"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
We walk home from school under the frying sun.Every flower that bloomed in the courtyard previously is either starting to wither or is already dead. Dead and dried and wrinkled in on themselves.Streets leading through the estate have been hard-baked to form cobblestones of some sort; dusty and cracked ground, hardened by the late November heat.PH-city— Port-Harcourt, I meant to say, has everything at the extreme.Everlasting rain that makes wearing completely dry clothes in the wet season a too-good-to-be-true dream, and heat in the dry season that could on a good day, roast corn.I get home and the gate isn't padlocked from outside as it is when Dad's travelled.I push the small door in and enter.Dad's black Toyota is parked in the courtyard, too close to the porch and angled weirldy as if he had to stop and jump out midway drifting, like in those Fast and furious films. The
Still dressed in school blazers and slacks, I head for the shop.I'm supposed to jump in and assist Mumsi go to Tank market to buy hair stuff, since she's always so busy.She isn't at the shop.Aunty Sade is.She's showing off her expertise on a customer who's ebony forelocks are speckled with grey. Another is waiting at the dark corner of the shop, her face lost in one of Aunty Sade's many fashion magazines.She only looks up to answer my greeting. And she is a he, as odd as that sounds.I wonder how he survived secondary school.Aunty Sade says Mumsi stepped out for an important meeting, leaving instructions that she won't be there long. She backs me the whole time so I can see her face in the mirror.It's lacking expression. As always.The fragile igbo accent she's picked up from years of working under Mumsi laces her sentences, inflecting her voice so that w
I check my phone for messages.There's no notification on the screen. At least, no useful notification. Just the expected barrage from Men dem and a reminder of lessons scheduled for ten o'clock at school.I sigh and slip the device into my pyjama's pocket.A perfectly ordinary morning.I go about doing my chores. Sweeping. Dusting. Washing and drying surfaces. A heavy layer of dust has coated the entire country by now.Chalkly spicy air which settles brown on our eyelashes, snuff-coloured brown.Brown film on the stretch of cars abandoned in that garage on the way to school, for-sale stickers pasted on them all.Brown breeze.Flowing browned-white kaftan on the mallam's body.The sun has already risen when Mumsi emerges, high up above cobalt cloudlessness. She's kept her door locked, bolted from the inside since the police station.The police station; th
"Abraham, you are deranged! Completely! There is no going back for you." Pascal bellows.You can tell that he's this close to knocking Abe out with the control-pad in his hand.Abe goes about ignoring him, whistling happily.Ahmed nurses his thoroughly beat-up head. He earned it cheating Abe to win the third round of a Mortal kombat match they both played.Abe took up the nearest throw-pillow and proceeded to pound him into a brown-out. Then Chideziri stepped in and it became a world-war.There are tufts of white pillow foam strewn around the house. Pieces of white on the Dining table, all over the couches, trailing the courtyard cramped full of old electronics— they even took the brawl to the toilet.Chideziri's perched on the glass centre table, drinking cool water from the fridge. His hair is a birds nest and holds more foam than the pillow Abe weaponized."You guys know that if Chantelle wa
CHIDEZIRI Even for December, it's an unusally chilly night. But that's probably stemming from the unsaid fact that I wore beach-party-worthy clothes to an evening party. Sleeveless tee and tracksuit trousers, because of the heat. I regretted the decision immediately I stepped out of the house's warmth. I'd forgotten how antonymous December days are from the nights in the Harmattan. Blazing hot days and bleeding cold nights. As soon as I arrived, Abe pointed out my track trousers and sleeveless, joking that this wasn't the Olympics but a 'bash'. Point noted. And yes, another party. Since after we broke the news of Amanda's imminent departure, nothing was the same. Amanda's become quite the celebrity at school with her carefreeness, her poems and easy nature with answers in a test hall, so everyone's feeling the loss, even before it has happened.
Amanda "You want something to drink? My throat is parched with all this dancing we've been doing." Chantelle says out of nowhere while we are grooving . I nod in agreement. My throat is a pulsing, raw arid wasteland, too. I let her drag me through the crowd in the courtyard which is swelling by the minute, empty cup raised above her head and the crowd. The evening air is sweet, with lively music and jaunty voices. Dancing out in the open is therapeutic, it turns out. Somebody should have told me.Someone presses me closer to her and my arm sticks to hers, cool with fast drying sweat. "Girl, you are sweating like a pot of boiling water. You came ready to par-te! For real, for real." She swats my butt, and her signature smile-smirk is a torch in the night. She loves parties, like Abe. "I'm only trying to keep up with you." I say. &nbs