Mint Chocolate chip

Chapter 00🪶

She stares at the coffin going into the ground, her breath stagnant in her chest as her brother goes 6 feet down. She entertains the wish of hearing a sudden thump, preferably accompanied by a shout from within the coffin to announce the awakening of said brother. A rapid thump thump that would overrun her own unstable heartbeat. She takes her eyes away from the descending coffin and stares at everyone present. Mr. Adams, her brother's coach and personal trainer, Mrs. Lutterodt, his literature tutor, a name that evoked many laughs during dinner with her mother and father. There were other faces present but her mind wasn't in the right state to decipher and commemorate and in tune match their countenances to the myriad of monikers that reared their heads from the murky waters of forgetfulness only to be submerged once again. She takes in a deep breath once again before staring at the remains of the coffin being kissed by the rays of the sun before it finds another abode with fungi and Heaven knows what. She hadn't cried since the news was broken to her. She hadn't shed a single tear and in her case, she knew exactly why she didn't want to give herself such a privilege. She felt her tears would cement his death, be the final nail that would impale the wood etched with fibers of the heartbreaking truth, the irrevocable fact that Clide was dead and he was never coming back. She didn't want to believe it, she couldn't bring herself to believe it. Her brother, Perfect Clide, dead at 22 years of age. Cause of death , suicide. It was preposterous to even entertain such a delusion. How in hades name would a promising young man such as himself even dream of throwing everything he has worked for, imbuing every single toil with his sweat and blood. How could he do all of this and just kill himself ? No, jeezum crow, no it was impossible! She closes her eyes in a bid to calm down the raging thoughts that would in turn prod another migraine. She's been having them consistently for the past week, and this time also, she knew what the root cause, or in her case, route causes of them were. She was not sleeping. She could hardly do so when the image of her brother with an armada of pills decorating his bedroom floor, almost like a makeshift ''do not cross'' signal. She hadn't seen it for herself, but her mother had tried her best to relay the image to her, with as much ease as a mother who had lost her first born could muster. She didn't need too much description to see how it would look. It was enough for her to even lose sleep when the image was one conjured from the throne of her heightened imagination. A strangled cry snaps her from her reverie and sends her already thumping heart hammering in her rib cage. She looks in the direction of the cry to see Sally, Clide's girlfriend gripping their best friend, Andrew's suit as they begin to shovel mound after mound of dirt unto the coffin. ''They mar the beautiful craftsmanship'', she thinks to herself. ''But then again, this coffin could have easily belonged to someone else, preferably a grown man who had had his fair share of life and was sweeping the crumbs away when he expelled his last breath''. Perfect Clide had to take his place, because Perfect Clide was always helping people. Stupid Perfect Clide! She suddenly begins to feel a hatred towards her brother. Perfect Clide? Pfft. More like Selfish Clide. She wishes she could trade a fragment of her soul (she felt the whole thing would be too much a price to be paid for a selfish person like him), to let him see the damage he had caused. She wanted him to see the craters he had left in the hearts and souls of his friends and family. She wanted him to see the damage he had caused them. The pain he had inflicted on them. The pain, oh the pain he had inflicted on her. None of them deserved these scars. None of them. She doesn't move her eyes as she watches Andrew hoist Sally from the ground and holds her tight, his face trying but failing superbly to hide his emotions. Boys, always trying to look and act stoic. She wants more than anything to smother the growing lump in her throat and scream, ''Cry, Andrew, for God's sake, stop trying to be a man and weep like a mad hatter! He was your best-friend, you have all the license to fucking bawl like a baby''. She balls her hands into fists and fights the lump growing in her throat. She was going to lose her cool and end up bawling herself; maybe she should ask Andrew for tips, seeing as he was doing much better than she was at the moment. Was he also apprehensive of shedding tears with the hopes that it wouldn't seal his dear mates fate? Did he also not want to embed his nail into the woodwork of reality?
