Songs for this chapter are:

Holy Spirit - Hulvey

Pitchy Seagulls - Montell Fish

Peep Game - Tobe Nwigwe, Fat

Free Mind - Tems

Six years later
Ebun

Ebun nearly started taking weed.

It started on one sunny afternoon at the school's cafeteria. Two students were sitting close to the only microwave provided by the school with a stainless steel food flask on the table. Ebun was finished with her food and was supposed to drop her plate at the basin for the kitchen workers to tend to but she could not decipher what it was that made her stay glued to her seat.

But she did and she watched those two students, a boy, and a girl. Soon afterward, she saw the guy bringing a ceramic plate out from the microwave that was filled with hot...noodles?

Noodles could be microwaved?

Ebun was surprised but she kept watching secretly from where she sat. Then the boy again opened the food flask on the table and brought a small substance wrapped in transparent nylon that she'd once seen in a movie she watched. The boy looked around him to be sure that no one was watching of course.

Quickly, he unwrapped the nylon and poured its content which was a brownish substance into the ceramic plates that contained the noodles. Both plates. The two of them started to mix the noodles with the added substance with their forks and started to scoop the food into their mouths, relishing whatever the hell it tasted like.

Ebun was eighteen years old now and had some good amounts of exposure but this occurrence that unfolded before her eyes surprised her so much. These two daring students who were her classmates had just mixed noodles with weed.

It was crazy but...she loved to see it.

Ebun tried to keep tabs on the girl. She was scared of moving any close to the guy for fear of being embarrassed. Yes, Ebun was a psychopath and trouble was only an enticing thrill but she had to flee if she knew she could because it was basic common sense.

Two days later, Ebun tried to approach the girl from the cafeteria. It was harder than she thought. That particular afternoon, the girl looked very angry and ready to break a bone but what was the worse thing the girl could do to her? Slap her so hard that she loses a tooth? Punch her face? Ebun could still fight pretty well. Returning the gesture would not be difficult.

She can ask the guy you saw with her to rape you.

Her mind informed her of the implications so she decided to play it safe and not approach the girl at all. Instead, she decided to do her findings remotely to know where these two daring classmates of hers had purchased the weed from. However, it wasn't hard for her to figure that the type of weed they had consumed was named, 'SK'

One week later, she was able to find the store after listening to the two students having sex one evening after closing time and screaming at the top of their voices, talking about how good the weed was and how they were going to buy it from the same source next time.

The store was quite far away from school which was convenient for her because her parents and siblings constantly picked and dropped her at school six years after the incident had occurred.

But Ebun took the damn risk nevertheless.

She gathered some extra dime from the pocket money she had been accumulating and took a taxi to the street where the store was located after school's closing hours. Of course, the street looked like a village that was in urgent need of a reformation; dilapidated buildings and roads filled with potholes.

The shop in itself was a small kiosk managed by mallams that could barely conversate in English Language. Only their native language, Hausa. Even the Arabic ballad that played from the radio was extra proof. Their eyeballs were a fiery shade of red as heavy puffs of smoke escaped their nostrils and lips simultaneously and their skins were rough, scaly, and heavily melanated.

Her heart was starting to race beneath her chest as she imagined how horrible it was going to be, having these scary men descend on her. The smell of smoke and everything disgusting but she was already here, so she pinched her nostrils slightly and tried not to cough too much as she purchased two wrapped transparent nylons of weed.

She knew the effect of weed all too well and even listening to the incoherent, foreign chatter of the mallams, she could imagine how high they were. It must be quite the bliss and it lasted way longer than the pleasure masturbation had to offer.

Ebun stopped masturbating three years ago. It was truly pointless and too much of a bother.
Although she already knew that from the first day she tried it in front of the mirror, there was a way her mind had been programmed to remind her to masturbate even when she didn't feel like doing it but she knew she was going to run mad if she didn't do it.

But the day Ebun realized that masturbation wasn't the drug she thought it was, she stopped, and surprisingly, she didn't run mad. Ebun was able to scale through some days without having nightmares or severe panic attacks about getting raped. She could walk in an environment dominated by men and not freak out too much.

