All Chapters of She Belongs To The Sky: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

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

 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

Some nights, it rains so heavily that I have to wonder if going to school the morning after will be possible. But then again, with my type of family, absconding from school isn't possible, even if it were brimstone and rock salt raining down, and not water. Mumsi has been home more this time around; she's there when I leave for school in the morning, and a hour or two after I've returned from school. Not that she's home from the saloon. Nah. I'm thinking from Amanda's Dad's house; which technically is Amanda's house, too. Which technically is way past awkward, well on its way to disgusting. But we take life as it comes now, eh, don't we?. For a bit now, I've ached to ask why she wouldn't tell me what was going on, but the courage eluded me. Like asking an underpaid seamstress to add extra layers of fashion to your clothing's design. Once, while she was in the kitchen, slicing onions into the blender to make stew, I was sitting at the dining table, looking i

Chantelle.         Chantelle's here... Chantelle's here and nobody thought to tell me. A small mist blows around my mind, thickening into light-headedness, and my tongue becomes too heavy for itself. Sweat dots my bare palm. She called and called, and called and...called. And I wasn't there when she needed me the most. A small voice in my head tells me it isn't entirely my fault, but the boulder in my chest that seems to keep doubling in size with each step I take towards the class says something else. Says that if I had just picked up that bloody call, then maybe things would have gone down differently. The class is rowdier than a fucking coven when I enter it. Papers flying. Beat boxing. Gossip spilling. A whole lot of green and white blazers. But I am looking for only one person. I spot her at the back, sitting up on a desk, talking to Pascal, her fingers leafing through a spiral-bound notebook,

 They hoot, holler, whoop,  and cheer after I have finished.    They didn't even let me have a break to catch my air. To feel self conscious after the last full-stop.    The quietness that's overtaken Abe since Chantelle was hospitalized parts like a drape. He grins approvingly, and waits for a moment before he fills his ears with Nasty C, again.   Pascal leans over, daps me up and snaps fingers with me. He tells me, "You get flows die, leave am."   Ahmed does a wiggly waist dance thing in his sitting cross-legged pose. Joking, he says it's a good thing that not everyone in the squad lacks the essential sense of art.       Chideziri beams at me, so bright, so hard, it's as if he's the full moon and I'm a moonlit night.      Chantelle? Looks as if I gave her Mars, Pluto, and a crown and sceptre to rule over both of them.