David:
I once stole.
Not a pencil or a coin.
No — I stole something far worse.
I stole someone's place in the light.
It was Form 3. Third term. I remember because it was hot, and the rains had not yet come. The trees outside the dining hall had turned the colour of old bruises, and the air inside the hostel was too thick to breathe easily.
I had a classmate, Simba.
He was good.
Not perfect, no.
But genuinely good.
Quiet. Generous. Devout.
He read Psalms in the morning and wrote his mother letters every Sunday afternoon.
He was also smart. Smarter than me.
We were both up for a school award — the kind that opens doors to scholarships and prestige. "Junior Prefect of the Year," they called it. I didn't care much for the title. But I cared for what it meant: recognition. Belonging. Power.
It was Simba who had the better record.
Simba who everyone assumed would win.
But Simba had a weakness. He was too trusting.
And I… well, I had started learning the ways of this world.
The power of rumor.
The seduction of silence
One night, someone whispered to me that Simba had once forged a sick note to miss a test. It was a rumor, nothing more. A grain of gossip in the storm that is high school.
But I planted it.
In the right ear.
Of the right prefect.
At the right time.
I never said, "Simba cheated."
I said, "I heard something… I don't know if it's true."
That was all it took.
By the end of that week, Simba was no longer a candidate. He was "disqualified quietly due to irregularities." I, David, became the Junior Prefect of the Year.
The next time I saw Simba in the library, he greeted me with a smile and said, "Congratulations, man. You deserved it."
And I smiled back.
I still remember how I couldn't meet his eyes.
---
David (staring out a window):
The world never knew. Joe never knew.
But Simba… I think he did.
And he forgave me anyway.
---
Adrian (quietly):
"You never told anyone?"
---
David:
I couldn't. I wasn't ready to hate myself that deeply.
Not then.
That award got me into competitions, into programs — into rooms I would never have walked into otherwise.
And yet, every certificate I ever earned from that moment…
was stained with his name.
I became David, the boy they praised.
The one they trusted.
The one they said had a gift.
But that gift was born in shadows.
---
David (to Adrian):
That's why I listen. That's why I keep secrets.
Because once, I weaponized a whisper and it shattered a future that wasn't mine to break.
So the next time you ask why I never trust praise —
why I always seem to run from titles, honours, attention…
…it's because I know the price of wearing a crown I didn't earn.
---