Omoge Campus #7

Read episodes 1- 6 of Omoge Campus

TEMI

After an hour and a half at the clinic, I left there feeling considerably better. I had filled a form that was basically a questionnaire I guessed was meant to assess my state of mental health. I had another appointment in a week and my therapist urged me to call him the moment I had any issues.

While money has never been a problem for me, I was quite surprised when neither the receptionist nor the doctor himself said nothing about my bill. After signing all the necessary paperwork, I bade them both goodbye, promising to call if anything was amiss.

After being cooped up in my apartment for days, I had no desire to rush back there so I decided to make a quick stop at home and visit with my family before going back to school. I booked an Uber and headed to Ikoyi, looking outside the window was we sped past third mainland bridge, reflecting on how much my life had changed since I last made a trip across the Lagos lagoon.

I got home and found my mother screaming at some unfortunate domestic help which meant she was in a good mood. My mum is such a dramatic soul that I never cease to wonder how she and my gentle and sweet father ever got along well enough to marry.

“Temi Tem Tem!” she screamed as she saw me, drawing me into a hug that crushed me against her ample bosom. “I have missed you o! An ah! Omoge campus. You didn’t even tell me you were coming”

I replied that I was suddenly homesick and I decided to quickly breeze in and check on her. She laughed heartily and mocked “Shebi you were crying that you wanted to go to school in America. So if you had gone to America is this how you will rush home because you’re missing your father? Because I know it’s not me you came to see.”

I didn’t bother to protest because there was a lot of truth in what she said. I was daddy’s pet and baby. My mum and I were like cat and mouse; we bickered and disagreed half the time. It didn’t help that she looked like my sister and dressed like a 20 year old either.

Rekiya Ade-Doherty was a beautiful woman by all standards, she was also a genius but she was too wild and free spirited to live like your regular genius. She spoke more than 10 languages, had visited more than 50 countries and had an intimidating academic record. She had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and gotten married right after, before getting her Masters and PhD.

Looking at her, one would never have guessed she was such an intelligent person because she almost always wore skinny jeans, bodycon dresses, crop tops and other such outfits that even I, the teenager, shyed away from sometimes.

I debated telling her about the Bayo incident and decided against it. Like I said, my mother was crazy and there was no telling what she’d do.

After eating and gisting with her for a while, I felt better and comforted by the familiarity of my own home. However, I didn’t trust myself to keep the incident away from my father whom I had never been able to lie to. So around 8pm I told my mom I was leaving for school and that I’d come back later.

I had a driver drop me off on campus and just as I got to University Road, a reckless driver in front of us suddenly swerved right without putting on his indicator lights and my car lightly clashed with his.

The reckless driver came down from his car and approached mine. “Great”, I thought to myself. Just when I had my first good day in a while, this Bozo had to ruin it.

REBECCA

Eventually, dinner had to end, no matter how slowly I ate. While we ate, I had noticed a lot of things about Yemi, like the tiny scar above his upper lip. I also noticed that he had amazing eyes since I spent the better part of the evening staring into them. His eyes were a dazzling honey brown, like pools liquid gold that beckoned and urged you to drown in them.

We got up to leave the hotel and made our way to his car. When he got behind the wheel, he told him his house was close by and that he wanted to show me where he lived, just in case I was ever in the area. I must have looked uncomfortable because he quickly assured that we weren’t going in, we weren’t even going to step out of the car.

He drove to an upscale area and showed me a compound that was bigger than any I had ever seen. Inside it was a sprawling mansion that suddenly made me acutely aware of the fact that I and Yemi existed in different worlds. Our modest bungalow back home was probably the same size as their boys’ quarters.

I suddenly felt like Cinderella and I was afraid my chariot would suddenly transform into a pumpkin. What could this boy possibly hope to gain from befriending a simple girl like me? My ecstatic mood began to dampen.

He deftly and expertly maneuvered the steering and played a collection of old R & B songs on the stereo as we headed back to UNILAG. When we exited the third mainland bridge into Adekunle, he cleared his throat and spoke “Becca, I had such a wonderful time at dinner with you today. Can we do this more often, please?”

I managed to nod yes, still reeling from different thoughts from before. “You’re sure?” he asked, “You don’t sound so excited. Did I do something wrong?”

I told him he had done nothing wrong, that I was just lost in thought. By now we were on University Road, less than a minute away from campus. He took his eyes off the road and looked into mine, holding my hand “What’s wrong Bec…” He didn’t complete the sentence before he had to quickly swerve to avoid an okada that was riding towards us instead of on his own lane.

Just as he swerved, a vehicle behind us rammed into his car lightly, jarring my teeth with the impact. He asked if I was okay, I said I was and he told me to give him a moment to deal with the chaos.

NKAY

After a long night during which I dazzled Razor with acrobatic skills in bed, he was in such a good mood that he gave me 100k to go back to school with. However, I left his apartment determined that that was the last time I was going to visit the place.

Sometime during the night, while he snored away, I had snooped through his phone, checking to see if he had been in contact with that useless Amaka girl who had claimed to be my friend, and then went ahead to seduce him.

What I found on the phone was more than I ever bargained for. While any other person would have been unable to decode the messages, I had spent enough time with Razor to know what they meant.

He and his guys were used to running rampage, collecting money and valuables from students on campus. He also ordered hits and his guys were known to rape girls as punishment for their boyfriend or brother’s sins. They also ran dirty errands for politicians and rich men.

His had messaged his best friend, telling him they needed to procure livestock for some politicians who wanted to make money from it. His friend had replied that they should go into livestock farming themselves and stop being errand boys since it was so lucrative.

No, they were not talking about goats and chickens, they meant human beings. And those human beings were used for blood money. If Razor was considering blood money, I was more likely than not to be the livestock he would need because according to Africa Magic, you had to use someone you loved if you want it to be potent.

On his own, Razor would never consider blood money. But the problem was that he always listened to Croc and he would eventually buy the idea. So I had to stay far away from him if I loved my life.

I got to Moremi and my roommate immediately gave me the gist of the two girls who had been fighting over a married man. Through my inner turmoil, I managed to respond with the appropriate exclamations as she told the story. I wonder what those girls would do if they knew I was sleeping with the man that they wanted to kill each other over. But I had far bigger things to worry about.