I wake up in the middle of the night. My room is so black that I can only make out the door frame, because of the light bleeding in from the sitting room. The door is open a fraction; it has no bolt and can't be locked.
I hear the noise of voices disrupting the late night's delicate noiselessness. I creep closer to the brightness and I hear Mumsi on the phone, laughing. Laughing at what whoever is on the line is saying. At two effing thirty O'clock in the morning. I go back to bed, close my eyes, and try to catch some shut eye. I don't catch a single wink. Turns out it is not possible to sleep with my mother giggling in the room next door, like a teen girl in secondary school. I remain painfully aware of her glee, till I can't anymore.
I fish around the head of my bed, take my phone and switch it on. There's like two hundred texts, a hundred audios, and stickers lining the walls of my DM from Men Dem alone. Since Amanda was added to the group chat it
"Amanda get dressed. We are going out." Dad says. He's standing in my door way fully dressed. That string of English words that scatters my plans for the entire evening—which include lying in bed, a dogeared novel in my lap, smiling at pictures on my phone and letting YouTube suck up my data with a straw. Having a parent like mine is always difficult, because except when he's extremely happy—which occurs every five blue-moons—he always sounds the same: at the very brink of grumpy. It's hard to gauge his mode. I dress up quickly, struggle into my pocketless jeans that has become firmer around my thighs in the last month, slip my feet into slippers and leave hurriedly. Dad is waiting for me in the dining room, on one the onyx-black dining chairs that is too small for his body. Yellow and cider glint on his neck. It seems he couldn't keep Mom tucked away for that long, eh."You are ready?" He asks. I am sure he's really a
Friday comes too soon.Why does friday come too soon? Apparently, because Friday is a rare chance for me to embarrass myself aka stutter on stage in front of the entire damned school.Chantelle breezes past me chasing someone in the hallway, barking threats. Abe, Ahmed and a few others are at the back drumming up some noise, rapping both terrible unworthy-to-be-heard lines and okay-lines. Chideziri is at the staff room; he always is on social-gathering Fridays. I asked why once. He only shrugged. Ishaq is braiding Chinonso's hair. It is more brown than black, the ends straight while those wooly strands at the roots are curled stiffly.Mr Harrison—the Literature teacher's name if you were wondering—insisted that I'll be the person to represent the group after he'd heard only two of my poems.Yes. You got that correct.Me.Me, myself and I.Me, who doesn't know wh
It's finally Saturday.Which means I have to get to Amanda's house. Which means I have to get kitted up.She invited me over this weekend to hang out—and whoa, whoa, whoa. I know what you must be thinking. Don't even dream about it.I bring Chantelle along for security purposes; somebody who'll keep me in check. Someone who won't let things get out of hand. Amanda doesn't blink when she answers the door, acts like Chantelle was always in our day's agenda—which I immensely appreciate. She enfolds her in one of those full on girl-to-girl hugs which ordinarily should be awkward, but isn't. But she doesn't kiss me, although I know her Dad is supposed to out."Come in, come in." She says.You'd think us showing up in her crib is an everyday thing. We kick off our footwear on the porch and enter the house; Chantelle's Nikes, me, palm-slippers. It has been getting warmer these past few days, making November taste like m
Esther is the scrawny girl from poetry. She's in SS2 Art's class, and daily, she heys me when we cross paths.Her teeth are crooked like mine, her smile is crooked like mine. But with gaping spaces between one tooth and the other; unlike mine."Senior, have you written anything new?" She always says.I think she already knows that I have, and that I am writing another.Cyril too, winks at me during combined Maths and English classes. And when he catches me aloof, penning a poem or some other thing that pops up in my head at the hardcover of my note, he grins; as if we share a small secret.Nightly, Tonye sends voice notes to me. She's huge on spoken-word poetry and although her poems are spiel and boring in a Shakespearean-ish manner, I adore her voice. It is a violin—reedy and young and nectarous. I fall asleep to her most nights.Side Note: If Chideziri hears that...Mr Harrison—the li
The house is asleep. A graveyard that has cricking crickets for epitaphs, shadows for tombstones and silence in place of spirits.Everyone is asleep, too—everyone being me and Mumsi.I keep awake, counting the asbestos on the ceiling.One.Two.Three.Four.Five.Six.Seven.Eight.Nine. Ten...The result of napping in the day.Yellow light spills in from the hallway.The drowsy silence makes the creaking sound of a door in the hallway echo louder.Footsteps pat the floor. And I wonder, if like me, the person who own those footsteps couldn't sleep a wink. If that person, like me, has been counting the clock's tick-tocks hoping to fall asleep before dawn.The footsteps go down the passage, fading. I turn in bed and snuggle my pillow, sleep finally whispers to me. My bedsheets are hot with sw
"Are you sure you are fine?" I ask Chideziri. For the hundredth time. "Do you feel sick or anything? ""No." He says. Then he goes back to ignoring all of us.Chantelle presses a palm on his neck. He shieds away from it. She frowns deeply."Is it girl problems?" Abe asks. I know he can feel the searing heat of my glare on his profile.''Or is it your time of the month? Like menstruation."We all stop to look at him. Even Ahmed is dumbfounded he'd crack such a joke now.Chideziri actually half-smiles. He never does that when he's like this."Leave him alone. Before he'll enter Avatar state now and deal with everyone." Pascal says. Chewing on a football sized orange I can only guess he robbed off one of Little feats many trees."Not me," Chantelle says. "He's my baby.""Amanda, are you still sitting there?" Abe jokes.I snort. I'm not scared of Chideziri and Chantelle'
Because we need a break in transmission, I invite everyone over to my house, Saturday, instead of Pascal's.Everyone being the squad.But first I'm supposed to meet Chantelle at the market. Tank market.She's standing beneath a squat billboard, relaxed on the mast when I see her.She beams at me; stark white teeth and unusual deep purple gums."Hey. You got here earlier than me. What was chasing you from your house?" I say.No answer.She's on earphones beneath the hoodie, and it's only when I get really close to her that I notice the almost imperceptible bop of her head."What took you so long?" She yells. I can hear the music from the earphones, loud and hip-hoppy."State matters." I joke.Again, she yells, "What?"This time she takes off the sound-impending earbuds out. Though reluctantly."Do you need a megaphone, or will a mic do?
"Wetin dey sup with your people na. Where are they?" Tobi says, on Saturday evening, when he bursts into the house unannounced, looking mad stressed.By my people, he means our parents.He's obviously in the dark, so first, I tell him, "There's rice and stew in the kitchen, but you may need to warm the stew."He will need food in his stomach when I break it down.Then I tell him, while he's wolfing down rice and cold stew. He was too hungry to wait, I think.I tell him everything.How hot and damp and sweaty we were.How stunned I was a hour after we had been at the station, blue and black uniforms flaunting past.How all the police did was make Daddy hand over the spare keys he had, and how with a musty weed smelling breath and wearing Awolowo-spectacles, the D.P.O said to Mumsi,Madam, are you sure you want to file this complaint. Why don't you go home with your hus