Last night, when Daddy came home, he looked exhausted, like he had worked all five days of the week in just a single day. He sat on the couch, held his head in his hand, complained of a headache, and told me to get him water. After he downed the water, he gave a heavy-bellied sigh.

"That stupid boss of mine thinks he can do anyhow and get away with it," my father said, his frown deepening the lines on his forehead. I stared at the lines, the way the sweat buried into them, and cooled off from the fan. 

"What's wrong?" My mother asked. She kept a good distance behind one of the chairs because it was quite obvious that Daddy was having one of his bad days. Iffat was in her room, and we don't know if Daddy was done with punishing her for her JAMB score.

Daddy held out his phone. Mummy looked up at me first, as if asking me to collect it for her, but I didn't move. She moved to my father fast and took it, silent as she stared at the screen. She closed her mouth, holding back a gasp.

"2 weeks suspension with salary deduction?" Mummy said out loud. "What did you do?"

"What kind of stupid question are you asking me?" Daddy turned to glower at Mummy. "Why did you just assume I did something wrong?"

"No, it's just...when I saw it..."

"When you saw it what?" Daddy cut her off. Mummy didn't say anything more. Daddy grabbed the phone from her hand and gave a loud hiss.

"Sometimes I wonder what I saw in you before I married you. Only fine on the outside but empty on the inside, just like my boss, except that one looks like a hungry Agama lizard," Daddy was already getting angry. The invisible hands tickled at my heartstrings, waiting to squeeze. "What happened is that my boss was too stupid to handle my great ideas. Telling me I was trying to lord over him and my manner of speaking was unprofessional and disrespectful. That's what people who don't want to hear the truth say. With that his backbone like crayfish leg."

Mummy didn't say anything as she left for the kitchen, leaving me alone there with him. I didn't know whether to leave or stay, so I just stood there, staring at my father, picturing him in front of his boss, shutting down his ideas, raising his voice above his when he spoke, pointing his finger up in his boss' face when he disagreed with him, fuming and probably wishing he could take off his belt, or could carry his koboko to work to lash out at his boss to keep him in line.

"Ehen?" Daddy's voice shook me to the present. "What are you doing standing there like mumu? And where's that your Olodo sister?"

"She's in her...she's sleeping," I told him.

"Sleeping? I'm not surprised. I don't have her time this night. And you, you're almost done with your exams right?" I nodded at that, wondering why that had suddenly come up. "If your sister hasn't set an example for you, you better learn. All these problems she is facing now are because I didn't beat her enough for not getting the first position back at school, so if you think you can relax, you better think twice."

My blood grew cold and went even colder as the night air swayed in and out of my room when I went to bed. We had one more paper to go, and it's almost evident that Nasir is leading. The truth is, this time, a tiny part of me, like an atom, far off somewhere doesn't care and doesn't want to, wants to just drop the heavy baggage of being first and forget about it. However, the larger part of me, almost the entirety of me, doesn't want to let him win.

But still, when NEPA took the light around 11 p.m., I found my hands reaching under my pillow for the phone, and I opened my WhatsApp. It is only Nasir's number, Iffat's own (although her phone is still seized), and Aunt Tolu's number I had. I was still scared to tell anyone about the phone, for fear that my parents might find out. My mother would not mind, but her fear would be because of what my father would say, and the questions he'd ask.

From where? Who gave you? Why did they give you? A boy?! 

A horror story I didn't want to live in.

I had gone through my messages with Aunt Tolu. She had traveled to Senegal for a long time now, and although she promised to visit with many gifts, she told me about talking to my mother about leaving my father.

Do you think your mother is happy there? Aunt Tolu had typed to me. I remembered my fingers hovering over the screen, thinking about the answer. There are good and bad days, Mummy smiling, Daddy laughing, new clothes, good food. Happiness was a feeling that comes and goes, wasn't it?

Not all the time, but again, no one is happy all the time, are they? I replied to my Aunt.

Nadeen, there's a difference between unhappiness and abuse. And I'm scared you aren't seeing it.

I'm really scared of what it has done to you.

