When I first met Rose, we had just moved to a new neighbourhood. I was walking home from school with an air of self-importance when she stopped in the middle of the road and wouldn’t let me pass. 

If this incident had occurred two weeks before, I would have started a bloodbath. But it occurred at a time when I had come to the realisation that when you’re so tiny that you are a mere composition of bones, it doesn’t help to have a temper that is as short as a sneeze.

In the past, whenever I was provoked, I started fights. The retaliation was always brutal. The last fight, the one that changed my outlook on fights, ended when my rival held me down and force-fed me chewing gum that had evidently collected all tribes of germs.

For weeks, I woke up from a recurring nightmare; that the germs from the gum were now big insects moving in my body. From then on, I sat myself down and came up with a new strategy; I would be light on my feet. And instead of throwing punches, I would spit out venomous words.

So when Rose wouldn’t let me pass, I created a path and ran in it. I stopped for a minute to tell her that she was a repulsive creature who was bound for a miserable life. She was always waiting for me when I got back to school. I outpaced her each time and said more horrible things.

I was happy when her parents shipped her to boarding school. I wasn’t so happy when my parents sent me to the same boarding school two years later. She had been waiting for a chance to settle the score with me the whole time.

From the day she learnt of my presence till the day she was found pregnant and sent home, Rose made my life a living hell.

Instead of carrying out one grand act of vengeance like I thought and even hoped she would, the girl took time to compartmentalise her actions. She did quite a number of terrible things but it was the fear of not knowing what she would do next that ruined my days and gave me nightmares at night.

First, she poured urine in my bed and for a week, I was quarantined, along with the rest of the bed-wetters.

There was nothing as humiliating as taking my mattress out to dry every morning. Students always lined up in the corridor to applaud.

Next, she collected all manner of leaves, tied them to my bed and told everyone I was trying to bewitch them.

People politely declined when I offered snacks. Intercessors prayed for me until they were convinced I was rid of the devil. Only then did people start accepting my gestures of kindness.

By the time she left school, she had written a rejection letter on my behalf to a boy I was infatuated with, poured salt and pepper in my bottle of juice and poured ink on my school uniform.

I was curious to know why her revenge was so thorough. She taught me a valuable lesson; that words are the most lethal weapon.

It started to make sense why my resolution to use ‘venomous words’ as defense mechanism resulted in harsher reactions. My short temper was cured and if ever I was in danger of a brawl, I just took to my heels.