Amarachi Oluebube, a curious teenager, seeks wisdom in the most desperate and perilous way possible, opening the paths between two different worlds.
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Amarachi Oluebube has always had an overwhelming cur...
They were all wrong, Emma thought. They were probably wrong. But as she looked at her dry hair and pale, oily skin, she knew they were right. She was ugly. Miserable too. The folds at her sides said it all and the cellulite on her thighs told no lies either.
She was fat and ugly. And seeing that she had never had sex before, she was also a prude.
She knew nobody wanted her around so she tried to be hard before anyone could be hard on her. She ignored people before they ignored her and she hated them before they could hate her. She never looked at people, never. She kept her eyes down, hoping that if she minded her business, they would somehow mind theirs.
But that wasn't always the case.
Everyone at school picked on her. They called her weird, the devil's child, an omen. They said she was loopy and sometimes, it didn't end there. They went physical. They dragged her by the hair and slammed her against the wall. But no amount of pain could be compared to the hurt she felt inside. She was practically dead. Dead to herself, dead to the world.
Emma looked at herself in the mirror. She was a bit fatter than before. She knew that. She didn't need a scale to tell her. Her clothes almost didn't fit her anymore but her hair looked better. Yeah, they did.
She put on her dark t-shirt with a pair of black, ripped trousers; black on black. She finished the look with her fierce makeup.
Her makeup was one of the reasons why they tagged her the devil's child. It was too dark for them but that was her way of expressing herself.
With a shrug, she looked at herself in the mirror again, a wave of disappointment rushed through her as she picked up every bit of flaw one after the other.
"Emma!" Her grandmother yelled from downstairs, shaking her. She didn't know where she was for a moment. When regained her composure, she shook her head and listened.
"Emma, you're almost late for school," her grandmother yelled again.
"Coming!"
She grabbed her bag and ran downstairs. She still had time to tidy up things. She wasn't almost late. With her bicycle, she would reach the gates of Hell in no time.
Her grandmother, Rachel was sitting on a sofa knitting what seemed to resemble a woolly hat. When she saw her granddaughter, a wide smile formed on her face.
"Hi, grandma."
"Hi, baby," she kept the hat on her thighs. "How did you sleep? There's breakfast on the table."
Emma wrinkled her nose. "I'm already late. I'll just skip breakfast today."
Rachel picked up the hat. "Well, that's what you said yesterday."
The teenager didn't know what to say. Her grandmother was the only person in the world who was nice to her. Everyone else either rejected or never got close to her. She couldn't be bratty and storm off without a reply. "Just let me say it this time again. I promise it's going to be the last."
That did it.
"Alright. Make sure you eat when you're back. You're getting too skinny."
She breathed. "I will," she kissed the woman before running off.
Outside, she unlocked her bike and rode off the street with a straight face.
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