If only

Chapter 1 The day I came home, the sky looked hollow like something had been carved out of it. I didn’t notice then. I was too busy dragging my dusty box up the familiar path, my head full of boarding school stories and new beginnings. Home was quiet. Too quiet. No shouting from my brother’s room. No banging pots. Just the clink of Mum’s spoon in the pot. “He’s upstairs,” she said. Her eyes didn’t meet mine. I ran up with my backpack still on. He was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall like he’d been waiting for me. He looked sick. Not just flu sick otherworldly sick. Skin too white, lips too dry. “There’s… something I need to....” “Ah abeg, later,” I laughed, tossing my sweater on the chair. “I just got back nau.” I didn’t wait. Didn’t ask. I left the room, smiling. By evening, he couldn’t breathe. I heard the panic from downstairs my mother screaming, my father shouting “Open the window! Bring water! Where’s the Qur’an?!” I ran in and froze. My father, a cleric, had placed his hand on my brother’s chest, reciting verses aloud, over and over. His voice cracked. The air felt thick, wrong. My mother brought the cat they said cats absorb dark energy. But the cat hissed and ran. It scratched my father's hand trying to escape. Maybe it knew. Maybe it saw what we couldn’t. My brother’s hands started to curl. His eyes rolled back. They forced a spoon into his mouth so he wouldn’t swallow his tongue. The room smelled like fear. They rushed him to the hospital. I didn’t even have time to change out of my school shoes. He was dead before we got there. And I never got to hear what he wanted to tell me..