You Can’t be Friends with John

He was bad. He knew he had always been. He’d pinched another baby behind her mother’s back, just to see what her face looked like when she cried. Then he was four or maybe a five-year-old child. He was nasty and extremely wild. His thick black lips which he always curled like one who was about to hiss, and his pert nose, and the two horn-like contours on his ever shining forehead, all gave the perfect face to the meanness of his core. Although, his parents had beautiful features in and out, he’d been born the way he was and was tired of wondering why he looked like the Orunmila painting in one of the encyclopedias in his father’s library.

He was the ugliest in comparison to his siblings. People told him so because it was true. He felt he was ugly too. He was hateful. He was hated. They said he was bad-mannered also. He didn’t care. He disliked rules and all that could affect his freedom of thought and expression. He disliked every form of control over his will. He knew answers to things, but had lately started missing the answers to the same things he thought he once knew. He had also recently forgotten how to cry or get miserable because of the crossed Okays in his answer sheets.

He was boastful and heady, had a strong inkling to do more wicked than good. He was an architect who constructed and sometimes executed to perfection, the nasty imaginations of his mind. He had almost turned numb to pain; had numerous leather and stick marks on his behind. He was the chief of mischief. A king in his dark, mysterious world. He avoided people. People avoided him, and he was content with the way they shunned him. Who needs them anyway; the thought eased most of his disturbing thoughts.

He had friends none could see, he had them in his dreams, in his imaginations, in the animals and the cars he saw, and everything lying still anywhere he happened to be. He gave them names and faces if they had none. He heard them call and sing to him sometimes. He drew them whenever there was a pen or pencil in his hand—not that he had the talent. He was a terrible drawer.

Some said he was a wizard. He actually wanted badly to become one, so he could fly at night; so he could vent the true nature of his hurt with the magic that comes with wizardry, on his parents and teachers, and many persons in his classroom, and other classrooms in the school; so he could become bigger and stronger; so he could fly like Superman, and smash the life out of the people he hated like the incredible Hulk does; so he could roam as free as he wanted to; so he could let them all know that he was also capable of doing something good, if they could stop tagging him as a bad egg for his numerous trespasses.

He feared he’d always be bad, no matter how hard he tried to convince those he came across, that he had a better layer underneath his miserable covering. Sadly, no one saw that layer underneath—not even once had he been praised by someone in the school for doing something right.

He was known for the mysterious, strange, and yet, somewhat unknown. He was respected so much so that most of his teachers thought it was best to leave him alone. He was mostly alone, but was also courageous enough whenever the odds were against him in any altercation or tussle with his seniors to always hold his own. He was a sturdy oak. He didn’t know how to depend much on his peers for his needs. He wasn’t a clinger. He was too healthy and fit to be easily knocked over by their fists. He feared none of his colleagues. They couldn’t match his doggedness and he was never afraid to get the stick.

He was stubborn—his mother had once likened him to a goat. His tear glands were stingy, such that they hardly spared water for his deep set eyes to cry with. He was tough and sometimes very rough.

“Can any good come out of you?”
“I no no,” he sharply replied the woman with a condescending tone. He got her angrier than she’d already been with him, and she beat him even more.
“I no no, I no no,” the woman blurted, harmonizing with the rhythm of the stick she repeatedly brought down on his back and buttocks and arms. Some of the kids laughed as he was being beaten—they could do that only because he wasn’t looking.
“You are a very useless boy. Will you get back to your sit now before I lose my patience?” she muttered in tired breaths, and then watched in disgust as he began to move away from her. “You silly little thing,” she added and hissed.

He pondered what had actually happened to her patience when she’d decided to beat him again. Maybe she was just about to lose it then, or maybe she had already lost it and was lying, he thought. He soon got back to his seat and sat on it. None of his mates told him sorry. None made a pitiful face. None could gaze at his direction or look at him in his eyes. He wasn’t the biggest or strongest in his class, but they all feared he could misbehave and rightly put them in an uncomfortable place, because he was the meanest of them all.

