ℬᎾℳᎯ  

   I COULD TELL you that it doesn't matter how many times you've been to the hospital; I've been there a lot more than you. It also doesn't matter how many times you've felt pain, I've felt more. Trust me.

   Last night was only a little different from the last six nights of pain, excruciating pain nobody deserves, and following that, being unable to fall asleep after two a.m.

   Just like those days, again, laying in bed and asking a thousand inaudible questions, I have watched dawn's shadow dissipate into this radiant morning sun, now shining through my sheer blue curtains like a goddess, and casting a whimsical glow that bounces off my dressing mirror to my yellow walls, around my white ceiling, and on my sleep deprived face. 

   I turn to the yellow wall on the right side of my bed. A section is dedicated to my collection of sunset cut-outs, and next to an enchanting Santorini sunset radiating with hues of calm oranges and sweet yellows; is picture of me and Chinny flaunting her medals from our last inter-house sports game.

   At the end of the wall, my bucket lists are coded in the colours of the rainbow for each year since I was eleven. They look like a mad artist's inspiration wall, or just that of a three year old discovering colours for the first time:

   RED: 11. 'I will look for Ivan again. Buy every single Barbie collection and go to Disneyland with Chinny.'
  
 Never happened. I was close to getting every single barbie collection but I grew up too fast.

   ORANGE: 12. 'Write letters to Ivan in Lagos. Learn everything about sickle cell disease. Read more books than Daniel and Kio.'

   The letters were written, even though they were never received, so check. I know all there is to know about my disease, check. Definitely read more books than those Bubbleheads, Daniel and Kio, part of that would be because I lived longer than both of them, but it's still a check.

   YELLOW: 13. 'Forget Ivan. Write a poem for Daniel. Smile more. Don't hate bras so much. Own a laptop. Have less crises.'
 
   Poem for Daniel, check, it was written after he died. Own a laptop, check, thanks to Tee, my soon-to-be step dad. Bra's and smile more, still a work in progress. Instead of having less crises, what I had was a heart attack. Forget Ivan, never happened.

   GREEN: 14. 'Kiss a boy I love. Start a YouTube channel and have millions of subscribers. Fewer than five crises is the goal.'
 
    Never happened. Don't let me start on the disappointment I encountered that year, just know it was epic.

   BLUE: 15. 'Convince Mom so we can travel to a fancy resort. Just kiss anybody, fall in love after. Go viral. Find Ivan on Facebook.' 

   Desperation never works and Facebook is not omniscient. 

   INDIGO: 16. 'Read The Death Book. Don't kiss anyone. Love yourself. Be happy where you are. Write a poem for Kio. Get your driver's license. Own your debit card. Don't die this year. Grow some hips.'

   Out of everything, I was wildly successful at, 'don't kiss anyone' and 'read The Death Book' which is just a metaphorical description Kio came up with for Dying Like The Sun; A Void, by Sarah Okosi.

   The book is Dr. Hart's birthday present for all her sickle cell patients once they turned sixteen, so I got one too. It is not a novel, as much as it's not an inspirational or self-help book. I don't know what it is—poetry or an exposé into life—but it's the only book that tells me things like:

   'THE FIRST VOID: Day breaks young; at dawn, then the sun is low, but only as much as to fault the dark of dusk, and not to wither out of purpose at being The Sun. So we wait a few measly hours, tick, tock, and when we return, we can only but wonder where bleak dawn bought a ticket to high noon. Still, again, we return another few measly hours to find the sun, now ever glorious, but fading. Fading into a cold, a darkness, both of which are nothing compared to its essence, but it fades still. Death is not the prettiest part of life to watch, but perhaps in a cosmic sense, like the dying sun, it is.'

   I have now grown into an obsession with the sunset, Opacarophilia, but then, my greatest grievance with the book is that Sarah Okosi is too optimistic in the way she describes life. To me, life has always been high school and hospitals. But death, death is easy. You leave everything and everyone behind, the people who survive you consciously strive to remember you like a saint, even though you were really just a demon.

  The perfect escapism, or at least, to me.

