We were summoned to the principal’s office for the third time since the beginning of the week.

The first time, Okwudili and I stood in front of Mr. Ifesinachi, the principal, Mrs. Olakunle, the vice principal, and Mallam Yunusa, the Physics teacher for the senior classes. Each person spoke at length, offering their own moral biases to the issue. Their questions frazzled me, and I paused at intervals to gulp deep breaths and thoroughly process the questions before answering them. Mallam Yunusa’s reaction got to me most of all. He sprang from his chair as though to hit me, his kaftan swaying carelessly behind him, almost dragging him to the ground. Streaks of saliva traveled from his mouth and only missed my face by a stroke of luck. I hated his condescending tone. He said I had dented the good image of Bright Eyes Secondary School, Itakpe, Kogi State, all while interjecting, Allahu akbar, you, Echezona, kishili?, La samah allah like he hadn’t recently been accused of sexually assaulting a student in my class—Linda, the only girl in the senior section with large breasts. Eventually like most cases, this one tapered off the instance it arrived at the corridor of the school management, as they cited the lack of tangible evidence.

All that third time, Okwudili kept his gaze downward and spoke only when spoken to. His silence curled in the air a creature, tying knots through me until my mouth ran dry and making my hands tremble like they were their own, independent entity. He had carried the silence outside of the principal’s office, outside of the staff room, and averted his eyes from mine when I called him corper, my voice barely above a whisper.

I glanced at Okwudili. It surprised me that he remained behind the swivel chair, hands clasped behind him, even though the principal had instructed us to take our seats.

“Young man, aren’t you going to sit down?” the principal said, pushing his drooping glasses back on.

“No, sir. I’m fine this way,” Okwudili said. If he was angry or irritated, his voice cloaked it. Yet, he sounded like someone in a hurry, like he would rather be anywhere else than in this crammed little room, the ceiling fan rattling round and round, a large bookshelf in the left corner behind the principal, a chest of drawers in the right corner. Mr. Ifesinachi looked him over, like a strange specimen, his eyes narrowed in a static moment of repressed irritation. “Suit yourself.” His eyes drifted towards me, lingered, and, for the first time, my legs shivered. Nowadays, I never slept enough. In the middle of the night, I’d jerk awake, struggling to steady the thumping in my chest. I’d roll out of bed and lumber towards the balcony and stare down at the infinite darkness. Sometimes, I’d clench the railing, trying to keep my feet rooted to the earth.

“You’re one of the school’s brightest students,” the principal began. My gaze flitted between my fingers and the principal’s face, anxiety surging through me like bad blood. I appreciated that Mrs. Olakunle and Mallam Yunusa weren’t present today, though still I was a little disturbed. Were they tired of the constant summons? Perhaps they gave their verdicts already in hope that the principal would communicate them to us. I couldn’t decode this new wave of tension spiraling through me, a feeling absent during the previous summons. My toes and armpits became slick with sweat, and I imagined a river in the seat of my trousers.

Clasping his hands on the desk, he said, “Echezona, I’m so heartbroken, so disappointed in you. Your parents are good people; they certainly don’t deserve this. Did you see the disappointment on their faces when they came around?” I wriggled in my chair, trying to nip the urge to poke my index fingers into my ears and scream in his face. I hated the contempt in his voice. If he wanted to chastise me, he should do so and not involve my parents. Of course I remembered their disappointment—the stern look on my father’s face, the swiftness with which my mother broke into tears when she saw the pictures. What did this man want to know? That, at home, I’d become a hermit trying to find his footing. Nobody called me at mealtime, morning prayers went on without me, and when I showed up at the living room, it ended abruptly, as though it happened at all. Still, I greeted my parents in the mornings and in the afternoons following my return from school, even when their silence returned to me like an unanswered prayer, a bone wedged at the back of the throat.

Mr. Ifesinachi cleared his throat, tugging me from my thoughts. “It pains me that you of all people are involved in this scandalous act. But this case has dragged for too long and I’m already exhausted. I wonder how many people have seen those pictures. Now, this is what we’ve decided.”

For a moment, I let my gaze wander around the office, at the long line of awards capping a shelf on the wall, a crucifix standing in the middle of the desk. Okwudili licked his lips, and beads of sweat crawled down his beard into the collar of his brown shirt. He seemed to be perpetually looking down at something. If not for how things had escalated, I wouldn’t be here in the first place. Before all this, I didn’t know what the principal’s office looked like. It made no sense to me, sitting before this man who viewed the world through only two colored prisms: black and white. A man who didn’t consider the presence of other colors, the in-betweens—colors which had equal right to belong, to exist without confinements.

