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AudreyTimms:
CHAPTER TWO

Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.
—Hermann Hesse

Episode 4 of Letting Go

GIOVANNI Ekwe mused as he walked to his room from the lecture hall. 

"Gosh! I miss my car. While walking is good for the body, driving my car would have stopped me from seeing these shameless girls hanging around me," he muttered underneath his breath. "Had it not been for those drunken b*stards trying to enact a live scenario of 'Fast and Furious' in the campus, cars wouldn't have been banned and I would be cruising to my room right now." He fumed.

"Gio, what's up?" Two girls greeted him but he ignored them and walked on. They hissed and walked past him. Gio continued ignoring the girls who greeted him but responded to the guys.

It was quite a distance from the lecture halls to the boys' hostels but Gio wasn't deterred. He made the journey everyday since the time cars were banned and he'd had to return his twenty-first year birthday gift from his dad back home-- a Toyota Camry Hybrid. A student had seriously gotten hurt when a group of boys decided to race down the smooth road to their hostels. Coupled with other near misses, the school authority had put their feet down in a meeting and an unanimous vote of stopping the students from driving cars in the school had been taken. Alternatively, shuttles had been provided to transport the students around the school. Gio had grudgingly started using the shuttles until he noticed that silly girls always found a way to sit beside him and try to chat him up. He'd made the decision of walking the long distance to his hostel when two sickos who called themselves ladies had quarreled bitterly over who would sit beside him in the shuttle. Guys had been amused and some had even sang his praises but he'd been clearly disgusted. He had been glad to notice that some of the girls had been irritated at the show of shame by their sex. There was still hope for the female race.

He finally got to the block of buildings which housed the male students and walked to his own room on the second floor. There were about four more of such four-storeyed buildings for the male students. His roommate, Tosin Oladimeji, the son of a billionaire shipping magnate, smiled as he entered the room. Tosin, with ample flesh on his body but couldn't be called fat was all of six feet with a dark skin and striking features. Girls actually drooled when he smiled, revealing a beautiful set of teeth with a gap tooth. He walked with a limp due to an accident he had as a child but he had perfected the act of walking with it, that only very observant and meticulous people would notice it. Most people thought he was just one of those guys who walked with abnormal gaits all in the name of feeling funky. He was as noisy as Gio was quiet. Gio tolerated his loquacious ways while Tosin tolerated the former's mood swings. They didn't have the best relationship in the world but they were pretty good friends.

Gio dropped his backpack containing his laptop and books on his reading table beside the book shelf and went into the bathroom to pee without saying a word to his roommate. He walked back into the room after taking a leak and zipped up his Gucci trousers. He sauntered to the mini-refrigerator which was in every room in the hostels to get himself a drink. He walked back to his bed to sit after taking a gulp from the canned coke and cast dark eyes filled with fury on his closest friend.

Tosin smiled, aware of the cause of his friend's ire. The wrapped parcel he was holding in his hands, which he had just received on his roommate's behalf.

"This just came in for you," Tosin informed his friend, smiling. He lifted the parcel to his ear and shook it. "I wonder what it is this time around." 

Gio strode to his friend, grabbed the parcel and made a nice shot with it at their waste bin. The weight of the parcel was however too much for the waste bin so it toppled over.

"What did you do that for? It could be a mobile phone," Tosin joked.

Gio finished his drink and tossed the can at the toppled waste bin also but the can bounced off towards his wardrobe. He grimaced and went to right the bin. He removed the parcel and dropped the empty can in it.

With a stern look on his face, he said, "Tosin, I've told you countless times to stop collecting parcels from dumb girls on my behalf. You know I don't like such things. Now, what am I going to do with this?"

Tosin laughed heartily. "It wasn't my fault this time around. Chuks in Room 20 brought it. A gift from his cousin."

Gio groaned.

"Do you know his cousin?" Tosin asked.

"Nope. Don't care to know. Why can't they all leave me alone?" He was at his thether's end.

His roommate chuckled. "Ah...lemme see." Tosin pretended to think and rubbed his hand across his clean-shaven jaw. "You're the son of a senator, you're rich...not to mention drop dead gorgeous...an Italian citizen...yes, hot cake and hard to get also. Put all that together and what girl wouldn't lose her head over you?"

Gio threw up his hands in exasperation. "You're incorrigible."

He walked to the door and opened it. He thrust the parcel into the unsuspecting hands of the first guy who came along and told him to keep it. It was already a known fact in the male hostels that Gio received numerous gifts from girls and gave them out also. 

He breathed a sigh of relief and went to lie on his bed with his hands folded behind his head. He stared at the ceiling.

Tosin studied his friend intently and wondered for the umpteenth time what made him tick. Gio was naturally cold to people, with an exception of his family and friends; the few ones he had. They had been friends since their first year in the university owing to the fact that they had been placed in the same room and were coursemates. They were in their third year yet he still didn't understand his friend. He didn't even understand the pull he had with girls because left for him, had he been a girl, he would have avoided Gio like a plague yet girls still chased him. It was amazing! He couldn't complain about that though because he had a number of girls who had drawn close to him in an effort to get him to talk to Gio on their behalf and they were willing to do anything, anything just to get him. 

