The ORION Project | ✔

chapter 20

1994, January,

They are coming —

It is only a matter of time before this little game of mine comes to an end, only a matter of time before they figure out the next level. I see the patience leave his eyes slowly when I come up with a new excuse every damn time. Today I caught him snooping through my things,  and he is a lot of things but he is far from stupid — even if I wish he were.

Tolu knows nothing of this, he thinks the so called project that has been keeping me awake at night is related to school, he does not know that I have been slowly crafting the most dangerous weapon ever created in Orion's history. He does not know that Remilekun's so called innocent questions are not so innocent, he does not know that he is unwittingly aiding the creation of the biggest DEADPOOL.

Sometimes I want to laugh at his naivety, other times it infuriates me. He still thinks Orion is an organization dedicated to making Nigeria a 'better place' behind the scenes so he is all to happy to assist in whatever ways are needed. The other day, he signed the deal automatically binding whatever children we might have to The ORION Project.

He does not know that he has made a deal with the devil himself.

***

"There's a boy looking for you outside,"

Grace looked up from tying her shoe lace and blinked up at her mother's stern gaze. Sometimes it surprised her how much her mother had changed from a woman that used to smile so much to a woman with deep frown lines crinkled at her lips, she was still beautiful but she was aloof. There was no warmth in her anymore and most times she didn't care anymore what her children did, so the deep frown on Linda Ilori's face took her aback.

These days all she cared about was her slowly booming catering business, and perhaps the 'man' she was having an affair with — as ORION had said.

Your mother sleeps with another man to spite him.

Grace shook her heads, banishing the words away even though she secretly wondered if her mother's infidelity was a reason for the divorce they were yet to officially announce to their children, although all of then well aware, at least everybody but Sanmi.

"I'm going out ma, he's a friend." Grace expected her mother to nod and disappear back into the kitchen where she would spend the rest of the evening baking up a storm but was surprised when Linda's frown deepened.

"Is he your boyfriend?" Linda asked flatly, seemingly uncaring.

Grace spluttered an answer.

"He's not my boyfriend," I wish he were.

Linda still hovered by the open door, her gaze swept the tidy room before settling back on her daughter's. She didn't even seem to care that Ewa had hoarded a whole batch of doughnuts that still lay on a tray, untouched on the empty vanity.

"Ewatomi started having boyfriends since she was seventeen, Sanmi was fourteen." Linda began, there was a tiny hint of exasperation in her voice. "I have never been the traditional Yoruba parent who objects to children messing around but you have never been one to care about things like that, because you are so busy trying to hide away."

Grace did not object, in fact she felt almost like a little girl again, listening to her mother talk all day even though all the kids her age wanted nothing to do with their own parents. For the first time in a long while, Linda Ilori sounded like a mother.

"But you have always been the most like me,"

Grace almost scoffed in disagreement but remembered that she risked a slap on her back, no matter old she could grow, Linda never objected to a good spanking when it was needed. Her life might be strange now, but it was not an American teen drama where teens talked back at their parents.