It took the school bell tolling to remind me where I was. Mr. Ifesinachi faced Okwudili, whose face stayed locked on the wall above the principal. By the window on my right, I could see some students milling about, others, like the senior students, walking to the car park, perhaps towards Mama Charity’s kiosk. Some of the senior students were from my class, SS2 Science. The culprit was among them, I thought. But who? Who among them attended the birthday party last week? Who sent those cryptic pictures to the principal and Mrs. Olakunle? As much as I needed answers, these questions hovered around the lamp of my mind like bugs.

Taiye and Kehinde, my close friends, attended the party, but swore on their mother’s grave they had no hand in it. Still, I didn’t know who or what to believe anymore. Mr. Ifesinachi took off his glasses, clasped his palms on his thighs, and said he was highly disappointed in Okwudili. “When you first came to Bright Eyes, I liked you instantly because of your nice conduct among the students and the way you spoke intelligently.” He reminded Okwudili of the school’s zero tolerance to every form of immorality. Of course, I had heard all that moral gibberish about homosexuality being a western idea, and at eighteen, I had read many books and those columns in the newspapers my father brought home that talked about how African cultures and values were fast eroding, replaced by woke western ideologies. After some time, I stopped reading the newspapers because their arguments seemed to hold no water, always leaning heavily on religion as a backbone. Oftentimes, the scriptural references ended up alienating the humanity in queer people.

********************

The principal delivered his verdict, the bell tolled the second time, and we left the office. After waiting for the other students to go home, I took the car park and walked briskly past the toilet behind the SS3 block so no one would talk to me. A few minutes later, I squeezed through a web of ixora head, bounding out of the bush behind our class.

Except for birds screeching from a distance, I was alone. I found some of the lockers and chairs flung to the floor, as though a fight had broken out among the students. At the front row, my locker and chair remained upright. I emptied my locker, transferring all the books into my bag, slung the heavy bag across my shoulder, and strutted toward the door. Pausing at the doorway, I turned to look at the class, the suspension letter in my left hand. I glanced at my locker and chair one last time and pictured how much dust and cobweb they’d accumulate in the month I’d be away. A sigh escaped my lips. I closed the door, trudged down the hilly slope leading to the library, then meandered the tiny footpath that led to a forest. It was the same path students took each time they arrived late to school. I pushed through the cluster of tall grasses like a man finding his way in the dark until I found the crooked path on my right. I crossed over a fallen tree trunk and noticed Okwudili sitting on it, facing the river. This was one of our usual hideouts. Before going home, we’d spend time together listening to the birds sing, their music a stark disagreement with the whooshing current of the flowing river. Other times, I’d rest my head on his chest, listening to his throbbing heart, trying to match its rhythm with his voice, as he spoke of the universe like a thing with a soul. He hoped one day the universe would make all his dreams come true, that one day he would build a house befitting for his mother, and his sister, Amara, would no longer have to hawk akara around Okigwe after school hours in the searing sun to seal the gaps his lean monthly allowances created.

Okwudili didn’t turn around as I edged closer to him. I wondered if he heard the crunching leaves and twigs beneath my sandalled feet, so I cleared my throat. He glanced at me before turning back to the river. “Why are you just coming?”

“I’m sorry. I was trying to sort my books.” I sat on one end of the trunk, unsure if I should go closer to him. I sensed the tightness in the air, the veil silence hanging around us. “Are you not going to say anything?” I said, bracing myself for what was coming.

“What’s there to say, Eche? How’s everything that’s happened okay to you?”

Looking beyond the hoarseness in his voice, I chose to delve into my memory bank for all things still fresh, moments not mildewed by the ugly hand of fate. I remembered the day the principal walked into our class, Okwudili behind him, in a crested vest and jeans. How the whispers flew about the class the instance he introduced himself as corper Okwudili Jideofor, the rich baritone in his voice a breath of clean air sending shivers through my spine. I remembered how he spoke briefly about wave and wavelength, mostly things we’d been taught, the gentle curve of his back, and his butt popping against his trousers as he strutted across the class. How Taiye, my seatmate, nudged my shoulders and whispered, “You dey see wetin I dey see? This one fine die.” Okwudili had a pristine accent which bore no modulations, and it was this characteristic together with his thick eyebrows and dimpled smile that made my heart wobble in my chest. During break time, I watched Taiye and Kehinde bicker over who would have him, fluttering their hands in the air, and I smiled when their squabble remained unresolved.

“Just take a look at me,” Okwudili said, abruptly pulling me from my reverie. “Barely a year of national service truncated, just like that. Where do I start from?” As he spoke, the paper in his hand flapped in the wind.

“Please, can I see it?” I said, extending a hand across to him. He looked befuddled for a moment, as though trying to understand the relevance of my request. Still, he surrendered it to me. It was a letter of dismissal, written, signed and stamped by the principal. I still recalled his last words before we left his office, how he had risen from his chair, eyes trained at Okwudili and said, “You ought to thank your God that the school has resolved not to take this case to the police. You know what that portends for you. What you did is a heinous crime under the law, cajoling a minor into an uncouth sexual behavior.”

