Serendipity [BoyxBoy]

Chapter Nineteen

When Mathew was younger, he’d lived in a neighbourhood so high-class he had no business being there.

His family didn’t have any money. His dad was dead and whatever assets he’d owned was seized by greedy uncles who'd left his mother stranded with her children.

They’d ended up in the estate by luck. A young but successful accountant had taken pity on his mother, deeming that it was not right for a woman to be on the streets with three children, the youngest of which was barely one. The accountant had leased Mathew’s family his boy’s quarters at a much cheaper rate and had set his mother with a small business running a corner shop in the estate.

The grass to grace, or as he liked to call it, grass to slightly greener grass situation had plopped Mathew in a society of wealth and luxury even if he'd still been unable to go to school. Everyone in the estate drove shiny cars and took evening strolls just because they could. His family had started attending Our Lady Mother of Nigeria, a church located in the estate with houses he wouldn’t be able to afford even if he sold all his body parts. The same church he would later meet Naomi in.

Back then, Mathew had liked imagining that their place were bigger and that they had as much money as the people they lived around. He'd liked to sit at the entrance of his mother’s shop and imagine he owned one of the huge mansions with terraced roofing tiles.

He'd been doing just that, sitting and daydreaming, when he’d met Irekanmi and Iretioluwa. The twins were only three years younger than him and, at that time, Irekan had loved getting into all sorts of mischief. Mathew and Ireti had always been there to save his ass, apologise on his behalf, keep him from going overboard with his pranks.

The trio had been so inseparable that it had hurt when the twins stopped coming around. They’d disappeared without a trace. No goodbyes. No explanations. No apologies. Mathew had found himself waiting in front of their empty house until he couldn’t anymore. Then he’d found himself resenting them even when he’d learnt that their family had moved abroad.

The resentment had only dissipated when Irekan returned ten years later and Ireti was not with him.

Mathew could not tell him sorry because sorry was a word too useless and weak to heal any wound. And loss was the deepest wound of all. 

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Nosa wasn’t a big fan of change.

He took too much time preparing for stuff and even more time adjusting to them. He hated the prickly feeling he got when he was told about something that went against his routine, it felt like multiple needles dancing on his flesh. He hated unfamiliar places and learning new names, faces and schedules. He hated having to assimilate things.

He knew change was necessary, constant, that life was an entire series of changes and that there was no way he could avoid them. But he wished though, God he wished. Because change was scary and it was even scarier when he couldn’t run away from it.

It was scary that he couldn’t run away from the change Irekan came with. If only he were serving his punishment at another part of the school then maybe they wouldn’t have met. Better still, if he didn’t skip class and get punished for it at all. It seemed unlikely that they would have met had the conditions been different. That Irekan’s parents would have decided to send their son to Pere Guttman’s without Nosa’s influence. Nosa had changed so much in the little time that had passed and it was all because Irekan invited him over to watch anime.

Irekan had butted into his life and there was no pushing him out. But, even though he liked having a friend, even though he smiled brighter and laughed more and took care of himself better, Nosa couldn’t shake off the feeling—the needles dancing on his skin feeling—that all this would ruin him.