I really hope no one sees me right now. 

What Zainab had suggested after Madrasah last week, which had really pissed me off, is now what I see as the best option. So now I am at school, waiting around the staircase leading to the rooftop, my eyes on the lookout for teachers and students, hoping no one will see me go up.

Imagine someone sees me and figures out later that it was only Nasir and me up there the entire time? I cannot handle such. My father would murder me, or more preferably, as Iffat use to say, "Murder us, chop us into pieces, and put us on skewers like the suya Mallams sell in the evening." The last thing I want to happen to me is to be caught in any compromising situation with a guy, and since I am in a Muslim school, it will only get worse from there; the perfect tale of the forbidden teenage boy and girl scenario.

But I have to do this, and no one must see me. Meeting in classes is a no-go, I can't have anyone seeing me and Nasir talking and finally figuring out what it is about because if they do and at the end of the day if I do get-- no, when I do get the first position, it won't be a big deal because everyone would know it was Nasir's brain that helped me.

I really cannot have that happening.

I clutch my book tighter to my chest as some juniors walk past me to go down the stairs. For a brief moment, there is no one. As I am about to go up the stairs, Mr. Wasiu walks past, and I greet him. He answers me with a grunt, the doughnut he is chewing a more interesting matter.

As soon as he passes, I disappear up the stairs at a maddening speed.

I am only safe when I reach the top of the second set of five stairs leading up. The small iron door to the roof budges noiselessly as I open it, and a gust of dust greets me first, and then it is the silence of the place.

No one comes up here, I wish there are interesting tales to say about this place like the past headmaster had said when we were in JSS2, causing us all to avoid it like a plague. "It is because birds land up there and transform into humans." "If the door locks on you, no one can hear you scream for help." "They killed ten snakes last term, and if you die there, the birds that have turned into humans will carry your body to the other world, and no one will be able to even find your body." 

For a while, we said these as jokes, created versions of our own, and as we grew older, it got boring and repetitive, only a manner of teasing around juniors now. The current Principal had been very direct about why we should not go there. "It is out of bounds for students. Do so, and you'll be caned." Simple, direct, without spinning some fairytale about witches and imaginary snakes.

But then, why is only Nasir allowed up here? 

I look around for him, and I spot him at a corner of the roof, a phone in hand and directed up to the sky. He is even allowed a phone on school grounds? He hasn't seen me yet, and I feel an inner force pull me back to the door and down the stairs, but the reminder of why I am here hits me like my father's punch, so I approach him.

He looks back when I am close to him. His mouth hangs open as he regards me, and I clear my throat to speak.

"I...I only came to ask you to teach me how you solve equations without the need for a calculator." I get straight to the point. All I need is his secret hack or formula, and I will be gone in a second.

"What?" His mouth is still hung open.

"How do you solve maths, physics, chemistry problems, and so on without even using a calculator?" I clarify.

I don't miss the way he looks away, because he isn't so subtle about it. He looks at his phone, his finger scrolling absentmindedly through the pictures. My eye goes to the screen. Clouds. Clouds. And only clouds.

"It's just easy for me." He says. He lifts his eyes and looks towards the iron door. He looks like he wants to leave as much as I do.

"Do you take bribes?" I ask.

He looks at me, the surprise exploding on his face. "What?"

"How much? I can give you my savings for the formula." Even though my saving isn't up to ten thousand naira, I really hope I won't have to give him everything. I keep it for emergency funds in the future, just as Mummy has raised me. 

"Formula?" 

"Yes, please." I respond in sugared politeness. Yusrah does this in front of guys sometimes, and it works, it only sounds weird coming from my own mouth. "I need the formula," I say again. At that statement, a flash of me being Plankton and Nasir being Mr. Krabbs from the Spongebob cartoon flashes in my head, only I am not going to stalk him to find it out.

Nasir just stares at me, and I feel stupid all of a sudden. It is clear he must think of me as desperate, think of me as, The brilliant Nadeen is actually coming to me for help? That thought pushes me to say what I say next.

"I am not asking you to teach me, I only want to compare your formula with the several ones I know." 

"I...I don't have any formula." He tells me.

The anger wells inside me in an instant. This entire situation is so stupid, I can't believe I allowed Zainab to get into my head like that. Strategy- what stupid strategy? It is obvious he wants the first position as much as I do, so why was I so sure if I ask nicely and even butter my please well enough he would serve it to me?

I don't say anything more, because I don't trust myself not to say another wrong thing. So I turn around and hurry back the way I came.

"Wait!" Nasir calls out to me. I stop, and the anger simmers from whatever hole it came from as I turn to him. So he is the kind that wanted me to grovel for his formula? 

"The clouds, look." He holds his phone out to me. An iPhone. I don't know what number of iPhone but it looks expensive. I can count the number of times I have seen one that isn't ancient, and only long ago around Aunt Tomi and her friends.

