Deborah had never owned a phone. Not even a small one. In SS3, while her classmates scrolled through TikTok and formed WhatsApp groups to share expo, she borrowed textbooks wherever she could and read by torchlight.

Her mother sold boiled groundnuts by the roadside. Rain or sun, she was there. Every night, she’d return with soaked wrappers and tired hands, but still asked, “You read today?”

One week to WAEC, her mother came home with a small box wrapped in nylon.

“A phone?” Deborah gasped.

“It’s small, but it can do Google,” Mama smiled. “You need it now.”

It was a used Tecno Pop. Cracked screen. Slow. But it connected.

Deborah used it like treasure—watched YouTube tutorials, joined a free WhatsApp study group, Googled things her teachers skipped. Every time it lagged, she whispered, “Please, just one more past question.”

Then, two nights before her Literature paper, her mother didn’t come home.

She was hit by a danfo while crossing the express.

Deborah found the phone the next morning, still warm under her pillow.

She wanted to break it. To throw it. To scream. But something held her.

That night, it rang.

The number was “Private.”

She picked.

A voice—low, familiar—whispered: “My daughter… don’t stop. You hear? I didn’t come this far for you to drop now. Read that book. Answer that question. Pass that exam. You carry my name.”

The line went dead.

She stared at the screen, tears burning her eyes. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe not.

But she opened The Tempest and read till dawn.

WAEC came. She wrote like her life depended on it—because it did.

Months later, her result came out: 9 A’s.

At the café, she looked at Mama’s cracked phone one last time and whispered, “We made it.”

It buzzed once. No caller. Just a flash on the screen:

“Proud of you.”

She smiled.

She believed it.