Table Six, Episode 4: Sick Bay

Principal's Office. Sunday, 6:30 PM.

The black Tecno lay in the middle of Mrs Oyelaran's desk like evidence in a murder trial.

Ife stood in front of it. Nobody had offered her a chair.

Mr Ekpo picked up the phone and scrolled with one finger. He read the messages aloud in the same voice he used for balancing equations.

"Did you find my note. Organ, 2 AM. Come alone." He looked up. "Now you know how it felt. All from Oladayo Martins. An expelled student." He set the phone down gently. "You have been in contact with him all along, Ifeoluwa."

"Dayo doesn't have that phone." Ife's voice shook, but it came out. "You took it from him. On the assembly ground. Everybody saw you."

"And I returned it to his mother in July."

"That's not true."

"Ifeoluwa." The principal rubbed her temples under the edge of her Sunday gele. She looked old tonight. "Mr Ekpo has been in this school for nineteen years."

"Ma, please. Ask Dayo's mother. Ask his sister, she's in JSS3, she's..."

"Enough."

The word dropped like a stone.

Mrs Oyelaran pulled a sheet of letterhead towards her and uncapped a pen.

"You are suspended from classes with immediate effect. A disciplinary panel will sit on Friday at nine o'clock to decide whether you remain a student of Heritage Hills College." She signed with the big looping O. "The panel is a committee of the Board of Governors. It will be chaired by Chief Eze-Obi."

Kamsi's father.

Ife's knees went soft.

"Your guardian will be informed tonight."

---

Aunty Bukky was in Abuja. A conference, a hotel, a client dinner. She was on speakerphone, and her voice filled the office, high and frightened in a way Ife had never heard.

"Exam papers? Ifeoluwa? Ma, there must be a mistake. This child reads her books, she..."

"Madam, the papers were in her box."

"I can't come until Friday morning. My flight. Ma, I am begging you, don't send her out on the expressway alone."

So they didn't send her home.

They sent her to the sick bay.

---

School Clinic, Isolation Room. Sunday, 9:15 PM.

Nurse Esther ran the clinic the way a market woman runs a stall. Loudly, warmly, and with total control.

"Sit there. No, that bed, the other one's spring is spoiled." She plonked a mug on the side table. Bournvita, too much sugar, the way you make it for a sick child. "Drink. You're not sick, but drink anyway. Shock is a sickness."

The isolation room was meant for chicken pox and malaria that wouldn't break. Two iron beds. Green walls. Louvre windows with a torn mosquito net. A ceiling fan that went round once every three seconds, like it was thinking about it.

"Mr Ekpo says no visitors," Nurse Esther said. "No phone. No going out." She paused at the door. "He did not say anything about books. Or exercise books. Or classmates bringing notes so you don't fall behind."

She winked and left.

Ife sat on the good bed and held the mug with both hands until the Bournvita went cold.

They had taken her phone. They had not taken her notebook.

She opened it to a fresh page and wrote with a hand that wouldn't keep still.

1. Somebody wrote my name in the register. Not Tolu (she says).

2. Somebody put the mock papers in my box. Mr Ekpo knew exactly where they were.

3. Somebody is texting from Dayo's number. Not Dayo. (Lola.)

4. Zee asked Tolu for Dayo's locker combination.

5. What did Dayo say to me on the assembly ground?

She stared at number five until the letters swam.

Then she turned off the light and lay in the dark and listened to the fan think.

---

Isolation Room. Monday, 1:12 AM.

Tap.

Ife was awake instantly.

Tap. Tap.

On the louvres. Fingernails on glass.

She crept to the window. Outside, crouched in the flower bed between the clinic wall and the hibiscus, was a shape with long braids.

"Open," Zee hissed. "Before mosquitoes carry me."

Ife cranked the louvres halfway. She didn't open them all the way.

"Why are you here?"

"Why do you think?"

"I think," Ife said, and her voice was ice, "that in June you asked Tolu for Dayo's locker combination."

Zee went completely still.

A cricket sang somewhere in the dark. Far away, Baba Sule's radio was still playing.

"She told you," Zee said finally.

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

Ife's grip tightened on the louvre handle. "Then go. Go back to whoever you're working for."

"Kamsi asked me."

The words came out fast, like Zee had been holding them in her mouth for three months.