   But as my fingers slowly graze the blank violet sheet that was supposed to hold my list for this year, I sigh. Mom is getting married soon, Ivan is back in Port-Harcourt, and I'm turning eighteen in five months. This is not a good year to kick the bucket. 

   This is me choosing life. No bucket list this year.

   I turn back to the ceiling, counting each pulsating wheeze of the rotating fan.

   Before this man starts again, I should whisper a prayer.

   Following a deep breath, I start my prayer. Audible to myself and God, whose ears I believe are wide open to always recieve my prayers of help and mercy. That's all I ever pray for. "Thank you Lord for another morning–"

   "Pra! Pra! Pra!"

    Too late.

   I open my eyes in annoyance, looking over my feet at the window where the gruffy voice came from. His loud speaker begins blaring Bob Marley's evergreen No woman, No cry.

   "Father, thank you for adding another day to Mr. Ortega–" 

   "Dibbo! Don't do that!" he yells at his dog. The dog barks back. 

   I pull my pillow over my head and growl.

   He continues. "No woman, No cry. . ."

   "Well good morning to you too." I sigh. I don't think he heard me but he turns the volume up. 

   "No woman! No cry!"

   It's all part of Mr. Ortega's routine—every morning—playing this particular song and singing loudly, yelling at his dog, while the dog barked back at him. Perhaps, if he stopped living off his brother's wealth, and laying around all day like a band of old sailors, who knows, he could get a woman, and maybe—just maybe—she'll stick around long enough to be his wife, and then he'll change his speakers or even better, stop playing this song altogether. 

   Before I can catch my breath, Mom begins downstairs. Singing loudly with the intent of waking me up indirectly. 

   That does it.

   I sit up, disentangling my body from the blanket. A sharp pain shoots down my right leg from my knee, forcing me to hold a breath. It's only for three seconds but my lungs burn so bad because three seconds is a lot of lost air for me. No surprise I only float in swimming pools.

   I pick up my phone, from under the pillow, tapping the front button to display the time: 8:00am. My alarm begins and I snooze it.

   Today I don't feel depressed, but it's not like I'm happy either.

    "That's a fat lie," I chuckle aloud to myself. Today I'm happy.

   At three a.m. while I was watching my depressing white ceiling and trying to recover from my crisis, Ivan texted. Texting past midnight is against my rules, but then, I couldn't not reply to him. 

   We talked till five a.m. about his weird dream and how I never remember any of my dreams. After which I turned off my phone, only to find that the plain depressing white ceiling had been replaced with vibrant swirls of neon purples, and bright bursts of summer yellows. 

   It was all in my head of course, but with those bushy gymnastic eyebrows and brown eyes that seem to be bubbling with lives of their own, that trim baby moustache that looks extremely pampered on his chiselled face, and that bronze sun kissed skin—probably the result of countless years of cocoa butter polishing, anyone could very easily overdose on his beauty, and I did. He had become nothing like Ivan from ten years ago.

   "Bomate!" Mom pounds my door. Instantly distorting my thoughts. "It's morning in case you forgot!"

   "I didn't forget, Mom." 

   "Prayer and breakfast in thirty minutes," she says.

   His smile flashes in my mind again—those flirtatious dimples—I let out a little laugh, then a cheeky smile, three or four more giggles and I'm a ball of laughter, bringing up memories of eight-year-old Ivan and me, both of us completely oblivious to the world we were soon going to be thrown into. 

   "Did you hear me?" she pounds my door again. 

   "Yes. I just need to brush my teeth and I'll be down."

   "Make it quick." I hear her footsteps retreat as she walks away. 

   I take in the sights of my room. The only thing out of place are the textbooks scattered across my study table.

   My laptop boots from sleep with a bleep. "Three days to prom!" 

   I roll my eyes, perfectly unexcited by the timely reminder Chinny had set up.

   "Three days to prom!" Cortana repeats and I turn off the reminder.

   "Whose idea was it to have a prom in the first place?"

   "Sorry, didn't catch that," Cortana responds. 

   "Wasn't talking to you, Cortana."

   "Sorry, didn't catch that." 