He wiped a tiny spot of blood that had surfaced from a cane mark on his arm with his fingers, and raised his hand towards his face. He tasted the liquid tissue from his slightly ripped flesh. He thought it made one stronger—to taste the blood from one’s own wounds. He shifted his focus from his bleeding arm to the woman who had caused it to bleed. His eyes narrowed wickedly, causing the lashes on their lids to softly kiss. He’d soon have his pound of flesh, and he’d start with Miss. Nwachukwu first, he hissed.

He had a sharp tongue which he constantly filed with dirty slangs and curse words. Those words drifted around in his neighbourhood every now and then, and today, he had angrily screamed a slur at a seatmate. ‘Asol,’ he had blurted loudly without knowing what the word actually meant.

He’d seen a movie the night before, while watching through the window of a neighbour’s apartment. The hero on the screen had said something like that as he gunned down his assailant, just before his mother came to yank him off the window’s burglary proof, where he’d clung for a better view. The beating he’d received after, had made sleep come to his eyes much sooner than it should have.

When the teacher left the classroom at the behest of a pupil later on, he caught a glimpse of an eight-year-old boy close to his seat, forming the words with his lips as they opened and closed in an A and O sound which no one heard except himself. He slightly grinned, tilted his head, and then noticed a bespectacled newcomer behind the boy. She had been staring at him. Not once did he notice her blink as he stared back at her with all the muscles of his face. Who was she?

“Tolulope Brown,” came the teacher’s voice, who had returned from wherever she had gone to, and was now standing at the doorway. “Please pack your bags and come with me,” she said and smiled.
He tried to remember if he’d ever been smiled at that way by this woman, and as if Miss. Nwachukwu knew what was going on in his mind, they locked gazes and he quickly disengaged because of the sternness of her face. She’d switched her demeanor from friendly to mean in a few seconds. Why does she hate me this much? He wondered.

He watched the newcomer arrange some things in her bag, stand and stroll toward who had called her. The red rope on the arms of her eye glasses seemed to have tiny gold linings. The rope swayed beside her neck as she walked past and glared at him again, this time with a grin on her oblong face. He was tempted to smile, but the pain he felt on his back and buttocks wouldn’t let him flatten the very twisted curves of his lips. Her eye balls were perfectly white, laced with hazel retinas that wandered left and right in their sockets behind the lenses on her face. She was taller than he was, way better looking than he’d ever imagined to become. Even with the very low level of the hair on her head, cut a little higher than his own, she was undoubtedly pretty. She also walked like a boy, or maybe her steps were so because of the excessive height and width of her backpack. He didn’t know which, but her gait picked his interest. The air she carried smelled lovely, like that of one aunt he liked in his neighbourhood, whom everyone thought was rude except himself.

Somehow, he sensed he had developed a liking for the new girl. He seldom liked people, much less on his first meeting with them. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. That was the way he was wired, yet, he’d hardly met this one. Maybe she was different from everybody else.

His eyes followed her movement towards the door, but they mistakenly stopped at Miss. Nwachukwu’s face again.
This time, he held his nerve and glared back at the woman. Her icy stare met his cold gaze. It made the pain in his body explode into a conflagration, that kind he had had when he set his little sister’s dolls on fire because she had been getting all the love and attention from his parents. It made his arm hurt more than they had been hurting a split second before, when his gaze was fixed on the new girl. He stared with all the wickedness he could scoop from the depths of his soul.

He wished he were a dragon, so he could burn her to ashes with the fury of his breath. He wished he could turn into a big reticulated python, so he could squeeze the life out of her and then swallow her whole.

