Mum was feeling sick today but luckily she got well after taking some tablets of paracetamol. Initially, I was planning on cancelling my plans with Dad's ex-girlfriend but the thoughts of actually getting to know what she and Dad did couldn't leave my head.
Yesterday, after Dad woke me up to wash his car, I mistakenly came across some crumpled papers in the passenger's seat. Believe me, I saw some weird stuffs about jumping down a bridge or digging up a grave. I don't know what Dad was doing with those kind of stuffs in his car but what got my attention was an address written on a piece of old office papers. It was the same address that Sarah gave to me. Whether Dad was cheating on Mom with Sarah, I was going to find out soon.
Sarah called my Mum's phone back after I called her and told her to call me in ten minutes time. Her voice was as lively as before. Full of a lot of expectations.
"Hello!" I said.
"Hi! What are you doing today?" Sarah asked as if she didn't know I was waiting for her to take me out of my prison yard called home to her comfort zone.
"I am going to spend time with you," I said.
"Where did you say I should pick you up?" Sarah asked.
"Close to the supermarket in front of our street."
"I will be there in an hour."
Dad must have known that I had other plans today except for sitting at home and watching Mum get better, because he kept on asking me who was phoning Mum and I kept on telling him it was my teacher who wanted to ask about my welfare. It worked actually and he stopped bothering me.
First of all, it is almost impossible to leave my house without being noticed by Dad but I had other ideas in my tiny head.
Before starting today with a breath of fresh air and some yoghurt to warm my stomach, I made some arrangements with my neighbour's son, Clag who was a year younger than me. Merely looking at him, it was obvious he was the kind of nerdy guy who was only interested in games, books and a little charity work.
Clag was born a day after his grandmother visited his parents with some gummy starch. Mum said she has never seen a stubborn starch like that in her entire life. And when Clag's Dad was in distress after being sacked from work, he ate Clag's grandmother starch and got better. When Clag was born, in honor of the starch that comforted him in his time of sorrows, he named his son, Clag which means a glue or paste made from starch. Almost the same situation with my big sister name. Why were they naming their children in honor of things?
That was more than a decade ago so I can say it is history now. What I was more concerned in achieving today was leaving the house and I had to focus on that. Nothing else.
Remember the woman I told you about who was looking for donations for her daughter's surgery? I am sure you do remember. Well, she kind of has an affiliation with a non-profit organization that looks for people who will help out in their clean up projects. And the good thing about today was that the organization was cleaning the gutters of a street not too far away from the street I live in.
With Clag's cheerful face and nerdy glasses, I was able to convince Mum and Dad to let me volunteer. Lucky enough for me, they agreed.
See, the reason I hate hanging out with Clag is not only because he is a nerd. I am a nerd too. Maybe not nerdy nerd but a nerd. Clag doesn't know when something is a joke and he always likes to take everything serious. When he met Sarah, he was pretty much convinced in his nerdy brain that we were going to exchange some greetings with her then leave and join the non-profit organization in digging up the gutters.
Even though I told him several times that I wasn't interested and that I needed the lie to get me out of the house but Clag didn't seem so moved to believe me. He said he would report me to Dad and Mum if I don't join him in cleaning up the gutters. What the hell!
Now, putting me in trouble was not something I fancied and if they was anyone that I could not accept a threat from, that should be Clag. I told him that I would return the favor he did for me with a bar of Candy and how I would spend a lot of time with him if he actually stuck up with the lie and let me go freely. But Clag wasn't ready for any bargain and I wasn't ready to keep Sarah waiting.
I and Clag finally made an agreement, but we ran into a problem right away. I wasn't comfortable with the idea of him using my soccer boots to play in the rain. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out another possible option but Sarah had already waited for too long for me to be selfish. I finally agreed but on one condition, he brings my soccer boots back before Sunday.
Clag readily agreed to my terms and he left us in peace. By the time I and Sarah got to the car, I was already exhausted and did not know what else to say or do.
"Are you married or about to get married?" I asked Sarah, knowing fully well that it was a stupid question.
Sarah laughed and told me she wasn't married and if she were to be married, it would be with Dad.
I told Sarah about my idea to constantly sneak out of the house to spend time with her and she seemed rather uncomfortable about it and she told me she was not into younger guys. This is why I dislike women sometimes.
I wanted to tell Sarah that I was not into older women too but I was into any decent fun an older woman could offer me but I didn't tell her.
After that, I asked her about her relationship with my Dad and she told me a few things I can't say for now.
I kind of wish Sarah had put some more effort into getting to know me rather than talking about Dad as if he was some demigod she worshipped in secret. Hopefully, nobody will know about my adventure today as long as I played my part and sacrificed my soccer boots.
