He twisted her collar so hard, she felt a prickling sensation across her face from the loss of circulation. “Very.”
Finally, he loosened his grip on her shirt, his face filled with disgust as he shoved her back against the building. “Tie them up. I don’t want anyone getting away. Then search the buildings again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.
– KENYAN PROVERB –
Nasha lifted the burlap sacks she’d hidden beneath and crept from the corner, listening to the men walking around in the courtyard outside the supply shed. She glanced at the trapdoor, saw it was securely closed, wondering if Mr. Pete and Miss Wendy would even notice she was gone. Probably not, she decided. She wasn’t like the other girls.
People tended not to notice her.
It was, after all, what made her a successful thief.
Then again, Mr. Hank had noticed her. But only because she’d stolen his keys. She didn’t feel the least bit of guilt over seeing him leave, though she was sad to see Mr. Fargo go. He also tended to watch her closely, yet she sensed that he was different. He watched his wife closely, too.
She liked that.
It reminded her a bit of her uncle, how he had watched her aunt when Nasha first came to live with him. That was before Boko Haram had killed everyone who tried to stop them as they invaded the school, taking the girls hostage. So many of her friends were gone. By the grace of God, she’d escaped to her uncle’s home, even though he lived in the shadow of a Boko Haram stronghold. He’d had the foresight to shave her head and dress her in boy’s clothes. “No more Nasha. Nash is now your name,” he’d said, putting her to work in the field with the other male children, who were, for a while, too young to catch the eye of the terrorists in their hunt for new fighters. A self-educated man, her uncle had a saying for every situation. When she’d complained after the first day about a blister on her hand, he’d told her, “A blister will heal, yet—”
“When can I go to school?” she asked, not wanting to hear yet another of his old proverbs.
Her statement had angered him and he slammed his fist on the table, scaring her. “Everything you learned in school, you forget. You are no longer a girl. Even to the boys you work with—especially Chuk,” he said, naming her one friend in the village. “He’s too young to keep that a secret. Tell them nothing. Do you understand?”
“No,” she replied, tears springing to her eyes.
“A whisper released is like feathers soaring in the wind. You cannot catch them to take back. And you never know where they might land.”
“But—”
He grabbed her blistered hand, pain coursing through her fingers as he squeezed them between his. “If they find out you’re a girl, they’ll take you away. They’ll . . .” His gaze flicked to an empty chair at the table, where her aunt used to sit. He paused and gave a deep sigh. He’d never spoken about what had happened to her, why she was no longer there, and Nasha had never dared ask.
“I’m sorry,” she said, having no idea what she’d done to rouse his anger.
He said nothing at first, just watched the tears slipping down her cheeks. Realizing he still held her hand, he let loose, suddenly pulling her into his arms. “No more crying. You’re a boy now. You’re Nash.”
“But I’m not.”
“You are. And you can never tell anyone different. If they find out . . .” He held her away from him, looking deep into her eyes. “I’ll get you out of here. However long it takes. But until then, you must do as I say. Understand?”
She nodded. “But when can I go to school?”
“They hunt the schools. Destroy them. Take the girls. It’s not safe.”
And that she did understand. She’d seen the empty building, listened to the wind whistling through the broken windows.
Her uncle was determined that would not be her fate. For the next six weeks he disguised her right beneath the terrorists’ noses, sending her to work the fields by day and hiding her at night. Her best friend in the village, Chuk, thought she was a boy. Her uncle refused to let her tell him the truth. Their life was lonely, hard, but filled with love. At night he read to her from an old tattered book of proverbs that had been borrowed decades ago from the library in Jalingo, a day’s bus ride from his village. “Someday,” her uncle told her, “we’ll take the bus and get a new book.”
That day never came. One night, her uncle shook her awake. “Time to go.”
“It’s too early. The sun isn’t even up.”
“Nasha,” he said, not dropping the a at the end of her name for the first time since she’d come to him. “Move. Quickly.”
She roused herself from her cot, reaching for the lantern.
“No light,” he said, handing over her clothes.
She dressed in the dark. And he put her in the back of a borrowed truck along with a half-dozen other boys who were destined to become the next unwilling soldiers of Boko Haram. They picked up Chuk last. A year younger than her, he started crying as the truck bounced along the dirt road on their way out of the village.
Nasha took his hand in hers. “We’ll stay together, like my uncle says. And watch out for each other. Okay?”
“Promise?” Chuk said.
“Promise.”
Her uncle drove them to Jalingo. He’d made a deal with someone who promised to take care of the boys until he could come back for them.
That had been well over a year ago.
The man he’d entrusted had pocketed the money, leaving the boys to fend for themselves.
Some of them ran off. Nasha, Chuk, and one other boy, Len, were picked up by the Kalu brothers as they wandered the streets of Jalingo. They may have escaped Boko Haram but they’d landed in a completely different hell, of that she had no doubt. The oldest Kalu brother, Kambili, had always told them this was their fate. This was what society’s rejects deserved.
As much as she tried not to believe him, a part of her figured there was some truth to his words. Wasn’t that why bad things kept happening to her?
Shaking off the old memories, especially the hurt of Chuk’s betrayal, Nasha crept toward the partially open shed door and peered out. She startled when she saw Mrs. Fargo, Miss Amal, and the four older girls surrounded by men with rifles.
Frightened, she glanced toward the closed trapdoor, longing for the feeling of security, wondering if anyone would let her in if she were to knock.
Still, she hesitated. Those girls down there might not be like her. But once she had been like them, thinking there was nothing else in the world but loving parents and a new day. And as much as she wanted to return to that life, free from Boko Haram and the likes of the Kalu brothers, she refused to knock on the door. If someone heard her, every one of those girls would be in danger.