Gone Bad (Nigerian Novel) -Editing

Chapter 17: Change of Plans

My heart nearly jumps out of my throat when I look up from the position I had sprung to.

"What are you doing awake at this time." my mom asks, her eyes half their original size.

She looks like she just woke up with bloodshot eyes and a creased nightgown with one sleeve awkwardly hanging off her shoulder.

She scratches her side and waves her hand at me.

"You should be in bed by now go and sleep," Mum says, shooing me so she can use the toilet.

I try to ease the muscles in my shoulder as I turn the head of the tap back in place.

The phone barely holds in my little shorts and part of me expects it to slip out my left leg.

I puff out my stomach in an effort to support the band holding my device and slightly waddle out of the toilet.

The bathroom door closes with a resounding bang and I race into my room before my mom can rethink my sketchy behavior.

Inside my room I lower my screen brightness and end the call, switching to Whatsapp instead.

"Sorry, mom almost busted me, got to run. Let's talk tomorrow."

He sends laughing emojis and a 'goodnight' but for me, it's far from it.

I had missed out on talking to Isren, all because boyfriends were taboo in my household till I was 25 and expected to get a man.

Not that Mum would be too thrilled that my first potential boyfriend was eleven years older.

I can already picture it: he will use you and dump you! men like that only look for what they can get and once they have it they will go and marry a good girl that kept herself.

Lol, I can't wait to be used.

18, here I come.

...............

It's 10 a.m when I come downstairs and I only see my mother perched on the living room sofa.

"Good morning Mummy," I say before I retreat to the adjacent kitchen.

But she pauses the ever handsome Ramsey Nouah to look at me. "Eh eh eh, come back. Go and get me water from the freezer."

I raise my eyebrows at the nonchalant woman. "Freezer?" I repeat.

"My friend would you answer me or was I speaking Japanese the first time," she says gracing me with an adoring gaze, probably wondering why she gave birth to such a slow child.

I pull the only sachet of water in the icebox and shake my head as I feel the crystallized ice already strengthening to form a denser block.

After I've given her the drink she ropes me in another episode of 'Nobody Cares', starring my mother who made me stand as she babbled about inconsequential things in her life.

"Those agbero boys (hoodlums) in the next building are so annoying. Always playing music as if the plaza is a nightclub." My mom says.

I rapidly bob my head up and down as I near the exit, slowly backing away.

"It's them that will kill their mothers I am not going to today..." I'm almost out of the door when she continues. "Ehen I remember, come here."

I force a grin but my kilowatt smile comes out as a poor current, like what PHCN gave you during the rain before they cut the power completely.

To this day I never understood that phenomenon. We ran hydroelectricity, but couldn't provide citizens with power during showers -and that was aside from the usual on and off switch I was convinced those in charge of light supply played with.