Today, as I came out of the bathroom and ate my breakfast of hot tea and bread, Mum sat on the couch watching an early morning diet show on the TV. I can't remember the name of the show but I know it has something to do with eating fruits everyday. Maybe it is called: Eating fruits with Damian John. If you are wondering why I came up with that name, it is obvious that the lead presenter of the show was Damian John!Today was like any other morning— boring, almost as if the big heavenly beings in the sky were hearing my cries everyday and making it worst. The time I spent with Sarah didn't change anything. All I could gather was that Dad was still keeping in touch with her even though he had angrily sent her out of our home in the name of preserving his name in front of me. Well, as far as I knew now, I can't say if he is cheating on Mum. I will have to fix another meeting with her before the end of this week if I were to figure out that."Perer," Mum called me an
My big sister came today with a lot of smiles in her face and a big demand for money. You are free to call her Christle.Anyway, I am starting to wonder if I should get mad at her for holding my money for too long or ask Clag's parents for their son's whereabouts. It is almost a week now and Clag was yet to return my soccer boots.The other day, after I was done exercising in the morning, I saw Clag's Mum trying to cut the short grasses in their front yard and after moments of desperately trying to get her attention, she only waved a hand at me and went inside. Damn!This morning, while I was waiting for my big sister to be done with the bathroom, I remembered she was fond of keeping money in her purse and I was so tempted to find her purse and open it.I will have to thank someone later for ensuring I did not yield to my temptations because my big sister was about leaving the bathroom when I was conside
I hate school! I hate school as much as I hate playing basketball in the rain!I knew what to expect from my first day at school. The bullies, the almost filled school bus with teens around my age talking about their wonderful holidays and the teacher who cared about me. But things were about to change sooner than I thought. It was as if a divine order had been placed in my life and no matter what I tried to do, I can't erase it. Escaping my fate was worse than running away from a drone that has been designed to kill me.I sat down in the only empty seat in my class, which was right in front of my neighbour's son, Clag. After asking a few persons some questions, I discovered that Clag had been promoted to our class. I didn't understand that at first until Clag told me how he had a 95% average last term and the school authority felt it was best he skipped the class he was about to enter and join our final year cl
Everything started to fall apart on the first day of October when Mum came home from visiting some of her friends and tore the wedding portrait of her and Dad. If you were to ask me what I was doing then, well i was sitting on the couch, telling my junior brother, Danny to stop moving his legs in an odd manner. I heard Mum's tears coming from the bedroom her and Dad shared and it was really loud.Dad always said that a man's worth depended on how he took care of matters concerning his family. I didn't know what he meant by that or why he said that but on this day, I knew he had lost total control of his family.It is more than seven days— a week, since I resumed school and began the tedious lifestyle of a desperate teenager trying to cope with the rigorous demands of school life. I am very much aware that I have not written anything lately but I am still lost in thoughts on how I should begin this story or proba
My parents got separated and I was forced to move into my Uncle's house. Uncle Max lives in a different state in Nigeria, close to the state that I used to live in. My journey to Uncle Max’ house was smooth and within a couple of days, I was settled.It was late in the night and the sun had faded away to give the moon an opportunity to shine in the sky when Uncle Max came to my room and woke me up. He was a fair man who was in his early forties. He was single and was yet to start making up any plans for marriage."You need to get ready for school, tomorrow," Uncle Max said, stretching his arms. "I have already found a new school that can fit a person of your standard." He looked round the room at the carelessly flung bags, books and shorts over the chair."What of my elder sister and junior brother? Are they not coming to Enugu?" I asked, grinning."No! They are not coming to Enugu," Uncle Ma
One might start a journey with a footstep, the thrill of an amazing adventure and bearing in mind, whatever he or she may be able to discover at the other end of the road. Life means considerably more than just living and most of the time we get trapped in our daily activities that we forget to realise that our imperfect bodies needs some form of excitement. But Uncle Max did not see life the way I saw it – rather he went to work, came back from work, ate, sleep and then repeat. With a new smile on his face every morning, he always joked about his boss calling him a loner. Something I was not unfamiliar with. A loner is a man who is alone. A man who enjoys avoiding the company of others. As off as it may sound, Uncle Max was a loner. A staunch man who had learnt to see spending time alone in his room as pleasure, oblivious to the fact that he was damaging himself.I formed a faint smile on my face as i thought of the night before, when Uncle Max had a remarkable o
By dawn, Dad, Mum, Christle, Danny and some relatives were already waiting for Uncle Max and I in Dad's apartment in Port-Harcourt. Before a large bowl filled with garden eggs was passed round the gathering, we had washed our hands in a common basin as a sign of unity before inviting God to ensure that the rest of our days go well. Everyone was smiling, including Dad and Mum who were divorced or better still, who felt they were divorced. Legally, it takes usually about four to six months before a divorce is finalized but my parents were resistant on any conversation that ended with them getting back together. Dad proudly told everyone in his workplace that he was a single man if anyone had the boldness to bring up the question of his marriage. On the other hand, Mum had pulled off the ring Dad gave to her when he proposed to her, from her index finger and told me the last time I saw her that she was divorced and married to the man that she was living with even though the man was yet
I dont like when the scorching sun hits my dark skin but there is nothing I can do about it anyway. The heat was a battering ram. I basked in it anyway not minding how hot it grew. The sky was tossing huge balls of sweat, the size of broken buttons forcefully pulled off from shirts. I could feel the rain coming. The soft drizzle hitting my skin like the sound of jazz music soothing my eardrums, like a distorted massage from a beautiful masseuse. The rain had the ability to drown the heat and put me away from the misery I felt as I walked alone to school, but it was as insignificant as following the advice of Uncle Max to stop at the bungalow owned by my classmate's parents. Goodness was a year older. Unlike Clag, he was a nerdy teen who liked to socialize.Being under the heat of the sun and waiting for the rain to fall is like holding a ladybug, the flutter of its shell-like front wings like a small tidal wave— smaller and safer than the tsunami that hit Lituya B