the kids are depressed

•OGECHI

"Ogechi wakes up with brothers..."

🎶...she fills my head with weird ideas...🎶

Ogechi pushed her eyes open lazily—too lazily if I might add. She would have groaned out in protest at her brother's for waking her up with their crazy Travis Scott music if she wasn't already almost late for the bus.

"Stupid retards," she hissed and lazily redirected her body to face the cream colored cracked ceiling of her room with a soft sigh escaping from her small lips.

"What am I going to wear now?" She asked the ceiling and narrowed her eyes with a disturbing expression of seriousness on her face that would make a person wonder if she was in fact expecting a response from the ceiling who looked like it could desperately use soap and water. She closed her eyes and began to mentally match the clothes in her wardrobe to check which would fit in perfectly for the "exposure lessons" which was another way of saying "excursion" in 2022.

'Jeans and crop top—they might think someone is trying to be an Ashewo in that stupid class, let me just put on Nonso's oversized shirt—I hope he has clean ones...What will I now wear on my leg o...yeah! I'll wear Emeka's white Nike—I'll just give them simple alté look.' She thought to herself as mental images of a Pinterest model she'd casually seen on her usual journey to the app came to her mind and she approved. It wasn't like she had a choice anyway; all the clothes she had in her wardrobe were virtually her brothers  hand-me-downs—asides from the ones she got from her Aunty who felt obligated to send her dresses from the states every now and then. Ogechi always felt like the woman pitied her.

"Ogbeni no dey cap nonsense for here! SEND ME MY MONEY JOR!" She heard Nonso scream and she didn't even flinch. She knew he was speaking to one of his fraud partners who was probably trying to run a fast one behind her brother—in fact, she hoped whoever he was yelling at gave him his money as she pushed her eyes open and prepared her bones to become active—Nonso was the breadwinner of their family of 4 ever since their father left them in Lagos for the village years ago due to the realization that he couldn't handle nurturing growing boys alone in a, "reckless generation", his words not mine.

"Omo...do I even still want to go like this?" Ogechi questioned herself as she stretched and revealed her slightly enormous belly button that boys stupidly found attractive. She knew the answer to her question, and it was, Yes.

School was her only form of escape. It was the only time she got to be a girl.

I mean, how was her day supposed to go? She wakes up, she tries to find sleep again but comes to terms with the fact that a sad girl can only sleep for so long so, she heads on to Pinterest—which she finds incredibly better and "educative" than Instagram—she's then scrolls, save and pin images for 36 minutes straight before realizing that she'd left the dishes in the sink overnight and...

"I have to go," she shook her head at the thoughts of how her day was ordained to play out if she stayed home and grabbed a towel as she began to prepare to shower.

"Yes, who there?!" She heard Emeka ask from the toilet as she knocked. Her twin brother always found it difficult to speak correct English, he said, "only faggots speak full English."

"Guy! I'm late for school!" Ogechi hit the door one more time and responded with a grumpy voice.

"Which stupid school?—today nor be sat—okay, you go that their baby baby excursion bah?" He responded with a condescending scoff from the bathroom again and Ogechi kept wondering how he was comfortable talking while inhaling his own shit. 

"Guy, just do quick—I'm late," she rolled her eyes. Emeka would never understand the need for escape even if she began to explain it to him in block letters—life and their elder brothers already exposed him a lot to the slum-gangster lifestyle and her explanation would only sound like a Trevor Noah standup comedy to him.

"Omo no rush me, I Dey come...na you sabi the stupid excursion wey you dey go," he murmured his last words and she would have yelled at him to hurry up if she hadn't heard the sound of a bailer meeting water afterward. "Better wait make smell calm down," he laughed and scoffed at her before disappearing into their chimney of a room—the smoke that came out of their room could expel a demon. Ogechi shook her head as she stared at the door to her brothers room, hoping they didn't hurt their kidneys or livers or whatever got hurt when you smoked too much weed.

Nobody liked to speak about the pink sponge dangling at the corner of the wall—right next to the broken shower head that had been destroyed years ago when Emeka was a little boy. The sponge had been for their mom; One day, when one of Nonso's numerous skinny girlfriends who had slept over and wanted to have a shower the next day asked if she could make use of the pink sponge, the house vibrated with Nonso's resounding, "NO!".

Ogechi had spent that evening wondering if Nonso's refusal was stemmed from the fact that he still held their mother in high regard or the fact that he'd finally joined his siblings in the seething hatred they bore against their mother.

Ogechi dumped the pink sponge on her way out the bathroom without looking back at it.

"What's the point?" She said to herself as she gbegan to get herself ready for the excursion.

EFIL:WHERE ARE YOU GUYS?!
I'M WAITING!

She gave a weak smile as the message from her only friend popped up on her phone screen on her way to the bus.

OGE: REST, IN JESUS NAME.

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