Sunny was glad her mother didn’t ask why she wasn’t out with Chichi, Orlu, and Sasha. She was glad her mother didn’t ask her much of anything. It was nice. Just being around her, working with their hands, cooking. Then later on, it was nice just sitting at the dinner table with her father eating rice and stew. He read the newspaper and she read her current book, a graphic novel called Aya: Love in Yop City.

All this soothed her, but by the time night came, it all sat right back on her shoulders, weighty as bags of sand. It was an overcast night and thunder rumbled in the clouds above. She’d slept poorly, as she had for the last two nights. She hadn’t spoken to Chichi, Orlu, or Sasha, she hadn’t worked one small juju, no Leopard Knocks, which meant no Sugar Cream. She’d have said that this was her life before realizing her Leopardom, but it wasn’t. Before, she’d had a group of other friends, and she’d never known of that other side of her that was now gone, and Sunny knew she could never ever go back. It was like being left on an island. Her Saturday meetings with Sugar Cream and Wednesdays with Anatov and the others. Even Lamb school would be a problem. How would she face Orlu?

No going forward, no going backward. “It’s like being dead,” she whispered. The thunder rumbled some more and she suddenly jumped up and strode to her closet. She threw on some shorts and a T-shirt, sandals, grabbed her soccer ball, and was out the back door. Her parents might wonder where she’d gone, Ugonna, too. Let them, she thought, tears streaming down her face.

The field where they played soccer wasn’t far. Especially when she walked with purpose. Her long, strong legs got her there in no time, and when she stepped onto the empty, slightly overgrown fields, she dropped the ball and kicked it hard. She jogged after the ball into the center of the field and stopped it with her foot. She looked up into the churning gray sky. There was a flash of lightning and then several seconds later, the rumble of thunder.

She knew the juju to prevent being struck by lightning, a variation of the rain-deflecting juju one used when caught in a downpour. Sunny chuckled bitterly to herself and kicked her soccer ball. “Let it strike,” she muttered as she worked the ball with her fast feet. Back, to the side, tapping it in the air and catching it with the bottom of her foot behind her back, kick it lightly forward, behind, around. She smiled as she moved and dribbled the ball. She did a turn and kicked it back toward the other goal.

She ran across the field and shot it into the goal, the soft whisper of net against ball making her heart leap with a familiar joy. She grabbed the ball with her feet and worked it across the field to the other side and did it again. And then she did it again. All alone under the churning sunless sky, she enjoyed her own footwork, imagining that she was playing a one-on-one game against herself. The air rushed in and out of her lungs. She threw off her sandals so she could feel the hard, uneven ground with her tough feet.