The drive back home is as silent as it could possibly be. The stereo is off and the only sounds heard are the sounds of the roar of her father's Chevrolet Camaro. She plasters her face on the cold backseat window and watches the shops and streets pass by. She stares at people going about their day to day activities, oblivious to the Camaro whizzing by and it's inhabitants. A trio of the most miserable family. A family not only sharing blood but loss and pain. Pain caused by a selfish someone. She watches as they move about, smiling, sneering, laughing and possessing stoic countenances. She wishes she was like them, oblivious to the somberness that had enveloped the car she was sitting in. They didn't care about the death of a Clide Asante. It did not matter to them. He wasn't a member of their family or a good friend. They didn't give a rat's rear about how he died or why he did it. Even the sky didn't care, so why should they? The sun rose earlier this morning with all of it's glory as if to say ''I came here to work and i do not care if you're mourning, people mourn all the time. I am just here to do my job so please.''. She wishes she could trade places with the girl she sees with headphones on as she crosses the street. She's dressed in a pair of blue jeans with a tank top, probably meeting her friends and once again oblivious to the pain oozing out of the car she just passed under the traffic light of Martey Avenue. She closes her eyes and allows the first natural lull of slumber to exorcise the pain and silence surrounding her in the car and embrace her, as the car tickles the tarmac of Martey Street.
''Claudia?''. The utterance sounds strained and an utterance that seems to be expelled from the lips of a very tired entity. She opens her eyes lazily and sees her mother staring back at her with a sad smile played on her lips. ''Are you okay?''.
''Yeah mum, you?''
''Don't worry about me, Clau. I'll be fine''. She produces a more convincing smile at her daughter and she has no choice but to nod causing the lurking migraine to sneer behind her cranium. She steps out of the car into the driveway of the house. A house tinged with so many memories of Clide. How did he expect them to live now? She sighs and takes a deep breath, finding her mother's opened palms a few feet from hers, She takes it graciously, gives it a gentle yet firm squeeze and they both enter. ''Where's daddy?''
''He had to meet some investors right after the funeral. He rushed at the chance of leaving home and didn't even bother waiting a second the moment we got inside the house and got a promise that we would be fine.'' She listened to her mother and focused on every syllable she uttered, all in a bid to avert her attention from every object in the room which would cause a tsunami of memories to drench her. She didn't need that right now. She had to be there for her mum. Her dad had obviously bailed and he had every reason to. She would have done same if an opportunity had brought itself. She couldn't even be mad at her father. They both go upstairs and after a few conversations, albeit short ones, her mother falls into a tired and well expected sleep, landing the entire house into a deafening silence. A silence that tickled one's mind and evoked memories. Memories of chasing Clide downstairs as he snatched her phone and made kissing noises at her, memories of them sitting on the couch and just talking, enjoying each other's company, as siblings tend to do rarely. A rare phenomenon like Lenticular clouds. Rare but beautiful and almost ethereal. She doesn't realize how long she has been standing in front of his room, her fingers on the cold brass knob of his door. She tries to take a step back but the more curious and closure seeking part throttles her forward and pushes her into the room.
She stares at his room. His temple of memories. His life, his solace and the room that would most definitely house most if not all, of his secrets. She stares at his bed, his always messy bed, still messy. She didn't expect anything other than that. She knows it would take weeks, maybe months before her mother or father could even stand in front of the door for more than a minute without breaking down into bitter and hot tears. She stares at the basketball lying a few feet from the bed on the silk carpet. She stares at the ball and smiles. This ball was probably waiting to be held and bounced by it's master. ''He would be home anytime soon'', it told itself giddily. It would wait and wait, lost in questions and scenarios without the lips or words to ask for where his master was, or what had happened to him? She walks over to his desk, strewn with papers, which prior to today were stacked atop one another. They were now a mess all over the table. She reckons they were looking for something that would have helped them understand why he did it. To her, it seemed pretty obvious why he did it. He was selfish. There was nothing more to it. He overdosed on pills simply because he was a selfish big brother, friend, boyfriend and son. She stares beneath the desk and sees his favorite sneakers lying there, also waiting for when they would feel the warmth of their owner's feet. A warmth they would never feel again. She remembers how much he loved those sneakers and suddenly, like a whisper only passed from the supernatural realm to the natural, she feels mandated to pick up the sneakers. She bends over and reaches for the sneakers. Red Nike down-shifters. She stares at the shoe, mesmerized by how much essence of Clide it possesses. She flips it over and suddenly a piece of rolled paper falls out of the left sneaker. She picks it up with numb fingers , sits crosslegged on the ground and opens it. In it are the words, ''mint chocolate chip''. She stares at it for a long tune, trying to understand why such a phrase would be in a pair of sneakers. It had to mean something. She rises from the ground and sits in front of the desk and picks up his laptop. She conjectures it could be a password to his laptop and begins to type slowly, every tap on the keyboard laced with hope, an undying hope that keeps getting growing bigger with every letter she taps on the keyboard of his laptop. She hits enter and the laptop opens. She sighs with relief. A relief short lived, a relief that has realized it has been unfaithful and has picked up it's clothes to shield it's nude body and has crept out of the room in shame. She stares at the screen, with a page of word pad opened with the words, ''If you're reading this..''
