The Turbulence✔️ (#1 in the Our Side of The Dice series)

18: Testing Times

Gifty
Lagos, Nigeria

The phone conversation with my dad was a therapeutic one and I needed it for sure. Zion wasn't having it easy with me and would not even bother to pretend in front of Mrs. Karen that we were on good terms. He didn't speak to me and honestly, I wished he could go back to the way he was – cold, calculating, and reserved.

I'd learned to live with his silent nature but this type of silence he was giving me wasn't something I could bear at all.

It had made me realize that silence came in different forms. Silence can both be something you desire and it can be something you don't.

But staying around him like my stepfather advised had helped in a way. On a few occasions, we nearly bumped into each other, and sometimes, we just happened to meet coincidentally. When that happened, I would say hi to him sheepishly, he would look at me and walk away without returning my greeting but I took that as progress. It was the least I could get because he normally would not look at me shortly after our huge fight.

We barely saw each other even though we lived together.

Him looking at me was something because, in those cold, emotionless eyes, I could find one thing – need. The need to be needed, loved tenderly, in the way he wanted to be loved; the kind of love our real dad was able to give us.

Zion was depending on me to love him like that although he never communicated it openly to me I owed him the love that only our real dad was able to give. He could understand if I was unable to do it the same way but he wanted me to try. I knew.

I could only hope I was taking the right steps towards trying because Zion deserved it.

The six-year-old Zion I knew was happy and had nothing close as to a storm brewing permanently in his eyes. He never looked angry or about to destroy the world. He was an adequately loved kid but the death of our Dad did him badly and made him who I never thought he would be – subtly bitter, somewhat depressed, and uncomfortably reserved.

I hope I will be able to revive that happy little brother I once knew because he's still very young. Too young to have his youthful years wasted to several thieves of joy.

Today is another good day - a good day if my optimistic side does say so itself. It's a day filled with another tiny dose of hope that Gaius will talk to me today and I don't know what makes me feel this hopeful but ever since Mrs. Karen told me that the only way to make him open up to me is to pester him with the same question over and over again with a few threats added, strangely, I felt it was something I could do well – like the personality of a naggy, clingy girlfriend.

I agreed with Mrs.Karen when she said that someone like Gaius would never open to me even if I decided to wait on him to talk and I knew this was something Gaius could do because, in a way, it always felt like there was something he wasn't telling me even before he started to pull up with this moodiness.

And in a way, it has always felt like something I should know.

Indeed, it's high time I squeezed that information out of his lips.

Once I am set to leave the house, I sling my violin bag over my shoulder and left my room. After ruminating for nearly a dozen times, I conclude that making my presence known to Zion before leaving should not be a hazardous idea. I mean, I have to prove myself to this boy in any way.

After knocking at his door three times and got no response, I turned the doorknob carefully, attempt to walk in but got hit in the chest by my brother or rather, some items he was holding just as we placed our hands on the doorknob at the same time. It didn't seem like he was willing to open the door for me.