It was unfortunate the school authorities didn't allow males to visit the girls in their hostels and vice versa, else he would have been a regular visitor there. Even leaving the school wasn't allowed without informing the school authorities. And permission to leave the school was only granted on emergencies. It however had not been like that at the inception of the school. Students usually did what made the school authorites ban things or cage them. At first, one was free to come and go as he or she pleased but students took advantage of that by going to Owerri to hold wild parties and get into trouble with the law. The school authorities had to be called a number of times to bail their students from police stations. As if that wasn't bad enough, students started getting missing. After a parent sued the school for millions of naira for his missing daughter, the school put its foot down and locked the students in. Now leaving the school was at the consent of both the school authorities and the parents. Even visiting of opposite-sex hostels had been banned because of rape incidents and orgies. The raging hormones of the youths were usually hard to contain. The school however provided every luxury or attraction that was outside the school for the students in the wide expanse of land. They had cinemas, restaurants, gyms, sports centres, picnic fields, to name a few, just to stop the students from longing for pleasures of the outside world. They were allowed birthday parties and the likes and at the end of every session, they held concerts where famous artists were invited to entertain them. But students being students; they still complained bitterly about their lack of freedom of movement. However, they found a way to let off steam when they wanted to. There were a lot of hidden places in the school. 

Tosin smiled as he remembered the rendezvous he had planned that night with a first year student. They were the most desperate and he capitalized on it.

His musings came to a stop when he heard Gio murmuring. He gazed at his friend intently. Gio was fond of talking to himself. When he had first noticed it, it had been pretty scary and had thought Gio had gone off his rocker but he eventually got used to it. Whenever he asked him why he always talked to himself, his roommate always denied it. He never had the nerve to press on because Gio could shut down on anyone in a matter of seconds or cut someone dead with a single word. Tosin felt he had to take the risk though and if Gio turned cold, he would go to their neighbour's room until the latter cooled down or better put, warmed up.

"Gio," he began after clearing his throat.

Only Gio's eyes moved to look at him.

"I've asked you this question a number of times but always receive unsatisfactory answers. This time around, I want the truth. Why...why do you talk to yourself?"

Gio looked at him as if he was going bananas, then he smiled.

"I don't talk to myself," came the noiseless reply.

"You do! I noticed it since our first year here." Tosin insisted.

Gio smiled charmingly. "Tosin, I don't talk to myself."

"Really? But you were doing exactly that a minute ago," Tosin pressed.

Gio sighed conceedingly and sat up on the bed to study his friend coolly.

Wasn't it high time he told his friend the truth? Gio asked himself. Would Tosin understand? Wouldn't he brand him insane? Was he mature enough to handle the truth? In for a penny, in for a pound.

"I don't talk to myself. I talk to Giordano."

Tosin froze.

"But...but...Dano is dead."

Gio nodded slowly. He knew Tosin wouldn't understand. He wouldn't understand the fact that he saw, spoke to and listened to his twin's ghost. How would he explain to his friend that Dano wasn't dead to him because he'd been communicating with him even before he was laid to rest? And while the doctors thought he had a case of Schizophrenia, he was really talking to his dead brother and had done so for the past four years.

His countenance changed. He was saddened by the fact that after three years of friendship with his roommate, he couldn't share his darkest secret with him. The last time he had shared his secret with anyone, he'd found himself locked up in a pychiatric hospital for a year.

Gio lifted a shoulder. "At the risk of sounding like a nut case, I talk to him as if he were alive. It's the only thing that keeps me sane in this crazy world."

Tosin breathed out in relief. He didn't want to be the one to call Gio's father to inform him his son had serious psychological issues.

Gio stared at his friend. He was glad he had chosen his words carefully. Tosin would really have freaked out had he told him the truth.

"You scared me for a minute there." Tosin laughed with unease. "I thought you meant you actually communicate with Dano. Thank God you only conjure him in your mind and talk to him...but is that healthy? Isn't that like living in an imaginary world? How do you differentiate between imagination and reality?"

Gio laid on the bed again. 

"I only talk to him when I'm alone. Sometimes I want to talk to him in public but the fear of being tagged crazy stops us...I mean me. Though I'm beginning to think it might be a good idea, to get those girls off my back. Loony boy equals runaway girls." He chuckled.

Tosin laughed. "Please don't do that. I wouldn't want to have to request to be moved to another room. We have been living amicably since we came to this school."

"Yep, and you've enjoyed a fair share of girls trying to get me," Gio said, tongue in cheek.

Tosin grinned and shrugged nonchalantly. "You can't blame me for that though."

Gio stared at the ceiling.

Tosin cleared his throat. "I've been thinking. Why don't you just accept one of those bimbos as your girlfriend? The rest will definitely back off."