She stares at the words, her breath coming out raggedly, her stomach churning with anxiety, fear, curiosity and the thirst for closure all poured into a big pot and stirred into the disgusting feeling and churn she feels in her belly. She takes a deep breath and reads on.
''If you're reading this, it means i did it. I finally couldn't take it and killed myself. Clau might be the one reading, she's always been the smartest one, lazy, yes , but smart. (She scoffs and hungrily reads on) If it really is you Clau, i'm sorry you had to see this. I'm sorry you had to have a messed up brother like me. A coward. (A selfish coward would have been a befitting title but hey) I took the easy way out and left you all in pain and for that i am sorry. I won't tell you i regret doing it and all, quite the opposite actually, i'm glad i did. The pain was so much Clau, i'm assuming this is Clau reading, and if not, whoever is reading can ignore the name. I won't tell you i was feeling this way for a long time, no that would be a lie. On the contrary, it was like a cancer growing in me, growing bit by bit till it was strong enough to engulf me and cause me to do what i did. I won't tell you i had second thoughts when i stared down at those pills, I doubt i did, but i would confess that the only thought i had after writing all of this was damn, Clau is seriously going to hate me for this. I didn't know i was going through a depression phase, i reckoned i was just feeling empty and was just drained from overworking myself for tryouts. It had been a hard year and been extremely hard on yours truly. I knew it would be but one can only conjecture how to prepare for a war he has never found himself in before, right? I thought i could handle it, i thought i could be strong enough, to finish hard and then be good. I thought if i made it finally, i could one day stand in front of people and say i did it on my own, went through all the trials and tribulations on my own and came up victorious. You reading this means all of those thoughts were delusions, delusions i kept feeding myself and in turn my depression. Sometimes i wanted to tell you, sometimes i opened my mouth to say something but then i'd remember you probably have so much on your plate with Wassce coming up and all. I would be bothering you. I wanted to tell Sally and Andrew too but i had gotten so distant the past few months that i felt i had no right to talk to them about my issues when i had left them in the unknown for so long. I didn't deserve their compassion. I didn't deserve anyone's. I thought i could handle the stress and the emptiness, but there is no logical way to kill or smother something you can't even see, can you? I was so empty, Clau , so empty. Empty to the extent that i sometimes woke up staring at the ceiling wishing i had never worked myself to where i had gotten to. I wished i was in your shoes, completely unsure of everything. At least then, i knew i had no choice but to ask for help. But in my case, in the case of Perfect Clide, yeah i know everyone calls me that, i couldn't ask for help. I just couldn't. Maybe if i did, i wouldn't be typing this. Maybe i'd have seen a therapist. No time for Maybes now, i feel the decision cementing, I am going to do this. I don't think i can change my mind. I just can't after all i've said. I am sorry Clau but i can't. I'm sorry, so so sorry. I understand if you hate me, i deserve it. I understand if everyone hates my guts, i deserve every loathsome thought. Please do me a favor, in the event that you still love me, do me the favor of living, do me the favor of being stagnant. Do me the favor of being a teenager and do what teenagers do best. Make mistakes Clau, make enough for both of us. Do me the favor of staying in the moment and not worrying too much about what the future holds. I did just that and look where that got me. heh, writing a suicide note. Well that's just by the way. I am sorry once again. You can choose to ignore my advice, i have no right to tell you what to do after all.
with love and sincere apologies,
Clide Asante.

PS: The mint chocolate chip password was an in the moment something. Don't think too hard on it. Somethings just happen spontaneously. This was one of them
She stares the screen, hardly blinking and doesn't realize she's weeping till her breath gets caught in her throat and hot tears begin to kiss her hands. She stares down at her hands and in a moment where understanding passes between the grieving and the dead, between the closure seeking and the closure giving, she picks up his basketball, lays on his bed and covers herself with his blanket, draped with his scent and she cries, cries for the sky and everyone living on Martey Avenue to feel her pain. She cries for Clide, wherever he may be to feel it. Her pain. Every single strand of it.