“You can’t be friends with John. He is a very bad boy,” Miss. Nwachukwu said to the newcomer as she took her gaze away from his glare, tired of wondering why there was so much evil in the person of a boy as young as he was. His previous class teacher had warned she could be in for the toughest test of her career. The woman had not been wrong. He had more issues than that of the whole classroom combined, in his tiny frame and roguish eyes. In all her 10 years of teaching kids, she’d never seen anything close to the ingenuity of his sadism. He was a genius in all that was not good. She didn’t know how to restrain or handle this one, and so had recently concluded that he’d turn into one of the few errors in her exquisite record as a school teacher.
She knew his parents. They’d been in the school about three times. They were disciplined and kind. They were the other side of this angry little child. He wasn’t their replica in any sense. She was infuriated and sick of his belligerence, even his looks—an attitude she was aware was unprofessional, but couldn’t help showing sometimes when dealing with him.
The headmaster had begged her to endure for the term. “He’ll be in Mr. Michael’s class come September, just do whatever you can Nwa please ehn,” he had pleaded. She knew she was past the point of endurance on this one. He had stretched her far beyond her break point. She could beat him to death. He was glaring like he even wanted her to come and do it. From his seat, he was beginning to annoy her greatly.

Tolulope stood in front of the woman and wondered why she’d refused to lead the way to wherever they were going. The whole class soon got a wind of what was happening, the silent face-off between Miss. Nwachukwu and John. All was quiet, a cemetery would have been louder as the kids waited on both individuals to see what would happen next.
Soon, logic took over her unstable emotions. The term will end soon, and you’ll be out of my class for good, she thought. Her smile returned and she clutched Tolulope’s hand and led her away, not knowing that the words she’d said to Tolulope about him, reverberated inside his head.

She’d painted him black again. He hated her even more. He whispered to himself the woman’s words. I’d never be a friend, or a good one at that. I’m different from the other kids, and so what? He mused. He was already friends with lots of persons in his dreams and the imaginations of his mind. He knew he had true friends hidden in a place where the fake ones couldn’t find them. He reached for his pencil under his desk, sharpened the tip and began to scribble patterns on the brown Formica upholstered desk.

The classroom began to hum with voices. It doesn’t take long to know that a teacher was not present.
“I am writing noise makers o,” Abigail’s loud voice drenched the hums and all was quiet for a minute or two before another round of humming took over again. He could afford to be noisy now if he wanted, he wasn’t under Abigail’s control like the others who worshipped the class captain, so they could be in her good books. He sprawled continuously on his desk, thinking about what had made him misbehave towards his seat mate. The pain from the beating shook his body. He grunted a bit with strained eyes, twisted his lips agonizingly because of his discomfort, and subsequently fought to keep himself together.
She’d taken and broken his pencil tip. She’d taken it without his permission, and the sorry she’d subsequently said to him had sounded like his mother’s whenever she was adamant to admit she’d been wrong for flogging him. It was empty. She didn’t mean it—the sorry she had said. She’d said it out of courtesy and not because she was truly sorry, otherwise why did she laugh at me while telling me sorry? He briefly wondered. “Asol,” he muttered in her direction again, but she was too busy with her hush conversation with another girl on another row to mind him.
He shifted on his seat, his buttocks hurt again.

“Okay, bring out your dictionary, it is time for English language,” Miss. Nwachukwu bellowed from the window before stepping into the classroom.
Tolulope had not come back with her. John was a bit disappointed. He was beginning to like the new girl. His heart told him so.
“Aunty we have done English before now,” Abigail yelled.
“That was Comprehension sweetheart, now we want to do grammar,” the teacher replied.
His heart sank as he opened his bag. He dreaded the subject. He knew it was one of the reasons he was always at Miss. Nwachukwu’s mercy. Why not Quantitative? Why not Verbal Instruction or Mathematics? Why not Social studies or any other subject they’ve not had in the morning? He ruminated with a tired sigh. He’d fumbled while reading a passage earlier and had been beaten for his numerous mispronunciations and spelling gaffes. He’d also taken some strokes not quite long ago. Another beating is coming, he thought, and as he placed his small dictionary on his desk, he felt another shot of pain in his back. He knew he would not be able to deal with another round of punishment. It would break him to tears and he didn’t want that. It will hurt his status as the toughest boy in his classroom, if not in the whole school. None of them had seen him cry and he couldn’t imagine the thought of anyone in the school, knowing that he’d come to tears at last. He fought the turmoil in his heart with gritted teeth. I won’t be crying today, no matter how many times she beats me, he silently swore, but also felt in his body that something was very wrong.

