Chapter Two – Echoes of What Used to Be
953 Words
Sometimes, I think memories are ghosts.
They don’t haunt you all at once — they hover, quietly brushing against you when you least expect it.
That’s what it felt like that morning. I was sitting in the school courtyard under the mango tree, reading a novel I wasn’t really focused on. The sun was soft, the air heavy with the smell of rain. Then, out of nowhere, I remembered a Saturday from years ago — before everything started to fall apart.
Dad had taken Mum and me to Jabi Lake. He bought suya from a man who kept winking at me, and Mum teased him about being overprotective. I remember her wearing this bright yellow dress, laughing so hard that she nearly dropped her ice cream. And Dad just looked at her as if she were the most beautiful thing in the world.
That look — that’s what I miss the most.
Now, when they see each other, it’s like they’re both holding back a storm.
“Earth to Amy?”
I looked up and saw Ethan standing in front of me, squinting under the sunlight.
He was holding a sketchpad and wearing his usual faded denim jacket. Ethan was new in school — he’d transferred from Lagos two months ago — but he had this calm energy that made people curious. He never said much, but when he did, his words stayed with you.
“Sorry,” I said, closing my book. “I was just… thinking.”
“About something good or something sad?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.
I hesitated. “Both, maybe.”
He smiled — a small, knowing kind of smile. “Those are usually the most dangerous kind of thoughts.”
I chuckled softly. “You sound like someone who knows.”
“I do,” he said. “My parents split last year.”
“Oh.” The word slipped out, awkward and quiet.
“It’s fine,” he said, sitting beside me. “Just… weird, you know? One day they’re arguing about salt, the next day one’s gone.”
“Mine never really argued,” I said. “They just stopped talking to each other.”
We sat in silence for a while, watching a group of students laughing by the gate.
Then he flipped open his sketchpad. “Want to see something?”
I nodded.
He showed me a sketch of a bird — wings spread, mid-flight. But the strange part was that its body was half-finished, like he’d stopped drawing halfway through.
“It’s beautiful,” I said softly. “But why didn’t you finish it?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes, leaving something undone feels more honest.”
I didn’t fully understand what he meant, but the words sank somewhere deep.
When I got home that evening, Mum was in the kitchen, staring at a pot of soup that had clearly been forgotten. The air smelled of burnt tomato paste.
“Something smells… dramatic,” I said, smiling a little.
She looked up, startled, then sighed. “Oh, Amy. I forgot to turn it off.”
I helped her clean the stove. She watched me quietly, her eyes soft but distant.
“You’ve grown so fast,” she said. “You look more like your father every day.”
Something in her voice cracked — something tired and tender.
“Mum,” I said carefully, “why don’t you and Dad talk anymore?”
She froze. For a long time, the only sound was the scraping of the spoon against the pot. Then she said, “Because sometimes, love runs out of words.”
I didn’t know how to reply.
She smiled weakly and changed the subject, asking about school. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that line — love runs out of words.
That night, I wrote it in my journal and stared at it for a long time. I wondered if maybe that was what had happened to us — too many feelings, too few words.
A week later, I saw Ethan again. We started sitting together during lunch, sharing music and stories. He had this quiet way of making heavy things feel lighter. Once, when I told him about my mum’s burnt stew, he laughed so hard he nearly choked on his biscuit.
He started sketching during our breaks — sometimes trees, faces, sometimes nothing but lines that made no sense to anyone but him.
“Why do you draw?” I asked once.
“Because it helps me remember,” he said. “Even the things I wish I could forget.”
I understood that too well.
One evening, I came home to the sound of raised voices — my parents.
For a second, I just stood by the door, frozen.
“You think you can fix this with money?” Mum shouted.
“I’m trying to make it right!” Dad’s voice trembled with anger and something like guilt.
“Right?” she snapped. “You lost the right to right things years ago.”
Then came silence. Then the sound of something breaking.
I couldn’t move. My throat felt tight.
When I finally walked in, they were both in different corners of the living room — Mum trembling, Dad staring at the floor.
Mum turned to me, eyes wet. “Amy, go to your room.”
I did. But I could still hear the echo of her voice long after.
I curled up on my bed, hugging my pillow, trying not to cry. I thought about Ethan, about the unfinished bird he’d drawn — wings open, never complete.
Maybe love was like that — something that wanted to fly, but couldn’t quite finish becoming whole.
- Writer
