Running Away Solves Everything

Chapter 5- Ekene

“Soji, how will you open the door with that nonsense hand you use to masturbate?!” I’ve never seen Simi this vile before. He’s ruthless on a regular basis, but his body has just been itching him lately to insult. It’s not even now I had already began to regret coming. “Just open it! And leave it open!”

* * *

Aunty Ugochi, Enyinna's mum is so liberal and allows her second son and I to leave to the house at eight pm for a party in a hotel she knew little or nothing about.

“We don’t have to sneak,” Enyinna said, when I thought we should plan on escaping, and I didn’t believe him.

We just enter a keke and Enyinna, just says, “Guys bailed on the outing. Their loss.” His phone is his hand, so I assume it’s news to him.

“What? Why?” I hear a child in those questions, so I promise to make my voice coarse the next time.

He ignores my questions though. Instead, he shakes my arms vigorously and the head on my neck almost drops to my laps. “You are going to be a man today!” With the way he is built like a living, lanky mannequin, I didn’t expect his arms to be so strong. Then, he stops. “Pete’s coming though.”

When I almost break into a smile, he fools around, “Fag-o!” and the keke man turns his head like sixty degrees.

“I no dey like dat kind ting for hia o!” When I speak of coarse, I don’t mean to this frog man's extent.

“C'mon face your front.”

Enyinna looks like he wants to slap the man, so I interfere. “Sorry sire. Enyinna, we’re almost there.” And without knowing it, I was right.

Three minutes passed, and we were at Simi’s house.

A car was facing that big, black gate as Imeh came to answer to Enyinna’s knocks. “This Simi guy has been bashing since.”

Enyinna snaps, “So what should we do? He knows he can’t even go without me.” That damn ego he doesn't think people notice. And then, there’s just silence between the three of us.
The walk to his main house is taking longer than I expected, and I just direct my focus to the security lights on each walls of Simi’s fence, illuminating yellow light and causing Imeh's golden-brown hair to seem even more golden.

“Should I relax my hair?” he asks Enyinna and this just makes me realize that throughout this outing, or whatever they’re calling it, I’m going to be invisible.

We don’t walk up to the house when Simi, Paschal, Ebuka and Collins strut out of the door we were heading to. In that order.
As Simi saucily says, “We were just about to leave you guys.” Paschal reaches up to Enyinna and gives him a friendly shake. “Bro, how far?” He shakes me too, but it’s not the same, as I haven’t quite figured out that 'snapping of fingers' part yet. The greeting goes round like that, but as Simi shakes me, he examines me. As in to say, What are you doing here? Or What are you wearing? I can just feel the bad energy in the air as he walks towards the Sienna that was at the gate with the key in his hand.

He looks back and discovers that he’s given us a great distance, so he is in a rage. “You guys should walk fast now??!” Lucky for him, his choice of words were not bad. I bet if they were, Paschal or Enyinna would have given it to him in words, while Ebuka masses his slacks.

I had almost learnt nothing today, but here I was in a car with one of my mates at the steering. “I can’t believe my parents travelled and left me alone in this country,” he seized his chance to gloat after he got back into the car after closing the gate.

Looking at everyone’s face, it was like we were driving in circles. This Simi boy had boasted that he could drive before, but I didn’t believe it. Does it also mean that in SSS 2 when he said he met NOT3S when he travelled to UK he wasn’t also lying? Or when in JSS 3 he said he followed his brother to buy packets of condoms he also wasn’t? I’m sick. I think I’m about to vomit. Thank God I am at the window. But when I want to let it all out through the same hole it enters, we’re already at Ocean View Hotels and Suites. You don’t want to know what regurgitated Jollof Rice with scent leaves tastes like.