I am puzzled at the sudden turn of his demeanor. He looks excited, and his eyes urge me to scroll. So I do. It is all just pictures of clouds, and of different swirls and colours.

"You said you like them all. Did you see the Cirrus I took today?" 

"I don't know their names," I tell him. It is only once I checked up on them and that was it. "I just look up and decide I like it, that is all."

"And have you looked up today?" He says. I swear it looks like someone switched on two lightbulbs behind his eyes.

So I look up. The center looks like a vortex of some sort, and clouds are moving at that snail's pace, unhurried. It isn't really spectacular, and I look at Nasir.

"It's nice," I say. 

"I can send the pictures to you." He suggests.

I shake my head and hand him back the phone. "I don't have any phone."

His face falls. Why does he wear his emotions like clothes he changes in every mood? He is so easy to read it is almost boring.

"Or you can tell me your social media handle name, mine is CirrusBlack09. Cirrus as in the cloud, and it is like a wordplay, Sirius from Harry Potter..."

"I know who Sirius Black is," I say. What is wrong with him? How did the conversation take this turn? "And I don't chat with boys even if I should have a phone."

His eyes lower in embarrassment. "I...didn't mean to talk, I only want to send you the pictures. You said you like them all, so I took enough. Did you see it? They were a lot of pictures. I was hoping to show you someday, and if you don't want me to send them, that's okay."

Guilt settles inside me, guilt mixed with my stupidity, like a bitter cocktail running through my blood. So I produce my hand for his phone, and I navigate my way to his Instagram and Facebook, and I search for Iffat's name; NiffyIffy, and I send her a friend request.

I hand the phone back to Nasir, and he sees what I have just done.

"That is my sister. Send everything you want to send me through her." I say.

He smiles, and I find it infecting me. He is like a cute innocent child just given a lollipop.

"Thank you, Nadeen." He says. This is the first time I hear him say my name. My smile drops and I nod, then resume my walk to the iron door. With the same stealth it takes me to go up, I find it even more difficult to go down.

I don't know what happened, but I am hoping whatever it is, he will be pleased enough to see I am interested in his clouds and sends me his formula as an exchange. Not a plan I envisioned, but it will work nonetheless.

I only just need it before the exams.

-

-

-

Mummy is in the kitchen when I get home.

Iffat is sitting at the table, and to my surprise when I get in, she is actually studying. I am not talking about the book open in her front and laughing her head off at whatever is on her phone screen kind of studying, but actually jotting in a notebook and pressing a calculator kind of studying. 

She has been doing so since last week, I just didn't expect it to last this long. Ever since that unfortunate incident with Mummy and Daddy and her getting in between their fight, something must have awakened in her that night. I doubt that slaps can reset brains, but whatever she had received that night, a slap, a punch, or a kick, had made her into the serious person she is today.

I had asked if Daddy had threatened her or something, but she only mumbles or right out yells at me to forget about it and move on, but I really wish it was not a situation like that one that had made her get her priorities right.

I head to the kitchen after greeting her, and I doubt she even hears me over her zoned-out muttering of numbers and letters. Mummy is stirring something in the pot, and she responds to my greeting with the same forlornness that has been hovering over her ever since that unfortunate incident as well.

"Food will soon be ready." She tells me and doesn't say anything else. Nothing about my school, or my Madrasah, she just sighs and keeps cooking. 

It has been like this since the week before, ever since what Daddy did to her shop. When he left that night, he had gone to open Mummy's store, throw out cartons of new goods, and left her store open. The Mallam that owns the wooden kiosk close to her shop was passing by that time, and he saw some people carting away goods from her shop left ajar before he could save the situation. He had even seen the keys thrown somewhere around the bush in the morning.

Mummy would have gone to salvage it that day, but she was all wobbly, wounded, and sore from the beating. Her eyes were swollen from crying through the night, and by the morning, when she had seen the damages Daddy did, her eyes grew even more huger from days of crying. Now she just doesn't say a word, and moves around the house like a ghost. I know there will be a family meeting soon because this is one of the times Daddy went too far.

Her face doesn't have the same fair tone as the rest of her body anymore. There are splotches of black and red all over them, and she doesn't bother to hide them when she goes to the market to buy foodstuff. Iffat told me when they went to get fish from Iya Eleja not too far away, she was shocked to see Mummy's face and asked her who did it, but Mummy had only just stared, unresponsive.

"I bought you sneakers." I produce her favorite chocolate from my bag. Mummy halts in her stirring, and she collects the chocolate from me.

"Thank you, Nadeen." She says and resumes.

My mood deflates at the mood of her response. I am hoping for a smile from her, and I get nothing. 

"Can I help you? I can skip Madrasah." I offer.