But I didn't reply. All Aunt Tolu ever talked about was Mummy leaving Daddy. I remember what Daddy had said, single women always find a way to point out the flaws in those of the married. Was that what Aunt Tolu was doing? Pointing out the flaws in her sister's marriage?

I didn't reply to Aunt Tolu after that message. I didn't want to carry another problem in my head. I still had Yusrah angry with me, although it wasn't as bad as the first one. She understood I wasn't feeling too well that day, but she deserved an explanation, she said, one I haven't provided to her.

How do I tell my friend I have panic attacks? But again, she's my best friend, and I feel we should be able to talk about these things. Although I still feel Yusrah isn't very open with me; I don't know much about her own family, and it feels like I gave her so much without getting anything in return. And how would she handle my truth about the panic attacks, would she still be my friend?

I opened my chat with Nasir and saw he was online. My cursor blinked, waiting for me to type out my words. 

Hey, I greet him.

Within seconds, his reply came in. Hey. Why are you awake?

I don't know. Why are you?

I'm trying to solve this Further Maths problem.

I was puzzled. Which one? I thought we finished the exam.

No, this one's just for fun.

I chuckle at that. I remember it's you.

I think you should sleep, Nadeen. I think the exams stress you and make you look different, and not in a good way. You've also been breaking out a lot too. I saw the pimples on your face the other day. And you've become a bit lean.

My smile instantly faded. This is why Nasir always gets on my nerves. Somehow he always says things so straightforward that he's just mean. The kind of mean Iffat says every man is. One of these days I expect him to start insulting me, telling people who cared to listen about how he bought me a phone and I collected it and was begging him to chat with him at night.  I mean what other reason could be there for him to do the things he does, or say the things he says?

I could feel it creeping up, the ugly change to come from him, and I readied myself to attack first just before anything happened.

You should worry about your skin and not mine. I typed back at him.

The reply came almost immediately. I don't have skin issues like you do. I sleep and eat well. It could be your anxiety also adding to yours, so maybe you should go to bed early.

Something dropped inside me. Nasir called out my anxiety. Did he just assume because of the panic attack?

Quickly, I reply to him, sitting up in my bed.

You can't diagnose me with what you don't know.

Nasir kept typing for a long time. I braced myself for the paragraph he wanted to write, preparing the insults I'd hurl at him before storming into class the next time and throwing his useless phone at his face. If he thinks he can attack me, I'll show him I can attack better.

And then, Nasir's reply came in.

I'm not diagnosing you. I'm sorry. I just thought you hinted at it before.

The anger had already pent up inside me, and last night, I felt like an overinflated, heavy water balloon. I still needed to burst.

You don't go around telling people they have anxiety just because you assumed, and you especially don't go around pointing out people's pimples and body weight.

I sent the message, but there was still this dissatisfaction in me. There's this need to cut at him and make him bleed, kind of like to go all "Daddy" on him.

And maybe if you spent as much time being mindful of how you talk to people rather than solving maths, you'd have more friends to talk to.

I send the message, and my fingers go on on their own.

And your skin isn't nice, it's as terrible as you. And I don't ever want to be friends with someone who acts the way you do and talks the way you do and just behaves the way you do and...

My fingers hovered over the keypad as I saw Nasir typing. I waited, all the while still formulating all the hurtful words I could hurl at him. He paused, then continued typing, and my patience was running thin with each passing second.

I'm sorry Nadeen. I'm honestly trying my best to be normal when speaking to people, but it seems I still haven't gotten a hold of it.

Something held back all of the anger in me. I try to be normal. Days ago, I could remember telling Iffat those words, of how I felt I didn't fit in anywhere, that somehow wherever I went, I was always a square peg in a round hole.

I know I haven't told you this before. Nasir continued typing. I held in a breath, waiting for some kind of dark confession. I don't know why I expected it to be dark; maybe the idea of Nasir's perfect family seemed too good to be true, and something to set it off, break that film of perfection is what Nasir wants to reveal to me. A deep, dark secret.

I'm on the spectrum. Nasir finally finishes typing.

I blinked. My mind first of all pictures Nasir sitting on a rainbow before reality slapped the stupidity out of me to check what he means online. And so, I googled it, and my eyes widened.

My fingers typed really fast. You're autistic???

I like to say I have autism, or I prefer to say I'm on the spectrum.

