"Why aren't you answering? Did I do something wrong?" I read the first message. This had come after four missed WhatsApp audio calls.
"Please talk to me. I just miss you and want us to discuss. I also have an important thing to tell you," the third message read.
"Is your group done with their presentation drafts?" I read on. There were so many messages, and I didn’t even know which one to reply to first. So I gave her a call and explained that I was charging my phone and, though I had my data on, I wasn’t active. She whined a little and ended by saying she’s always the one who starts the conversation on WhatsApp. Well, I agreed, because she never gave me a chance to chat her first.
I met Gladys in my first year in Uni when we gathered to submit our first math assignment. I didn’t have any friends at that time, and I wasn’t even interested in having one.
Gladys had a close friend, her high school classmate, and they stuck together in such a way that one could mistake them for family.
"Let me see your answers," Gladys said as she flipped through my fullscap.
"The steps are different, but it’s the same answer," I said. She liked mine and said she would buy another paper and copy it.
"Leave her. She’s looking for a way to stress herself," Favour, her friend, said, and we all burst out laughing. That was how we began talking, and before I knew it, we became friends.
"Favour loves boys too much," said Gladys.
"She’s a beautiful girl. It’s natural that boys will disturb her a lot," I said.
"No be small beauty," she replied in pidgin, and we burst out laughing again.
Gladys nagged so much about Favour, and strangely, Favour never seemed bothered. She laughed along and even said things like “Don’t worry, I won’t talk to boys again.” But she always did, and we would tease her about it.
"Favour is not from a rich home. She’s just packaging and loves an expensive lifestyle. She doesn’t pity her parents at all." That was the first statement from Gladys that threw me off balance. I tried not to read much into it, but then a few days later, she said another one.
"She isn’t intelligent. And she doesn’t study. She’s always on her phone."
I actually told her my mind. "Favour looks intelligent. Not everyone likes reading during the day," I said.
She didn’t agree with me, saying she’d known her longer than I had. A few other statements followed, and I realized what she was up to. She didn’t want me to be close to Favour.
At first, I brushed off her words as harmless gossip. But slowly, I started to see how tightly she clung to people by cutting others down. She knew how to disguise control as concern. It scared me, because if she could talk that way about Favour whom she's known from childhood, what would she say about me once I fell out of favor?
I didn't wait for It to be my turn because I stopped being close to both of them. I distanced myself because I feared that one day, she would say the same thing about me.
Eventually in my third year, I ventured into drop shipping. This business required lots of connection, so I began approaching people to tell them what I did. That’s when Gladys crawled back into my space. She escorted me on every outing with a good explanation that she also wanted to advertise herself as a hairstylist. She started sitting beside me during lectures and walking with me around campus. She followed me everywhere, and my friends began asking if I had a new bestie.
I forgot to mention that she and Favour were no longer friends. I don’t know what happened, but they broke apart in our second year.
“Let’s go to the cafe,” Gladys would say.
“No o. I can’t go there now,” I would reply.
“You can just escort me,” she would insist.
“But I want to stay in the lab,” I said, at the end Gladys would either go to the cafe alone or buy snacks and eat it in the lab.
Looking back, I think I allowed her back into my life out of guilt, and also because touring the campus in search of customers felt less stressful when it's done by two ambitious girls.
I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and yet it seems I was hurting myself by letting her stay. It’s strange how we sometimes let emotional pressure override our instincts, just to keep the peace.
In other words, I wasn’t at ease with her, and she wasn’t sensitive enough to notice. I gave her all the signs I could, except telling her verbally that I didn’t enjoy her company. I’m always careful with how I treat people, even those I don’t like, because I don’t want to hurt them.
After sometime I accepted her presence and tried to be unbothered by her company. I played with her and come through like a friend whenever she needed me, all while still maintaining close relationships with my other friends.
Back to the presentation she disturbed me about. When we met in school, she took my phone and transferred the file that had my group’s presentation into her phone.
I was very shocked that she knew my password, and furious that she had transferred the file without my consent.
“Sorry oh. I’ve deleted it,” she said.
I wasn’t just shocked, I felt violated. For someone to go through my phone, know my password, and transfer something so sensitive without asking? That wasn’t friendship. That was entitlement masked as closeness. And I was angry. Betrayed felt like a better word.
But even in my anger, I found myself still trying to be diplomatic.
That same evening, I saw my name being tagged repeatedly in my project group chat. I immediately opened the messages and discovered they were all angry with me.
“How could you share our sweats, our efforts, with someone else?” Bisola said.
“We put a lot of work into making sure we had the best graphics and content for our presentation, but you messed it up by sharing it with another group,” Benny added.
My heart ached, and tears gathered in my eyes as I went through all the chats. None of them called me, which showed how angry they were.
I calmed down and explained how Gladys got the file. Bisola then sent me a screenshot from another friend in a different group.
“Gladys sent our file to her group and told her partners she singlehandedly prepared it for them,” Bisola said.
I was at a loss for words. Did this mean she would have stolen our work and made her group present it to the lecturers as their own?
I called her immediately and asked why she did it. She began to apologize and said she would have made some changes.
“I promise I’ll delete it immediately,” she said.
To her word, her group didn’t present the same thing as ours, and she came to apologize to all my group members. She was very remorseful.
I accepted the apology, but that incident made me realize she could be a thorn in my space. We still exchanged polite greetings, though, but I was done with the friendship, and the closeness was over.