Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E32

2 years ago

Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E32

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 32

Hotter than fire

A whole 24 hours and Johnny still hadn’t turned on his phone, or called me back.

Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t call him again – and it took a lot to even call him after all the stupid text messages I’d sent – but it was Johnny. At least he should give me a chance to explain.

The worst part about how I was feeling was that there was no one to talk to about it. I was carrying my grief alone while everyone else, the whole world, carried on.

I gave Kike some flimsy excuse to explain Johnny’s disappearance from the poolside. It upset me that she simply believed it.

Mama was worrying her head over one fine boy she was liking; she had her own problems, and besides, I wouldn’t talk to her about Johnny.

At the end of the day the only person I could talk to about Johnny was Johnny, and he wasn’t talking to me.

He had even switched off his phone, and the way I saw it, switched me off for good.

Indoors is so conducive to being heartbroken. It is as if the walls contain your pain, or when like me you’re grieving alone, they hug you when friends are lacking.

I waited for the girls to leave me and the walls alone so I could cry my eyes out but they wouldn’t go away. They stayed and gossiped and tried on new dresses, and I, under a cover cloth at 7 pm, kept checking my phone for messages or missed calls.

Janet came home with bags of shopping and a boxed iPad. The girls excitedly gathered round her to see her new toy and new things.

She let Kike be the first to handle the box and even open it up and fetch the brand new device inside. They had since made up, but only to the extent that Janet was still kissing Kike’s ass and Kike was unapologetically lapping it all up.

Mama, surprisingly, was the only one who knew her way round an iPad. She soon had it going and was checking her Facebook page.

Janet excited the girls with tales of how her new mugun was a British diplomat, was very handsome, and was very-very rich. Andy, that’s his name, was a middle aged oyinbo man that had even asked her to marry him. She also told how he was ‘an engine in bed,’ this told me she was either liking the man or taking his proposal seriously. Poor girl. But then again, maybe. poor man.

Janet was on an all-out PR campaign. She announced that she had something for everyone. Andy had taken her shopping and she had gotten enough La Senza undies for all of us. The girls went crazy. Bribery and corruption, even in our tiny BQ.

My phone rang as Janet emptied a shopping bag full of underwear onto the mattress. The girls lunched like starved feral dogs.

It was Johnny calling! My heart raced, and even before I answered I felt a lump in my throat that warned me I wasn’t going to be able to speak.

I got up and left the mattress to the girls and braced myself as I took his call.

“Hello?” My voice was weak. Guilty.

“Hello, who is this?” Said a male voice over the line. It wasn’t Johnny. ‘Didn’t even sound like him.

“This is Amaka,” I said without thinking. “Is Johnny there?”

“Johnny, is he your friend?”

Something alarmed me about the voice. There was noise in the background, chattering, that sounded familiar.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Madam Amaka, you say Johnny is your friend?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“Please, I will call you back,” he said and he hung up.

What was going on?

I tried calling back but the phone went unanswered. Something was wrong. It only then dawned on me that it was unlike Johnny to switch his phone off for one whole day. He didn’t switch it off because of me; something had happened to him.

Panic pumped blood into my heart.

I called his number again. Someone answered but didn’t talk. I listened to voices talking and tried to make out what they were saying. Something about it felt unnervingly familiar. The call was cut off.

I waited a few minutes during which I did absolutely no thinking at all. I couldn’t focus.

“Kike, something happened to Johnny,” I finally said.

Kike stopped from holding up a black bra to her chest and looked at me.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.”

The girls turned to me and I narrated the events starting from Radisson Blu to the phone call I just received.

“Accident?” Mama volunteered.

It made sense. He left the Hotel in anger and he had an accident.

“Is he dead?” She asked.

Kike reprimanded her but the thought had already formed in my own head as well.

Kike took my phone from me and called his number again. Again no one answered.

“What will we do?” Mama asked.