My Best Friend Bucky

God, I hated when it rained. It was hard to hear anything above the thunder and the incessant drumming of rain upon the roof, but I did. Three loud bashes on my door threatened to take it off its hinges. It startled me from my assignment which was due in the next few days. If I was not already saturated with information I might have ignored it, but as it was I needed a break from all the facts and numbers, numbers, numbers from the compulsory accountancy course shared across several disciplines. I still do not understand what Psychology has to do with Accountancy. I glanced at the clock as I tied my wrapper around my waist. It was ten minutes to midnight. Who could be

breaking down my door at this hour? And more importantly, how did they make it past the night watchmen into the hostel? I considered briefly that it could be robbers or campus rapists or cult boys out for a night of mischief; perhaps they had tied up the guards! But I dismissed the thought. Robbers and rapists probably didn’t knock. “Ola! It’s me! Open the door.” I recognised my classmate

and best friend Bucky – real name ‘Buki’ but she preferred the other spelling because it sounded more Janded. I slammed by books shut and grabbed my lantern, cutting a swathe to my front door with its white light.

“Bucky?” I opened the door. My heart skipped a beat. The wind whipped a spray right into my face. I shivered. It was cold. Bucky waited just long enough for me to see her face by the light of my rechargeable lantern before she burst in. I shut the door and locked it behind her again. Bucky stood

there dripping on my carpet, a sister rainstorm to the one outside. “What’s wrong?” I could tell she had been crying. It was not just the rain on her face, her eyes were too puffy.

“Where’s Jide?”

“Who knows? Who cares? I left him and ran-”

“Ran where? Calm down, start from the beginning.” She was shaking, from the cold, from the wet or from being upset I couldn’t tell, Maybe it was all three. “We were at Nonso’s party-” She didn’t need to say which one. There was only one Nonso on campus that could throw a party which Bucky would deign to attend. He was a fraternity brother of Jide’s. “And I had to take a call so I

went outside, it was so rowdy I had to go quite some way away and by the time I got back he had disappeared. I caught him in a room, making out with that…” here her

breath caught in her throat. “…That slut Chimdi!”

To be continued...