GENESIS

In the morning of every new day comes the chance for a new beginning and the chance of starting afresh, and Monday is no different.

Especially this particular Monday morning.

High School resumes today and for some reason, I am not entirely gassed up for school. To be honest, I am not a big fan of school.

Don't get it wrong, I am not a runt or a dullard. I am a regular teenage nerd if I may say so myself. You know, that unique set of people who have find solace in academics than in the other social activities that normal teens their age engage in. The only standing disparity between me and the rest of the nerds in school is that it doesn't show from my physique.

Automatically, if I am a nerd, then I should love the academic aspect of schooling, which in all truth I do.

So why am I unenthusiastic about school then and what do I dislike about it?

Pretty much anything else, from the sports that I can't take part in, to the females that I can't talk to because of their now corrupted and perverted perspective of who they should talk to as a male friend or even consider as a boyfriend, to the fact that I speak to myself and eat by myself every lunchtime and let's not forget the fact that I am constantly bullied by people.

I guess I have good reasons why school should seem like anything but fun to Jeremiah.

Yeah, that's my name. I am Jeremiah but I prefer to be called Jerry and I am your very humble and not-too-good-looking host on this walk-through Riversdale high school on its first day from the Christmas holidays.

I think it's best if we take a step back to the beginning of the day when I got on the bus this morning.

The students are seated the same way they sat since I started using the bus, which is basically...as far back as I can remember.

The formation is simple.

The footballers are the ones who sit at the beginning of the bus and interact with each other, trading information and gossip across the aisle that separates them in a low volume.

The information they trade is usually nothing more than scores of teams in different leagues that are going on and different moments of glory during matches that they watched.

They are the celebrities of the high school, or at least they became the school's most celebrated team when they helped us to win in the last inter-school league we played and they have been placed highly and praised by all the girls and boys in school... well almost all.

The next set of people in the formation is the group of hot girls and their boyfriends.

These guys are always together, walking together, eating together, and even wearing the same clothes sometimes. They hold the not-so-amazing record of the only guys who dress uniformly to a mufti school like this one.

Their gang (or clique as they would prefer to call it) is made up of the cutest and most cultured girls in the high school who are usually daughters of men and women of wealth, so they make it a point of duty to ensure that they flaunt this wealth in the faces of those who don't have that opportunity to wealth.

These girls are also the best at emotionally tearing down guys by using them, extorting them, making them their living puppets to do their every bidding, and then of course, dumping them.

Rumour has it that a good majority of the boys who have dated any of these girls end up becoming broken by them. It usually happens in a pattern, a cycle if may think of it that way and funny enough the cycle is the same for all of them.

First, they make them feel like they are loved and shower them with affection and attention. The reason for this is to ensure that no one can try to warn them or dissuade them from the relationship.

Next, they introduce the guy to the clique, now this is where it starts getting weird. The clique will then ask him a set of questions, like an interview, and decide if he is worthy. If he performs well doesn't matter to them, they just want him to feel intimidated by them and to understand that the relationship has existed only because they say so.

Then, the guy becomes their slave for at least 7 months and is eventually dumped for a cuter toy.

Even Stefan, a senior who was the best football player that the school had ever produced, was broken under the grasp of one of these hashtag girls.

I don't know how true that is though because it all sounds like a rumour to me, but it probably sounded like that to the other guys who come in to fill the space of the ones who have been dumped too...oh well.

After them, you have the set of people that I call "the regulars.". They are a rather different and more normal set of people, at least from my perspective.

They consist of the purest and most docile set of people who are usually very intelligent or talented or pretty but all on a low key. They aren't big on being rich or pretty or athletic but they are very big thinkers. Sometimes they are even better than those who claim to be the best in their field but they will never show it.

If you haven't guessed it yet, I'm talking about the nerds.

Though we aren't all pretty on this side of the bus, I'll admit that some of us need some work, while the rest of us need...a lot of work but still we're not that bad.

