Truth comes out on a Wednesday night, glaring and jarring. Like a wave of full brightness at 4am when sleep is at its sweetest. It washes over me in a tide, and it is terribly soothing.
*
Pascal hits my DM up while I'm texting Chantelle.
Pascal: Brother man, afa?
I text back: G, wetin dey sup?
Very unlike Pascal , the texted reply comes in almost immediately: Chidi, plenty things. Plenty things.
Me, not slightly as alarmed as I should have been: Wetin happen na.
Pascal : Guy, show. I dey outside una hauz. Under that palm tree.
The bloody palm tree.
Why is everyone attracted to it?
Outside, he is hyperactive, eyes alight, pacing back and forth. He pauses as soon as he sees me, as if he's trying not to scare me further. It backfires.
"Guy what happened? This suspense is killing me."
He starts to answer me, then he stops. "Wait..." he mumbles
Immediately I put my phone on on Thursday morning there's six texts from Chideziri waiting for me. On my SIM, not social media where I could have missed them.That's heavy. That smells like trouble and its big brother.I sweep through them, each one telling me to lay low and meet him at school, first thing in the morning, and that if my Dad asked any weird questions I shouldn't even bother to play dumb, because he already knows about us. I return the call, it goes through, but no one picks the phone up.Chideziri's waiting for me by the side of a brick layered pillar when I get there. He snatches up my hand and drags me along the corridor, past SS1 Block, SS2,and then SS3 to the back. The back of the senior secondary block is quiet mostly. It's more of a fence than a backyard, with fancy holes letting in pockets of rays into the school. It's Little feats' hot spot, obviously. Writings cover the interiors, splayed across bricks like webs. Giant
She said it.She said those words that I've been craving since the days of John the Baptist. That three worded sentence that contains the entirety of what life means in its alphabets.A kinder part of me goes soft, gummy soggy soft. In that squishinesses inside of me that needs attention, that needed to hear those words sooner. Still, to most of me the words have no meaning. Just a sentence thrown in the air. And because most of me is still very hopping mad, and most of me owns my will;Most of me walks away.*Young,we were butterflies in a meadow,fluttering,meandering,seeking out the Sunniest petals,dreaming beyond the trees—Amanda.
We see.We see each other each day. We walk past each other every day. In classes, in the hallways, on Whatsapp statuses, on the field when he's chasing a ball and I'm running. I almost waved at him once, like normal. Only this time, nothing's normal.What does "normal" even mean, without Chideziri? I certainly am not the She you want to be asking that question.Running: the only thing that keeps me sane nowadays, the only time I actually begin to feel complete. When I am sprinting, I am well aware of the fact that the next probable collision will only be between me and the ground. That is safer than anything I can ask for. Running, till my lungs are heaving, ready to give out and my knees feels like jellyfish.Now, Chantalle is the only person that still talks to me. She was there the last time I nearly collapsed on the field. I keeled over, gasped and struggled for breath until I got some and when I looked heavenward, she was the
November legit tries to wash us away, to clean the slate.Like, I mean, you would think after October's being a teeny bit sunny that November will be dry. That it would be the actual beginning of the Dry season.But nope.It drizzles and drizzles and drizzles...and drizzles. And when it isn't drizzling, the heavens are trying fall down in a tsunami. I won't say it's not possible, with all of how damaged this year has been.The nightmares have started again, too. And as if to make matters much worse they come whenever they fucking please. At home. In school. Walking to the store near the house. I was just strolling and—boom—it all goes dark, I hear the chatter of pidgin on the stereo, the wipe-wipe sound of the wipers sloshing water away from the glass, smell a mist of candy spray in the car, seconds before the hit. It's almost like I black out. They are a vortex, sucking me into that fractured world of replayed drive-by
Everything happens in slow-motion.These days even the clock ticks at snail-pace, as if the seconds are sauntering by, trying to be noticed. There are the minutes within the minutes within the real minutes where I miss Amanda. Then there are the minutes when I realize what I am imagining: us, at the river, inside its mirror green stream splashing, giggling, loving. And I am shoving my way out of reality into another portal where I'm hating on her. I hate that reality upon the fact that it is the reality that I wish it was the realest. She could have just bloody told me. But no. Boils down to the fact that nobody tells me a thing around her, nobody trust me with the smallest things. I sit on the house's low fence, Duncan mighty's Fake love stuffed into my ears. I have had it on repeat all week. The music is the only thing that keeps me from snapping, from asking—no, from demanding answers. I try and try not to snap. Fate has never really had my best interests in mi
When Tobi wakes up, it is barely dawn outside but I've been up hours before, listening to the song of crickets and all those other early morning insects we really can't identify, chirp away.He yawns, stretches in his big hoodie he worn at midnight because at some point in the course of the night the cold became too cold. Blood dampening cold which seems to drip out of the soaked walls and seep into one's spirits. Me, I was feeling very defiant—I have been lately, no inkling why—so I dozed off in my singlets and trunks; which is why I am so feverish.Tobi smiles to himself, eyes closed. I cannot fathom what is so amusing until he rolls on to his bed toward mine, then blows a hot mouthful of morning breath my way."Gooooooooood!" I curse. "Phommmmmmmm!"He laughs and flops back on his bed.Typical Tobi, making a prank out of everything. Once he put tack nails on the Sunday school teacher's chair. It's a mira
I dial Amanda's line, lying on the fur rug in the centre of the sitting room. She doesn't pick up, but seconds after the first call, a text makes my phone chime.Amanda: HeyAmanda:YouI type: I wanted to say I am sorr—I delete the entire text, re-text: Can we talk—Delete, again.Eventually, I settle for: Wassup.She doesn't reply for such a long time I begin to imagine she's ignoring me, texting others. It turns my tummy, even though I will never admit to jealously.Then, it appears, a pop up on my screen: The sky, chideziri, the sky.What I have to say is too heavy for a text message, so I opt for the closest remedy; voice note. I speak hurriedly, before my courage fluctuates.I say: I was wondering if we could...meet up? And hash out a few things we have to...At the river?The typing notification shows on her profile and I get the abst
It's later into the evening that when we went previously to see the water.The sun is slowly on its way to bed, blacking out of the sky. Soon there will be no trace of its existence, only a scar of pink where there once was a beam. The clouds already look lonely without the Sun.Chideziri meets me at Oro-igwe junction, near where the mallam sells biscuits, cigars, bracelets, anklets, anything legally tradeable, anything not, too. There's two men sitting in front of the shop playing cards, an Olamide song effusing from the corner. They stop to stare at Chideziri and I, at our awkward meeting, because when we meet up we obviously don't know to do, how to react whether to hug, shake hands, smile at each other, do all of the preceding. We settle for a handshake, but any drunk walking by can see that we aren't acquaintances, or casual friends. He keeps my hand in his palm, holds on softly for an extra, extra awkward milisecond. He opens his mouth to say somethin