Inter-house sports season arrived with its usual chaos. Students jogged the dusty track or tried to catch the attention of crushes they’d been too shy to approach all year. Hormones, sweat, and borrowed colognes hung heavy in the air. Some genuinely trained. Others just posed. A few didn’t care. Andrew belonged to that last category—the boys under the palm tree who came out only because the hostel was on lockdown.

Emmanuella had planned to stay invisible. She always did. Two years at Omega High had taught her the value of silence, of disappearing into uniforms and routines. She was short, bookish, soft-spoken. Her world was Erica, her younger sister, a few close friends, and the pages of her notebook.

But then, one morning under the palm tree, while discussing a novel with her friend Nandom, Andrew heard her voice for the first time.

“Wetin she talk?” he asked, pulling closer, curiosity caught in his grin.

That night at home, she sat on her bed scrolling through her phone as Erica, eyes sharp as ever, bounced onto her mattress with her usual mischief.

“So, who was that guy you were walking with?”

Emmanuella didn’t lift her eyes from her phone. “Who?”

“You know. That guy that followed you to the hall. Fine boy with Nike slides.”

“Oh. Andrew? He’s Nandom’s friend.” She said it like it didn’t matter.

Erica raised a brow. “Just Nandom’s friend?”

“He was good company. That’s all I can say.”

Erica rolled onto her side, grinning. “I’ve got my eyes on you, Em.”

“Good for you.”

Andrew started showing up in her periphery—near the water tap after class, under the mango tree during break. Never intrusive. Just...there.

Sometimes, they spoke. Sometimes, they didn’t.

And for the first time in a long while, Emmanuella felt herself unfolding.

Not into someone else.

Into herself.

He didn’t complete her. She wasn’t waiting for a boy to hand her identity like a gift. But somehow, Andrew’s presence made her brave enough to explore the parts of herself she had kept hidden—opinions, emotions, dreams.

She told him about her plan to study Law. How she hated injustice. How sometimes, when the hostel got too loud, she’d sit under her blanket and just breathe until the world got quiet.

He listened.

God, he listened.

He stopped playing the clown around her. Started showing up with cleaner clothes, asking deeper questions. It wasn't love, not quite, but something close—a quiet curiosity between two people from different orbits.

Her sister teased her. Friends watched with raised brows. Emmanuella said nothing. She didn’t need to define it. What they shared felt too delicate to label.

And then, like all fragile things, it broke.

She was reading him a poem beneath their tree when a girl with sharp nails and a sharper tone interrupted.

“Babe, you still dey follow me go ICT block?”

Her voice cut the air. Her hand rested on his shoulder like it belonged there.

“You should go,” Emmanuella said, quietly.

He did.

No explanation. No apology. No return.

In the weeks that followed, he laughed the same way in the corridors, but never in her direction. She didn’t chase him. Didn’t ask questions. She wasn’t the kind of girl who begged to stay in someone’s story.

Instead, she wrote. Her words grew bolder. A teacher praised her for a story that crackled with emotion. 

She had been invisible for so long, even to herself.

But not anymore.

Andrew had never been the story. Just the spark. The gentle nudge that helped her look inward and like what she found. He had listened, yes—but it was her voice that changed everything.

Sometimes, people walk into your life not to stay—but to hold up a mirror.

Andrew had been that mirror.

Through him, she saw the version of herself that no longer wanted to hide.

And that was the real story.

Not a teenage love affair.

But a girl learning that her voice was enough—even if the boy never came back to listen.