It makes it in a way that it's not entirely me, you know?

Saying I'm autistic is like a stamp on my entire identity.

My fingers froze over my screen. I know of the word autism, but what does it even mean to be autistic? The only thing that comes to mind is the time that my father and I saw a boy drooling from his mouth in traffic and one of his hands was pretty thin, I asked Daddy what was wrong with him, and he waved it off and said, "he's abnormal." But turned out he had polio, and I never knew if Daddy knew that too.

Nadeen?

Nasir... I began to type but stopped. I puffed out a breath of air and continued, how do you know you're on the spectrum?

I was diagnosed when I was 8.

He knew long ago, I thought. I continued to read about it on Google as Nasir continued to type on.

I didn't do too well in my former school, and I was glad to leave it when we moved. It's easier in this school.

Were you bullied or something? I ask.

No. The reply came at once. Someone said I behave like the retarded kid in their area, and it stung. Things like that sting. I thought I had mastered how to be normal then.

Turns out I haven't mastered it up till now.

Retarded. A derogatory slur for an autistic person. I kept reading. High IQ. Problems with socializing and communication. Avoids eye contact most times. Engages in constant action. Obsessed with specific interests. No change in routine.

I try to connect it with Nasir. The no-calculator brain. The way I view him as weird when he talks sometimes. He cannot hold my gaze for more than a few seconds, which makes things awkward. Taps constantly on his thigh, especially when seated in class. Is obsessed with clouds and the sky and always finds a way to talk about it and send tens of pictures my way. The way he always brings the same food to school, and the way his mother said he only ate stirfry spaghetti on Wednesdays even though it was his favorite food.

Do all of them add up? I think so.

I finally typed. Nasir...

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way.

But as I waited, Nasir doesn't text back.

-

-

-

"Nadeen, where is your head today?" Ustadh Sa'id's words have a bite of frustration when I make a mistake for the thousandth time. I keep my eyes closed and flex my stinging palms, having already lost count of the number of strokes of cane I have received.

I have long learned that sins come like a dark, gloomy cloud you can't see, but it's in your head, around your heart, your mind, and I think of myself this way when I recite. The words do not form in my head, a place too dark for something so full of light. And so it's like struggling through a thick fog on a Harmattan morning.

I try the verses again. Slowly. I let them come out on their own, until eventually they stumble over each other, and lose their way.

"Stretch your hand," Ustadh says.

"Ustadh please," I hear Zainab beg him from behind.

"Please for what?" Ustadh glowers. "Do you know how long ago I asked you all to memorize these verses? And Nadeen of all people is messing it up, the very person who will represent us in the State's Quran competition very soon. If ordinary these verses she cannot get, do you know what will become of us in the competition? Do you know how people will wonder if I ever even taught her?"

I don't look up, but I can feel Ustadh's angry eyes on me.

"This has to end today. I don't care how many times I cane you, you will have to force yourself to take your Quran seriously again," Ustadh says. "Oya, tewo."

I keep my hand-stretched, and when the first stroke lands on my red palm, I squeeze my eyes close from the pain and bear it.

"That's enough oo, Ustadh Sa'id," I hear the familiar voice stop him. My eyes fly open, and at once, the entire class is thrown into a wave of excitement and happiness. Abu Hurairah waves at us all as they cheer out his name, and he gives me a warm smile that gets me swallowing the lump in my throat.

He looks over to Ustadh Sa'id. 

"I'm on my way to the mosque for a meeting," he tells Ustadh Sa'id. "And if it's one thing I'm going to make sure of, is that caning ends in this Madrasah today..."

"Ahn ahn, Abu Hurairah, if we don't cane these children, they won't take their Quran seriously." Ustadh Sa'id argues. "Even the Madrasah I attended at Osun, we dare not make a single mistake because if we do, we know we're in trouble. These ones are even being pampered..."

"I don't know anything about being pampered by a cane, but that kind of thing will end today," Abu Hurairah says. "I told Baba Ibeji," Baba Ibeji is Hussein and Husseinah's father, the co-founder of the Madrasah, "I told him that we need to take this seriously, and he agreed. I haven't been here in a long time, and now that I'm here, it will stop."

