Daniel was my friend.
We were friends from nursery school continued halfway through primary school then met again in secondary school. It wasn’t planned, it just happened.
The funny thing is, much as we were close, our parents weren’t close. They knew one another but didn’t really visit themselves; except on rare occasions and this was because, the way I see it, Daniel’s parents are rich people. The type that travel abroad every summer.
My own parents are not; they are people who will never think of travelling abroad because they have a child to send to school. I am an only child.
Our school was a school for rich kids but my mother always reminded me, ‘you are not a rich kid, behave yourself’. Daniel always bought me gifts whenever he travelled abroad; he loved everything Marvel. He would buy Marvel comics, Tshirts, belts, socks, anything; he was a real fan.
Here’s what happened to my friend.
When we were in grade 10 going to grade 11, I began to notice that Daniel was always getting into trouble and other students would go and report him to the counsellor or sometimes the principal which was a big thing. Before then, he was just a regular kid. We made fun at others; we ran when we were supposed to walk along the corridors at school; we took the junior students’ snacks after promising them ours the next day but we never gave it back…childish stuff!
But the first time I thought something was wrong with my friend was when he tore one girl’s notebook in class. Daniel and I missed out some notes in class and we asked one of the girls in our class to give us her note to copy. She said no, Daniel just forced the note out of her hands and ran out of the class. The girl began to shout and was threatening to report but I begged her that we would return the note once we finished copying. We both copied the note and Daniel promised to return it to the girl. I was later to hear from the Principal, when I was called along with Daniel that he tore the note to shreds and dumped it on the girls table!
What!
There was no need to do that, we were meant to just copy the note and return and now he had torn the book after we finished copying it!
I looked at his face that afternoon as we stood in front of the principal and I expected him to snicker, instead, he broke down and began to cry, claiming not to know anything about the notebook. He claimed he dropped the notebook on her desk during prep and maybe someone came along and tore it.
As soon as we left the principal’s office, I asked him, “Dude, what was that?’ My friend just smiled and continued walking. I knew he did it! He tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I’ll race you to the hostel” and he took off.
At another time, in class, Daniel was very disrespectful to the teacher in class. It was a biology lesson class. We were in the Biology lab and the teacher was talking about reproduction among amphibians. Daniel began to hoot and do that sign, finger going into the O in his other hand. The teacher walked him out but he refused to go. The next thing was straight to principal.
I don’t know if he was trying to prove he was tough, I really don’t know to date. So by now, you know that Daniel had been going to the principal’s office almost on a weekly basis. The principal would call his parents, they would come, they would talk and Daniel would still be in school. If I tried half of what Daniel did, my mother would flog me until my skin came off!
I just thought maybe he was behaving like that because his parents were rich. He knew they would use their money to get him out of trouble; though several times, the principal would punish him. He would clean the dining hall; he would mow the lawn, he would join the staff to clean the pool. He was always serving one punishment or another, until I think the school had enough when the story came out that Daniel had been forcing some grade 8 and 9 girls to perform bj on him!
Bj is blow job…yes in secondary school! we were like what? 14, 15, 16 year olds then.
Hummn, yes, we did bjs a lot at school. It’s no biggie; no sex but plenty of bjs especially during prep.
its like this, when you have a gf, she can do it for you but Daniel was a troublesome boy. So, I wasn’t surprised when I heard he forced girls to perform bjs on him and threatened to pull down their skirts in the class if they didn’t.
Ah, yes, he had done it to two girls and everybody laughed!
Most of these girls were scared of him, in short even the boys were scared of him. Daniel was a bully, you know. It’s just that he didn’t do all these things to me because I was his friend.
But you know, I told Daniel I could never pull all the pranks he was doing at school because my parents would kill me. I may be their only child but they would not think twice to kill me if I was ever reported to have pulled a skirt down or even get a bj whether forced or not. I would just dead!
So, to be honest, I really don’t know why he did all these things.
Now, you know there are alumni groups even for secondary schools? So I think they began to discuss this on one of those whatsapp chat groups and a parent saw it and asked their children who it was that was forcing girls to do bjs in the title. Everything came out after that because some of the girls Daniel forced, spoke out, when the parent contacted parents of girls that were affected. some of the girls then told their parents.
The school called Daniel’s parents and reported him and I think they were going to expel him but his parents said they would take him out of the school instead. That’s how he was removed from our school.
His parents sent him to one school in the north which was bad because we were all going into our final year.
I went to visit him during the holidays and he told me that he didn’t like the new school and that he hadn’t made new friends. He also said a few of the students who had friends in his old school, which is my school, had heard about what he did to the girls…the bj and stuff so they were mocking him.
He was just quiet, that day, he told me he felt like just dying so his parents won’t have to suffer because of him. I didn’t think he meant it. I just thought he was ashamed of himself because really, what he did was bad.
I told him to forget about the rumors around him and focus on his exams and I hoped he wasn’t being a rascal anymore. The following term would be extension period when we wouldn’t be allowed to go home for holidays.
Ok, so we resumed, he went back to the north and me, here in Lagos. I went back to my boarding house. That term would be second term and we were not going home during holidays so I couldn’t keep in touch with Daniel. Phones and internet are not allowed for us in school, as you should know.
I am not even sure we had started our IGCSE when I began to hear a rumour among students that Daniel had committed suicide in his new school. At first, I just thought people were beefing him and wishing him dead but when my mother came on visiting day and told me it was true, that she had gone to see Daniel’s parents, I was shocked!
Daniel? Commit suicide? How? Why?
I begged my mother to go again and find out more information but my mother told me to focus on my exams. How could I focus when my best friend is dead?
When I finally came home, I learned from my parents that Daniel must have been depressed, that was why he took his own life at just 17years!
I don’t understand it, Daniel was the one who bullied the students at our school, he was the one who forced several girls to do bj on him. Shouldn’t it be the other way round? Shouldn’t it be the girls who are traumatised and depressed?
It was much later, I was already in my first year at the uni, when I overheard my parents talking one day about Daniel. My father said he had undetected mental illness.
I don’t agree. Daniel was not mad, maybe he was depressed but he was not mad. If he had lived, he would have been in his third year in the uni, like me.
I miss him.