"In June. Two weeks before. He said Dayo had locked his Casio calculator inside, the scientific one, because Kamsi owed him money for something. He said he wanted to get it back before the Physics test and put glitter in Dayo's Further Maths textbook as a joke. A birthday joke. Dayo's birthday was the twenty-eighth." Zee laughed with no air in it. "It was funny, Ife. It was the kind of thing we did. I didn't know Dayo's combination, but I knew Tolu sat next to him in the lab. So I asked her."

"And you gave it to Kamsi."

"On a piece of paper. During break. He said thanks, and he bought me Fanta."

A Fanta. Dayo's whole future, for a Fanta.

"Then on the first of July I saw him coming out of the admin block," Zee whispered. "And on the second they found the papers in that exact locker. And I knew what I had done." Her voice cracked. "That's why I screamed. Not because I was sad. Because I understood I'd helped bury him."

Ife let go of the handle.

"And yesterday? In the doorway? Your hands were behind your back."

Zee reached into the waistband of her skirt and pulled out the cracked Samsung.

"Because I was recording."

---

They watched it with their heads almost touching through the gap in the louvres. Zee had turned the brightness all the way down. The sound was off.

The video was shaky. Zee's angle was low, from the doorway, behind Kamsi and behind Mr Ekpo. The dormitory looked enormous and grey. Forty girls at their bed-ends.

Ekpo stepped forward. He went straight to Ife's box. He didn't look around. He moved the Indomie and the Peak milk with one hand, lifted the Golden Morn, and there was the envelope.

"He didn't search," Ife breathed. "He knew."

"Wait," said Zee. "Watch his other hand."

Ife watched.

Ekpo's left hand was behind his back. From in front, you saw nothing. From the doorway, you saw everything.

A small phone. Not a smartphone. An old silver Nokia, the kind that lives forever. His thumb was moving on the keys. Slowly. Without looking.

On the screen of the video, he pressed one last key.

Two seconds later, Ife saw herself flinch on camera. The buzz in her skirt pocket.

Ekpo's thumb moved again. Pressed.

Ife flinched again.

Don't cry, Ife. Crying never helped anybody in this school.

Ife sat down on the floor of the isolation room and put her face on her knees.

"It's him," she said into her knees. "It was him all along. The texts. The note telling me to go to the chapel. He wanted to catch me there."

"No," Zee said slowly. "Not the note."

Ife looked up.

"Think about it. The photocopy in the bench had Kamsi's name. Why would Ekpo hide a paper that points at Kamsi? Kamsi's father is his boss." Zee chewed her lip. "There are two people, Ife. One of them is trying to help you find the truth. The other one is Ekpo, and he's using Dayo's phone to drown the first one out."

"Then who's the first one?"

Zee looked away.

"Zee."

"I can't say yet."

"You know?"

"I promised." Zee was already backing into the hibiscus. "Every night when I sneak out, it's for this. I'll show you. Soon. Before Friday. I swear on my life."

"Zee!"

But she was gone, braids and shadow, into the dark between the clinic and the farm.

---

Isolation Room. Monday, 2:40 PM.

Tolu came at lunchtime with three exercise books, a sachet of chin chin, and the face of someone walking to her own funeral.

"Nurse Esther said ten minutes," she said. "She said she's counting."

"Sit."

Tolu sat on the bed with the spoiled spring. It groaned. She put the exercise books in Ife's lap: Chemistry, Further Maths, Literature. Neat notes, colour-coded headings, little drawings in the margins.

"I copied everything Mr Ekpo wrote on the board this morning," Tolu said. "In case you come back."

"In case."

"When," Tolu corrected quickly. "When you come back."

Ife waited.

The silence got uncomfortable. Then it got more uncomfortable. Tolu held out for almost a minute, which was a record.

"It was Kamsi," Tolu whispered.

Ife closed her eyes.

"The one I taught your signature to. It was the first week of July. After Dayo was gone. He came to the art room after prep, and he was..." Tolu stopped. Started again. "Ife, he was crying. Real crying. His whole face. I'd never seen him cry in five years."

Don't trust the one who cried the most.

"He said his father would kill him if he didn't learn it. He didn't say why. He just kept saying please, Tolu, please, I have to." She twisted her fingers together. "I showed him the tail. The loop on the A. He practised for an hour. He was good at it. Too good."

