Goodbye Tyrant

February 11th

Janine

Dear Diary,

Maria Fernandez was a tyrant. The girl could just throw an insult at a carnivore and watch it break down in tears. But this was not why she was here today.

“Water?”

Sipho Ntuli stood on the half-brown lawn holding an empty glass. Sipho never spoke to me. He was the type of guy that spoke to girls like Maria and won every karate championship. He never knew that I watched his matches or that I got my yellow belt because of him. At least, not when Maria was around.

I saw her kiss him after he won his match. Her skirt, which I’m sure she secretly changed into, showed far too much of her. I wonder what she’s wearing now. Her parents would not let us see her. So she lies next to a six foot hole waiting for her bodily remains to join her in hell.

I wonder if he’ll kiss me now. You know the moment when the hero dumps the mean girl and ends up with the girl who’s real - the girl who has loved him all this time.

“Janine, I know it hurts,” Sipho said.

He put his hand up as if to touch my shoulder and then put it back down again.

Hurts? Did a country moan about losing a dictator? And why didn’t he touch me? My skin covers itself with goose pimples when he’s around. It’s almost like he’s drawn to me but there’s something I still can’t reach.

I looked at him again. There was a tear falling down his eyes.

“We were planning to go to university together, you know?” he said.“And now it’s…….”

He lifted his head. His eyes were fixed on a boy who Maria fed scraps of attention to. It was just like her. One scrap for Sipho, another for a guy on the school bus and another for that guy in choir. This one was a junior. He wore a black suit like everyone else but stood as far away from the polished oak casket as could be.

“I have to go,” Sipho said.

And I was alone again.

Sipho

February 11th

He had to be mad to be here. Really, after everything that he had done? His tux was darker than mine and it didn’t look like it had a single thread out of place.

Of course he had to show off. He wasn’t the boy that struggled to get Maria gifts. I remember how she smiled at him - and now she would never smile at him again. Yes….Maria would never smile at any boy ever again.

What the hell? I can’t be as wicked as Fu. What kind of person was I to want the love of my life dead?

I wasn’t wicked - at least not as wicked as he was.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

He didn’t flinch. Li Fu Zian wasn’t in anything that I was in. He was a standard eleven crap who decided to tell Maria that he loved her - minutes before she passed. Maybe that’s why she was reckless. I knew the way he held her hand when they had to travel out of Gauteng for choir.

Fu didn’t look like he even noticed me.

“Fu, what the hell are you doing here?” I said. “You ruined her -killed her.”

“Killed her?” he said. “Now that’s a bit harsh considering the fact that you kill everyone with your speeches at assembly.”

His face - along with those caterpillar eyebrows- needed to be smooshed. I mean properly rubbed in the mud smooshed.

“Look I didn’t kill the girl,” he said. “Do you think I’m stupid to kill someone I love?”

Duh, does the man never scroll through TikTok? Men kill women all the time and claim they loved them - I would know. I’ve seen it more than once.

“Look, I don’t care what the court says or what any lawyer says, I know you did this,” I said.

I couldn’t take it any more. I remember her face and the way she smiled at him when he skulked around the school corridor. I could do something of course. I was head boy. I could make him lick the toilets like another batch of prefects did. But Maria wouldn’t have liked it. There would have been that look in her dark eyes. And I just couldn’t hurt her. Not even in death.

Fu

Hey,

I used to think that soulmates didn’t exist. Everyone wanted Tania Saleem, who people in my grade drooled over. Not me.What was the point when Maria walked smiling at me across the halls.

Maria was a year older than I was and the reason our school had a choir in the first place.

“You know she’s Sipho’s girl?” Nigel said when I first saw her.

Nigel was a guy whose head more or less resembled an anthill. He had his prefect badge pinned to his chest and a report card that told everyone he was going to medical school.

Here he was a few months later as they were lowering Maria to the ground. He kept one eye on the casket and another on me.

“I don’t care what those dumbasses said, I know you didn’t kill her,” he said.

But I know I did. No matter what I told Sipho or the cops or anyone else - she wouldn’t have died if I didn’t call her. But if she didn’t die - I’d see her with Sipho. And I’d rather die a hundred times.

Casandra

February 11th

Dear Diary,

My sister died. No - my sister was murdered. And it was those two men in front of her that did it. Maria - my Maria - would never have taken that call. She was the girl who stood up when Janine rolled her eyes when I was putting on lipstick.

Apparently, I ought not to do it in school.

I remember the way Maria yelled- how she defended any woman from the boys and Janine. Only she didn’t have to die. Not at the hands of any man. Maria was going to graduate, she was going to study law and defend sex workers. She was going to be a woman.

This was insane. This was absolutely insane. There was that cow Janine where her body was being lowered. It was right next to the poppies the girls and I had picked out. Sipho, Fu and the rest of them had brought her roses. Maria would have hated them. Just like she hated the Gucci perfume Fu wore or Sipho’s AI generated poetry.

She hated it all. Because I knew who she loved - and it wasn’t either of them.

Kagiso

February 11th

Dear Diary,

I knew how Maria died. And it wasn’t murder.

She trusted me the day we both entered the eighth grade. And she trusted me in her last moments. Did that mean my heart wasn’t going to be shredded whenever I pictured the way she listened to me - the way she loved me? Of course it would.

The coroner said she died in a car crash. She got a call and answered it. She didn’t see the truck speeding towards her. She was on the wrong side of the road, they said. As if Maria was stupid enough to be on the wrong side….by accident.

I could still taste her lips on mine. Sipho thought we were in choir practice. Of course we were practicing. Just not singing.

I got her poppies - I always did.

“Girls,” Fu once said, as he saw the flowers. “Why poppies?”

Of course, he thought he should get her red roses. That’s what every boy in school got her. Little did they know she fed them to Juan - her foul mouthed parrot.

“Hey,” Cassandra said as she came towards me.

Something already told me to run. Cassandra wore one of Maria’s dresses - and every inch of her made me want to scream. I saw Fu look at her - just for a millisecond- while rubbing his eyes with the astrology handkerchief that Maria once gave him.

I knew what this meant. She’d be next. They would compliment her. They would ask her out. They would photograph her in ways her mind could barely process. And only Maria’s fate could save her.