"You won't tell me anything about it, would you?" When she didn't answer, he said, "I thought as much."
"You have your own secrets," she shot at him.
"Of course I do. But one last question before I go—"
"You said you would leave after the last one."
"You didn't give me a reply, so allow me to ask again. Why are you go interested in Precious's suicide?"
It felt like a second bomb, only that the first was yet to be cleared. Ho….w did he know?
She saw him shake his head and say, "Maybe I shouldn't have given you the suicide note."
A third bomb. "It was you who gave me the note?"
"I did tell the inscription came from me, it was you who didn't believe." He faced her. "You and I know you're in danger. And no, I'm not talking about the threat from the Dean, I'm talking about real danger like a cut on your head. Give up digging into her, I don't know what you have found, and I don't care, it's not worth your life."
Ivie looked at his face and saw it, the sincerity. Her heart was racing, she just couldn't tell from what.
"Let me have the note."
"Father—"
"It's the first thing I can do to protect you. And refrain from speaking to your friends about it."
She exhaled and nodded. Fetching the note from her beside her bedding, she handed it over to him. "But what is it to you?"
He chuckled. "I want to keep teasing you of course, and to do that I need you alive." Alive and standing in front of him, not alive but unconscious in the woods.
He gathered the cat in his arms and rose to his feet. "Go to bed, Ivie, you need the strength to fight Itohan tomorrow when you see her. Just don't do it in the hallway, go to a quiet place and beat the crap out of her."
Ivie didn't know when a smile creeped on her face. "At least we agree on something."
He smiled too and then opened the window.
"What if someone sees you?"
"Go to sleep, Ivie, you worry about me too much."
She watched him slip out of the room before saying, "Sometimes it feels like you worry about me too."
The next morning, Itohan didn't join them for breakfast.
"Maybe she's hiding," Gaga said. "She knows I'll break her teeth if I see her stupid, ugly face."
"I think….I don't know, maybe she has a reason? But that's not like Itohan at all," Aisosa said. "Maybe something entered her."
"And that's what I want to beat out of her. Do you know how many days we have to serve detention because of her? Not to mention the letter."
"Ugh, the five hundred words," Aisosa groaned. "I've never been goo with words."
"Ivie should know what to write, tell us about Father Chibuike, something we can write about."
Ivie eyed her. "And why should I know that?"
"Because you're Father Chibuike's sweetheart."
She choked on the juice she was drinking, spilling some over the table. "Jesus Christ, Gaga!" She looked around, cleaning the corner of her mouth. "Don't talk like that and get Father Chibuike into trouble."
"And since when do you start worrying whether he gets into trouble or not?" JohnMary asked.
"I just don't want to get involved," she replied quickly. "Don't call me his sweetheart. God! Can you even listen to yourself?"
Gaga shrugged. "He didn't have any reservation to me calling you that."
The priest was a lunatic, what would she expect?
"I wonder how the meeting with the Dean went yesterday, did Itohan get into trouble?" Aisosa asked, obviously worried.
"Father Chibuike said she took the fall, she didn't mention our names."
"You've spoken to him this morning? I haven't seen him at all."
"Ummm…." Ivie scratched her head, there was no way she was telling them about him in her room last night. "Did I not see him? Or was it a dream?" She laughed awkwardly. "Funny, I remember him saying that to me but I really have not seen him this morning."
"So now what, you now dream of him, I thought you didn't like him?" One look at JohnMary and the displeasure was evident on his face.
"Can't she have a change of heart? Father Chibuike is a nice man," Gaga defended.
"Priest," Ivie corrected. "And no, I've not had a change of heart. I don't get it, do we now control what we dream about?"
"No, but sometimes what we dream about is as a result of repeated imaginations."
"I do not have any imaginations about Father Chibuike," she said, word for word. She liked to believe that she didn't, she didn't think about him, she only thought about the situations surrounding them.
After he left last night, she thought about how he had pieced everything about her gift. It was commendable that he was that observant, but she wasn't telling him any of her secrets.
JohnMary watched her quietly for a while before surrendering. "Fine, if you say so."
"The person I constantly think about is Odion, that thing is becoming a pain in the ass."
"What did she do this time?"
Gaga asked.
"It was her running mouth that told Father Chibuike about us. I don't know why she wouldn't just leave me alone."
"Seems like she needs a lesson or two."
"This is where IT excels, torturing people, she would have been ecstatic about it," Aisosa said with a sad smile. "Yesterday when I met her outside Father Chibuike's door, she said she had been so scared. She seemed very remorseful."
"But IT rarely gets remorseful, she always defends herself. Remember when Sister Gabriel was adamant on giving Ivie a tough time, when Itohan slipped into her office and changed just her grades? She didn't have remorse in her eyes when Ivie confronted her about it, she defended herself." Gaga said.
"That was the slip up, it was there I knew she was hiding something. I really don't know what is wrong with her."
"Anyway," she stood up. "Bring that dwarf thingy to me, I'm going to scare her enough so she can stay away from me."
"Where would you prefer?"
"Anywhere quiet that is not on the staircase." She was going to avoid it as much as possible, she wouldn't give death the chance to happen through her.
"Ivie?" JohnMary called back. "You have dropped the whole Precious's thing, haven't you?"