Stay With Me.

1. After The Leaves Fell.

Knitting was a habit Binyelum took up after her father fell ill. In the beginning, it was born out of the need to keep him warm from the constant freeze he complained that he felt at night. He had developed the fever during the harmattan when the leaves dried up on the tree branches and fell to the earth, devoid of all life and crushed under the heavy feet on busy people getting on with their daily lives. She recalled that he had looked the same way, the sunken and dried out skin that hugged his prominent cheekbones tightly as his sickness progressed.

His body soon no longer housed life a few months after the fever had began, and just like those dry fallen leaves, he had become something of the past, referred to in the past tense, "he used to", "he would have", "he loved". It had taken weeks to get Binyelum back to sanity after he passed. She would sit and stare at his sick bed longingly and lost in thought. The feet she used to rub and the voice that would crack silly jokes just to distract her a bit from her worries was now six feet under.

These days, she knitted to calm herself. Her mother had thought that her returning to the hobby would have triggered trauma, but instead, it brought her daughter an overwhelming sense of calm.

Somewhere deep in her thoughts, Binyelum always felt like her father's spirit watched over her whenever she picked up her pins and begun to knit something new. So the habit had become almost sacred, and the weaving would only begin when she felt the need to calm herself or feel her father's comforting.

"You're knitting today. It's been a while since you have." Diane looked up from the book that had consumed her attention for the past hour to comment, and Binyelum gave her a soft nod, eyes not leaving the wool for a second.

The beanie was coming together nicely, and a few cute patterns around the front would make for a lovely design, she thinks to herself before another thought passes through her mind and suddenly she drops the beanie.

"I need to get started on the Chemistry project." She says out loud and Diane's head snaps up immediately.

In a few minutes, both girls rush to dress up before racing to the library to get a handful of resources for their project. The night was fast approaching and the library would be closed for day in a little over half an hour.

"Chika Okoye has a fat ass." Diane read out the scribble that was written next to an awful drawing of a stick figure with gigantic breasts, forcing down the loud laughter that threatened to burst out of her mouth.

Asides from the free WiFi that the library offered, the second best part of the building was the hilarious scribbles and drawings that defaced surfaces from the tables, book shelves and even the toilet stalls.

If you were having the worst day, the best way to cheer up was to head down to the library and take a ten minute tour and you'd leave in tears provoked by uncontrollable laughter.

Binyelum chuckled at the ugly drawing shown to her by Diane. "But her breasts aren't that big nah." She snarked cheekily while hurriedly jotting down all useful information for the project into her huge study note.

"Are you almost done?" She asked her roommate who had now busied herself with reading all the nonsense that was written on the desk they worked on. "Diane! Focus and get the formulas down, we need to finish this in the next ten minutes!" Binyelum whisper yelled which prompted the other girl to nod in obedience, little laughs still leaving her lips as she opened the textbook.

"Did you hear about that cute half-caste guy in 11 Ruby?" A voice behind them said with a gossipy tone which caused both girls to look at each other with a knowing look.

Everyone in Year 11 knew that voice by heart, it belonged to Ebere who was also known as Mini Google, she was an absolute nightmare and a caustic gossip whose not so friendly nickname had emanated as a result of the fact that no matter what happened or who it happened to, she knew about it and blabbed happily about it everywhere.