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It was that time of the term again—exam season. The atmosphere in the school buzzed with tension as students buried their heads in textbooks, revising with desperate intensity. Rita and Anne, like most of their classmates, were deep in preparation, their minds a whirlwind of formulas, facts, and figures.
A few hours before the English exam, Mrs. Olutunushi, their ever-elegant but strict English teacher, swept into Bitter Class. Her presence commanded attention as she clutched her notebook and a marker, ready to deliver a quick crash course on figures of speech.
"Pay attention!" she announced, her voice slicing through the low hum of murmurs. She began explaining different figures of speech, moving up and down the aisles as she spoke.
"Personification… Irony… Onomatopoeia…" she listed, writing each one on the board with matching examples. Her words flowed, and the students listened with varying degrees of interest—some taking notes, others just pretending to.
As she stepped backward to emphasize her next point, her heel caught the edge of a student's bag, and with a startled gasp, she fell to the floor. The entire class froze for a heartbeat.
Rita and Anne jumped up at once, rushing to her aid. "Ma, are you okay?" Anne asked, kneeling beside her.
"I'm fine, thank you," Mrs. Olutunushi said, her voice a little shaky but grateful as the girls helped her back to her feet. She dusted herself off and gave a small smile. "Let that be a lesson—watch your steps, just like you should watch your grammar."
The class let out a nervous chuckle.
After she left the room, things took a wild turn. A few mischievous students seized the moment, rushing to the front of the class. Without hesitation, they grabbed a marker and began writing on the board. But their version of figures of speech turned into a hilarious disaster:
Figure of speech (figure of speech)
Pasonlafikasan (personification)
Ironi (irony)
Onome to pa iya eh (onomatopoeia)
Ipa bole (hyperbole)
Si mi le (simile)
The class erupted in laughter as more of these twisted terms were scribbled on the board. Just as the room reached peak chaos, another teacher walked in, eyebrows raised at the scene before him. The students scrambled back to their seats, trying to act innocent.
Later that week, during the Mathematics exam, the tension in the room was almost tangible. Anne sat staring at her question paper, her mind suddenly blank. She had studied hard, but now, she couldn't remember the formula for probability. Her fingers tapped nervously against the desk.
Then, as if the universe responded to her inner panic, a drop of water—cold and sudden—fell onto her chest from a leaky ceiling. She gasped softly, startled.
From her nearby seat, Rita noticed. They weren't sitting together, but their bond made them connected beyond proximity. Rita's brows furrowed with concern as she quickly tore a piece of paper from her rough note, folded it neatly, and scribbled, "What's wrong?"
She passed the paper discreetly to a classmate, who handed it over to Anne. Anne's face lit up with relief. She quickly wrote back, "Forgot the formula for probability."
Rita didn't hesitate. She jotted down the formula:
Probability = Number of favourable outcomes / Total number of possible outcomes
With careful timing and quick glances, they passed the paper back and forth like a silent dance of friendship and survival.
Unbeknownst to them, Mrs. Owode, the sharp-eyed invigilator, had seen it all. She didn't interrupt. She simply watched from the back of the class, a knowing look in her eyes. Perhaps she saw not just students "cheating," but two friends helping each other through a moment of academic panic. Maybe she understood that sometimes, a little support makes all the difference.
And so, the exam continued—quiet, tense, and filled with tiny moments that would one day become memories worth laughing over.
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