CHAPTER TWO

The lecture hall door closed behind me.

The noise of the corridor swallowed me up away. Students were moving in every direction, voices everywhere, bags dragging against shoulders. I kept walking through it all without being part of it.

My hand was still in my cardigan pocket.

The note was still there.

I wasn't thinking about throwing it or keeping it. My fingers just kept finding it like my tongue finds a tooth. Not on purpose. Just because it was there.

Love is coming.

His handwriting was neat and sharp. It was the kind of handwriting that didn't waste any movement. Every letter was where it was supposed to be.

I didn't get him.

That bothered me more than the note itself.

I pushed through the side exit. Stepped outside. The air was cooler here. I pulled my cardigan tighter with my hand and kept walking.

His voice was still in my head.

It starts, gets louder. Then fades away.

I turned the corner onto the road that led away from campus. The buildings got smaller as I walked. The streets got narrower. It took fourteen minutes on foot to get from school to my real life. I had counted once without realizing it.

I walked all fourteen minutes with him on my mind.

The way he wrote ILLUSION under LOVE like it was a done deal. Like the argument was already over before I even opened my mouth. The way he looked at me when I pushed back. Not angry, just watching. Like I was doing something he hadn't seen before.

“Yet you are here alone.” That moment kept repeating in my head.

I stopped walking for a second.

Then I kept moving.

He saw me for one hour and thought that was enough to know everything about me.

My street looked the same way it always did. Like it had never heard of Crestfield University and did not care to.

The door to my room did not lock properly anymore. The door did what it always did. I lifted it slightly, pushed at the same time, and it gave way. If you did not know that trick you could stand outside rattling it for five minutes and it would not move. I had stopped thinking about it. My hands just knew.

Inside, one bulb hung from the corridor ceiling. It flickered when I walked too heavily. I had stopped looking up at it.

My room was the second door on the left.

I pushed it open and stood in the doorway for a second.

Everything was exactly where I had left it. That is the thing about not owning much. Nothing moves. Nothing changes. Nothing surprises you.

My mattress sat on the floor against the wall, a thin cloth spread over it doing the job of both sheet and blanket without being asked. My clothes hung on three nails I had pressed into the wall myself. A dress, another dress, my trousers, my wrapper for the nights the cold crept in under the door.

That was it.

The room was not small. It was spacious. Plenty of room for everything I owned and still enough silence left over to feel the emptiness.

No table. No chair. No shelf.

My books were piled in the corner beside the mattress. Edges soft from carrying. Pages soft from being opened too many times

I sat on the mattress and pulled off my shoes. There was a water stain on the ceiling. I had stared at it so many times I had stopped seeing it.

I reached into my cardigan pocket. Touched the note once more.

Then I let it go.

I leaned back and closed my eyes.

Just five minutes. That was all I needed.

My phone buzzed.

I ignored it.

It buzzed again.

I reached for it on the floor beside the mattress. The screen had a crack running from the top left corner all the way down, splitting the display into two uneven halves. The touch stopped responding on the right side two months ago. I had learned to manage with the left.

I tilted the screen and read the message.

My eyes stopped moving.

I read it again.

It was from the university finance office. The kind of message that did not use soft words. Outstanding tuition balance. Final reminder. If payment was not received within thirty days enrollment status would be affected.

Thirty days.

I sat up slowly.

Adrian Cole disappeared from my thoughts completely. The note. The lecture. The word ILLUSION on the board. All of it gone like it had never been there.

Just the number on the cracked screen. Just thirty days. Just the sound of my own breathing in a small quiet room.

I sat with it for a moment.

Then I stood up.

I took off my cardigan and hung it back on its nail on the wall. Smoothed it flat the way I always did.

The note was still in the pocket.

I did not take it out.

I changed into my house clothes. An old dress, washed so many times the colour had softened into something quieter than it used to be.

