“Miss Uby, you’re already done?” The teacher asked, astonished.
Uby raised her head reluctantly from her desk where she’d been comfortably sleeping and replied a lazy, “Yes.”
The teacher didn’t bother going through her work to confirm and neither did a lot of people waste time turning and there was a reason which I'll let on in a bit.
In the first year of high school, there were different arms of eacg class and Uby wasn’t in my arm, but I heard of this girl who could be more or less described as nonchalant at best when it came to academics. She was hardly in class and couldn’t ever boast of complete notes but was always passing. I didn’t believe it.
Then, we happened to be in my same fourth year of high school and that’s when I saw it for myself. She always had this bored look on her face and was always looking for the slightest excuse to ditch classes. She arrived late for everything, exams included. The first time I saw her finish her exams in record time and slept, the teacher walked up to her and yelled, asking to see her papers and she handed them to him, looking bored. The class snickered but when the teacher was done perusing her work, he dropped it without saying a word. When results were out, she scored the second highest. No one snickered again when she slept in the exam hall.
It became a saying among students and teachers, “Don’t follow Uby’s ways or you’ll fail.” Whatever she was doing seemed to work for her but there were chances that it wouldn’t work for those that tried to copy her ways. And true to that, all Uby’s ‘friends’ that found her cool and accompanied her in ditching classes and not having notes all repeated that year and Uby, the girl that couldn’t be caught dead with an academic book was promoted to the next class and that too with flying colours.
It was in my final year of high school, when all of us moved into the dormitory that I got to uncover the mystery behind the mysterious Uby. I observed her, but of course, she did what she always did which was to play in the field with others from dawn to dusk, keep chatting and then bath and sleep at night. So, did that mean she never read? I gave up and concluded that she must be a master brain.
Then one night, I hadn’t slept a wink because I had been reading a novel and by the time I was done, physically and emotionally spent, it was about 2am. I leapt out of my trusty mosquito net to use the bathroom. There was no power supply but I wasn’t ever afraid of the dark plus I knew my way around so I started moving there then, I saw Uby, with her lamp on getting up from the bed and using the other entrance to go to the upper floor.
I didn’t even hesitate, promptly abandoning my bathroom venture and choosing to follow her instead. I smiled to myself, thinking Sherlock Holmes would be so proud if he saw me right now. At the back of my head was the lingering thought that kept resounding, “Curiosity, killed the cat.” But for the sake of my discovery, I was quite willing to let it kill me. So, I followed her. She entered a room that hardly anyone ever visited and when I was sure that she was there. I turned back and left. I knew where she was now so another time would be to discover what she did there.
The next night, I was awake but not because of a novel, this time. I was determined to find out what Uby did. So, when I heard her bed creaking from the end of the room, indicating she was standing up, I waited about twenty minutes and then I went, with my lamp this time(I was brave please, not invincible). And when I rounded the corner and looked into the room from the crack in the door, I gasped. There were about six textbooks in front of her and she was scouring through them like a woman on a mission.
Why, you cheeky little…. I thought to myself. But I smiled. She was no superhero after all, and wasn’t practicing voodoo too. She went about her thing weirdly, but she was just like us and that was enough for me.
She motivated me and I adopted reading during those hours too. In the event, I cited in the beginning of this piece, Uby walked into one of the biggest examinations of our senior year, thirty minutes after it had started. And was still done when almost all of us weren’t. Others scoffed that she was taking it too far but I grinned. I knew her doings. And it was the same grin I had on my face as I watched Uby called out at our graduation ceremony as the third overall best student of the class.
And as she walked in, with the usual bored expression on her face and a look that said, she wanted to be anywhere but here, I grinned wider, clapping excitedly for her. I never told her but she was my hero. Extremely badass, that one. And I’m glad I let my curiosity get the better of me to know who she was behind all that couldn’t care less mask of hers. A nerd. Like me.
Jhymi🖤
My entry to The Inkwell Creative Nonfiction Prompt.
