Beauty For Ashes (Chapter 3, Part B)

‘Hi! Lisa, how are you this morning?’ I asked.
‘Leave me alone,’ Lisa bellowed.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ventured.
‘Would you just leave me alone?’ she said in a surly manner, her eyes red in rage.
‘What did I do?’ Why are you so angry?’ I asked in bewilderment.
‘Why can’t you just go? Traitor!’ This was too much. I would have lashed at her but my self-control took a better part of me. My day had been rough and... Now this? I had thought. I stood still, staring at her. ‘You are a ser...’ She stopped. Lisa had wanted to call me a serpent! She would have been hurling insults at me but for her sweet nature. This went to show how enraged she was. I walked to my seat completely confused. In the midst of my utter confusion, my seatmate, Hannah tapped me gently and told me that she knew the cause of Lisa’s anger.
Hannah had always been nice to me although she was a friend of Nkechi. Or so I thought. Nkechi always had many girls hovering around her. They were like a clique with Nkechi as the queen. She had attracted some of them with little gifts such as chocolate, candies, cookies, etc. She was also admired for her elegance. She had a slim body frame, the perfect figure and beautiful skin. She was tall with straight legs with which she had learnt to catwalk. Her face was masterfully curved and her hair was long. But for her two extra-large eyes, she would have been a perfect paragon of beauty. Another person that was held in high esteem by the girls was Lisa. She was indeed very beautiful (both inwardly and outwardly), charismatic and intelligent but the fact that she had no cash to throw about made Nkechi the most popular amongst them.
‘I hover around Nkechi but that doesn’t mean that I like her much. Let me tell you why Lisa is mad at you,’ Hannah said in a half-whisper.
‘Please do,’ I said almost immediately.
‘Nkechi and her friend, Tonia put up a plan to shatter the friendship between you and Lisa.’ Tonia was Nkechi’s shadow. I had never met two friends so alike in character. As the story goes, they had been friends since Junior Secondary School  1 and even now in SSS 1, they were inseparable.
She continued after a brief silence, ‘They decided to poison Lisa’s mind with lies by telling her you said that she and her family are as poor as church mice. They said that you pointed out that while her mates take assorted drinks, she makes do with just sachet water. I was there when Nkechi was discussing the plan with Tonia. She believed I wouldn’t spill the milk being her friend.
‘But I didn’t say anything like that,’ I muttered, quite amazed.
‘This goes to show how devilish Nkechi is,’ Hannah said.
‘Why then are you a friend of hers?’ I asked curiously.
‘Oh! Most of the girls you see clinging to her do so because of money and the gifts she throws around.’
‘What do I do now? Lisa is extremely angry and won’t listen to anything I have to say,’ I complained.
‘All right, friend. I will help you speak to her after she has calmed down a bit.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, still amazed at her sweetness.