Luckily, the bell rang.
“Oh it’s time for break o,” Miss. Nwachukwu lamented as some of her pupils happily screamed and ran past her towards the door.
“You kids be careful,” she sang and then walked towards the back of the classroom to sit behind her desk.
He sighed in relief. Surely, whatever embarrassment or headache he was to face, had now been temporarily shifted. He had a thirty minute window to recuperate from his earlier beatings, in preparation for an inevitable thrashing if they were still going to do the same grammar after the period of recess. He glanced at Miss. Nwachukwu’s table, but couldn’t find her. She too had left the classroom, same with most of his colleagues. He gazed around, and saw that two girls remained, but one was hurrying the other who was tying up her shoe laces, to be fast about it, so that they can go out and play.

He saw them laugh and scurry out of the classroom moments later. He managed to stand from his seat, aggravating the pain he was now feeling all over his body. He took one step away from his desk, but couldn’t back it up with another one, his other leg won’t bulk. His head became heavier. His knees could no more carry his weight. He wobbled for a second or two, and thought he saw the floor, gradually moving closer to his face. He closed his eyes before he got to the ground, the pain shook him one more time before everything went momentarily blank.

Tolulope was the first to walk back into the classroom. He thought he saw her drop her large backpack and stare at where he was. He noticed the concern in her eyes. They melted his hateful wall, burnt every thought that had all these while, gotten him very sore. Somehow, he scarcely felt the pain that had coursed through his entire body moments before. She moved to where he was and touched him on the shoulder.
“John, are you okay?” she asked, but he felt too weak to respond.
She had called his name in the most soothing tone he’d heard. It was pleasant to his ears, a nightingale’s call. Every other person he’d ever known had all but calmly called him, the way this young girl had done. He managed a smile and stared at her eyes. He wanted to raise his head and tell her he was fine, that everything would be alright with him. He hated the worry on her face, wanted to hear her call his name once more, and sincerely longed for her embrace.

“Where are you going?” he thought he asked her, but he couldn’t hear his own voice as he watched her hurriedly leave the classroom.
He saw his friends—the ones he used to see in his dreams and also imagine in his head, take positions on the several classroom window sills. They smiled at him, waved and called his name. They told him to get up and come play with them outside the classroom. He said he’d be with them, but he couldn’t hear his own voice still, as his friends disappeared. He tried again, tried to yell, but all around him remained quiet—the silence was getting very loud.

Miss. Nwachukwu walked into the classroom with Tolulope trudging behind. “Who is this on the floor?”
“John,” Tolulope pointed. Both hurriedly walked towards him and bent over his body.
“John! John! What is wrong with you ehn?” Miss. Nwachukwu shook his body. She felt for a pulse on his wrist. She paused for a beat. There was trepidation in her eyes when she put her head closer to his face, and in one fell swoop, she scooped him from the ground. “Jesus, I’m finished!” she exclaimed.

He hated what she was doing to him now, not after all she had previously done. His head slung over Miss. Nwachukwu’s arms as she carried him. He struggled to keep his eyes focused on the girl, who stared without following them.
“Please come. Come with me. Come with me,” he silently pleaded. He saw her take a step, but she then suddenly stood still, sat and bowed her head on a desk.
She was the last thing he remembered before he closed his eyes.

He was the first to get to the classroom the following day. He sat on his chair and couldn’t find his bag. It had not followed him home the day before. Wait! Yesterday! Yesterday, I was here, but I did not finish the day, he thought. He remembered he fell. He remembered being flogged. He checked his arm. His injury had magically disappeared. There were no painful sensations in his body. He loved the transformation, but soon developed a feeling that something wasn’t right.
He paused for thought, but soon let it go. All that mattered to him was the opportunity to get to know the new girl.
Abigail walked into the classroom. She briefly glared at him and moved closer to her desk. He wasn’t surprised she hadn’t acknowledged his presence. They hadn’t said a word to each other for a while.

