Serendipity [BoyxBoy]

Chapter Eight

TW: Homophobia.

When Eghosa was fourteen, she'd watched two girls get expelled for acts of immorality.

Our Lady Undoer of Knots was an all girls catholic school run by the Sisters of Perpetual Boundless Mercy so it wasn't really a small institution. They had sister schools all over the world; last year, some students from their campus in Lagos came over to the school in Benin for a weeks stay and the year before that, a few of them went to the school in Ireland for an educational tour.

She liked Our Lady's, it was a good school with good teachers and a good environment. The rules were rigid but they weren't so hard to keep. Egho wasn't a rule breaker. She wasn't rebellious or particularly adventurous. She liked to keep her circles small and her life as uncomplicated as possible and that meant following rules.

Egho was determined to be the best student she could be.

During that assembly, no presentations were made, neither were there any announcements. Sister Felisha, the principal at that time, was the only one up on the podium. Egho remembered how the crowd began to murmur because Sister Felisha usually avoided assemblies (she believed they were best left to the capable hands of the teachers and prefects). Egho remembered the feeling of dread roiling in her stomach, the fear lodged in her throat. She remembered being afraid not knowing exactly why.

Sister Felisha had called the two girls up, taking the liberty to shame them for over thirty minutes. She had called them vile and sinful-- daughters of Sodom and Gomorrah. After which, she informed the school that their expulsion letters had been sent to their parents.
After assembly, all the girls kept talking about how disgusting those two were. Some juniors took pride in saying they always knew that the two of them were weird.

Egho never said anything. Her life was small and uncomplicated, she followed the rules.

She was determined to be the best student she could be.

▪️▪️▪️

"Nosa's home!"

"I pray that as you grow," Nosa lifted Ehi up and placed her on his shoulder, "you'll learn that shouting anyhow is bad."

It was seven in the evening and both his parents weren't home yet. Nosa figured he could have spent maybe an hour more at Irekan's place without anyone calling to ask where he was. But he needed to pee and there was no way he was doing that in someone else's toilet.

There was also the fact that he had to come home and relieve Egho of her baby sitting duties... and maybe eat something other than Gala and La'casera, an apple flavoured soda his mum literally called poison. But those things came second place. The peace and quiet he'd enjoyed was almost worth running away and living off of junk food.

Almost.

As much as he hated to admit it, he had fun at Irekan's place and they didn't even really do anything. He watched anime, Irekan read, Uvo slept and it was fun. Nosa's definition of fun was playing an old mobile game in bed even though it was 1am and he had to be up for mass in four hours. It was sleeping in comfortable positions because those were surprisingly hard to find. It was rolling two sixes on the odd occasion that Egho decided to challenge him to a game of Ludo.

He'd never had fun with someone outside his family. That was a testament to how he never hung out with anyone outside his family but still.

Ehi pressed her hands into his cheeks, squeezing his flesh like play dough as he carried her to the kitchen, ducking to get through the door with her.