Incoming Stress

"We have been biased towards Nancy and treated her wrongly."

"I think we should apologise to her," I suggested to them.

"Is it really necessary? Besides, her attitude comes off as snobbish." Evelyn chirped in.

"We have to apologise to her. If she still doesn't rapport well with us after that, then we are not to blame again."

The girls and I thrashed out all our issues that evening and we all apologised to each other. They also decided to take turns taking care of me till my ankle recovers."

We all apologised to Nancy after prep. Although, it broke the ice among us. She still kept to herself most of the time and we had to accept that it is her nature and accommodate her. I became a middleman between the girls and Nancy, a role which I found amusing.

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Mondays have always been terrible but this particular Monday came with an extra spice. It was already bad enough that we had to struggle with other students to get ready for school and ended up being late for the morning assembly, Mr. Marcus made it worse by talking for a long time and as usual I left the assembly without knowing the announcement he had made.

"The remaining groups that are yet to present their work, you have until Friday to do that. I want us to be done with everything so you can focus on your upcoming test." 

"Test! Which test is the art teacher talking about?" I turned and whispered to Stacy, careful enough not to draw the attention of the teacher.

"Continous assessment test, it comes up next week Monday," Stacy whispered back to me.

"When was it announced?"

Stacy looked at me in shock. She didn't believe I was asking such questions.

"It was announced during the assembly. Weren't you listening?" Stacy frowned.

"I didn't pay attention to the principal. Did he talk about any other thing?"

"He didn't say any other thing that caught my attention."

I sighed. The past few weeks have been a wild ride and now the test has been fixed without prior notice. Elite Academy sure merits the reputation of making their students to be on their toes.

The rest of our classes that day went on smoothly till dismissal. The saying that desperate times call for desperate measures applied to me and the girls at this point. Sleep ran away from our eyes as we all began to prepare earnestly for the test. What we didn't know was a huge problem was coming our way.

                         *******************

We had just finished having lunch and we were headed back to our hostel, and when we arrived, we saw that our hostel was still locked.

"Why is the hostel locked?" Jessica asked Evelyn. Evelyn didn't eat lunch with us as she didn't like the menu for the day.

Evelyn hissed, "Someone stole from the hostel captain and she reported us to the hostel mistress who locked up our hostel till we could provide the culprit."

"This is serious," I replied.

"But the person that stole from the hostel captain has a lot of guts." Stacy paused and looked at us as if she knew something else. "Maybe the person has a beef with the hostel captain. You never can tell." She shrugged.

"If you know you are the one responsible for this or you know the person. Please, come out. Don't let us all get punished for your misdeed." Tracy pleaded.

People began to murmur and some began to question her right to make such a statement, while some said she was trying to lord over everybody.

I began to laugh hysterically because the situation felt so familiar to me but the girls gave me a side eye.

"Why are you laughing?" Jessica flashed her eyes at me. "Do you think this is funny?" She scolded me.

I continued laughing despite Jessica's scolding while everyone looked at me as if I had gone nuts.

"I am sorry for laughing." I covered my mouth with my hand in a bid to stop myself from laughing.

"It's just that this whole story is funny and I can already predict the outcome."

"What's the outcome, prophetess?" Stacy teased me.

I cleared my throat and began to speak, "See eh, no one will accept that she did it, so we will all be punished and it will continue whenever something like this happens because no one will rat out another person for fear of being ratted out in return."

"It's not possible." Evelyn refuted. " There's no way they would punish everyone.

"You don't believe me. Let's bet on it."

Evelyn and Jessica betted on it for their drinks on Sunday.

Just like I predicted, we were all given punishment after the hostel mistress addressed us later in the evening. We didn't have a chance to take a nap and wore our school uniform to afternoon prep that day. Needless to say, that night and the rest of the week were utterly useless for me.

Evelyn and I were among those assigned to clean the dining hall after lunch every day while  Stacy and Jessica were among those tasked with washing plates in the kitchen and some with cleaning the laundry and bathrooms.

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"Why are you hissing?" Jessica asked me.

"My back aches from all the cleaning and I haven't been able to read properly for some days now," I complained to Jessica.

"You have to train yourself to stay awake during prep no matter the stress. Life is not easy." Jessica admonished me.

She also woke up Stacy and Evelyn and dragged them out of their beds.