Chapter 2: Chapter 2

"Uugh!" I'm knocked off the bed at the sound of the alarm. It's 6am already? I slept thirty minutes ago at 9pm sharp!

I groan angrily as I get up, slapping the alarm clock, willing it to stop blaring but it doesn't.

"Goodness!" I exclaim, forcing my eyes open. I quickly shut it off and- well, you'd think I'll start getting ready for school but I don't. I land back on the bed and zoom off to dreamland.

***

"Bella!"

I'm shoved hard and I jump, half awake. It's Agnes, my annoying younger sister. She is roughly a year younger than me because mum took in months after I was born.

"What?" I almost yell at her for waking me up. "I know it's 6 already but can you just let me sleep for five more minutes?"

"Huh?" is all she says.

Fudge.

I cover my face with my blanket. I sometimes wish her twin brothers are here to keep her busy, even though they can be very annoying too. Alex and Jason did not come to Nigeria with us because dad was in a hurry to come and start things up quickly.

They are staying with Aunt Oya, dad's sister, in Texas. They will be coming soon, though. They just have a few more things to sort out.

"Let me sleep, Nes."

But wait.

Nes is a terrible sleeper. You'd have to run her over with a tractor to wake her up. But she woke up before me. That means it's 7:30.

7:30!

Before Agnes can say a word, I am in the bathroom fiddling with almost everything. Within fifteen minutes, I'm out and throwing my uniform on.

"Bye mum," I call, rushing out of the dining room. Mum is a therapist who owns a counselling firm. A new branch was opened here in Nigeria months before we moved.

"Err, Bella? Your skirt is facing the wrong direction," mum tells me.

"What skirt?" I ask, wishing she can just let me go.

"Uh, you're wearing a skirt," Nes whispers beside me. That's when I look at myself.

"Geez." I turn it in the right direction. Nes let's out a snort and I glare at her.

She was gonna prank me with my own mistake on the first day of school. Nes!

"Morning, Bella," Mr. Joseph, dad's driver greets, starting the car. Dad left home very early as he's still trying to put his business in place.

"Morning, Mr. Joseph."

The ride to West's High takes about five minutes and all through, Nes keeps blabbing about how she doesn't like idea of uniforms.

"Can we just go back to Texas? Where there are no uniforms?" she keeps saying. We get to school early enough and I am lucky to find my class without stress. Agnes, on the other hand, literally drags me around the school after the morning assembly, asking me to help her find her class. By the time we find it, I am already late for mine.

"Excuse me, ma'am," I say to the teacher in my class.

"Yes? Are you a member of this class?"

"Yes ma'am," I reply, a little flustered.

"You realize that you are late, right?" she asks in a calm voice.

"Yes. I'm sorry"

"Good. Come in and get a seat."

I step into the class and as expected, all eyes are on me. I quickly glance around for any vacant seats and find one at the far end of the class. I almost run to the seat to get away from the stares.

Phew.

I let out the breath I had been holding. Hopefully, I will survive today.

***

"Okay, how about underworld?" I suggest, plopping down on the couch.

"No," Nes deadpans.

"Oh come on, it's nice," I say with a pout.

"How about Annabelle? Ha, let's watch Annabelle comes home! I haven't seen that movie and I can't wait," I suggest again.

"No!"

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to end up sharing your bed with you," she explains with a smirk.

"Good point," I simply state.

"Great, so we're watching Mr. Right," she says, clicking on the search button on Netflix.

"Wait a minute, you want to re-watch? Not a new movie?" I ask in disbelief.

"Yeah?"

I roll my eyes, scoffing, "That's dumb! I don't have any interest in re-watching anything"

She turns with a glare.

"What, don't give me tha-"

"Girls!" mum cuts me off, "no more arguments. No more movies." She walks over and closes the laptop.

Me and Nes are just sitting there, clearly defeated, as mum drops the laptop on the side table and walks towards the kitchen. Initially, mum had fled to the family sitting room when she heard that Nes and I wanted to watch a movie together.

My phone beeps, distracting me. It's a WhatsApp message from Trish. Trish is my closest friend in Texas. We attended Macaulay high school together and we haven't stopped communicating ever since I came to Nigeria one month ago.

Trish:

Holla! How was my girl's first day at school?

With a smile, I type my reply.

Me:

It was okay. Except for a little girl madness of course.

Trish:

Hmm... Tell me about it!

Me:

Gossip.

"Girl!" Nes calls, shoving me in the head.

"Ow! What?"

"Mum's calling you."

"Oh. Coming, mum," I call out typing my final reply.

Me:

Hey, I'll tell u everything later. Mum needs me now. Bye. Tell the squad I miss them!

***

Fifteen minutes later...

"So Bella, why don't you tell me about your day at school," mum says, putting the cookies in the oven.

"Well, my day went normal. I guess?"

"You guess? What do you mean by that?"

"Yeah, well it wasn't completely fine."

"And why is that?" she asks.

"First of all, I totally hate my uniform. It's so bogus! Secondly, I hate the fact that I was late for my first class simply because Nes couldn't find her class. Thirdly-" Mum shuts me up.

"Okay, can you not only tell me things that you hate? You hate planet earth as a whole!"

"Yeah. I bet life in Saturn is way better than this," I reply in mock fantasy.

Mum shakes her head in laughter and says, "just tell me already."

