All Chapters of She Belongs To The Sky: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

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.

Late 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. 

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

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

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