His roommate dealt him an incredulous glance. "Are you for serious?" Tosin shrugged with a silly look on his face. Gio frowned. "I'm not interested in a relationship right now. Besides, they'd only look for ways to split us. I don't have the time nor patience for that kinda drama, cat fights and all that shi*t."

"Suit yourself but I think--" Tosin was cut off as they heard a commotion outside. 

Tosin sprang up, rushed to the door and went out while Gio took his IPhone 3GS to play a game. Tosin came back awhile later shaking his head and laughing like a guy who'd just been entertained by Basketmouth.

"These snooty rich kids are pretty hilarious." He sat down heavily on the bed and his six-foot frame shook with mirth. He knew not to waste his time waiting for Gio to ask him what the commotion was all about because the latter wasn't a tad interested in gossip. So he volunteered the info willingly.

"It was that same Chuks who brought that gift and his roommate fighting. You can't begin to fathom what caused the fight. They were discussing the latest Forbes list of richest men in the world when they started arguing. The argument later changed to their fathers; who is richer? That was what caused the fight. They have both been taken to the clinic 'cause blood flowed. Fortunately, no one called security. They would have been in deep sh*t by now."

Gio scoffed. "Fools! Arguing about their dad's wealth. Pitiful! That's the height of stupidity. If their dads were to go bankrupt now, what next? That's one of the reasons I hate this school. It's a total waste of time for some people here. They are just here to get a degree; then they'd go back home to sit on their a**es all day to wait for their fathers' death to inherit millions. They do not teach us to be self-made millionaires!"

Tosin was astounded at his friend's outburst. Gio usually took the silent way out, often shrugging annoyingly. He had expected such a usual reply not an outburst.

"Wow!" Tosin said. "I hope you haven't categorized me among those people."

Gio moved his eyes from the game and surveyed his friend steadily. You must judge a man by the work of his hands.

"Aren't you planning on joining your dad's shipping company after your youth service?"

Tosin became defensive. 

"Yes! What's wrong with that?" He intoned coldly.

Gio shrugged. "Nothing. As far as you don't change your mind and sit all day at home waiting for his death and will. But tell me something though," Gio sat up. "Why are you here studying mathematics?"

"Beacuse I love mathematics. It's my passion," Tosin slammed back at him with angry emphasis.

Gio's shoulders rose and fell in a nonchalant shrug. "OK. So what has mathematics got to do with your father's company?"

Tosin was disconcerted for a minute. "I plan on being his Company Accountant."

"You should have gone into applied mathematics like me or accountancy."

"You're just saying this because your dad is a senator not a buisnessman," Tosin countered impatiently.

Gio's gorgeous mouth quirked. "Had my dad been Bill Gates, I would still strive to make a name for myself; be greater than my father. I intend letting my freak flag fly instead of sailing through life."

Tosin nodded in understanding. "I can take my dad's company to heights it has never been with new innovations and stuff."

"Now, that's the spirit! Good for you! We really should stop waiting for what our parents or country can do for us and start using the brain God gave us," Gio commented with growling satisfaction.

"Yeah, rightly said from someone born rich," Tosin sarcastically replied.

"I mean business. My heart's cry is I wish I'd been born poor."

Tosin's eyebrows rose in disbelief.

"Yes," Gio stabbed a finger at his close-cropped hair, "then my brain usage wouldn't be limited and my focus wouldn't be on my father's wealth. I would be striving for ways to make money, be very creative--which I'm doing--and girls wouldn't be chasing me left, right, and centre."

"I'm really beginning to think you're crazy. Not to have the luxuries and pleasures of life? To have to think of where your next meal would come from and all that. I did a charity project with a group in church and the poverty I saw made me thank God he gave me a wealthy father." He cringed at the memory.

Tosin's comment aroused laughter in his roommate.

"And you like the fact that your life is no longer private? That every slight mistake you make is made known to the public by desperate reporters? And that you are ensconced in this private university instead of a federal or state university where you experience real life?"

Tosin moved a shoulder nonchalantly. "I know my life isn't perfect but I'm grateful I don't have to go without."

"It sucks being rich," Gio murmured quietly.

There was silence between them until a rapid set of knocks sounded on their door. The guy to whom Gio had given the parcel burst into the room.

His face was flushed with excitement. "This is HTC Hero!" 

Gio looked at him with disinterest. Tosin smiled.

"Are you sure you don't want it?" The guy asked.

Gio shook his head slowly.

He grinned. "Men! Thanks a lot. I've been planning on how to get the phone. My dad cut my allowance because I had some academic issues so it was almost next to impossible getting it. Do you know this phone's camera is five megapixels?" he excitedly told them.

"Yes," Tosin answered.

"You're the man.....emmm, incase more gifts come that you don't want, I'm in Room 44." He made to leave but came back. "I almost forgot. Here's the romantic card that came with it. Her phone number and pictures are inside it."

"Please keep them but please let her know you got the gift and appreciate it. Thanks."

"Will do. See you guys later."

Tosin and Gio burst into laughter when the door closed quietly behind the guy filled with euphoria.

*To be continued*