I.

Rich chocolate.

That was the only vignette she settled for, that morning, that fitted her eyes.

Their ethereal glint were puzzling in a way to her. They were eyes, eyes that held aspirations and a fire licking before the white bulbs. She was aware of the fact that they were the most arresting thing about her, other than her brains, of course, but in her appearance.

She'd never admired them. For too many reasons. Her body was a work machine, configured for achieving a task every few seconds and she wouldn't be caught dead dolling up in front of the mirror. Another reason could owe to her self esteem; an uncomfortable track she liked to avoid like mines. She'd never looked at herself for more than a few chips and now that she's attending Ruthanne, for functional reasons. That was a sensible pretext, unlike in the shanty, where the best-dressed is in soiled singlets and baggies and the revered place (to be) is a beer parlour. No one simply cared, as long you were covered, get out there and work for money. The only exception to dressing blandly was in the sex trade. Unless one was an in-house prostitute.

Ademisola Iyunloye Ilori had no plans of doing either.

Rain drops scratched her eardrums from their tom tom tom tom in buckets by the side of the room, lined beneath a leaky ceiling. A wind slammed the rickety window next to her, gushing through a faux cloth-net to hit her senses. She shuddered and blinked, then refocused on her reflection in the chintzy mirror.

Why her eyes of all mundane things seemed to be the preoccupation of her mind, she didn't get. Or maybe the answer wasn't so far-fetched: she'd made her hair the previous weekend at her Mum's place for some cousin's wedding. It was the indomie hair, in Nigerian parlance – curls. Maybe it was the whole thing highlighting her square face or eyes in the tiny gunk and cobwebby room. She'd have been sweating falls but for the weather outside—

Okay, snap out of it for real, Demi.

She puffed her breath and let a mental phew out as she shook her head. She took her arms around to her neck, fingers flexed about a black band to gather the full bouncy weaves into a bun. The loose remains fell to her shoulders, on an immaculate shirt. She stretched over a distance to yank her cream blazer up from a droopy bed sporting a faint nauseous odor – just in time before Posi's meaty shin doubled over the space it laid erstwhile.

She smothered a sigh.

Straightening, a thinly, medium-height, radiant black figure gazed back from the mirror with the help of a dying glow from a swinging light bulb that appeared to have been in an automobile crash. The skin glow was Vaseline's work, just to be on record.

Demisola attempted a smile, dropped it. Her mind ran on an hesitation course. A fleeting thought passed her subconscious. N-o- o. She can't- can't- possibly do- ...

She was debating making up.

Okay. The hair was really doing her head in.

It was improving her mood and esteem, she'd admit, but: taking it a step further?

It wasn't like Ruthanne Georgeson High, Ikoyi, had a policy against students making up. After all, models and politicians and actresses students go there. Yep. Yeah, to that. Politician kids to politician parents. It was a norm. It still stupefied her, but she was getting around to it. Just some democracy shît or whatever amidst the students' bodies and clubs.

She snagged a loose thread off the arm of her blazer; plucked a nylon bit from her collar, reaching a decision. No matter what, she'd never dressed up to the standards of the elite kids whom stepped into classes like they were at Lagos and Milan and Paris fashion weeks.

Was she glad or sad about that?

She squashed the thought and picked a mascara, eye shadow, powder and lip gloss from their essentials table. It came from her dad's bachelor days – spanning thirty years – and now they kept all manners of "gbo gbo e," (every every) on it. She finished and threw the makeup items to the table, checked herself in the mirror. Her brain fought against accepting her beauty. Ugly thoughts ran through her head and emotions spluttered through her heart.

This was a first for her.

You're doing it for Ren...?
Will youuuu shut the fúckkkk...

She wasn't dealing with any of the tumbling thoughts, she was determined to test her will strength. She was going to school with her painted face, any way, any how. She'd like to test how she'd handled being out there and looking attractive. So, no second guesses. She mustered a calmness over her nerves with a feathery smile as she went about snatching last-minute materials. A pencil here, a sharpener there, and not forgetting a slippers she secured in a polythene bag.

The wind howled, shocking her to fright, on her bending to secure the knee-high straps of her shoes. She relaxed, stilled her shaken body. She stared out. The lightness of the dawn filtered over the dark overcast of the night and the rain's force had lessened.

*

She waited like a lone ghost on the corner of the main road for the school's bus trip to the mainlands, many streets away from Ward Lane, her abode in Mushin. She was crazily early. 4:30 am.

It was a plan, that she followed. She never wanted to get in the way of the rich kids - the sixth, fifth and fourth rankers especially - and she timed her appearances to the nook and crannies of Ruthanne Georgeson. The Diadems weren't her concern, not that they'd have her time lately, and so she was doing well.

During sports, at the cafeteria, reading and solving assignments out in the open. No one had paid her any mind and she been productive.
Mouth craving for a chew, she reached around to get a mint lozenge from her bag before the zipper caught on a metal teeth and refused to close. She tussled with fixing it until the luxury school bus rolled in front of her.

II.