Her family had been able to provide a fairly safe environment for her but that didn't mean she was completely over the incident and the trauma. The majority of the days were terrible and she still needed an escape. Occasionally, blood poured out of her nostrils, and heart palpitations dealt with her from time to time without ant triggering thoughts or circumstances.

She still wasn't doing well at school either. Heck! She even found herself craving sex no thanks to what masturbation had exposed her to. With a substance like a weed, she could sleep for many hours, away from the reality she had been dying to escape from and those vain moments of euphoria? She needed it essentially.

However, David caught her.

How he was able to locate where she was, she didn't know but when she turned away from the kiosk to walk down the main junction so she could board a taxi, she saw her brother stepping out of his car and in the blink of an eye, he dragged her by the arm and once he pushed her into his car and closed the doors, he slapped her face.

She couldn't believe he had just done that but the stinging of her cheeks was an attestation to the fact.

"You take weed now?" he barked.

"N-no I don't!" she snapped, tears filling her iris to the brim.

"So what did you come here to buy? Let me see what's in your hands right now!" he commanded.

Ebun opened her two arms which revealed two wraps of weed and suddenly, she started to feel ashamed. At first, she was angry that her elder brother had slapped her like that when he knew she was raped and traumatized by her experience but became horrified by the fact that she wanted her brother to baby and pity her by thinking like that.

She once used to hate him for pitying her but now, she almost wanted to justify her actions of buying weed based on rape. She wanted her brother to understand her but the truth was, she deserved that slap.

"You can't heal like this, Ebunoluwa. We're doing our best as your siblings to show you that you can rely on us. There hasn't been a casualty of any sort for six years. What exactly are you trying to escape from? Paranoia? Nightmares? Weed still isn't the way out. There hasn't been much for you to fear because we are and still would continue to protect you. When we asked if you wanted to go for therapy during the holidays, you said no so we felt you were a bit okay but seeing this? It breaks my heart."

A tear from Ebun's eyes fell on her hand. Her brother was right. Everyone was trying hard for her but she'd been hard-hearted over the years. She wasn't even doing well in her academics. She would have graduated from high school two years ago but she had to stay back, repeat her classes, and retake subjects she failed.

She wasn't helping herself at all and she knew. If she was eager to seek vengeance, she would have done everything it took to graduate from school at the right time but in her bid to escape school being the center of her trauma, she stayed longer than she should have. More tears dropped down her eyes.

"You should have a school certificate, Ebunoluwa. You deserve to graduate from school and live a decent life. We can never understand how you truly feel but it doesn't mean you should throw everything we're doing for you into the mud. We're trying our hardest to feel your pain the way you want us to feel it. If you ask us to get you the latest movies since we observed that movies make you feel better, we would travel far and wide to buy you all the CDs just so you could be okay.

Do you think that we all don't go through a lot in our personal lives? I'm not saying this to invalidate what has happened to you but you can't use your trauma as an excuse to behave terribly. That hurts the people who have vowed to make sure that you are never alone. We are doing our best to protect you but here you are, buying weed like an abandoned street girl."

Before Ebun could say anything at all, David placed his head on the steering wheel and started to cry. All he'd said was true. Her dad was a sickle cell warrior but he worked hard to pay her school fees every year but she continued to get bad grades.

She'd broken his heart and seeing him weep because of her hurt her more than she'd imagined. From then on, she made the resolve not to give her family a hard time anymore. She had to try and value what they were doing for her and satisfy them till she gets the liberty to do what her heart truly desires - seek vengeance.

***

Ebun's final examinations were approaching. She knew she had to ace her papers else, it meant another extra year for her at school. She decided to go to the library to read. A big step that she normally would never take but she had to try.

"Nothing is going to harm me. This is just a large room with shelves, demarcated desks, chairs, and people who loved to mind their business. I'm protected so I will be okay." she assured herself.

Quickly, she found a seat and brought out her notebooks placing them on the table but just as she was about to take a seat, something tangible pulled her by the arm and dragged her far away from her seat.