“Commot, commot!” shouted the driver.

“You’re not going again?” I asked.

“You dey craze? You no dey see riot? My friend, commot, make I go. Keep your money sef.”

Grumbling and cursing, I got off and he sped away. I sighed and looked around and that was when I saw Vivek a few blocks down, unmistakable in that dress. I called his name but he didn’t turn around and so I ran to him, pushing his shoulder when I reached him.

“You don’t hear your name?!”

My cousin turned and looked at me calmly. “I’m Nnemdi,” she corrected.

I wiped my face with my hand. Today of all days. “Okay, sorry, Nnemdi. Please, can we go back to Juju’s house?”

“No problem. But I want to get some puff-puff first.”

I stared at her, then gestured to the mayhem ahead of us. “You want to enter that? For puff-puff?”

She looked at the crowd and her face wavered. She was twisting her hands together like she did when she was nervous. “It won’t take long. Can we go after I buy it?” she said.

I wanted to shout at her, but the last time I did that in public, she had threatened to punch me in the face, then ran away. I wasn’t able to chase her—it would’ve looked too somehow—so I went back to Juju’s house and waited till she came back on her own. This time, I gently held her shoulders and looked into her eyes. The cotton of the dress was soft under my palms. “Nnemdi,” I said. “I’m sure even the woman selling it has packed her things and gone already. She won’t be there. Everyone is going, see.”

A plume of smoke was rising against the horizon from the market. The road beside us was packed with speeding vehicles, buses and taxis and private cars. A trader carrying folded yards of cloth piled precariously around her zoomed past on an okada. It was weaving through the other vehicles, and as it passed us, it swerved to avoid a pothole and some of the cloth fell off, landing in a cloud of sand. The woman shouted at the okada driver to stop, but he didn’t, shouting back at her as he continued to speed away from the brewing mob.

“We have to go,” I told my cousin. “Biko, before something happens to you.”

She glared at me. “Why is it me you think something will happen to? You nko?”

“Please, don’t start this now. You know it’s not even safe for you to be going out of Juju’s house like this, let alone in this area, let alone in this situation! Don’t act stupid. Let’s go!”

“I see.” Her face had settled into coldness. “So now you think I’m stupid?”

“Nnemdi, please. You can fight me when we reach Juju’s house. Let’s just go. Biko.”

“You’re ashamed of me,” she said, her voice surprised. “That’s why you don’t like me going out like this. It’s like you’re always ashamed, Osita. First of yourself, then of us, now of me.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s not true. Abeg—”

“No, it’s true. You don’t mind anything when we’re inside and nobody can see us, but that’s why you don’t like me to go outside like this. You don’t want anyone to see me. Or is it that you don’t want them to see me with you?”

I groaned and clutched at my head. We didn’t have time for this. What would happen if someone looked too closely at her, someone holding a machete and buffeted by a mob? How quickly they could hurt her, kill her. I grabbed her arm and started to drag her away. “We don’t have time to be quarreling on the road!”

She tried to pull away and started hitting me. “Let me go! Hapu m aka!!”

I lost it. “We have to go now! Do you know what they’ll do to you?”

Nnemdi gasped and wrenched away from me with all her strength, breaking my hold. I was startled by the pain in her eyes, surprised that the truth could hurt her so much. She pulled herself away with such force that she stumbled, and her heel caught on a stone, and she fell. It happened so fast. I saw her head strike the raised cement edge of the gutter at the side of the road. I saw her body slump, eyes closed, blood pooling into the sand within seconds.

I screamed.

“No no no no!” I ran and knelt by her, sliding one hand under her neck to lift her head up. “Nnemdi. Nnemdi!” Maybe she wouldn’t recognize that name after hitting her head. “Vivek,” I whispered. “Vivek, open your eyes. Please, bhai. Open your eyes.” My hand was now wet with blood—there was so much blood. Panic was a vulture inside my body, trying to get out, pecking and flapping wildly at me. I looked around and scrabbled to get the cloth that had fallen from the okada. I ripped off the plastic covering and lifted her neck again, using the cloth to try and stop the bleeding.

