09: Block Party🎆🍹

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Kam

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Kam

━━━━━━━༺۵༻━━━━━━━
"Have the courage

to speak your truth, at least."
━━━━━━━༺۵༻━━━━━━━

"So you've never taken the mainland train before?" Came her caustic voice, when I frowned as the sleek metal monster pulled up in front of us.

We had reached the subway at exactly five o'clock.

Persuading Asa had been very hard. In the end, I had had to invite Kosi and Jemi, her two best friends, to come with us, just so she would agree to come with me. It had dug a substantial hole in my pockets, nothing that my steady allowance wouldn't fix, but it's the easiness at which I did it all that made me slightly uneasy.

I felt like I could wrap the moon in my hands for her and the realization both shocked and excited me. I wanted to see her smile. To let go. Loosen the rigidness of her spine and the tightness of her scowl and just... Live.

"I've never been to the mainland before," I told her. "You can't blame me."

In the spirit of Nigeria's independence tonight at midnight, we were all dressed in the colours of the Nigerian flag. Asa donned white leggings and an oversized green sweater with a white beanie that kept her brown braids out of her face. Her golden charm bracelet, sparkled on her wrist.

I noticed that the charm bracelet she wore looked exactly like Kosi and Jemi's (Jemi, of course, had a more manlier one, a solid bronze band with an infinity symbol), except hers was gold, Kosi's was silver and Jemi's was bronze.

"How come you've used the train before?" I asked her.

It was Jemi that answered for her. "She lives on the mainland."

She looked at him with an alarmed expression, like she didn't want him divulging any information about her personal life to me. "Shut up!" Her eyes practically screamed and he shrugged in cool nonchalance.

I was puzzled by this revelation. Asa always struck me as someone that lived on the island, where most students from our school and most of the rich people, with their flashy rides and expensive yachts, dominated.

It's not as if all of mainland was slum, it had some really fancy parts, but when you were rich in Lagos, you just had to live on the island. It was just the way thing were.

The event was supposed to be held in Secret Garden, Ikeja and we were supposed to board the train, heading to Ikeja and take an uber dropping us off at our destination.

When I had asked, "why don't we just take an uber all the way?"

Kosi had said, "we need to take a train for the whole mainland experience. You've not experienced the mainland if you've not used the train."

𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝑮𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒏 𝑺𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒔 𝑪𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒅𝒆 | 1Where stories live. Discover now