   "Damn you Windows! Go to sleep, Cortana." I groan. Hoping she listens for once and sends my laptop to sleep. 

   "Perhaps you want a tongue twister?" she goes on reciting Peter Piper. I groan louder and throw myself back into bed. My bonnet falls off and my hair falls into my face.

   Chaos equals my life and it comes in three different packages.

   The first of which would be that I'm mixed race, half-caste, mixed blood, whichever term befits the circumstances under which I would be described. Plainly put, I have tan white skin, pale blue eyes with whites that yellow very often, and an angry strawberry-blonde curly hair.

   All of that confusion is the result of Mom's love affair with a German man. I'm her love child, and there's not much to say about the German man.

   The second part of the chaos would be the nightly crisis and subsequent insomnia that have refused to get better since last week. That evening, I had gone to bed early; relieved and extremely grateful that high school and everything that followed it (except prom) was finally over. That relief only lasted a few hours until I was awoken by a searing pain that started in my chest, spread rapidly over my back, and sneaked a paralyzing shot into my head. 

    To cut the long story short, sickle cell disease is not the cutest of the millions of genetic diseases you could be born with. But we don't get to choose, do we?
  
   The final part of the chaos so far, would be Quincy Brown. Normal boy, nothing special. A hard-soft face like most boys his age, 6'2, 19, amber eyes that look like stained glass, the only boy in school allowed to keep a head full of coily black afro. Averagely smart, at least he didn't fail all his classes, but who cares? He's the striker of our football team, which means he was always running around the field, kicking a ball, glistening under the hot sunlight, showing off his packed abs with every goal scored, while raising trophies of fake gold, and of broken hearts. The broken hearts belong to the wonderful number of girls piled at his feet. Unfortunately, my poor heart is part of that pile.

   My phone vibrates in my hand as the light comes up, showing off my screensaver, the portrait Ivan sketched as a return gift. The Boma in the sketch is the one I dream of, the one who smiles more, whose father stayed, the one who never had sickle cell disease, the one who has no care in the world, the one who's free to live and live long.

   Two messages pop up shortly. A bottle of wine emoji followed by "THREE DAYS!!!" It's from Chinny.

   "Can't wait till it's over." I text her back.

   "You're still not excited? I thought I set Cortana up to remind you every day?" she asks.

   "She did, but my excitement is still at negative-zero-point-zero-percent." 

   "What if you're voted as prom queen?" 

   "How I wish I cared," I say.

   She sends an emoji with rolled eyes. "Pessimist or sadist, I don't know which suites you accurately."

   "None. Why do I have to worry myself just so an obnoxious spoilt little girl can rest well knowing she was prom queen?"

   Obnoxious spoilt little girl is Jacklyn Morgan. The mere mention of her name always has Chinny seething and part of all that bad blood has led to three broken pairs of glasses since Jss1. The glasses belong to Chinny but the tears on the battle ground do not.

   "Jacklyn." She sends a laughing emoji.

   I send a couple too. 

   "But seriously, Buns, so what if that's all it means, it's still a once in a lifetime event." She says.

   "I still don't care," I say. "And even if I was going to be minimally excited, it's Wednesday and I don't have a dress."

   "Did you read yourself? You also don't have a date." I imagine her brown eyes rolling around her thick glasses. 

   "Chinny, I don't remember anyone asking you either."

   "Lol. Albert is going to ask, I know he's trying to come up with something special," she says. 

   "Oh wow, I guess you must be living the dream." I say. 

   "Exactly my point, I just don't want to brag."

   "I was being sarcastic, Chinny."

   "If you weren't so sarcastic about everything, you'd have a date and Mom would have gotten you a dress."

   I reply with a laughing emoji. "If this wasn't Cedar Heights class of 2019, I would be excited."

   She's typing so I send another. "I would be so excited that I'll probably have Prom tattooed on my arm. But then, our class super sucks."  

   What is this girl typing?

   "OMGGGG! ALBERT ASKED!!" 

   "Speaking of the devil. Seriously?" I ask.

   She sends me a voice note. "I'm serious Buns." 

