Chapter 45: The Cover-Up

When it was finally dawn, mom quickly rushed to the kitchen to make breakfast while I had my shower, after she had prepared everything, she had a quick bath and joined me at the dining table, where we sat before a nicely fried scrambled egg a loaf of Oak bread and two cups of tea. As we ate, mom asked me a question that suggested that she suspects that I must swim lately, but she quickly dismissed the question by herself, I thank God for that.

"Tell me Damie, have you in any way played or go into any water which I asked you not to? You know what? Forget it. Where can you possibly find any stream here in Abuja, it is not like we are in the east where you will see streams almost everywhere."

Wow! I'm so grateful to God that she had to change and annul the qualm by herself, what would I have done? Tell her the truth? Hell no, that is not even in the option, lie to her? God, I will really not want to lie to my mom, I should hide the truth from her instead of lying to her.

                           ***The Cover-up***

After mom and I had our breakfast, I quickly rushed to Cynthia's house, WO we could go to school together. I'm enjoying going to school and coming home with her, especially when we are coming home, she is often tired and tends to rest on my shoulders, hmm, what a sweet feeling. Aha, I recollected that I've told Cynthia not to tell her mom that I'm participating in the competition, in fact, she must not let her know anything about the swimming competition to I told her, however, I did not truly give her the reason why, I just told her that my mom does not like me indulging in anything that is not study related in school.

"But mom already knows that our school always hosts a swimming competition called the Merman. But she does not know that we are about to start the competition."

Cynthia said

"But she is not aware of its commencement, right?"

"Yeah" 

"Well, let it be that way."

So we discussed the day before in the cab on our way home.

When we got to school, it was like moving into another world, my story was still in the lips of the students. Chinwe and Charity were already in school when we got to school, there will be no assembly Session today, it will just be practice and practice. Well, today it was going to be the red house that will commence with their screening first before others since they were the last the day before. I told the Super Cee that I will like to see the defending merman swim. As you all already know, Kunle Adewale was the defending of the school, he had comfortably acquired the title of the Merman for the last three years without any challenger good enough to dethrone him.