These are the last set of people on the bus and this is my category with my throne highly exalted at the end of the bus sitting perfectly in the middle of the aisle.

That's how it has been for a long time and that's how it continues to be until now.

We arrived at the school at the usual 8:17 am and we all alighted the bus to meet all our long-time friends.

The school was bubbling with life and with people as well. Laughter filled the air and the compound contained countless people who were all happy to see each other.

The girls were checking out the changes that seemed to have occurred in their friends and also in their bodies. Guys, especially sports junkies, and egomaniacs were checking how well they had tuned their biceps and their pectoral muscles.

It bored me to watch.

The melomaniacs were standing side by side with one another to share their earpiece so they could show off new beats they had been working on throughout the spring break and talk about new instruments and how cool and effective they were.

Further down and you could spot the sneaker addicts who were checking out their new kicks and their preferences for shoes. Then finally, my favourite lot, the nerds were talking about new grounds they had discovered and inventions that they were working on, while I was just there in the mix observing and watching with complete adoration of the beautiful scene before me like a lonely raft drifting in the middle of the sea.

However, as usual, I didn't partake in this beautiful thing because I lacked one of the key requirements.

I had no friends to catch up to or to speak to.

"hey boy....you lost?" a voice at my back said with a jump in it that I could feel even without seeing the person

I turned back and I smiled at the realization that this face brought.

It was a matter of fact that I had no friends and I have poor social skills, however, I have a family and the person closest to me has to be my immediate younger sibling.

"I am good boy" I replied to my brother, Danny.

"you seemed a bit, lost bro," he said with a bit of a giggle in his voice. He sounded like he had been watching me for a very long time.

"nope, just observing," I said to him with a smile on my face.

Danny smiled back at me and moved in for a hug. We also carried out our far too complex but long-lived secret handshake.

Let's talk about my family for a bit so you can catch up. We are black Americans that came in from Nigeria in the year 2021. my parents are well established and very.... very..... very busy people and so they spend a good amount of time travelling around for one business meeting or the other.

We are the Allabys and we consist of my dad, my mum, myself, Danny, and jemmy.

Danny's full name is Daniel Allaby Inioluwa(a Yoruba name) and he is almost the direct opposite of me. Daniel is a very cheerful guy and the life of any party. He is also a very balanced dude, in the sense that he is intellectual as well as sporty and he is very specific about the care he gives to his body and his hair.

Especially the hair.

It is the fastest way to find Danny in a crowd. His full cabbage-shaped hair which he always leaves in an Afro.

Danny plays for the school's football team and since he is one of the best left-wingers they have, he automatically has a lot of fans and he rolls with the first set of people that I had mentioned in the school bus formation.

The only thing is that he doesn't use the bus. He would just catch a ride with one of his teammates in his car. Even though he didn't have to.

Our parents had done a very good job in raising us to be children that didn't show off the fact that their parents were very established. So even though Danny and I had our private cars in the main house, we don't use them or even live in the main villa.

Then, there is the last in the mix, our only sister, Jemimah Allaby Ewaoluwa(also a Yoruba name). she is 12 years old and is still our little pumpkin till-date. She pretty much lacks nothing when it comes to brotherly love.

However, she won't be appearing much in this story if at all.

I guess I should tell you guys my full name since you guys may be curious to know. My full name is Jeremiah Allaby Odunayo which is also a Yoruba name.

Now that we are done introducing my family to you let's get back to the events of the day.

"Yo Danny" shouted a voice a bit far off.

Danny and I turned to see the person calling. It turned out to be his team captain and the person who is constantly fighting him for the position of the school team's left winger, mason.

Mason is my classmate and so his obnoxious nature and attitude are nothing new to me.

"uh...boy let me see what this guy wants then we can hang out when we get home later," Danny said as he kept changing his focus between me and the approaching aggressor.

"Sure, sure good luck, you might need it" I replied to him and left for class.