CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE “WHEN WRONG IS LOUD!”

© Opeyemi Akintunde
As Inspired by the Creative Word

As I climbed the stairs, my heart climbed faster than my legs.

Every step felt like a question.

What if Sikemi refused to see me? What if Martins returned suddenly? What if Mum somehow discovered I had left school? What if Mark had already reported me to the teacher? What if this was the beginning of the end?

But another thought was louder.

What if Sikemi truly cared?

That thought gave my legs strength.
I got to her door and knocked softly.
No answer.
I knocked again.

“Sikemi?” I called.

Still no answer.

I placed my ear close to the door, listening for movement, but the room was quiet. I touched the handle gently, and when it opened, I stepped in slowly.

She was not there.

Her room looked the same and yet different. Expensive. Beautiful. Dangerous. There were things on her dressing table, clothes arranged in a way that looked careless but still rich, and a faint smell of her perfume hanging in the air like a memory that refused to leave. For a few seconds, I stood there, feeling foolish and afraid at the same time.

“Sikemi?” I called again.

No answer.

Fear rose in me.

Where was she?

I came out of the room and checked the corridor. Nobody. The house was too quiet. I walked back downstairs, my mind suddenly creating stories I did not want to imagine. What if she had taken too many pills? What if something had happened to her? What if Martins had lied and she was not even at home?

I did not know why, but my feet carried me towards the back of the house.

I remembered there was a garden behind the building. I had seen it once from the kitchen window while helping Mum clean. It was not the kind of garden ordinary people had behind their houses. It had trimmed grass, flowers that looked like they drank bottled water, stone paths, white outdoor chairs, and a small garden house tucked quietly at one side like something from a foreign movie.

That was where I saw her.

Sikemi was sitting on one of the swing chairs with a book on her lap. She was writing, or maybe drawing. Her head was slightly bent, and her hand moved with quiet concentration. She did not look like the Sikemi who sent teasing messages. She did not look like the Sikemi who laughed when Martins spoke about money. She looked softer. Smaller. Almost lonely.

I stood a short distance away.

“Hello,” I said.

She looked up.
For a moment, our eyes met.
She did not say anything.
She only looked at me briefly, then returned her eyes to the book and continued drawing.

I stood there awkwardly, not knowing whether to go closer or leave. Something about the way she kept moving her pencil made me feel I should not interrupt. It was as if she was seeing something in front of her and trying to capture it before it disappeared.

So I waited.

The swing chair moved gently back and forth while she drew. The garden was quiet except for the faint sound of birds, the soft scrape of pencil on paper, and the confused beating of my heart. I should have been angry. I had come there to confront her. I had come there to ask whether I was just another poor boy in their playbook. I had come there to demand truth.

But as I watched her draw, my anger began to lose weight.

That was the danger of Sikemi.
Even her silence could manipulate my emotions.

After a while, she stopped drawing. She stared at the page for a few seconds, then closed the book gently and looked up at me.

“Thank you,” she said.

I blinked. “For what?”

“For allowing me to finish.”

I frowned slightly.

She gave a small smile. “People don’t understand. When I’m drawing, it feels like I’m seeing something in front of me and trying to catch it before it leaves. They always interrupt. They always ask questions. They always want attention. But you waited.”

I did not know what to say.

She looked at me in that way that made my chest misbehave.

“You see why you are special to me?”

Special.

The word entered me like warm water.
After everything Mum had said, after everything Mark had warned, after everything I had seen with my own eyes, one word from Sikemi still had the power to make me feel like a baby being called by a pet name.

I stood there, suddenly unable to remember all the questions I had rehearsed in the bus.

She rose from the swing chair and walked towards me.

“Would you mind sitting with me?” she asked.

I nodded.

We sat together on the swing chair. She pushed it gently with her feet, and the chair began to move back and forth slowly. For a minute or two, none of us said anything. The silence between us was not empty. It was full of all the things I had come to ask and all the things I was suddenly afraid to hear.

Finally, I turned to her.

“Sikemi, I…”
“I know why you’re here,” she said at the same time.

I stopped.

She looked ahead, not at me.
“I deleted the message I wanted to send to you.”

My heart beat faster.

“You saw it?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

She nodded slowly. “I know.”

“Why did you delete it?”

She swallowed.
For the first time since I had known her, Sikemi looked unsure.

“Because I love you,” she said.

My whole body went still.

She turned to me, and her eyes looked bright, almost wet.

“I don’t know why, Matthew, but you are different. You are special. And I don’t want you to become one of the young boys my brother turns into something else.”

I stared at her.

My anger moved one step backward.

She continued, “Martins you are following a pattern… He will make you feel important. He will show you money. He will make you feel like you are finally entering a world that has been refusing you. Then before you know it, you are not just carrying packages. You are carrying people’s destruction.”

I should have been relieved that she was telling the truth.

Instead, I felt more confused.
“Then why are you part of it?” I asked.

She looked away.

The swing moved slowly.
Back.
Forth.
Back.
Forth.

“My brothers brought me into it,” she said quietly. “At first, I did not understand everything. They made it look like freedom. Like business. Like wisdom. They told me I needed to have my own money.”

She laughed softly, but there was no joy in it.