There are quiet celebrations among the students that rumbles into noise. Ustadh Sa'id holds up a cane to silence us, and I can hear the laughs from the back, the authority the cane had already lost. 

"Nadeen, Zainab, I hope to see you soon," Abu Hurairah says to us. I nod in response, and he continues towards the mosque. 

"If you think banning the cane is an excuse for being unserious, think again," Ustadh Sa'id says. The noise in the class lowers. "These days no one wants to take Islamic studies seriously and imagine it has reached the point where we have to cane you before it enters your head. What will become of you if we stop?"

And so, after about two minutes, I manage to finish the recitation, and Ustadh Sa'id all but dismisses me.

After the class disperses and everyone talks freely, Zainab sits next to me. She grabs my aching palms and examines them.

"Look how red they are," she sympathizes. "I know Abu Hurairah will put a stop to this."

I pull my hands out of hers, and instantly, anger and disgust wells in me. I check the back of my hands and see something oily on them.

"What did you put on my hands?" I ask her.

"What?" She attempts to touch them again, but I recoil fast enough. She looks at me, confused. "I didn't put any...Oh! It's the fried yam Misturah brought, and I thought I cleaned it completely oo."

She proceeds to rub her palms on her skirt, which is the same rumpled way her outfits have always been.

"Can't you just go and wash them at the ablution center?" I suggest.

She holds her hands up to my nose, and I push them away.

"Why'd you do that?" I cannot contain my anger.

"I just wanted you to smell them, that they are clean already," she says and has the effrontery to look offended.

I pack up my books. Without saying a word, I leave the class. It isn't until I leave the gates of the Madrasah that I realize that Zainab is right behind me.

"Ehen!" She starts, rushing to meet my fast steps. "I wanted to gist you about what happened with Mr. Alade today, our biology teacher. We were supposed to dissect a frog, and when he began to cut it..."

"I don't want to hear," I cut her off.

"Why?"

"I just don't want to hear, it's disturbing."

"Okay," Zainab still tries to keep up with me. "Okay, that girl in my class that I told you about last week, the one that stole from everyone's bag when we went for assembly. Did I tell you how they caught her? She..."

"You've told me already," I say.

"Okay, but I didn't tell you..."

"There's no need to," I cut her off again.

Before I can walk any further, Zainab puts a hand on my arm. Instinctively, I fling it away.

"What's wrong, Nadeen?" Zainab's voice takes a shaky edge, kind of like how Iffat sounds when she's trying to hold back her fear. "What's wrong with you?"

What's wrong with me? The question swims in my head, takes me up like a tornado. What's wrong with me? This is the question that defines me. I imagine it like a single question on an examination paper, me staring at it, clock ticking, page still blank.

"Nadeen?" Zainab calls to me. "What's wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been acting strange. You've been acting somehow. I can't figure out what it is, but you have."

"I haven't."

"Yes, you have," she says more boldly now. "It feels as if... as if you're avoiding me."

"I walk home with you."

"It's not the same," Zainab says. "Talk. Tell me what I did wrong, and I'll apologize."

"I didn't say you did anything wrong."

"Tell me the truth." Zainab insists.

I sigh, barely able to suppress the irritation that brews whenever she is near. "Let's just go. We're almost home."

Zainab holds my arm before I can even walk away. When I look at her, she has that determined look on her face, one I have seen too many times when she wants to get Abu Hurairah to understand what she's saying.

"You're angry with me and I want you to tell me why!" She is adamant. I cannot help but think of her just like the he-goat that ate the flowers in front of our house. Several times Mummy Anu's children have stoned it away, and it kept coming back, flies surrounding its tiny body.

"Leave me alone," I tell Zainab. "You're shouting. And we're in the middle of the road."

"You are my best friend, and best friends tell each other..."

"I'm not your best friend!" The words explode out of me. It came like a bomb, unexpected. "I'm not your best friend! I'm just your classmate at Madrasah and that's it!" It's like a volcano, lava spilling hot from my mouth, and it burns. Allah, it burns right at my core. "I want you to leave me alone. I want you to stop clinging to me. My best friend is Yusrah, not you!"