I was not a minor—at least, I was old enough to make decisions for myself, and that included falling for a man seven years older than me. Nobody deceived or cajoled me into anything. Yet, what struck me was how little Mr. Ifesinachi knew about love, its varied forms, about desire and the inappropriateness to toss it in a box. I stopped reading the letter. Nonchalance coiled like a snake in my belly, and I returned the paper to Okwudili, who clutched it, almost squashing it.

Staring at the sullenness on his face, I wondered what his younger version was like. Did he cry when life’s storms gathered around him? Did his back cave in from carrying the world on his shoulders? How much did the heart have to take before it finally buckled? I desired to hold him in a tight embrace, to cup his shattered heart, to save its last few pieces. To lay on this bed of dry leaves and twigs, just like those few evenings we spent together in the town’s secluded hostels, when he complained that my constant presence in his house spawned rumors. All those times I talked about myself, my desire to go somewhere away from my parents and their extreme religious ideologies, to a different country, say America, where I could live my life and be comfortable in my skin. But this time, I stayed quiet , listening to him speak, rant, cry. Even if it were for just a minute, I’d convince him to release the reins of the world.

Above us, ribbons of dark clouds began to weave around the sun. A siege of herons sped through the sky, pounding their wings. Something stirred in the branches above us and dry leaves rained down. I glimpsed tears snaking down his cheeks, but he was quick to pluck them with the back of his hand. I opened my mouth to say sorry, but halted, not certain for what exactly I meant to apologize. Of course, I wasn’t sorry for my feelings toward him, or for making the first move when he seemed reluctant. For weeks, I could barely concentrate in class. Finally, I decided to visit him at the corper’s lodge. He had looked startled, mouth slightly agape, when I told him how I felt. I claimed I didn’t care what he did with the information as long as I had undone the knot of anxiety from chest, even though I hoped he would say something afterwards. His reaction surprised me, the way he held my hand, tickled my palm, and smiled. The smile that told me all I needed to know.

“What are we going to do now?” I said, hoping the sound of we, would assuage his basket of grief.

“We?” he yapped, cocking his brows. “You said we? There’s no ‘we’ anymore. You don’t have anything to lose here. As it stands now, my service year has ended. How do I face my mother and Amara? I mean where do I start from.”

I wanted to say he wasn’t the only one who lost things. I didn’t know how to face the world again.

His eyes had reddened the moment he turned to me. “Why didn’t you delete those pictures? I begged you to delete them, and you promised. Remember, you promised? Why did you send those pictures to them?”

A strange wind slapped my body; I wrapped my arms around my chest. Okwudili’s words undressed me, leaked my bones clean of their warm sinews. I wasn’t sure of anything or who had my phone the night of the party.  My parents had traveled to Ogun State for a two-week training of church leaders, at the chapel headquarters. While Taiye and Kehinde rocked each other on the dance floor, I sat in a corner, drunk and fighting to stay vigilant. Many people brushed past me. Maybe chatted with some classmate who took my phone without asking and went into my gallery? Even now, I wished I had kept my phone password-protected.

When I didn’t offer any response to his question, he hitched to his feet, ready to leave. I grabbed his wrist and held onto it, even though he pulled hard trying to wrest himself free. As though conceding defeat, he fell on the trunk beside me. His lips were dry and white. I took his palm, ran it down my face, drenching it with my tears.

********************

For the first time in many nights, I laid naked on the bed, my body spread out like an offering. My penis slouched flat between my thighs, waiting to be nudged into erection. The harmattan wind blew fiercely through the balcony, moving the curtains around. My parents were probably asleep by now after hours of shouting at each other, I being the reason for the quarrel. My father had looked at me with disgust when I showed him the letter and called me a disgrace to his bloodline. “If you don’t want to go to this school again, just let us know,” he spat before storming off. He shuffled into the kitchen and raised his voice at my mother. “You’ve failed as a parent,” he told her. “Where were you when this boy strayed from Lord’s path?” How my mother stormed out of the kitchen, refusing to clip her voice. When my father went after her, she shouted at him in equal cadence, reminding him they were both responsible for me.

I was sorry that they had become people who threw words at each other in a bid to evade the truth.

Stroking the bracelet on my left wrist, the one Okwudili bought on my birthday four months ago, I tried to conjure his face. I wanted to remember the kiss that passed between us hours ago, his arms around my arched back, the tenacity with which his tongue sought mine, the quick exchange of saliva, our tears commingling into a unit. This kiss was different from the rest; it was loose and thick with things unsaid. It was the beginning of the end. My penis wriggled out of its slumber, but as I caressed it, it drifted off again. My palm gathered dregs of a time now in the past, memories wrung of their colors.