Brushing globs of rain off her blazer, she stepped through the threshold of Arcane History - Dekatría class hall and scanned her bracelet wrist watch. 6:12 am. She strolled to a low wide window at the east wall, barred and distorting her view of the dusty dawn into a pitch vortex. The balcony was faintly traceable and the gardens beyond, bursting with vibrancy from midday to sunset, was invisible. A strip of sunlight struggled amidst folded clouds to the northern sky.

Ruthanne Georgeson High School, first in the country; Africa; and a global icon projected an ancient and ice castle sealed off with the cursed prince waiting for a damsel to wander in, kiss, and rid him of the spell placed upon his soul. Residents peeping from the boxy windows of their villas and mansions of high-end security, in the elysian and cosmopolitan Emillé Bauer Drive, saw electrifying edifices that made up Ruthanne Georgeson. The greatest high-rising corporate establishments around the world held nothing on the one-of-a-kind secondary school architecture.

Demi turned away and went further down the pastel wall's length, her surrounding void and sucking. Flaring lights from street lamps caught on louvers, glass doors and ceilings to be refracted in the arc-shaped History hall. The blotches they cast on the walls were eerie and more so with Demi's shadow leaping at them. Her feet thuds didn't help none. They were booming, and soon were joined by the rumbling roll of the sea water flanking the Island.

Distant horns shrieked in the silent air, signaling the start of the rush hour. Dust billowed in the wake of revving engines as commuters' murmurs began to rise. Their footfalls slapped on pavements and illuminated complexes sprung against the skyline, piercing and adorning its bleakness.

In the class, at the multi-colored school, Demi found a slant spot. Next to an oily sheet of wood closing off the class and a three-person distance to an air conditioner, a twin desk and chair was. Even with the blackness lifted, she'd be blocked off from the teacher's line of vision. Just what she wanted. She settled in, simultaneously swinging her backpack off her shoulder and bucking it to the floor. Her fingers came back up to an itch in her right ear, scratching. She ruffled through the contents of her bag with her left hand and extracted a Nicholas Sparks's novel that had caught an empty mentos' foil in its pages. Easing into the seat, she plucked and stashed the mint wrapping in her pocket, flipped the book to where she'd read to and dove into its world.

*

Her uniform creased all over her dead form, shallow breaths and quiescence exuding from her body. The Rescue laid at an odd angle on the floor, knocked off.

Adamma Inyang was the first to react. "Demi?" She called, rapped her knuckles on the table.

Demisola came to, eyelids blinking like the flap of a bird's wing. They popped open. "Ada?" And all consciousness rushed to her head. She sat straighter, rubbed the last of sleep from her eyes and yawned. She looked around her. The Outcast kids were settling in. Christopher Aigbokhan to her right; Didi Clay to her left, after shooting her a wink, and Jasmine Qureshi, who could have been an actual beautiful sight to behold but for her sullenness, flopped before her. "Hi, guys," she greeted. They were her fam at the school crawling with snakes and demons; ill-fitted students just like her who'd be banished to the most austere life at the institution, having failed to pass the tectonic (five) Test of Es. She, Demi, had scale through two stages—the narrow hows she'd rather not remember.

Ada backtracked to a seat next to Jas, in front of Didi. Her butt had hardly touched the chair before she was flying out again, grabbing the novel on the floor. "Wuhooo, what do we—" her head pivoted, to asked Demi, "—have. here. on. your. face?!"

"What?" Demi smiled nervously.

Chris released a sensual breath. "Beautiful."

"You made up? Awwwn," Adamma gushed and began to inspect Demi's face, ticking the curls with her fingers. "You look AMAZING. Seriously. You even used a mascara."

"Trying... to get the attention of anyone, perhaps?" Jasmine turned to Demi. "To make your face stand out? So..., they can—what—notice? Haqhaq. You don't even stand a chance. You know how many hotties he or they would have had to go through, before, even—yuck!" Jasmine faked a vomit to accompany the bile she'd spat.

"Won de, o. Won ti de. Awon low budget villain." Christopher glared nails at Jasmine.

"Mtcheeeeewww." Ada sauntered back to her space.

Jasmine faked again, to be shocked. "What?!" She cried innocently. "I'm just saying the truth. Unlike y'all! You'd rather have her think she—"

"Just shush," Ada said.

Jasmine rolled her eye-shadowed-in-red eyes and huffed, went in to the awkward silence she'd created for a minute. She broke it when she adjusted to face Demi again, arms straddling the back of her leather chair. "Urm. What hair extension is that, by the way? For real, I'm not trying to mock you, or something. I just- like it. And the whole look." Her lids began to bat, thin blue lips curling into a semi-sweet pout. "I think, it'll like, help my face dazzle more—"

"Seriously, Jas? Seriously? You sassed her and then kissing up to her ass now..." Chris started to say.

"Kissing up to whose ass? Her, of all people? Jo," Jasmine retorted in a wrong intone of the Yoruba word. "Free. Me. Guy. I said what I said earlier. No matter what she does or wear or... fix on, it'll only get her ass kicked back to the lowest rung here, and if possibly out of those electric gates." She gestured in the direction of the looming yellow gates of mighty brass that closed off Ruthanne. "So yeah, whatever she has on is subpar. I'm just... curious to know..."

