“That’s not the point! You think being a cat burglar in Sangui is dangerous? That place is no game! It’s Mordor you’d be heading into!”
“Mordor? I’m going to Kasisi.”
“No,” Boyboy says, throwing up his hands, “I mean Mordor, like Lord of the Rings, Eye of Sauron. You know, definition of evil?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is that a nerd thing?”
“Yes, it’s a . . . Never mind. Listen to me. You don’t just waltz back into Congo. Why do you think our parents took us out of that hellhole in the first place?”
“Come on, you’re being dramatic. I mean, lots of people still live there, right?”
“Yeah, warlords! Militias!”
I put my second-best knife in my backpack. My sweater. A plastic bottle that I fill from my rain barrel. “Not just them,” I say. “Normal people too. Farmers and stuff.” I look around, trying to keep my face composed, calm. No sense in letting Boyboy see that the idea of going there terrifies me too. What does one take on a trip into the eye of evil? I pick up a can of beans and add it to the pile.
Boyboy swallows, and I can tell he’s trying for a rational voice. “Tina, we were the normal people. And bad stuff happened to us. Please don’t do this.”
I busy myself with arranging the stuff in my pack. “I have to, Boyboy,” I say, unable to face him. “That’s where Mwika is. Mr. Greyhill is going there too. Mama’s murder and home—it’s all tied up like a big knot. Keep working on the decryption, okay?”
Boyboy’s still looking at me like I’m giving him the stomachache of his life. “What are you going to tell Bug Eye?”
I hesitate. Bug Eye told Boyboy my time was up at the Greyhills. “I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can tell him I can’t leave the Ring without Michael getting suspicious. I’ll be back in a few days, before you’re even done decrypting. He never has to know I’m gone.”
Boyboy just hugs himself and shakes his head.
What I don’t say is that as scary as Bug Eye is, I am sort of beyond caring what he’ll do if he finds out I’m skipping town. Some things are more important than ass kickings.
? ? ?
It feels good to sleep in my own bed. Even the guilt I feel when the driver, and then Michael, call and text repeatedly until I turn off my phone isn’t enough to bring me down. I’m just relieved to be in my own place, with my own smells, my own things, the lights of my own city stretched out like stolen diamonds on velvet.
I think about going to see Kiki, but she won’t be expecting me and I’d have to knock on the dorm window. I don’t want to get her in trouble. It’s only Monday. I’ll be back by Friday, I tell myself.
I wake up before it’s even light, jittery and nervous, but excited too. I’m finally doing something.
It doesn’t take long to get ready. I brush my teeth and tuck new bobby pins into my hair. I stuff as much of my emergency cash as I think I’ll need for the trip into the seams I’ve ripped open in my jacket. Then I pull the concrete block up to the eastern corner of the main room and stand on it. I reach with two fingers into a crack between the bricks in the wall and pinch out a plastic bag. After I blow off the dust, I look at the prayer card, at Saint Catherine’s face, her breaking wheel at her side, sword under her feet, palm branch in her hand.
Sometimes I feel like I split Saint Catherine in half. Kiki kept her name and her goodness. I kept the things that killed her.
I fold the plastic bag around the card and put it in my backpack with the photo of my mother. Maybe one day I’ll add a triumphant palm branch to the tattoos of the sword and the wheel on my arms. But not yet.
? ? ?
The bus terminal is orchestrated chaos, as usual. Hawkers, touts, pickpockets, and travelers press past one another in the early sun. Wide-eyed men and women from up-country clutch their bags to their armpits and furtively count out bills stashed in bosoms and underwear. Steely-eyed men and women who work the buses and market stalls watch them with predatory disdain.
I nod greetings at a few of the other light-fingered crowd workers I know and give them the signal that I’m not working today. They look relieved.
And that’s when I spot them.
One in a very lime-green hat and plaid capris, scanning the crowd; one trying to look like he hangs out at bus depots all the time and failing miserably because any fool can see he’s a sonko rich boy and doesn’t take the bus. It’s in the way he’s avoiding touching things. Also because he’s half a shade whiter than anyone except the blind albino guy rattling his tin cup for coins.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, marching over.
Michael has the nerve to look relieved to see me.
“Waiting for you, of course,” Boyboy says, puffing up his chest. He’s going for bluster, but he shrinks under my scowl.
“How did you even find me?”
“Tapped into your phone’s GPS,” Boyboy says. He shoulders a travel bag.
“Why?” I ask, giving the bag a suspicious once-over. “And what is Michael doing here?”