us hated each other... More like a set vs set thing.

"Shut up." Arthur glared at her,

  He was angry.

Why do I feel like I played a tiny role a bit in his anger fit?

Kenelum glared at me.

  Okay, so I played a huge role. Okay.

They all walked towards me and sat on a bunch of plastic chairs besides me.

   Thanks to the obvious inexplicable hatred SS1's had against SS2's, we differentiated our classes by sitting separately, the hall was large enough.

Ngozi opened her mouth to make a comeback but her classmate whispered something to her and she went mute.

"Oh okay, Arthur and his gang. You just missed Mrs Elohor.
Perfect, Faith and I, we're the supervisors, and it's 4:06PM, the welcome back party starts by 7PM. So we have roughly only 3hours to practice for it.
    According to Mrs. Elohor, we're closing off the show. So we can have at least 30minutes extra practice before we're on... " Senior Precious said quietly,

I tuned her off with a smile directed at her.

  I already understood what she hadn't said yet.

"Are we going cultural or modern?" Kenelum asked with a weird smile that just looked like a sneer instead.

That's a first..

  He's usually not this polite.

"Modern." Precious grinned at him and he smiled lightly.

Miraculous! Kenelum knows how to smile? Wow.

"Ebuka has already burnt the CD we're going to use for rehearsals. Ebuka." She nodded her head at a neatly dressed SS2 boy, he tapped a button on a circular speaker and placed it on the only desk here.

And at once the auditorium became a place I felt comfortable at.

Peaceful yet loud.

The current song that was playing set off everyone.

   Chairs fell on the floor as people jumped up rapidly. Guys started howling and the girls slowly gyrated their butts, eagerly waiting for everyone's favorite line in Pills and automobiles.

"Wet!" everyone standing yelled out of tune increasing the tempo in the auditorium. I closed my ears with my hands as the loud shouting in the hall doubled.

I felt comfortable in here but it was still very very loud, I didn't want to damage my ear drums.
 
    With my hands firmly against my ears, I looked around the auditorium and watched everyone dance, we weren't professionals like Ayo and Teo but we definitely could dance.

And we could dance well.

Girls were twerking on guys now, following the beat of Chris Brown's song.

  I giggled while watching everyone who'd walked in with Arthur disappear into the twerk crowd and scowled when Kenelum grabbed an SS2 girl's butt.

He was disgusting.

I leaned into my seat feeling lonely, I missed Rooney.

   I glanced at Arthur, he was also leaning into his chair. Normally by now, the two of them would've folded their school shirts on a chair and danced maniacally, dragging me to them.

  I missed dancing weirdly with both of them.

"Hey. Want to dance?" His voice sounded so close and nearby, I looked up to stare at Arthur and removed my hands from my ears, because what was the point? I could still hear everything clearly.

"The way they're dancing?" I smiled, glancing at the 'twerk crowd' and noticed how they'd doubled in size.

"That's what I do best." he smirked at me and I sighed inwardly.

Finally, the awkward period was over.

"Oh C'mon." I rolled my eyes playfully after speaking, then stood up and dragged him to the crowd.

"Woah Woah Wooah. Time to learn from the pair with a flair Muna and Arthur!” senior Perfect boomed.

  Arthur tickled the sides of my waist subtly and I giggled. The music seeped into my head, Arthur's hands touched my waist and I sucked in a breath remembering our warm up routine.

Minutes later, I dropped my hands from his arms and spaced my self from him by dropping low to do the Helicopter move, I placed my palms on the floor while squatting low on the floor and he moved backwards to give me enough space to try out this move, so did everyone.

I jumped a bit, raising my leg as I moved it round my body slowly not caring if my school skirt dropped down because I was wearing my black tights and that was the formal clothing for us female dancers.

  I unwrapped my legs faster than I'd moved it up, dropped my leg on the floor as I sprang up, shuffled my legs quickly till everyone in the crowd started clapping and howling.

I smiled and slowed down a bit while refusing to make eye contact with Kenelum who was angrily watching me.

He was practically shooting daggers at me with his eyes.

Weirdo.

Kenelum stepped into the middle of the crowd and practically shoved me out of the center, not too roughly though, but rough enough that I slammed my back into someone. Arthur, his hands touched the sides of my thighs while I watched Kenelum street dance as everyone cheered his name.

He was faster than he was in 9th grade, He started off with the classic pop N lock steps before entering his signature break dancing. I stared at him, watching him until he stopped dancing and then Arthur moved away from my back and walked into the circle.

  I moved backwards with everyone and watched the tall boy smirk.

His smirk didn't falter while doing a back flip twice before landing on his legs, he threw out his right hand and jerked backwards to his left repeating this step to the music's rhythm.

And then he actually started dancing like Arthur, his feets moved too quickly to be a shuffle, did a reverse move like Ayo and Teo, and then he jumped into the air again throwing a cartwheel backwards, he started break dancing like Kenelum but a bit faster, then he started Krumping before breaking into an electro dance.

Everyone joined in as the circle disappeared. We were all dancing crazily together. The song was coming to an end slowly but that didn't stop everyone from dancing in the same pace as they did at the start of the song.

"Woooh!" Senior Precious panted loudly after the song ended.

She continued, "That was a perfect wrap, but now it's time to get serious again. And decide which song we're going to dance to this night, Lemon or Freaky Friday? "

"Lemon! ! " majority of us yelled and I smiled.

"When did you learn to dance a copter? " Arthur whispered into my ear after leaning close so I could hear him through the loud shouting.

I turned to smile at him and shrugged. He stared at me and his hand slowly moved to the back of his hair, scratching softly.

"Do you have dandruff or something?" I joked and his eyes widened,

  “God. No, eew.” he muttered and leaned in closer,

“I'm sorry for what I said during break.. But I swear every word I said was true.. Is true." he suddenly pulled me closer to whisper into my ear again even though the noise had reduced; his breath was hot against my neck.

"It's okay." I whispered awkwardly and he pulled away.

  I looked up to see senior Perfect picking two students from 9th grade to dance this night.

This session, no 7th graders nor 8th graders signed up for our choreography team.

I didn't know why.

We were only eight students in SS1 here, nine if Rooney was here. Perfect picked six, he smiled sadly at the two girls from SS1B he didn't pick.

He selected two students from SS2. We had only five SS3's and only the three 'in charge's were dancing this night.

“Guy!” Dominique hollered and Arthur smiled at me, in a way that had me nodding.

    He returned my smile and turned to go.

  I definitely see why Arthur was labelled a player.

  That smile.

Could break or make a heart.

•••

“Forced to be silent, unworthy to be heard, unworthy to be understood and unworthy to be loved.”