The Boy in the Blue Blazer
The assembly hall at Kingsview Secondary School smelled the way it always did on Monday mornings—floor polish, sweat, and the faint sweetness of someone's forgotten breakfast pastry rotting in a blazer pocket. Oba stood in her usual spot, third row from the back, close enough to hear the principal's microphone crackle but far enough to avoid being singled out for the crime of existing near the front.
She liked the back. From here, she could see everything.
That was the thing about Oba that people rarely noticed until it was too late to matter—she watched. Not in the nosy, gossip-hungry way some of the girls did, collecting rumors like charm bracelets, but in a quieter, more clinical fashion. She noticed when Mr. Adeyemi's tie was slightly crooked because his wife hadn't been the one to knot it that morning. She noticed when the SS2 prefect, Funsho, flinched every time the principal said the word "examination," like the syllables themselves carried a physical weight. She noticed the way lies sat on people's faces sometimes, a half-second too long, a smile stretched just slightly wrong at the corners.
It was a useless talent, mostly. Nobody paid you for reading faces. But it made…
