TK

01

ONE

SIX MONTHS.

TK thought mindlessly sorting through the books that she needed to take to school today.

Six months since mummy had died. Six months since daddy had buried himself in work, Dare hid in his room playing video games on his PC and Teni started leaving very early and coming home late usually when she thought everyone was asleep and couldn't question her on her whereabouts.

The distant rumbling of thunder and the slightly nippy feeling in the breeze that blew through TK's open window, separated the heavy maroon coloured curtains and whooshed around the walls of the boundaries of her room causing goosebumps to rise on her skin whenever it touched it, warned of incoming rain.

It was still very early however, almost six am, and the weather still had ample time to change and become hot and almost unbearable like it had been for the past few weeks.

This was Lagos. The city where everything, including the weather, was highly uncertain.

"TK!"

TK could hear her brother's voice hollering for her from the hall. "Daddy said you should come down fast because he is about to leave! And Aunty Nene said your breakfast is getting cold!"

As if to confirm Dare's message, she heard daddy's voice carry up the stairs and through her slightly open room door. "Tinuke! Are you not ready yet? I'm about to leave o!"

TK frowned. No pressure. She thought with an eye roll as she pressed her lips together pursing them as she began the hurried task of eyeing her books and ticking of the mental checklist of all the things she needed in her school bag.

It was ironic really, she thought as a sliver of lightening brightened the inky black sky outside her window for a brief moment. First day of senior year and rain threatens to fall.

"Almost!"she responds when she is satisfied that everything she needs is within the confines of her school bag.

She turned to stare at herself in the mirror eyeing the ugly school uniform she had been forced to don for the past two years... and her junior uniform was nothing to write home about either.

Her eyes are drawn to the golden emblem of the school's logo on the upper left corner of her school jacket.

It had been six months, she found herself thinking again. Was six months enough?, She wondered, to stop the stares and the pitiful glances the teachers and her classmates gave her.

She hoped so.

Everyone in school knew mummy. She was the PTA chairman and loved spending her time on school property thinking and plotting up new ways through the which the school could be improved and becoming familiar with the school staff.

Over the past months, one too many teachers had touched her shoulders and offered condolences, they had told her how amazing  and generous and nice mummy was like she didn't know.

And TK hated it. Not because they were lies - heck, her mum was the nicest person she knew. Miss Congeniality. And it was probably that niceness that killed her - or even because she was perhaps jealous but because their words of sympathy made it harder. So much harder for her to heal.

Because the gaping hole became so much wider when someone talks of her good deeds or her wonderful smile.

And it hurt even more.

And that was only when she refused to let her mind think about her. That was when she let her despair overshadow her guilt. That was when she let her grief overshadow the thoughts that somewhere in this small city of Lagos, another family was mourning a lost daughter. Sister.

Someone much younger than her mum.

TK refused to let herself think of  Delight and what she could have done to save her what she should have done because she knew the tears brimming her eyelids would definitely fall then. Because if there was anyone that deserved not to die, it was her.

And just as she was about to perform her last first day of school ritual  of examining her face for any new pimple that may have cropped up over night, her phone beeped signifying her of one the celebrities she followed on Instagram's birthday that was today.

And she thought of how ironic it was how people celebrated at the same time some other people mourned. And while people were laughing some other people ugly cried in their bedrooms.

And with that thought she headed out of her room.

Senior year here I come.