Chapter 38: The First Crew

                          ***The First Crew***

"Now please, you all should join me at the swimming pool, we will start our training and selection today as we have heard earlier, we have less than a week before the competition. So please let's go now."

So did the house Masters and we all followed them like goats for sacrifice. As we strolled to the poolside, I kept thinking in my mind about how or what can I do to escape this death trap. I just can't tell these girls that I've got this stupid allergies and that I lied when I said I can swim, how can I possibly do that? So now I'm trapped in between my dignity and my life, which should I take. Now I remembered what my mom will always tell me about reputation. She will say:

"Damian. As you fair through Earth's way, you might come to the false conviction that money is the highest thing of value in life, my son, be not deceived, for money is not the most valuable thing a man can have, instead, the valuable thing a man can have is his reputation, if you have a good reputation, please guard with your life, for it's worth is more than gold or diamond."

Now I have found myself in a situation where I literally have to choose between my life and my reputation. 

Now when we got to the swimming pool, the whole students separated to their various houses, and both I bright and Cynthia were in the same house, later the rest of the Super Cee which is Chinwe and Charity joined us even though it wasn't their house, according to them, they wanted to see how I will defeat the arrogant Bright and put him to shame.

Because of the number of houses in the school, the house Masters decided that a particular period and time should be given to each class to practice and make ways for the other houses, and my house which was the yellow house had to commence first. We were plenty in our house, we were twenty in numbers, so the housemaster had to split us into two groups, I fell into a different group from Bright's. And their Bright had to swim first, so I was actually happy I thought that after Bright and his crew will swim then our time for the day will elapse then we will give way for the other house to practice, and I will have to not come to school the next day under the pretext than I'm probably sick again. But I was surprised that the first crew which was Bright's crew finished pretty fast and we still had lots of time. Well, the winner for the first crew was unsurprisingly the head of the bully, he started confidently and ended with more confidence, he bragged to be the best, and he also spoke on how he could not wait to defeat Kunle and become the school's merman, a title he had always hungered for.