The journey back to Surulere was the longest of their lives.
Normally, the close of the school day was a chaotic release of pent-up teenage energy. Students flooded the streets of Lagos in waves of blue and white, arguing fiercely over Chelsea versus Arsenal, buying roasted corn and coconut from street vendors, and dodging the reckless okada riders.
Today, Femi and Lola moved through the crowd like ghosts.
They managed to squeeze into the back of a battered danfo bus heading to Ojuelegba. The bus smelled of sweat, hot vinyl, and the pungent odor of smoked fish from a market woman sitting near the door. The conductor hung off the side, shouting and slapping the roof, but to Lola, the noise sounded muffled, as if she were underwater.
She sat pressed against the window, staring blankly at the blur of traffic. She kept her hands clamped tightly between her knees. Every time the bus hit a pothole, she braced herself, half-expecting the violent wind to tear the vehicle apart. But nothing happened. The air remained stiflingly hot.
Femi sat beside her, his thigh pressed against hers. He did not pull away. The static shock that usually accompanied their touch was gone, replaced by a deep, humming warmth. It was a comforting anchor. Femi's backpack rested heavily on his lap, the terracotta cup hidden inside a wrapped sweater.
"O wa o! Driver, I dey drop for the next junction," a passenger yelled in Pidgin.
The bus screeched to a halt. As people shuffled out, a vendor thrust a plastic bowl of iced sachet water through the window. "Pure water! Buy your cold pure water!"
Femi bought two sachets, biting the corner off one and handing it to Lola.
"Drink," he said quietly.
Lola took it with trembling hands. The icy water hitting the back of her parched throat was a sharp, brutal reminder of her physical body. She was still flesh and blood. She still needed water. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the image of the boy crumbling into dry leaves.
"What if he comes back?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roar of the engine. "What if there are more of them?"
"Then we will be ready," Femi replied, his voice flat, analytical, completely devoid of his usual teenage uncertainty. "But right now, we have to go home. We have to face our mothers and act like today was just another Thursday."
The Yoruba say that the insect that eats the vegetable lives inside the vegetable. The greatest danger was not out there on the streets; it was the secret they were bringing into their own home.
When they pushed open the wooden gate of their compound, the smell of frying plantain and palm oil hit them. The late afternoon sun cast long, lazy shadows across the concrete courtyard.
Iya Femi and Iya Lola were sitting on low wooden stools near the communal kitchen, peeling a massive basin of egusi seeds. They were laughing loudly,gossiping about a neighbor who had recently bought a flashy new car on a suspicious salary.
It was a scene of profound, beautiful normalcy. Femi felt a sudden, sharp ache in his chest. He wanted to drop his bag, kneel before his mother, and tell her everything. He wanted her to tell him it was a bad dream.
"Ah, the scholars are back," Iya Lola announced, tossing a handful of peeled seeds into a tray. She wiped her hands on her wrapper and looked up. Her smile faltered slightly as she took in her daughter's pale face and disheveled uniform. "Lola, what is it? Are you sick? You look like you have seen a ghost."
Panic flared in Lola's eyes, but Femi stepped forward smoothly, shielding her slightly.
"It's the heat, Ma," Femi lied, his voice perfectly steady. "And the mock exams. We spent the whole afternoon in the library doing past questions. She just needs to rest."
Iya Femi clicked her tongue in sympathy. "Pele, my daughter. This JAMB will not kill you children. Go and bathe. There is rice and plantain in the pot."
"Thank you, Ma," Lola muttered. She kept her head down, hurrying past the women and unlocking the door to her mother's room.
Femi stayed behind just long enough to greet both women properly, his manners flawless, before retreating to his own room across the corridor.
Once his door was locked, the facade crumbled. Femi dropped his bag on the floor and leaned against the wooden door, sliding down until he was sitting on the linoleum floor. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. His head was throbbing with a migraine that felt completely unnatural.
He pulled his bag toward him and carefully extracted the terracotta cup. In the dim light of his small room, the ancient geometric patterns seemed to catch the shadows.
Femi set the cup on the floor. He closed his eyes and held his hands hovering just an inch above the clay.He didn't want to change it. He just wanted to understand it.
He let his mind go blank, dropping the rigid walls of formulas and physics he used to make sense of the world. He reached out with his senses. Immediately, his palms began to tingle. He felt a deep, slow pulse coming from the cup. It was a rhythm. A heartbeat. Not of flesh, but of the earth itself.
He realized then that he wasn't just molding dirt. He was commanding the very foundation of the world. He was the earth, and the earth was him.
Across the narrow corridor, in her own dimly lit room, Lola lay flat on her back on her narrow mattress, staring at the ceiling. The ceiling fan was broken, and the air was thick and stagnant,She raised her hand toward the ceiling.
She remembered the feeling of the wind bursting from her palms. It hadn't felt like a weapon. It had felt like a part of her soul escaping a cage.
Slowly, deliberately, Lola took a deep breath. She didn't panic. She just imagined the air in the room. She pictured it moving.
A gentle, incredibly cool breeze suddenly swept across her face, rustling the calendar on the wall. It circled the room, picking up the scent of her lavender soap, before settling softly back down.
Lola let out a shaky breath, a tear slipping from the corner of her eye.
They were monsters. They were miracles. And as the sun finally set over the chaotic sprawl of Lagos, bathing the city in deep, bruising shadows, Lola knew one thing for certain.
There was no going back