He shoved the balled-up newsletter into his backpack and kept walking. Everyone he passed had a copy and was either reading it or carrying it and discussing what they had heard with someone else. He even saw a man reading while driving. He passed a stall selling newsletters and there wasn’t one copy left. The woman sitting on a stool beside the stall was in an especially chipper mood.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling at Nnamdi.
“Good morning.” Of course she was happy; she’d made a small fortune selling all those newsletters. A newsletter full of huge wild lies. Everyone was being misinformed! How could anyone believe Mama Go-Slow was this weak old woman? Didn’t people have any memory? Still, people wanted to know when and where the Man would strike next and who authorities and journalists thought he was. He now really was like the Hulk or Superman. People wanted to read theories about his strength, if he had a girlfriend or wife, and his possible secret identity.
Though the newsletter gave none of these answers, it gave the illusion that it would . . . if you just kept reading. It also gave people something exciting to talk about. Nnamdi included. He wanted to talk about risks, consequences, heroism, and battle plans. And he only wanted to talk about it all with Chioma. She always had the best ideas and knew how to put things into perspective, even when it was something he didn’t necessarily want to hear. But she hadn’t spoken to him in over two weeks, so he hadn’t set things straight with her. But she hasn’t set things straight with me, either, he thought. All day in school, he brooded. None of his friends would talk to him. And Chioma, though always nearby, still wouldn’t look at him.
As he walked home, he was so deep in his thoughts that he nearly missed the green Hummer parked along the road. He stood there staring at its shiny golden grille. Then Nnamdi saw the man standing on the side of the road next to it. The Chief of Chiefs, again. Mere feet away. His back was to Nnamdi, his front to a television camera. To the left, a small crowd was gathering to listen and watch. Someone grabbed Nnamdi’s shoulder and pulled him aside.
“Sorry, kid,” a plump sweaty man in a tight suit said. He dabbed his brow with a handkerchief. “You were about to walk right into the camera’s view.”
“Sorry,” Nnamdi muttered, turning back to stare at the Chief of Chiefs. This time, he felt no fear at the sight of him. No anxiety. Only outrage. Why was this man being put on TV? He was a criminal! A murderer!
“I’m just a humble businessman,” the Chief was saying in his professor-like voice to the woman interviewing him. “A lot of people can’t deal with a man who is successful legally. So they attach crazy stories to him. Really, I am no criminal.”
“So you have no fear of the Man coming after you the way he did with Mama Go-Slow?”
Nnamdi’s ears perked up.
“I fear the Man as any Kaleria citizen would,” the Chief said. “We all saw what he did to an old woman. Obviously, he will attack anyone. Not just criminals.”
Nnamdi felt the Man ripple beneath his skin, so he smiled to himself, despite his anger. He could just imagine the chaos if he changed into the Man and descended on the Chief of Chiefs like a shadow of revenge and it was all captured on camera. But then he thought of his father. Physically attacking the Chief of Chiefs for no clear reason was probably not how the Ikenga was meant to be used.
Nnamdi shoved his hands in his pockets and walked home. He needed a plan.
* * *
Nevertheless, that night, he didn’t think when he sneaked out of the house and ran to Chioma’s window. If he had, he’d never have chanced it. He’d been thinking all day and it was giving him nothing but a headache.
He threw a tiny pebble at Chioma’s bedroom window on the second floor of the apartment building. He’d done this twice in the past. The first was two years ago, just before going to bed, when he’d caught one of those colorful grasshoppers she loved so much. And the second was months before his father was killed, when he heard that Chioma’s grandmother had died and Chioma wouldn’t come out of the house.
Finally, Chioma cracked open her window and she peeked out. She gazed at him for a moment and then shut the window. Nnamdi’s shoulders slumped. Not even a hello. He was about to walk away when she came out of the front door, a jacket over her nightgown and flip-flops on her feet. Her braids were gathered together in a wrapped scarf.
She leaned against the wall with her arms over her chest. Nnamdi did the same. For minutes they said nothing. Feeling uncomfortable, Nnamdi looked at a spider creeping up the concrete wall of the apartment building. Chioma pushed around a piece of trash on the ground with the tip of her flip-flop. From one of the apartments, a baby cried. Nnamdi turned to Chioma, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry.”
She looked up, grinned, and threw her arms around him. “This time, you mean it,” she said into his ear. Nnamdi tensed up. But then he relaxed. She smelled like the cinnamon she loved to pour into her oatmeal every morning.
“Here,” he said, handing her the string of colorful beads he’d bought at the market after school. “In case you forget that I apologized sincerely.”
She laughed, taking the beads. Nnamdi knew she liked anything with colors and a strong smell. He grinned when she sniffed them. He’d sprayed them with his mother’s perfume. They sat on the concrete steps as she tied them around her wrist.
“A lot has been happening to me,” he said as she put her bracelet on. He hesitated, biting his lip.
Chioma glanced at him and motioned for him to keep talking.
“Since that night I ran after that man during my father’s memorial. You remember that?”
“Of course,” she said. “I was the one who told you not to go out there.”
“Chioma, I’m going to tell you something that will sound crazy. Just let me tell it all, then you talk, okay?”
She squinted at him. “Okay, but tell it fast. We both have to get back home or we’ll be in trouble.”
Nnamdi looked at his shoes and blew out a breath. Then he looked at Chioma. There was no other way to say it. “I am the Man,” he blurted.
Chioma frowned deeply. “What? You can’t b—”
He held up a hand to stop her from talking; when she did, he quickly added, “And I think it’s what made me almost hit you.” He told her everything, from beginning to end. From his father’s ghost giving him the Ikenga to the thrashing that Mama Go-Slow gave him. He told her about the anger that would sometimes overtake him and what it felt like to be a tall, super-strong shadow man. The more he spoke, the lighter he felt. And when he finished, he took a deep breath, looked at his hands, and smiled. Then he looked at Chioma’s face and the smile dropped from his lips.
“Oh, Nnamdi,” she sadly whispered.