SHE CALLED ME SIS

CHAPTER THREE — Where the Fire Starts

She called me sister. But it didn’t feel like family. Not yet.

That was the line I ended with in my notebook that Sunday night.

I stared at the page for a long time before I closed it. I wasn’t sure why I wrote it down — maybe to remind myself later that what was happening wasn’t just in my head. That the shift I was feeling between me and Lani was real, even if I couldn’t yet describe it.

The air in our room was thick. Not hot, just… full. Full of things we weren’t saying. Questions we weren’t asking. Memories we hadn’t yet shared.

Lani was lying on her mattress, still dressed from church. She hadn’t bothered to remove her gown. Her arms were folded under her head. Eyes open. But staring at nothing.

She’d been quiet since Madam’s comment — “this one is from her own mummy.”

I heard her breathing — not shaky, not deep. Just controlled. Like she was managing emotions she didn’t trust this house to see.

I rolled over and faced the wall. But even with my back turned, I could feel her pain stretching across the room like power outage — silent, but obvious.

And I hated how it affected me.

Because the longer she stayed here, the harder it became to keep my guard up.

—

The next day at school, I was distracted.

During Biology class, I was supposed to be labeling parts of the human eye. Instead, I found myself sketching her face beside the diagram — her lashes, her jawline, the tiny mole near her left ear. I caught myself halfway through and angrily rubbed it out with my eraser.

I wasn’t like this.

I had always been the quiet girl. Focused. Neat notes. Top five in class. I minded my business, avoided drama, and never let anybody too close.

But now?

Now, I was drawing my half-sister in the margin of my textbook.

Lani had entered my space like smoke. Quiet. Steady. And impossible to ignore.

—

That evening, it rained hard. Lagos rain — the type that shakes your windows and floods your compound. Madam was shouting from the kitchen as usual, annoyed that NEPA had taken light mid-soup.

Chinyere was mopping the corridor. Daddy hadn’t come home.

I was inside, holding a small basin under the part of the ceiling that leaked when the rain got bad. Lani sat by the window, hugging her knees, watching the sky fall.

“You ever danced in the rain before?” she asked suddenly.

I blinked. “No.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “This house doesn’t allow play.”

She smiled faintly. “You should try it sometime.”

Before I could ask what she meant, she stood up, walked to the door, and slipped outside into the rain.

I gasped. “Are you mad?”

But she didn’t answer. She just walked into the middle of the compound, barefoot, arms open wide. The rain soaked her gown instantly, sticking to her body like second skin.

I watched from the door, heart pounding.

What was she doing?

Dancing.

Slowly. Softly. Her arms moved like she was folding pain into the sky. Her body turned like she wasn’t afraid of being seen.

I wanted to be annoyed. I wanted to call her foolish.

But I couldn’t.

She looked… free.

And I envied it.

“Zara!” Madam shouted from inside. “Close that door! Are you trying to bring cold inside?”

I slammed the door quickly. But not before Lani turned and caught my eye.

She smiled.

That night, she got a small fever from the rain. Madam shouted at her for “acting like a goat.” Daddy gave her Panadol without asking questions.

But I stayed up and watched over her.

She shivered under her wrapper, forehead damp with sweat.

When I reached out to touch her arm, she flinched. Then relaxed.

“Sorry,” I said.

She nodded, eyes half-closed. “It was worth it.”

I smiled. “You’re mad.”

She smiled back.

“Maybe.”

We didn’t say anything else.

I just sat beside her until she slept.

And maybe I slept too. I don’t remember.

—

Later that week, Madam started giving her small favors.

“She has sense,” she told Daddy over dinner. “Not like Zara that will be forming big girl but can’t even greet elders with respect.”

Lani never defended me.

She didn’t need to.

We had started defending each other with silence. With glances. With shared eye-rolls behind Madam’s back.

It was dangerous.

Too much understanding could become something else.

And I felt it.

One night, it happened.

Not the full thing. Not yet.

But a shift.

A beginning.

—

We were lying in bed, the heat from the generator long gone. My wrapper was halfway off. Lani’s was tucked tight, but she wasn’t sleeping. I could hear her sighing lightly.

“You okay?” I asked, voice low.

She turned to face me. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dark, catching light from the streetlamp outside.

“I miss her.”

“Your mum?”

She nodded.

I shifted closer. “What was she like?”

“Strong. Loud. But soft too. She could fight conductor and still sing worship ten minutes later. She smelled like shea butter and Dettol.”

I smiled. “That’s a strong combo.”

“She had this habit of brushing my hair while telling me stories about her life. About the first man that broke her heart. About how she used to dream of living abroad. She never did.”

I didn’t speak. I just listened.

Then she said something I wasn’t expecting.

“Sometimes I think she knew she was going to die. The way she started holding my hand longer. Saying she was proud of me. Asking me to forgive her if she ever failed me.”

I swallowed hard. My chest tightened.

“She didn’t fail you,” I said.

She looked at me. “How do you know?”

“Because you’re still here.”

She stared at me for a long time.

Then she reached out and touched my hand.

Just a soft touch.

Barely a second.

But it lit something inside me I didn’t have the words for.

I didn’t pull away.

I didn’t move closer either.

We just stayed like that.

Two girls in a shared room. Half-sisters. Not by choice. Linked by loss. Bound by silence.

And something else now.

Something we didn’t have permission to name.

—

The next morning, everything returned to normal.

But it wasn’t.

She touched my arm when she passed the salt.

I didn’t flinch.

I helped her loosen her braids that night.

She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t need to.

The following week, I got in trouble for snapping at Madam. Lani stood up for me.

Madam slapped her.

She didn’t cry.

But later that night, she lay in bed facing me.

And said, “If I could leave, would you come with me?”

I looked at her, my heart loud in my chest.

“I don’t know.”

She smiled sadly.

“You do.”