Risikat stared at the lady sitting beside her on the bench, she just couldn’t stop wondering why a pretty lady would chose to dress like a man.

She however continued with the counting of the tom-tom sweets which she just bought from the market along with other confectioneries.

Princess checked the time on her phone, when would Chuks change? Despite the fact that she had called to inform him of her return earlier, he still disappointed by delaying her.

She wasn’t comfortable with the way the shop owner was staring at her, who was she kidding anyways? She was already used to the numerous and unpretentious stares she got from people.

She was thirsty, she checked her purse to see if she had any change.
“Madam, give me small coke, hope its cold?” she requested.
“Yes Aunty, I dey come,” Risikat replied with her very pronounced Ibadan diction.

She brought her the coke and a straw while collecting the money from Princess.
Princess sipped the coke, she liked the relief she felt from the first sip, the drink was darn cold.

Although she schooled in the university of Ibadan, she did not like coming to Lagos for her holidays, she preferred spending her holidays in her village in Anambra.

Her parents had however insisted that she come to Lagos this time around, her father was a lecturer in LASU whereas her mother was a nurse in a general hospital, they hardly spent time at home which meant that she would be home alone with Chuks her elder brother.

Chuks had just graduated but was still at home, all thanks to the high rate of unemployment in the country. It was a source of worry for her, she was in her final year now and she did not intend to spend time at home all in the name of searching for a job.

She had gotten home earlier to discover the apartment was locked. On calling Chuks, he had claimed he went for an interview but she knew him better than to believe that.

Her brother was a casanova and though she loved him she did not like the manner he treated girls like toys.
He didn’t do dating, she had been played in the past and as such she knew the feeling. The reason she respected her brother was that he told the girls what they were in for.

What she did not comprehend was why the girls who knew about the unwritten contract of them being used and dumped still went ahead to sign the mental contract of torture.

Her brother was a handsome dude, his looks gave him this good-bad boy look, a look that placed him in the middle of bad boys and good boys.

He used his charms on the female folks and they always swarmed around him like flies frolicking around a decayed corpse.

Chuks was jovial, adventurous, intelligent and strikingly handsome unlike their elder brother who was a bookworm. Kinglsey was 30years old and 5years older than Chuks, he was married and resided in Abuja with his family.

She was the baby of the house and was 22, she finished the bottle of coke, took out her phone and was playing the game subway surf.

She played it for about 8 minutes, quit the game, stood and stretched her limbs. She thanked Risikat and left the shop, she was tired of sitting on the same spot.

When she got to the apartment, she discovered Chuks was not home yet, she took a stroll around the house.
The changes made to the building were quite minimal, the gate and doors had been re-painted and a bench had been placed at the backyard.

How come she had not noticed the bench before? She dropped her bags on the bench, she was tired and wanted to sleep, where on earth was Chuks?

She took out her phone and dialed his number.
He had better have a good reason for keeping her waiting.
“Hello Chuks,” she spoke loudly into the phone.

The voice that responded to her was totally different from what she knew as Chuks’.

Omoye stood from her bed to find out who her visitor was. She had planned to ignore whoever it was till he or she deemed it fit to leave, but she had to respond now since the caller had refused to stop knocking.

She opened her door to find a distressed Iya Bobo standing before her.
“Iya Bobo, good afternoon,” she greeted.
“Omoye…na Bobo ooo, you help me see am?” Iya Bobo panicked.

Omoye shook her head, the last time she had seen Bobo was when she was taking Victor to school, she had even playfully questioned Bobo on the reason he was staying at home rather than prepare for school.

“I be see am for passage in the morning, but I never see am since.”
Iya Bobo placed her hands on her head, “which kind wahala be dis one now?” she wailed, “No vex say I come disturb you oooo, but I just dey ask around.”

Omoye wore her slippers, “Make I follow you find am now,” she suggested while both headed out of the passage.
“Thank you,” Iya Bobo was trying hard not to sound frightened.
Both women stepped out of the house while screaming ‘Bobo’ on the streets, it didn’t take long before other women joined the search team.

Omoye took the search as an excuse to break away from the thoughts that had enveloped her mind the past few days. She was yet to come up with a plan and she had been avoiding Osagie’s calls and texts.

Two hours later after the entire neighbourhood had been thrown into a total disarray, Bobo had been found sleeping in a damaged car at a mechanic workshop few streets away from theirs.

The various volunteers of the search party had then dispersed to continue their various duties, Iya Bobo’s face now had peace that radiated strongly. Her face had constantly worn an award winning smile while she thanked those who had helped in the search.

———————-

“hello Baby, I’ve sent the money…you should receive an alert soon, I’m sorry about your mum, its gonna be alright,ok?” Sandra sighed.
“Yeah, thanks, I really appreciate this Sandra,” Fola replied.
He had been packing his clothes into his travelling bags, he had been a prodigal son for too long and was returning back to Benin for good.

“I’m going to miss you, but you have to be in Benin since your mother’s surgery is around the corner. I’ll see you tonight shaaaa.”

“Of course” Fola replied.
Sandra had offered to travel with him to Benin but he didn’t oblige her. He felt guilty from his actions but he shrugged and comforted himself on the fact that she would get over it.

——————–

Dami closed the chm211 laboratory manual and stretched her forelimbs, she had been writing the report for about two hours.

She looked at her wristwatch 5:55pm, where was this boy when you needed him? she said to her self. She had been working in the classroom while waiting for her lab partner Ore.

When she didn’t want him around her, he didn’t give her a breathing space. And the moments she needed him, he suddenly was no where to be found.

She had no call credit on her phone, the fact that they both used different networks wasn’t helping matters. She could have just sent him a ‘call me back’ message.

She was feeling fatigue already, the laboratory experience had been terrible. The melting point experiment which had been carried out had appeared easy, but different groups had gotten different melting points for the same substance which the lecturers had provided.

The melting range gotten by some groups had exceeded two, some even had upto ten. The failures that would come out of it wouldn’t be funny. She just hoped she and Ore did well, the lecturers could pull funny stunts atimes.

Currently in 200level, the last thing she wanted to bag was a carry over. Who ever needed extra load? she checked her wristwatch again, 6pm already. She itched her scalp, how would she get the remaining readings, Ore was simply a nuisance.

She packed her books into her bag, plugged her ear-piece into her ears while listening to cool fm on her phone radio.

The earpiece was always a good escape for her whenever she left the faculty of science for her hostel Fagunwa. The dirty comments Jaja boys made were offensive enough, but the trap you didn’t want to get into was that of Sodeinde boys and Eni-Njoku boys, using the ear-piece therefore blocked their silly comments from getting to her.
She got to her room to discover her room-mates were all out. She dropped her bag and was about to make her bed when her phone rang.

It was an unknown number. Whenever she saw numbers like this, she made sure she didn’t reply first. She picked the call and placed the phone to her ear.