I know people are staring, I can feel their curious gazes magnifying on us. My voice...I hold my throat. It hurts. It didn't feel like I was shouting when I was talking to her, but Zainab's face...

She's just staring at me, and unfiltered surprise and shock are written on her face. Two beads of tears roll down her face without warning, and she shakes her head. Zainab wipes her face with her hijab, looks around, and runs away.

This is the first time Zainab hasn't yelled, "I love you, Nadeen!" as she bounds to her place. But with the lava that poured out of me earlier, it burned everything along with it, including feelings. I can't feel a thing. I should feel something, something that would whip me with guilt, but I don't. So I just stare at her run, until she turns toward her street.

My legs finally move on their own, dragging my body like it didn't belong to it. I move this way until I get home, and Anu and some children are in the compound. Anu sings something, she's looking at me, but I don't hear the lyrics.

I step into the house, and Daddy is seated in front of the television. He's grumbling something, throwing things off the centre table. I don't look his way and keep moving toward my room.

"Ahn ahn, Nadeen, are you blind? Didn't you see me?" Daddy yells at me. I know I should run back to the living room, apologize, beg him, but I keep moving to my room. Daddy is yelling something, I don't know what it is. Iffat sits up from her bed, her eyes wide and set on the opened door I just came in through.

"Nadeen!" Daddy's voice is closer. He steps into the room, and the volcano I had imagined in me now sits in his eyes, burning with intent as he holds up his koboko.

"So that's how you want to behave? Like your sister, abi?" Daddy roars. I shake my head but stop and nod it.

"Please leave her. There's something wrong with her," Iffat jumps, standing between Daddy and me. 

She's right. There is. That's why everyone that comes into my life, leaves. All of them. That's why I can't understand what goes on in my head. That's why I don't understand who I am. I want to dismantle myself, find the problem, fix it, and reassemble myself back together.

Iffat screams, and before I understand what's happening, something stings me across my face, burning like fire. Everything in me comes alive with pain, and I shield the next hit of koboko as it lands on my arm. I scream, the pain isn't like the regular cane, it is deep, sharp, and stinging. So painful that it had me collapsing and writhing on the floor, reaching for any form of protection as I rush for my Adire blanket but it is snatched away from me.

"No one shows me respect in this house anymore!" Daddy shouts, the koboko whips landing anywhere on my body. "I provide for you! I clothe you! I feed you! Now you think because I have been suspended you can do anyhow abi? Not even greeting me!"

Iffat rushes to me, and her scream is so loud it blocks my ear. She screams for my mother, for God, for mercy, but the koboko whips reach me anyway. 

It is after a moment I notice the whipping has stopped. I open my tear-filled eyes, and next to my glowering father, my mother is on her knees, begging him.

"Please. You've beaten them enough, please," she begs. "Iffat has learned her lesson, please."

"Has she? She is a failure and now Nadeen wants to grow wings too. You think it's because you get the first position in school you're something abi?" Daddy points the koboko in my direction, and I flinch away to the safety of my sister's body. "If you like, get the first position for life, you're still nothing. Nothing!"

Daddy shoves Mummy out of the way, and she collapses to the ground. My entire body stings and I can't tell if the wetness on my face is tears or blood, and I don't want to find out. Iffat is seated next to me, her whole body wracking with sobs.

Mummy rises to her feet, crouches before Iffat, and rubs her shoulder. She says nothing, and her eyes go over to me, empty like wells in Harmattan. She reaches for the roll of tissue on Iffat's bed, tears some off, and pats my cheek. When she removes it, I see my blood.

"What happened, Nadeen?" Mummy wants to know. But again, nothing really happens for Daddy to strike. His moods are volatile. People say they step around volatile people like they are walking on eggshells, but we step around Daddy like walking on landmines, and I set one off. Without caring about the consequences, without being careful.

It's all my fault.

"What's wrong, Nadeen?" Mummy asks me. But I don't look at her. I stare at the new welts on Iffat's body, fresh red ones over the darkened ones, watch her in a crumpled mess on the ground, her sobs sounding like a person grieving from within.

"Nadeen, what's wrong?" Mummy asks.

Me, Mummy. I want to tell her, but I imprison the words behind the bars of my teeth. I am what's wrong.