'_{Your nastiness grits on my lungs and makes then worse for speech than any natural illness could},' flashed on a scrap of paper Didi displayed to the seeing of all.

Christopher and Adamma sniggered; Jasmine burned with indignation and irritation. She made to clap back before she was cut off by the shuffling of feet as students began to file in and fill up the empty theatre-like class. Dekatría was the Greek word for number 13 and it was some weird labelling and complicated system the school had for subjects dealing with pre-contemporary times. History, Government, Art, Literature and so on. To the oblivion of the staff and authority, the higher ranking students had wittingly wound a class segregation around the classes. No less privileged student was to be seen attending a class numbered from penté* upwards. That, was one thing that had consistently gotten Demisola in trouble. She still couldn't shake the untouchable vibes she got from the students around her there, in the Dekatría class, yet all were from low-earning classes by Ruthanne's royals standards, to be so down in the thirteenth hall. Students were grouped by a number of rubrics; judged by metrics. The minimum requirement to be worthy of any starting placement at all was a family-owned corporation. That was comparable to owning a kiosk outside the school world, in the eyes of the haughty, fat-bred and jelly-glazed, creamy royal students. Students like Ren and Renee Georgeson, Ivie Okoye, Funmilola Bakare, Odetta Ferreira – and the rest, enjoyed a god-like status in the students' body chain. They are the offspring of the highest top people in the society who have bagged honours and awards; gained multi-citizenships; grazed Forbes, Entrepreneur, Architectural Digest covers; featured on the most influential talk shows of the century and owned long-standing chains of conglomerate scattered in more than half of places around the world.

The lesson started. Drudgery, painstakingly, and hypnotic. It was uneventful for the most part except for Demi's plan going semi-awry. The teacher had spotted her, even recognized her as the star scholar of the Sophia Georgeson Foundation (SGF) and had questioned her. It was an harrowing experience as she tried to explain her reason for being in such a lesser class than in the more advanced ones like it's been stipulated in the terms of her scholarship. She could not out the Diadems and Diamonds now then there for bullying. The day she'll attempt that would be the day she'd cease to be a Ruthanner.

Hours went by and it was midday. 5 minutes into break-time, the machine teacher stopped, the students spent. He was one of such that could take Mathematics, Chemistry, and Introductory Technology subjects for ages. The students, having been tricked into thinking they had a moment of respite afterall, erupted in groans and hisses as they banged their heads on the table when the teacher announced an assignment. He took the next 17 minutes to dictate it, expatiating. It was a project assignment, to be researched, typed and printed and submitted in four days. Six thousand and five hundred words on a Native Americans themed-topic.

Hell broke loose in the class, objections and complaints flying in the air. Chairs screeched, and voices whined, trying to plead their owners' cases to the immovable teacher. He walked out of the class.

-
*penté:- number five in Greek.

i can't wait for the next part. that's where the interesting scenes begin and the interaction in the library between the mc and the mixed race love interest takes place. ^_^ (see the story's aesthetics for [visual] idea).

and yeah, this is a kind of multi-racial book, even intra-racial, so names like Adamma Inyang; Jasmine Qureshi; Tiara Kieffer and such are common. it's how i choose to write it.

background information will be woven in all through the narration as the story's progression is the main thing. the whole idea of this spin-off is simply: a date between the main characters at the love interest's house on the island, with his family present.

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Beloved3:


There's a delicious ambience on this thread coming from the name and the aura of the front picture.

Then it feels like a cozy place for two.

Thanks. Yes, it's kind of a romance, but majorly with an elite theme. Loxury = (De)Luxe + Love. The whole point was for them to have a "dinner date" at the guy's home, against the clsss background. I know it's a common trope, but writing style makes all the difference. So not saying anymore on that.

I lost the draft I've written for it and I was so demotivated in rewriting another until yesterday. I'll post when I'm done. And I'm not discipline enough to suffer through editing; I've written a lot of "vomit" drafts I cannot stomach posting here, lol

Who created that master piece design on the front picture?

I designed the graphics.

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Beloved3:



Good read there and you did stretch my imagination.
Please crack on with the story when you can. You are grand. �

Are you a graphics designer or just a hobby you played around with?

It's just an interest I'm picking up.

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Magnoliaa:
a spin off, one-shot...

it'll be in bits, because, spam bot. it's like that thing haff marked my moniker on this site. just banning someone upandan. mtcheew.

Apologies again Mag. I'll stick to my words and clean up this thread and stop trolling you.
Cheers buddy.

Beloved3:


Apologies again Mag. I'll stick to my words and clean up this thread and stop trolling you.
Cheers buddy.

I'm not your buddy, firstly.
Fk, you made me write a PDF in response to thrash this all out once and for all as I dazzle in glory and you're forming peace out and bye bye?

Thought you wanted to know the "lad" behind the monicker? I was ready to offload all my history for you, naaaa.

Mtcheew.