from Fast Facts for Free Agents

2

Chichi

Over the next two weeks, Orlu and Sunny made a habit of walking home together. A friendship was sprouting between them. For Sunny, this was a nice distraction from what she’d seen in the candle. But there was another reason for walking home together these days, too.

That reason’s name was Black Hat Otokoto. He was a ritual killer, and he was on the loose. The local newspapers were constantly running terrifying stories about him with headlines like: BLACK HAT OTOKOTO CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM; KILLER KILLS CALM YET AGAIN; and FRESH RITUAL KILLINGS IN OWERRI.

Black Hat’s targets were always children.

“Make sure you and that boy Orlu walk home together,” Sunny’s mother insisted. Her mother had liked Orlu since the day Sunny came home all bruised up and Sunny had told her that Orlu had stopped the fight.

Almost every day, Chichi was there to greet them, and Sunny began to grow used to her. Chichi said she spent most of her time helping her mother around their hut. When she wasn’t helping, she did what she called “traveling,” walking to the market, the river, kilometers and kilometers all over the countryside. Sunny wasn’t sure if she believed Chichi’s story of walking the fifty-five kilometers all the way to Owerri and back in an afternoon.

“I got this wrapper from the market there,” she said, holding up a colorful cut of cloth.

It was indeed very fine. “Looks expensive,” Sunny said.

“Yeah,” Chichi said, grinning. “I kind of stole it.”

She laughed at the disgust on Sunny’s face.

Chichi loved bombast and trickery, too. She bragged that she sometimes approached strange men and told them how lovely they were, just to see their reactions. If they were too friendly, she scolded them for being nasty and perverted, reminding them that she was only ten or thirteen years old-whatever age she felt like using at the time. Then she ran off, laughing.

Sunny had never met anyone like Chichi-not in Nigeria, and not in America, either. Chichi didn’t know where her father was, and that was all she would say. But Orlu told Sunny that Chichi’s father was a musician who used to be Chichi’s mother’s best friend. “They were never married,” he said. “When he got famous, he left to pursue his career.”

Sunny almost spontaneously combusted when he told her it was Nyanga Tolotolo. “He’s my father’s favorite musician!” Sunny exclaimed. “I hear him on the radio all the time!”

When she confronted Chichi about this, Chichi merely shrugged. “Yeah, so?” she said. “All I have to show for it are three old CDs of his music and a DVD of his videos that he sent a long time ago. He’s never given us any money. The man is useless.”

After a while, Sunny decided that Chichi wasn’t so bad. She was certainly more interesting than any of Sunny’s ex-friends.

One day, Sunny found herself walking home alone. Orlu had some place to go right after school. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” was all he said as he hopped a bus. If he’s not going to tell me where he’s going, I won’t ask, she thought. Thankfully, Jibaku and company only sneered and snickered at her as she left the school yard.

Without Orlu to talk to, she kept looking around for Black Hat Otokoto. Then her thoughts moved to even darker territory, to what she’d seen in the candle-the end of the world. Yet another day had passed, bringing it closer. She shivered and walked faster.

“What’s your problem?”

She turned around to face Chichi, her face already prepared to look annoyed. But she was secretly pleased. “Why are you so rude?” Sunny asked.

“I speak my mind. That doesn’t make me rude,” Chichi said with a grin, giving Sunny a friendship handshake. Today, she wore a battered green dress and, as usual, no shoes.

“In your case, it does,” Sunny said, laughing.

“Wharreva,” Chichi drawled. “Are you going home?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some homework.”

Chichi bit her lower lip and made an arc in the dirt with her toe. “So you and Orlu are close friends now?”

Sunny shrugged.

“Well,” Chichi said, “if you’re going to be good friends with Orlu, then you have to be friends with me, too.”

Sunny frowned. She’d thought she and Chichi were friends, sort of. “Why’s that?”

“Because you’re his in-school friend and I’m his out-ofschool friend.”

Sunny laughed and shook her head. “I’m not his girlfriend.”

“Oh, neither am I. We’re just friends.”

“Okay,” Sunny said, frowning. “Uh… well, then… well, okay.”

“I don’t know much about you yet. Not enough to say we’re friends,” Chichi said. She cocked her head. “But I can tell there’s more to you. I just know it.”

“What do you mean, more?”

Chichi smiled mysteriously. “People say stuff about people like you. That you’re all ghost, or a half and half, one foot in this world and one foot in another.” She paused. “That you can… see things.”

Sunny rolled her eyes. Not this again, she thought. So cliche. Everyone thinks the old old lady, the hunchback, the crazy man, and the albino have magical evil powers. “Whatever,” she grumbled. She didn’t want to think about the candle.

Chichi laughed. “You’re right, those are silly stereotypes about albinos. But in your case, I think there’s something to it.” She paused, as if about to say something very important. “You know, Orlu can take things apart- undo bad things.”

Sunny frowned. “I see him messing around all the time, fixing radios and stuff like that. So?”

“So it’s not what you think.”

“What’s your point, Chichi?”

“Well, if you’re going to be Orlu’s friend, you should know the real story.”

They were standing by the side of the road. A car zoomed by, leaving them in a cloud of red dust. “Tell me something secret about yourself,” Chichi suddenly said. “That will seal our friendship, I think.”

“You tell me something about yourself first,” Sunny said, playing along. This was one weird game.

Chichi frowned and bit her lip again. “Hey, do you have to go home right now?”

Sunny considered. Her homework could wait a little while. She called her mother on her cell phone and told her she was with Chichi. After a long pause, her mother gave her an hour if Sunny promised to finish her homework as soon as she got home.

“Come on,” Chichi said, taking her hand. “Let’s go to my house.”

Chichi’s hut looked as if it would melt into the ground come rainy season. The warped walls were made of red mud, and the vines, trees, and bushes around it crept in too close. The front entrance was doorless, covered by a simple blue cloth. Sunny’s nose was assaulted with the smell of flowers and incense as soon as she entered. She sneezed as she glanced around.

The only sources of light were three kerosene lamps, one hanging from the low ceiling and two others on stacks of books. The place was full of books-on a small table in the middle of the room, packed under the bed, stacked against the wall all the way up to the ceiling. The corners of the ceiling were clotted with webs inhabited by large spiders. A wall gecko scurried behind a book stack. She sneezed again and

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