I picked up my braiding bag from the corner. A worn black bag with two broken zip teeth that I held together with a safety pin. Inside, my combs, my thread, my clips, everything arranged the way I liked it, everything exactly where my hands knew to find it without looking.

I checked the time on my phone.

If I left now I could cover three streets before dark.

I left.

The first house said they would call me back.

They did not call me back.

In the second house, a woman came to the door with a child on her hip and looked at my bag and said she had just done her hair.

In the third house, a girl about my age opened the door before I finished knocking. She needed her hair braided. She sat me down in the corridor outside her room. I worked for two hours and twenty minutes. My fingers are moving without stopping. My back begins to ache somewhere around the one hour mark.

When I finished she looked in the mirror for a long time.

Then she opened her purse.

What she put in my hand was not what we had agreed.

I looked down at it.

I looked up at her.

She was already turning away.

“That is what I have,” she said, like the conversation was already over.

I stood there for a moment. My braiding bag on my shoulder. The money in my hand. Less than half of what the work was worth. Less than half of two hours and twenty minutes. Less than half of the ache still sitting in my lower back.

I said nothing.

I put the money in my pocket and walked back down the corridor and out into the evening air.

I stood outside on the street.

The bright sky had gone, it was soon turning dark. The kind of evening that does not comfort you. The kind that just watches.

I counted the money once. Then again.

Same amount both times.

I started walking home.

I passed a food stall on the corner of my street. The smell reached me before I saw it. Something warm and oiled and real. My stomach moved toward it before I did.

I stopped walking.

I looked at the stall. Then down at the money in my hand.

I did the calculation the way I always did. Quick and quiet and brutal.

If I spent anything here the amount became smaller. The number was already too small. The amount needed to be bigger, not smaller.

I walked past the stall.

I did not look back at it.

My room was exactly as I had left it.

I set my braiding bag down. Sat on the mattress. Took off my shoes and set them by the door the way I always did even though there was nowhere to go and no one to keep the space tidy for.

I was hungry in the way that had stopped being urgent and become something quieter. A low steady presence that I had learned to negotiate with.

I reached into my storage containers and pulled out a small tin. Inside was a plastic bag of gari and a small container of water. I poured some into a cup. Added the water. Sat and drank it slowly in the dark.

No taste. No warmth. Just something to fill the space.

I finished it.

Set the cup down.

Reached for my textbook and opened it across my lap.

The torchlight was on the floor beside me. I clicked it on. The beam came out thin and yellowish, the kind of light that tries its best and still falls short. The batteries were dying. I had known that for a week. New batteries cost money. Money was what the finance email had reminded me I did not have enough of.

I tilted the page toward the light.

I read.

The words made sense for a while. Then they began to slide. My eyes moved across the lines but the meaning stopped arriving. My head dipped once. I pulled it back up. Dipped again.

The torchlight flickered.

I did not notice.

My hand loosened around the textbook.

My eyes closed.

I did not decide to sleep. Sleep just came in quietly and took me without asking.

Something woke me.

Not a sound. A feeling. The kind that pulls you up from the bottom of sleep before you understand why.

I lifted my head. The torchlight was still on but barely. Just a faint orange glow that lit almost nothing. My textbook had fallen sideways across my leg. The room was cold now. Properly cold.

I did not move for a moment.

Then I saw it.

A piece of paper. White. Folded once. Pushed halfway under my door.

I stared at it.

I got up slowly. Crossed the room. Crouched down and picked it up.

I unfolded it.

My landlord’s handwriting was large and uneven. He pressed too hard with his pen. The words went slightly uphill on the right side.

One month. Pay or leave.

I read it twice.

Then I stood up straight.

The torchlight behind me flickered once. Then went out completely.

I stood in the dark holding the paper.

Outside a motorbike passed. Someone laughed somewhere above me. The building made its usual sound, old and settling and indifferent.

I folded the paper slowly.

Sat back down on the mattress.

The dark was complete now. No light from anywhere.

I sat inside it and did not cry.

Not yet.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​