   I snicker at the sound of her love drowned voice and reply with a voice note too so she can hear how hard I'm laughing. 

   Albert Wechie is Chinny's missing rib, and the only boy who got himself sour with the Sweet Boys, when everyone found out that the extra one inch that made him 6'ft (a premium trademark of the Sweet Boys), was supplied by shoe pads. It's not like I'm shocked. If he didn't ask, it would have shattered Chinny's remaining ribs. 

   She sends me a video of Albert singing her the question of 'Would you be my better half to prom?'

   "Let me guess, you're in love." I text her after watching.

   "Overflowing." She texts another thousand hearts. 

   "I'm in love too," I say.

   "With who???" 

   "I mean I'm in love with Albert's song." 

   Three smirking emojis show up. "So, you're not going to ask Ivan?"

   I imagine her worrying herself about my indifference towards prom, while still being over the moon about Albert. In a way it feels like betrayal, but then, I'm always second guessing everything so it really isn't a problem. "I'm a bit worked up by that question."

   "What's working you up? He's prom perfect, duhh." She says.

   "It's not that serious, Chinny." 

   "ANASTASIA. BOMATE. LAWSON. A PROM DATE DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED." 

   "You're screaming, and you know I hate that Anastasia name," I reply scowling at the phone. 

   "Sorry," she says.

   "Plus, he just got back here. It's been barely two weeks." 

   "So?"

   "So, I don't want to come off as desperate, besides, it's against my rules," I say.

   "It's down to THREE DAYS. I'd have broken the rules a long time ago." 

   "News flash! You already did."

   She sends me a sticker with the inscription 'Your head is paining you.'

   I add a laughing emoji. 

   "I love you Buns and trust me, I understand, but it's just one evening, and honestly, you'll hate being alone because I won't even have your time." 

   "Good to know best friend, but I'm still going to take my time," I say.

   "If you take too long, I'll have to hook you up with a greenman. You have two days."

   I grimace at the thought of being with a green man, those boys maintained their standard of dirty smelling uniforms since Jss1.

   "BOMATE!" Mom calls from downstairs. I don't answer, I want her to think I'm in the bathroom. 

   "Ttyl. Mom's calling," I tell Chinny.

   "K. Tell her I'm sending a kiss." She sends a kiss emoji and I put my phone away.

   On my way to the bathroom, I stop by the dressing mirror and pull up my top to scan my reflection, my breasts look the same, like baby oranges, or as Chinny calls them, 'semi-limes'.

   I push open my bathroom door, and my face puckers as the smell wafts past my nostrils. I pick up the newly opened tin and dump it in the trash.

   Didn't I beg her specifically, not to get cinnamon air-freshener?

   After grunting like an angry bull and low-key screaming like a woman in labour, I find my eyes staring back at me in the mirror. They're still blue, but the whites are yellow, as they've been this past week. Probably due to the anaemia.

   My shower curtain is drawn, and beside me, the water closet rests, just the way I like it, pristine and spotless. Everything seems fine, except my eyelids. I wipe the mirror and look again, it's still there, a pale purple dab on the top and corners of my eyes. Batting my lashes, I touch the purple spots, they're a bit cool.

   Clotting?

   I spray some water on my dry curls, then wrap it in a huge messy puff with a scrunchie resting on the sink.

   It's probably just Post-exam stress. Nothing to worry about. I tell myself.

   Humming along as Billionaire by Teni plays, I start brushing. The only talent I have is probably laying somewhere deep down within me, unnoticed and under utilized, but I'm sure it isn't singing. Singing is way too dramatic. 

   I spit out when a metallic taste consumes the sweet mint of my toothpaste. I open my mouth to observe where the blood is coming from and I see little dotted spots of blood leaking from my tongue and my gums. I rest my hands on the sink, spitting out the blood until it stops.

   Maybe it's just a reaction to starting back on the drugs.

   I wash my face and apply some lip balm, massaging my temples thoroughly with eucalyptus oil to relieve the swelling. 

   Please don't be worse. I whisper to myself before heading down to meet Mom.

~~~~

Thank you and please don't stop reading.

~♡ tamunosakiogaree ♡~