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Stay: Chideziri POV
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2021-06-15 01:16:27Late into the night, Abe hijacks the home theatre, links it to his bluetooth and plays Cole's Stay.
I asked him to. The loud bass is sweet music to my ears. I look over the crowd and there she is smiling to the music, too. As if she understands, as if she hears me.Amanda taught me about J.Cole. Then she taught me about love. And now...now she's leaving me with all that new knowledge.
It's tragic. It's Jack and Rose's retelling without the giant ship or the iceberg. It's the curtains falling before we are ready to stop dancing. It's us.
And it's beautiful however you look at it.Related chapters
She Belongs To The Sky Stay: Amanda POV
AMANDAStay.It booms through the speakers, deafening and delicate at once. People groan and curse at whoever changed the song.I look up and I'm perplexed to see Abe at the speakers—he gives me a thumbs up—and Chideziri manoeuvring his way down the staircase, hands in his pocket.He's beautiful.Not handsome. Not rough-and-tough good looking.Beautiful."Hey.""Hey you." I reply. "They don't seem to agree with our taste in music.""I thought you might want to listen to some J.Cole," he answers. "I wanted to.""Fuck them." is what he's actually saying. He knows it and I know it. We share a conspiratory smile.Tell me how am I supposed to leave this.~ The lady prosecutor—the one who looked as if she had never before spent a day of her life in a cell filled with mosquitoes and grumpy cell mates—called you a monster.
Last Updated : 2021-06-15She Belongs To The Sky Slipping Time: Chideziri POV
Finals are easy. Mostly.I was the first person out of the hall; the post-school tutoring paid off. That or I just failed the last paper of the term, and year. English. With 20 minutes extra time to go. A combined paper, so everybody wrote.Like most of my mates, Abe stumbles out, cross-eyed and confused, cursing the essay writing. Cursing the English teacher. Cursing Little feats."Write an essay arguing for or against the motion to legalize abortions in Nigeria, giving cogent reasons. And it carried 15 marks. Just fifteen." Abe sparks. He squeezes the offending exam sheet, balling it up in a fist."They are trying to kill us." I say for his benefit alone. Every year, since SS1, Mr Harrison, the Literature and English teacher pulls a stunt of the same nature. Debates. Essays. Short prose writing. Anything to make you "wear your thinking cap" as he puts it.And every single year Abe emerges from the hall, sweating, spewing hate
Last Updated : 2021-06-15She Belongs To The Sky Slipping Time: Amanda POV
"They are here!" The voice startles us.Abe. And the entire squad. They followed us."Lovebirds." Chantelle chimes.Pascal crows, "Chimaziri." grinning.They all are. That conspiratiory look kids have when they have done mischief and you just can't place a finger on what exactly it is they did."You are kidding me." flies out of my mouth.Chideziri groans, "Seriously?"Abe eyes us. "What? You want time alone to fornicate. Not happening. Not while I'm alive."Chantelle steps up to the edge of the plank, where we sit, and there is amazement in her face at the sight of the water."So this is where you guys stay. It a smart hiding place. It isn't too close to your house or his house. An in between."Abe makes to sit, but we are at the middle of the jetty, and the space is too small."Shift," he says. I groan."Shift, abeg."Half bent, he pauses, na
Last Updated : 2021-06-15She Belongs To The Sky Forget Not: Amanda POV
By the seventeenth day of December, Christmas has taken over the town. Soon red and white are the only two colours the world knows—how it always happens this time each year.Plastic hollies and mistletoes hang from porches of family houses and schools gates, churches and banks. A cherry sun hangs from a lucid mistless sky.Red and white, too.Perhaps that is all Christmas is: Red and white.Little Feats' closing fete is a sombre occasion, suprisingly so. Chideziri made a life sized portrait of the infant Jesus, in a manger, gurgling. Hands reach for him from the periphery. I assume they are Mary's. It's so properly done that looking at it, it could have been an old black and white photograph.For the carol, all the fluorescents are switched off and only candles light the room.It's a sight. A hundred or more candles, glinting against the Assembly hall's blackness. Then time flies and it becomes time
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Christmas is explosive. Literally so. The number of fireworks produced in a single annum is alarming. But what is even more alarming is the fact that the effing hoodlums that deadbeat parents in my neighbourhood call their children seem to think that detonating all those fireworks in the street just beyond our gate is cool. On Christmas eve, after one "knock-out" landed on our roof, I reached the end of my thoroughly stretched patience. I stormed out to yelled at a couple of them loitering in the street. All of which I did barefooted.Don't blame me, I was spectacularly pissed.The twenty fifth—Christmas day itself—is spent out of our house and in Aunty Seedy's, with her and Ozo. Dad wanted us to go to Chicken Republic, or one of the many fancy restuarants he made it his business to locate in the area once we arrived, since neither of us can boil an egg.