Little children who faithfully kept malice—not the types Jesus had told his disciples about.

He expected nothing less from one of his enemies, and so, concentrated on his new wave of strength.
He stood and walked towards the door, and then paused as he saw her hazel eyes. She smiled at him and he smiled back this time. He was satisfied. Tolulope approached with her boyish steps, her backpack extending from her sides like the horrible angel wings her sister had drawn on his shirt.
“Oh dear John, it’s good to see you again,” she said, and before he could find the words to express how glad he was to see her too, her arms curled around his shoulders in a loving embrace.

Abigail walked past both of them, somewhat oblivious of their presence. Tolulope was awed as the class captain walked out the classroom door, while she was still locked in John’s arms.
He took a sniff of her neck. She still smelled like that aunt on his street.
“It’s good to see you too,” he found his voice before she disengaged and walked over to her seat.

More pupils started to come into the classroom, gaily and excited, noisy and filled with the energy of the rising morning sun. None of his colleagues had noticed his presence as usual, except Tolulope alone, and for that he felt glad.
Miss. Nwachukwu had not arrived before the assembly started. It was unlike her. Maybe she had been held up by traffic or was probably ill. Whatever was keeping her from being in school, also made him happy beyond words.

On the assembly ground, they sang, clapped and danced. Tolulope nodded in his direction. He saw her gesture and smiled. He felt loved, and a surging desire overwhelmed his wickedness with a kind of benevolence he could not explain. Then he waved. She smiled, and they both laughed heartily and loud, but their loud laughter was drowned in the chorus sung by the other children on the ground.

He wished Miss. Nwachukwu were present to see what was happening, to see him smile and also watch as he was being smiled at by the girl whom she had advised not to be friends with him.

The assembly ended and both walked towards the classroom hand in hand. No one seemed to notice the new girl was her friend now. Maybe they were all minding their businesses as usual. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. She said a couple of things and he also said a few things as well. There was little he could digest from all that they said between each other though, as he was too awed by her comportment to keep his ears solely attentive to the confab.

Mr. Michael came to their classroom and taught. He seemed to know how to carry everyone along. He was gentle. He taught with ease and lots of expression. He laughed and connected with everyone. They all smiled and played with him, and John prayed in his mind that his former teacher never came back.
“Let’s go out and play John.”
He looked around the classroom before glaring at Tolulope who had said the words. He wondered why no one reacted to her loud suggestion, even the teacher was still laughing and making jokes about monkeys and bananas in a certain shed.
“The teacher,” he replied and nodded in Mr. Michael’s direction. “He will see us,” he whispered.
“He won’t see us,” she smiled, and he doubted if he’d remain the most mischievous person in the school if Tolulope pulled this off.
He watched her stand from her seat and move to where he was. No one noticed still, although the teacher had faced the board to scribble some notes.

This girl has got guts just like me, he thought.
“Common, let’s go,” she gestured and he was unhesitant to comply. They strolled between rows of desks, past pupils while dodging their legs and flailing arms as they laughed, and in front of Mr. Michael who seemed not to be aware about their movement at all, even as they got closer to where he was.

John thought he saw Mr. Michael look at his face once, as he turned around. He thought he’d seen him, but was probably leaving him alone to avoid his trouble. If Tolulope was with him and they were almost at the door, Mr. Michael would definitely call her at least and ask what was going on? He knew this was next as he waited for the man’s voice to make them stop. The man never said a word to both of them as they walked out of the classroom’s door.