"And you didn't ask why."

"I didn't want to know." Tolu's eyes filled. "That's my whole problem, isn't it? I never want to know. I just copy things."

From the corridor, Nurse Esther's voice: "Two minutes, Toluwani!"

Tolu stood. At the door, she turned back.

"There's something else. In the Chemistry notes. Page fourteen. I didn't put it there."

When she was gone, Ife flipped to page fourteen.

Between Tolu's careful notes on electrolysis was a strip of torn exam pad. Small, slanted handwriting. A tiny circle over every i.

Not Ekpo's. Mine. Real this time. Hold on till Wednesday. Don't eat anything he sends. D.

Ife held it up to the window.

Tolu could copy Dayo's writing. Tolu had said so herself.

But Tolu always pressed hard. Her letters dug into the paper like she was carving them.

This writing barely touched the page. Light, quick, like the person was in a hurry. Like the person didn't need to think about how to make the letters, because they were his.

---

School Clinic. Tuesday, 11:00 AM.

Nurse Esther liked to talk while she counted tablets. By Tuesday morning, Ife knew the names of her three children, her opinion of the new Governor, and the full story of how the clinic fridge had been "borrowed" for a staff party in 2024 and never returned.

So when Ife asked, very casually, about the gold Lexus from visiting day, Nurse Esther didn't even look up.

"Lexus? That one is Mr Ekpo's own."

Ife nearly dropped the cup in her hand.

"He bought it in August. New. Not tokunbo, o. New." Nurse Esther tipped paracetamol into a sachet. "VP Academics salary. Nineteen years in this school. Even with promotion." She clicked her tongue. "Some people have rich uncles, sha."

"Nurse Esther, did Dayo's mother ever come here? In July?"

Now the nurse looked up. Her face changed. A little softer. A little more careful.

"She came. That poor woman. She came twice. Second time she sat in my clinic and cried, because Mr Ekpo told her the boy's phone was lost. Lost, in his own office." She shook her head. "I gave her Fanta and a Gala and told her God sees everything."

"Lost," Ife repeated. "Not returned."

"Lost." Nurse Esther narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

"No reason."

"Mm." The nurse went back to her tablets. "Some people should learn to lie better," she said to the paracetamol. "And I'm not talking about you."

---

Isolation Room. Wednesday, 11:48 PM.

Ife didn't sleep. She sat on the good bed with her shoes on, the strip of exam pad in her fist, and watched the louvres.

Hold on till Wednesday.

It was Wednesday for twelve more minutes.

The fan went round. Round. Round.

At 11:53 she heard it. Not a tap this time. A scrape. The louvre blades on the left window being lifted out of their frame, one by one, by somebody who knew exactly how. Prefects knew things like that. Prefects had keys and tricks and the trust of every teacher.

One blade. Two. Three. A gap big enough for a body.

A tall figure folded itself through and dropped onto the floor without a sound.

School trousers. White shirt. No blazer. No badge.

Kamsi.

Ife was on her feet with her back against the wall before she had decided to move.

"Don't come near me."

"Ife."

"I'll scream. Nurse Esther sleeps in the next room. I'll scream and say you attacked me and they'll believe me, Kamsi, for once in this school they'll believe me..."

"Then scream."

He didn't come closer. He just stood there in the slatted moonlight, and his face was wrong. Wet. Red around the eyes. A boy who had never cried in five years, who apparently cried all the time where nobody could see.

"I signed your name," he said.

The fan went round.

"In the register. In July. Ekpo made me tear out the page with my name on it and write a new one. He chose you. I practised your signature with Tolu for an hour, and then I wrote it in that book, and I've seen it in my sleep every night since." His voice broke on every. "You can hate me. You should. But you have to hear the rest before Friday, or he wins."

"Why should I listen to anything you say?"

Kamsi wiped his face with the back of his wrist.

"Because Dayo isn't missing," he said.

"What?"

"He's been here since the second of September. Living in the old staff quarters behind the farm. I've been bringing him food every night. Zee found out two weeks ago and started helping." He held out his hand. "He wrote you that note in the Chemistry book himself. He's been waiting four days for you."

Ife stared at the hand.

"Come," Kamsi said. "He wants to see you."

To be continued in Episode 5.