"No." The reply that I receive is so sharp it surprises me. 

"Uhm...okay," I say, and I leave the kitchen without another word. Iffat looks up at me when I arrive in the living room. I can feel the tears brimming at the back of my eyes, and I just want to go under my blanket and empty them.

"She's really sad, Nadeen," Iffat says. I nod, and she pats the ground next to her. I am surprised by the request, but I oblige.

"It's almost a hundred thousand naira worth of goods she's lost." Iffat goes on. She looks at me with soft eyes, and I can see Mummy's face on hers without all the dark splotches and red bruises on her face. "And Daddy might not reimburse her."

"But he is rich now," I say.

Iffat snorts. "I think I this point we need to understand that he is only rich for himself. He would pay school fees, give you money to feed you so you won't die, and buy two to three clothes once in three to five years so you won't walk the streets naked, but that additional money, all that enjoyment, it is for him. You better stick to using your mosquito net and healthy food because if you fall sick, it is your own problem. God forbid there are diseases like cholera or typhoid or appendicitis affecting any of us, you should just take a shovel and start digging your grave in the backyard."

She sighs after saying this and closes her eyes. There is quiet for a while, and the only thing that punctuates it is the dishes being done by Mummy in the kitchen.

"Do you think she is angry with me because I have his face?" I don't expect my voice to break as I say it, but it does.

Iffat opens her eyes and watches me. "But you are pretty."

"What?"

She rolls her eyes. "No, you are pretty, pretty and Daddy do not go hand in hand, and no, you don't remind her of him." She laughs a little, and toys with the pen between her fingers.

"This whole thing you said reminds me of our names," Iffat says. 

I am puzzled by that. Maybe she doesn't know what she is saying. "Our names?"

She nods. "Yeah, I heard that when Mummy was pregnant Daddy understood the importance of names. Names are prayers, and that is why he named me Iffat, and you, Nadeen. So that he won't have to worry about us...prostituting around, as if when you leave girls to their own, they go wild."

I ruminate over what she just told me. Iffat and Nadeen. Iffat means Purity or Chastity, Nadeen means Hope, I understand Iffat's own but I don't understand mine.

"Hope." I voice to Iffat. "That's the meaning of mine."

She shrugs, and she doesn't say anything else as she continues with her studying. I look over at her phone, and I remember the encounter with Nasir.

"Have you gotten any Instagram messages?" I ask her.

She shakes her head. "No. I don't want any distractions. I need to study and leave this house for good."

I linger and look at her phone. When she doesn't make a move to check it, I press on. "I am expecting a message from someone through you."

She stops writing and drops her head unto the book. She raises her head, and a frown is directed at me. 

"Buy your own phone, Nadeen." She says and grabs her phone from where she put it. Like as if I have the money to do so, or as if the money will appear in thin air. I see her open her Instagram application, and her phone continues to vibrate with silent notifications. 

"What the hell? Who is Cirrus Black?" Her head whips to me. "Nadeen! I have forty-seven messages from whoever this is! And it is still counting!"

"Yes, he's the one." I grab the phone from her and scroll through his messages. He had taken the time to put the name of each cloud with each message, and I scroll through them, marveling at the angles at which he has taken them and the patterned designs of the clouds. 

"It is a he?" Iffat hisses, and her eyes are on the screen too. "Is this a science cloud project?"

I nod. It sounds like a better explanation than whatever reason someone would decide to send me clouds because even I can't give an explanation for it. Come to think of it. why does he send me clouds? Who sends people fifty-six, now fifty-eight images of clouds?

"Ooh, that's a nice one," Iffat says, and she expands the image and zooms in on its features. She looks on with me until the messages stop at seventy. Nasir ends it with, let me know your thoughts.

"Hmm, tell him this science project is kind of weird but is nice to want to hear your thoughts," Iffat says. I look at her, and she smiles at me. It's like someone has thrown petrol on me and set my face on a raving fire. 

"He..."

"I know Nadeen, I am only just pulling your legs. You aren't stupid enough to like a boy now or anytime ever. They bring nothing but chaos, misfortune, and failure. Even if it is a crush, from one sister to another, suffocate it. It isn't worth it." 

I stand. "Stop making it weird. It is not all the time a girl and a guy speak that there have to be feelings involved. I don't know why a lot of people think like that. It is disgusting and childish."

Iffat looks taken aback, I instantly regret speaking to her that way.

"I am sorry." I apologize.

"There was an "If" Nadeen." She says but keeps mum after that. I take that as the end of the conversation and proceed to get changed for Asr and head on to the Madrasah. I plan to head to Abu Hurairah after, because after such grey clouds in my house, I would love a little sun, which came in the form of his smile and the warmth of Umm Abdullah's hugs.

I crave that more than anything right now.