PIECES OF ME
625 Words
Chapter Four:
The plane touched down at Murtala Muhammed Airport just after 8:00 PM.
Rhodesia stepped off wearing sunglasses though the sky was dark. Her braids were two weeks old, her lips dry, her lace frontal lifting at the edges. The girl who once stood with confidence in heels beside Khalil now dragged a suitcase behind her, mascara smudged, hoodie oversized.
The airport lights were too bright. The air too real.
Reality had returned.
When she got home, her mother gasped. She had been gone for over a week without proper explanation, and her phone had been off for two days. Her father’s face twisted not in anger, but in disappointment. That was worse.
“Where have you been, Rhodesia?” he asked.
She couldn’t speak.
Not yet.
Her mother reached forward, but Rhodesia pulled back.
“Please,” she whispered. “I just need a shower.”
She cried for hours that night.
The kind of crying that comes in waves where your chest heaves and you forget how to breathe.
When she finally slept, her dreams were full of airports and lies.
The next morning, she woke up determined.
Everything she had lost, she was going to fight for.
Her parents said little, unsure if they were relieved or afraid. But they saw something shift in her a tiredness, yes, but also a fire. Quiet, but real.
Rhodesia went back to Meadowcrest a week later.
The whispers started immediately.
“She’s back?”
“After all that travel?”
“She went abroad with a man!”
“She’s finished.”
“Shame!”
She kept her head down. She didn’t try to explain. She wasn’t here for them.
She was here to get her life back.
She begged her teachers for makeup work. Some refused. But others, especially her literature and English teachers, gave her a second chance.
“You’re smarter than this,” her literature teacher said. “Show them.”
Rhodesia spent nights with textbooks, catching up on months of lost work. She deleted i********:. She uninstalled w******p. Her mind had been on jet skis and champagne now it was back on syntax and algebra.
It was hard.
But healing always is.
One afternoon, she walked into the library and Chika was there.
Same table. Same glasses. Same calm face.
But colder.
“I’m sorry,” Rhodesia whispered, her voice shaking.
Chika looked up. “You don’t owe me an apology.”
“I do,” Rhodesia said. “I chose excitement over loyalty. I forgot who I was.”
Chika studied her for a moment, then sighed. “You’ve changed.”
“I know.”
“Good,” Chika said. “Because you were starting to scare me.”
That was it.
The wall cracked.
They smiled.
In the weeks that followed, Chika introduced her to a new group students who were quiet but brilliant, thoughtful, driven. One of them, Temi, loved photography. Another, Ezinne, played violin. They weren’t flashy, but they saw her. The real her. The her who loved poetry and orange sunsets and silence after the rain.
They studied together. Ate together. Laughed over plantain and memes.
Slowly, the pain began to fade.
One day, Lilian walked past her in the hallway.
Same glossed lips. Same arrogant eyes.
“Wetin happen to your Dubai boyfriend?” she said, smirking.
Rhodesia paused, met her gaze, and smiled.
“He’s married,” she said simply. “But I guess you already knew.”
The hallway went silent.
Lilian blinked.
Then turned and walked away.
That night, Rhodesia wrote in her journal:
I lost so much trying to be someone I wasn’t.
But now I’m growing into someone better than I ever imagined.
Not perfect. Just honest. Just me.
- Writer