Last Updated : 2021-06-15She Belongs To The Sky Yultide: Chideziri POV
Ahmed is stuck at his mother's shop. But as always, he finds a way to vanish. Abe's on his way already. Pacal posted pictures of the places his family had been to today: cinema, swimming at a pool and Ferris wheeling. The mere sight of the Ferris wheel gave me vertigo.By the tone of his last text, he's down for a reunion. Although he's never been as good as Ahmed at vanishing, I know he'll be there. Chantelle gets there first, to our spot at the river. Her sister's nurse friends visited, and in her words, turned the house into a marketplace. Amanda arrives last. The sun has sunk below the horizon by then and mosquitoes are biting. "I come bearing gifts!" she bellows, stomping down the planks, her footsteps heavy with the weight of five paperbags she's clutching. "Since when did Amanda become Santa?" Abe says. Yet he grabs his gift bag when it's offered.&nbs
Last Updated : 2021-06-15She Belongs To The Sky Purple Hibiscuses: Amanda POV
January, the sixth arrives quickly, quietly. January, the sixth steals our time. I wake up not remembering what the day means, at first. It comes to me slowly. The night before we leave, the night before January the sixth, I learn two things: there are two kinds of hunger, and one can keep you up all night, staring at the ceiling and missing a place and people you are yet to leave. It is two O'Clock in the morning and disconcertingly quiet when I decide that I can't endure the trashing and turning. I take a book from the shelf that will no longer be mine by evening, purple hibiscus, with the cracks on its cover and Adichie's delighted face above its blurb, and I go to the sitting room that will not be ours by evening. There, I turn on the light and cozy up on the couch. Halfway through the first chapter, feet shuffle in the hallway and Dad emerges from
Last Updated : 2021-06-15She Belongs To The Sky Purple Hibiscuses: Chideziri POV
The trees outside my window are almost naked now, burnt to figs by the ever angry sun. In the darkness of dawn, their branches resemble bones. I can't sleep, and being awake staring at the skeleton branches isn't helping, so I take Tobi's hoodie and leave the house. Outside is silent, much like everything else. So silent that when I pass the playround, I can hear the grass whistle. I walk. I walk by the tailors shop, to Close 4 and past. Past the hulking buildings and lonely trees. I walk till I get to the river. Elimgbu river has sunken so low that the stones underneath break its glassy surface. The first time we were here, it was full to its brim. Leaves floated on its surface. Pebbles lived under. It was beautiful. That is the thing about faded glory. It always starts out beautiful.
Last Updated : 2021-06-15
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The trees outside my window are almost naked now, burnt to figs by the ever angry sun. In the darkness of dawn, their branches resemble bones. I can't sleep, and being awake staring at the skeleton branches isn't helping, so I take Tobi's hoodie and leave the house. Outside is silent, much like everything else. So silent that when I pass the playround, I can hear the grass whistle. I walk. I walk by the tailors shop, to Close 4 and past. Past the hulking buildings and lonely trees. I walk till I get to the river. Elimgbu river has sunken so low that the stones underneath break its glassy surface. The first time we were here, it was full to its brim. Leaves floated on its surface. Pebbles lived under. It was beautiful. That is the thing about faded glory. It always starts out beautiful.
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She Belongs To The Sky Yultide: Chideziri POV
Ahmed is stuck at his mother's shop. But as always, he finds a way to vanish. Abe's on his way already. Pacal posted pictures of the places his family had been to today: cinema, swimming at a pool and Ferris wheeling. The mere sight of the Ferris wheel gave me vertigo.By the tone of his last text, he's down for a reunion. Although he's never been as good as Ahmed at vanishing, I know he'll be there. Chantelle gets there first, to our spot at the river. Her sister's nurse friends visited, and in her words, turned the house into a marketplace. Amanda arrives last. The sun has sunk below the horizon by then and mosquitoes are biting. "I come bearing gifts!" she bellows, stomping down the planks, her footsteps heavy with the weight of five paperbags she's clutching. "Since when did Amanda become Santa?" Abe says. Yet he grabs his gift bag when it's offered.&nbs
She Belongs To The Sky Yultide: Amanda POV
Christmas is explosive. Literally so. The number of fireworks produced in a single annum is alarming. But what is even more alarming is the fact that the effing hoodlums that deadbeat parents in my neighbourhood call their children seem to think that detonating all those fireworks in the street just beyond our gate is cool. On Christmas eve, after one "knock-out" landed on our roof, I reached the end of my thoroughly stretched patience. I stormed out to yelled at a couple of them loitering in the street. All of which I did barefooted.Don't blame me, I was spectacularly pissed.The twenty fifth—Christmas day itself—is spent out of our house and in Aunty Seedy's, with her and Ozo. Dad wanted us to go to Chicken Republic, or one of the many fancy restuarants he made it his business to locate in the area once we arrived, since neither of us can boil an egg.
