“CONGRATULATIONS, YOU WON”

The shrill buzz of Ava Charles Davies’ alarm shattered the quiet of the tiny apartment at exactly six o’clock. She reached across the narrow bed to silence it before it disturbed her mother, who had come home only a few hours earlier after another overnight shift. The room was still dim, lit only by the weak morning light filtering through threadbare curtains, while the steady drip of rainwater into a faded blue bucket echoed from the corner where the roof had leaked for as long as Ava could remember. It was an irritating sound, but after nineteen years, she barely noticed it anymore. Some people woke to birds singing outside their windows; Ava woke to the reminder that her family couldn’t afford to fix a roof. She sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes before looking around the apartment she had called home for most of her life. It consisted of a single bedroom, a cramped kitchenette, and a sitting area that was barely large enough for an old sofa and a small dining table. It wasn’t much, but it was all her mother could afford after the divorce. Ever since her father walked away when she was eight years old, life had become a constant exercise in stretching every naira and making impossible choices with limited options. Her mother never spoke badly about him. Whenever Ava asked why he had left, she would simply smile, though the sadness in her eyes always betrayed her. “Sometimes adults lose their way,” she would say. “It doesn’t always mean they stop loving the people they leave behind.” Ava had clung to those words for years because believing her father still loved her was far easier than believing he had chosen a life without her. What remained of him fit inside a small wooden box beneath her bed: a faded photograph of the three of them smiling at the beach, a worn leather toolbox with chipped corners, and memories that had become more precious with every passing year. On difficult days, she found herself opening that box just to remind herself that those moments had been real, that there had once been a time when life felt full of promise instead of unanswered questions. The toolbox had once belonged to her father, and although the red paint had faded and the metal clasps had rusted with age, Ava treasured it more than anything else she owned. Whenever life became too overwhelming, she would slide it out from beneath her bed and run her fingers over the scratches that marked years of use. Inside were neatly arranged screwdrivers, pliers, measuring tapes, tiny bolts sorted into old mint tins, and a pair of safety goggles that were far too large for the little girl who had insisted on wearing them every Saturday morning. The smell of machine oil still lingered inside, faint but familiar enough to transport her back to a time when weekends meant laughter, learning, and spending hours in the tiny garage behind their old house. Her father had never treated her like a child who was too fragile to understand complicated things. Instead, he encouraged every question she asked, no matter how impossible it sounded. When she wanted to know why airplanes didn’t fall from the sky, he spent an entire afternoon explaining lift, thrust, drag, and gravity using paper, string, and an old desk fan. When she wondered how engines worked, he dismantled an old lawn mower and patiently showed her every moving part before helping her put it back together. By the end of the day, Ava’s hands would be covered in grease, her hair would be sticking out in every direction, and her cheeks would ache from smiling, but she always left the garage feeling as though she had discovered another piece of the universe. “Every machine tells a story,” he often said while tightening a loose bolt or adjusting the wing of one of their homemade model airplanes. “Most people only see what it is. Engineers ask why it works, why it failed, and how it can be made better. That’s how the world moves forward.” Those words had stayed with her long after the garage disappeared from her life. They were the reason she spent hours reading about aircraft design at the public library, watching documentaries online whenever the internet café offered discounted hours, and sketching airplane concepts in the margins of her notebooks instead of flowers or hearts like most of her classmates. Becoming an aerospace engineer wasn’t simply a childhood dream that she would eventually outgrow. It had become part of her identity, a promise she had silently made to herself and to the father she hadn’t seen in years. Life, however, had a cruel way of reminding her that dreams alone were never enough. After the divorce, her mother worked tirelessly to keep a roof over their heads, often taking extra shifts at the nursing home even when exhaustion was written across her face. Some mornings she left before sunrise, and on others she returned so late that Ava was already asleep. They lived under the same roof, yet there were days when the only proof her mother had been home was the neatly folded laundry on the chair or the handwritten notes she left beside the kettle. Money was always short. Rent consumed most of her mother’s salary, groceries took another large portion, and whatever remained disappeared into electricity bills, transport fares, and unexpected expenses that seemed determined to arrive at the worst possible moments. There was never anything left to set aside for college, despite how desperately both of them wanted it. Her mother never admitted how much that hurt, but Ava noticed the quiet sacrifices. New clothes became unnecessary. Birthdays were celebrated with homemade cake instead of gifts. Even replacing worn-out shoes was postponed until they were practically falling apart. Determined not to become another burden, Ava began looking for work as soon as she graduated from high school. She wasn’t picky. She applied to supermarkets, cafés, bookstores, warehouses, offices, hotels, and anywhere else that displayed a Now Hiring sign. She rewrote her résumé so many times that she could recite it from memory, tailoring it for every application in the hope that someone, somewhere, would decide she was worth taking a chance on. Instead, rejection became painfully familiar. Every morning she checked her inbox with cautious optimism, convincing herself that today would be different. Every afternoon another polite email arrived thanking her for her interest before explaining that the company had chosen a more experienced candidate or someone whose qualifications better matched the role. At first she read every word, hoping she had simply misunderstood. Eventually she stopped reading beyond the first sentence because they all ended the same way. She had graduated with excellent grades. Her teachers had praised her discipline, her curiosity, and her determination, insisting she had a bright future ahead of her. One of them had even helped her apply to Westbridge Institute of Technology, where she had been accepted into the aerospace engineering program. For one unforgettable evening, she and her mother had celebrated as though every sacrifice had finally paid off. They laughed, danced around the apartment, and shared a cheap takeaway pizza they could barely afford because the acceptance letter felt like proof that better days were finally within reach. Then they saw the tuition fee. The excitement that had filled the apartment disappeared almost overnight. Acceptance had opened the door, but without money, they couldn’t step through it. The letter remained carefully folded inside a clear plastic folder in Ava’s bedside drawer, both a reminder of what she had achieved and of everything that still stood between her and the future she wanted so badly. Even so, she refused to let herself stop believing. Every rejection stung, every disappointment left another c***k in her confidence, but somewhere deep inside she held onto the conviction that her story couldn’t end before it had truly begun. She didn’t know how her breakthrough would come or when it would arrive, only that giving up now would mean abandoning the little girl who had once believed she could build machines capable of touching the sky.