Hospital. I needed to get her to a hospital. No one around me was paying attention; everything was chaos; people were running all around us. I lifted Nnemdi and carried her against my chest, using my upper arm to cushion her head. I stood at the side of the road and an okada skidded in front of me. The driver was, unexpectedly, a woman.

“Wetin happen?” she asked, staring at Nnemdi.

“She fell down. Please, can you take us to a hospital?”

She nodded. “Enter,” she said, and I climbed up behind her, carefully, sitting far back enough so Nnemdi could fit. We sped off.

“Anyangwe Hospital,” I called out to the driver. “Do you know it?” It was just around the corner from Uncle Chika’s house, walking distance. I could run and get them while the doctors took care of Nnemdi. The driver nodded and I bent my face to Nnemdi’s, wind whistling past us. “Wake up,” I begged. “Wake up for me.” We wove through cars and I kept my arms clutched tightly, her knees draped over the crook of my elbow. Her shoes fell off and I didn’t care. When we reached the junction of a side road leading to the hospital, a giant pothole filled with water blocked most of the road. The okada stopped at the edge.

“My bike no fit enter that one,” she said. “E go spoil my engine. We can go around by the main road. Abi the hospital is just there?”

“No wahala,” I said, carefully climbing down. “I can walk from here. Ego ole?”

She waved her hand. “Forget the money. Go and make sure your wife is all right.”

I nodded, tears solid in my eyes, and she drove away as I waded through the edge of the puddle. The side road was a shortcut, small and narrow, unpaved, shadowed by trees. I knew this small road well—there was a side gate from Uncle Chika’s compound that opened up into it. When Vivek and I were still in secondary school, we had broken the rusty padlock and cleared a path so that we could use the gate to sneak out of the compound. I got through the puddle, legs wet to my calves, and I was passing the gate when I looked down at Nnemdi and stopped.

There was something new in her face. It didn’t look like her anymore. Hurrying, I knelt down and laid her on the ground to check her neck for a pulse. There was nothing. I held my hand in front of her nose. Nothing. My sleeve and shirt were soaked in blood. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes blurred and I felt as if I was going to faint. I shook her, called both her names, as if it would do anything. We were under a flame-of-the-forest tree. An orange flower fell down and landed on her chest.

I knelt there, close to the fence, no one else on the road with me. I put my hand on her face and called her names again. It felt as if I was imagining the whole thing.

I was there on the road with my cousin’s body in front of me.

Someone was going to see me.

The thought took precedence and adrenaline shot through me. I can’t tell you why I did what I did next, except that Uncle Chika’s house was right there, and I knew the hospital was now useless, and I didn’t know how I would answer any of their questions if I walked into either place. Vivek had always told me and Juju, “Make sure my parents don’t find out. They already have so much to deal with. Make sure they don’t find out about Nnemdi.”

So I did what he would have wanted me to do.

I untied the bow the dress was fastened with, and I stripped it off her body, crying the whole time, my hands shaking, my head scattered. I took the material I had used to soak up the blood and unfolded it. It was akwete, in a red-and-black pattern. I used it to cover my cousin and I picked her up again, and I walked to the side gate—the lock was never fixed—and pushed it open with my foot. I ran through the backyard, along the side of the house to the veranda, where I laid Nnemdi down by the welcome mat. There was so much blood, all over both of us. I couldn’t stop crying.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.” I stroked some hair off her face and pressed my forehead against hers, my tears falling on her nose and mouth. My uncle’s voice sifted through the window.

“Did you hear that?” he was asking my aunt.

“Someone is at the door?” she replied.

I choked back a sob, sniffed, and held my cousin’s face in my hands, kissing her lips. “I have to go,” I told her. “Please, forgive me. I have to go.”