"Fine," I say, giving up.

***

~ After finding my seat in the class, I could still feel people's eyes on me.

Uh, what did I do now?

Now? Pfft, this is practically my first few minutes in this class and they are already giving me accusing stares.

"Who the hell is she?" I heard a girl whisper.

Hell? Seriously? I simply acted as if I never heard anything.

Math period was over in no time and students waltzed out of the class.

"Physics will be held in the lab." A tall, slim girl said, smiling at me. She had light brown eyes unlike mine which are almost black. Her black, frizzy hair was held in two buns. One word, pretty. She was pretty. I smiled back and stood up. We walked side by side out of the class.

"Alice Fabian," she introduced, pressing her books against her chest.

"Isabella Smith. Call me..."

"Belle," she finished.

"Cool," I shrugged.

***

One word for physics, boring. Two whole periods. Some people were dozing, others were writing or reading something that definitely wasn't physics. The only reason I didn't doze off was because I discussed with Alice throughout. Literally throughout. Yeah, I know. Bad new student.

She was telling me about the school and herself. The school was founded by a white man named Jamie West. As for her, her name is Alice Fabian, she loves the colour red and practically has no other favourites; one thing, I figured, that we have in common. She has a boyfriend and his name is Simon. She showed him to me too and I must say, she has good taste.

After physics class, we had computer studies. It wasn't bad. Plus the teacher was nice. I learnt his name is Mr. Bolanle.

"I'm sure you'll miss Macaulay secondary school but trust me, you'll love West's High. Plus, me and the girls can be your new squad," Alice said, beaming at me. I had just finished telling her about my life in Texas. I told her about my squad consisting of me, Trish, Lee, Dame and Enoch. I told her about how me, Dame and Trish had cried when I told them I was leaving.

"Yeah, I hope s-" Someone bumped me off balance, cutting me off. I grabbed Alice's hand for stability.

"Hey, watch it!" Alice blurted, glowering at the tall, brunette haired girl who had pushed me. I gave her a once-over as she and Alice were having their stare-down. She obviously dyed her hair.

When she turned to face me, a smirk crawled onto her lips and she stared at me like some scanning machine before speaking.

"Watch what, Alice?" Her voice was monotone. Alice narrowed her eyes as if to say 'you're looking for trouble'.

"I see you've already found yourself a group. Unfortunately, they're the losers," she shrugged with a light giggle.

"Look, Diana-" Alice started.

"So?" I cut her off. All eyes turned to me.

What? I have a mouth too, you know?

"I mean, I don't get it. How's any of that your business? I get to choose my friends, right?" I asked, my eyes darting from Alice's face to Diana's.

Wait, they get it, right? Cause I don't get the weird look.

I quickly plastered a grin on my face, hoping they'll get it.

"I get it that you girls are in a hurry to start fighting..." A voice came from behind. We turned to see it was Halima Hassan, one of the girls Alice introduced as her friend. To be honest, she looked like one proud girl who could be a bully if she wanted.

"But we really need some air right now and you're polluting it, so just... shoo," she finished, gesticulating. Lol.

All eyes on me again.

What now?

My eyes widened when I realized I had let out a snort. I cleared my throat and pulled at my shirt.

"Can we go? I'm starving," Halima said, walking past us. Alice and I followed behind.

"And by the way, your uniform looks terrible." One of the girls behind Diana called out. I turned to face her.

"Oh? What about yours? Of course you wouldn't know. You have no mirror and the people you call your friends have no fashion sense. What's your name, anyway?" I fired back. I could hear Alice and Halima giggling behind me.

Get yourself together, Bella!

Clearly intimidated, she replied, "Bose"

"Babe!" Diana rebuked.

I chuckled. "Babe? That's what you call yourselves? Pft. Dumb"

Shut up, shut up, shut up! I yelled in my mind.

When I turned to leave, I saw the amusement on my new friends' faces and I forced a smile.

Yeah, they were laughing at the fact that my big mouth is always on autopilot. Hahaha. Note the sarcasm.

"Tell you what girl, you're Diana's perfect match!" Alice squeaked.

"Nope", I simply said. We walked to join their other friend, Melody Udo at their regular table in the cafeteria quietly but not without my head turning into a big hole from people's stares.

***

I was halfway into my food when the bell rang.

What, this cannot be happening. I was really fast with it!

Okay, maybe I wasn't fast enough or even fast at all but come on! We all scurried back to our various classes.

I had English for the next two periods. Melody told me that the teacher's name is Mrs. Bradshaw but they called her Mrs. Bratshaw because she liked to call people brats. She appeared to be very strict so I decided I'd go for Mrs. Bradshaw.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. We had sport sessions aka do whatever you like before going home after school for about an hour. I chose basketball but regretted it because the ball would not stop hitting my head, causing me to end up having a headache instead of fun.

So, that was my day. Short but long at the same time. ~

***

I'm kind of breathing heavily from all my blabbing and mum must be sleeping on the counter by now but whatever, she asked for it. I plop down on the chair by the counter and see her staring at me.

Hmm... She's awake.

"That was quite a day, honey."

"I guess."

"You should have nothing to worry about. As long as you stay away from those girls and avoid trouble with Mrs. Bratshaw - sorry Bradshaw," she corrects herself and I laugh. Me and mum have a lot in common. Loquaciousness, part of it.