They walked on the pavement along the corridor, to the canteen and then the school field. He saw his bag on the field and ran towards it with Tolulope on his heels.
He was happy. He opened it and found a towel. He spread it on the grassy patch for both of them to sit. His fruit juice and biscuits from the day before were still intact. He brought them out also and stretched them towards her so she could eat. They talked for very long. They were in their own world. No one saw or recognised their presence in the school premises at all.

A week before, Miss. Nwachukwu had beaten him and he had collapsed afterwards. He’d been rushed to the hospital and there had been high hopes that he was going to come out of his state of coma, but the doctor could not revive him. He died. He had died that same day.

Tolulope’s parents had come to pick her early from school. She had an appointment with the optician for 12P.M. on the same day, her eye lenses were due for replacement. On their way to the hospital, they’d met with a fatal accident. Neither she nor her parents survived. She had come back to the classroom to wish him well and tell him her very first and last good bye. She wanted him to be happy, to let him know that contrary to what Miss. Nwachukwu had earlier said to her that day, she was already looking forward to becoming his friend before her untimely end. She had found him almost lifeless when she got back to the classroom, and had somehow gotten Miss. Nwachukwu’s attention to help salvage what was left of his health and life.

She’d been devastated when his head slumped over Miss. Nwachukwu’s arms as she made to follow them. She was hurt and so had stopped and sat with her head bowed, to weep for him, because his face had told her one message only: A long good bye.

To revel in the beauty of the things going on in the classroom, to see the girls and boys she could have been friends with if life hadn’t decided to be cruel towards her entire family, Tolulope was in school again. But someone else had come her way—John, somehow had finally come back, but how?

When they embraced, Abigail had walked right through both of them on her way out of the classroom. It was then it dawned on her that he was just like her—dead.
She knew he did not know. He had no slightest clue, the things that had happened since the day he died. When she embraced him, she had felt his heart beat increase, and in that moment, recognised his longing to love and be loved. Somehow, life had denied him both yearnings, even from his parents who knew little about what was going on in their son’s mind.

Soon it was break time again. The pupils rushed towards the field and played. None minded them where they were perched on the grass, even though they played around them for as long as the period of recess lasted. She watched the smiles come and come again and again on his face. She could tell he was happy and content. Content that he was with someone who cared to know more about him. He was content to be in the company of this stranger whom he must have thought would be just like the other ‘strangers’ he’d seen all his life.
“Why can’t they see us?” He eventually asked.
She smiled, held his hand and told him to listen. Her mind flashed back to how she had finally gotten to grips with not being part of the living.
She’d gotten to the school the second day after her demise and had been enjoying Mr. Michael’s class unnoticed. Someone walked into the classroom and tapped her on the shoulder from behind. She slowly turned to see who the individual was. She was shocked when she saw the face. She glanced around to observe the pupils. No one had seen this person, the same way she had not been seen all morning.

“Miss. Nwachukwu, are you dead also?” she had asked, but had gotten no reply. The woman had turned around and walked towards the door. She however followed her, in a bid to confirm if her suspicion had been right. When she got out of the classroom, Miss. Nwachukwu was far ahead in front of her, but had then turned around and stared pitifully at her.
“Tell him I am very sorry,” she had said and subsequently took a bend in a corner. With more questions to ask her, she pursued but the teacher was nowhere in sight by the time she got there. That was the first and last time she saw Miss. Nwachukwu in the school or anywhere around.

“Whatever it is, you have a friend now John,” she said and flashed a grin. He smiled and nodded, and she said no more than she’d already done. She’d let him know the true state of things and also apologise on behalf of Miss. Nwachukwu when the time was right.

They stayed until all the pupils left the school, and the teachers and the cleaners as well. They sat on the grass till the sunset ushered in the moon and prompted the night stars in the cloud to come out of hiding—and maybe bless them with accompanying dew.

He didn’t want to go home. She wasn’t surprised. He had so much to tell her and she was ready to listen and keep the smile on his face for as long as she could, in their new world, where she knew she was not alone, and would most definitely be in need of a friend like John for company to make her smile also.

THE END.

Seun Afolabi.