“They said Dad is a politician. Anything can happen. Government can freeze accounts. Enemies can rise. One scandal can scatter everything. They said if I was smart, I would not depend on my parents’ money forever. I would build my own source.”

I listened.

“They started with small errands. Then small sales. Then girls began to trust me. Girls from girls-only schools. Rich girls. Lonely girls. Girls who wanted to be slim. Girls who wanted confidence. Girls who wanted to forget home problems. Girls who wanted to feel like life was not choking them.”

Her voice broke a little.

“At some point, I stopped knowing whether I was helping them or destroying them.”

My chest tightened.

“So why didn’t you stop?”
She looked at me then.
“Because I was already taking the pills too.”

The garden became quiet.

“I am addicted, Matthew,” she said softly. “I know how to dress it. I know how to laugh and post pictures and look beautiful and act like everything is normal, but I am tired.”

I did not move.

“I don’t even know what I want again,” she continued. “Some days, I want to stop. Some days, I want to disappear. Some days, I tell myself I am too deep already, so what is the point? But anytime I think about you…”

She paused.

I held my breath.

“Anytime I think about you, I feel peace, Possibility.”
Peace.
That word touched something in me that no amount of warning had touched.

“You make me feel like maybe I can still be normal,” she said. “Maybe I can still be clean. Maybe there is still somebody who sees me as more than Martins’ sister, more than a rich girl, more than a distributor, more than a spoiled daughter of a politician.”

I felt pity rise in me.
Not ordinary pity.
The kind of pity that makes a foolish boy believe he has been chosen to rescue someone he is not strong enough to stand beside.

“Sikemi,” I said softly, “you don’t have to continue with the pills.”

She looked at me.

“Then where will I get my peace?”
I should have told her about Jesus.
I should have said, “Jesus is the Prince of Peace.”

I should have remembered every sermon I had ever heard, every Scripture Mum had ever quoted, every altar call I had ever answered.
But her eyes were on me, soft and broken, and my own sense had already started melting.

Before I knew it, I said, “I can give you peace.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I knew I had spoken like a fool.

I could not give myself peace. I had left school through a secret gate. I had lied to my mother after she prayed for me. I had used Tunde to escape. I was standing in the garden of the very house I had promised never to enter again.

How could I give anybody peace?

I should have corrected myself immediately. I should have said, “No, not me. Jesus. Jesus can give you peace.”
But I did not get the chance.
Sikemi leaned forward and kissed me.
Everything inside me scattered.
My questions disappeared first.
Then my anger. Then my warnings…Then my mother’s voice.
Then Mark’s eyes.
Then Rosie’s disappointment.

The kiss was not like the first one that had caught me by surprise. This one came with sadness, need, confession, and something that felt like love to a boy who was desperate to be special.

“Sikemi,” I whispered, but even my whisper sounded weak.

She held my hand and stood up.

“Come,” she said softly.
I should have asked where.
I should have removed my hand.
I should have run.
But I followed her.

She led me towards the small garden house. My heart was beating loudly, but not loud enough to stop my legs. The door opened, and we entered a quiet, shaded space that looked like it was used for resting, reading, and hiding from the world.

That was exactly what it became.

A hiding place.

I will not write everything that happened inside that garden house, because some falls are not beautiful enough to be described. Some mistakes do not need decoration. Some doors should only be mentioned so others will fear entering them.
All I know is that things moved too quickly.

Too foolishly.

Too willingly.

Sikemi led, and I followed. She touched my hands and showed me what to do with them. I kept telling myself to stop, but my body was no longer asking my spirit for permission. One boundary fell, then another, then another, until the purity I had once guarded with fear and pride lay somewhere behind me like a garment I had dropped and could not immediately find.

Just like that, my sexual purity vow went silent.

When it was over, I expected to feel dirty immediately…I expected thunder…I expected tears. I expected the kind of guilt that would throw me on my knees at once.

But strangely, I did not feel what I expected.

I felt close to her.
That was what frightened me later.
At that moment, I felt like we had crossed into something deeper. I felt like Sikemi and I were now connected in a way nobody else would understand. I felt like I had found home inside the very place God had been warning me about.

I looked at her, and instead of seeing danger, I saw a girl I wanted to save.
My mind began to build a future faster than wisdom could interrupt.
I would fight for her love.
I would save her from her brothers.
We would stop the pills together.
We would become clean together.
We would build a decent life.
One day, I would marry her.
We would have a good family.
I would work hard, make money honestly, and prove to everyone that what started wrongly could still end beautifully.
It sounded romantic.
It sounded noble.
It sounded like redemption.
But sometimes, when a person is deep in deception, even bondage can start sounding like destiny.

Sikemi rested quietly beside me, and I looked at her with the foolish seriousness of a boy who thought he had become a man because he had lost what he was supposed to protect.

Then we heard the honk of a car.
Once.
Sharp.
Outside.
Sikemi froze.
I froze too.

The sound entered the garden house like judgment.

She sat up quickly, her face changing.
“What is it?” I whispered.
She did not answer immediately.
Another car door shut somewhere in the compound.

Then voices.
My heart fell.
Sikemi looked towards the door.
And in that moment, I knew.
Martins was back.
And I was probably dead.

To be continued…
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