“Daddy warned me not to take this way today,” Chukwu moaned. “I completely forgot. With all that craziness last night, I was distracted. We should have been there by now.”

“Don’t worry,” Sunny said. “We’ll get there.”

“So close yet so far.”

A half hour had passed, and they’d only moved up about twenty feet thanks to two cars that were pushed off the road because they’d run out of gas. Drops of rain started falling just when Sasha and Chichi returned carrying bags of chin chin.

“That’s all you got?” Chukwu asked as Chichi got in. “What took so long?”

“There wasn’t much to eat,” Chichi quickly said.

Sasha slowly climbed into the passenger seat. He looked ill, his face sweaty. Sunny frowned as he sat with his legs pressed together. He smiled weakly at her. Chukwu looked at him, frowned, and asked, “What is wrong with you?”

“Just gotta pee,” he said.

“Then go do . . .”

The rain started hitting the car in large droplets. Then it began coming down like a waterfall.

Orlu looked up for the first time from the book. He looked at Sasha and then Sunny, and Sunny nodded.

“Turn the car on,” Chichi shouted.

As soon as Chukwu did, she closed her window. They all followed suit as the car was pounded with rain. Sasha groaned and jumped out of the car. “Can’t hold it!” he screeched. Sunny turned away as he stood in the rain right there beside the Jeep and relieved himself.

When he finished, he got back in the car, still looking strained. He pressed his legs together. Whatever he had done, it had only been him who did it. She couldn’t imagine Chichi suffering the same problem. That would have been more complicated.

“What kind of rain is this?” Chukwu asked, leaning forward. Outside, they could see people running for shelter and to their cars. All around them, vehicles were starting and the paved double road ran with sludgy red mud. For several minutes, it was chaos. Women in their best church clothes took off their heels to hop into cars or beneath canopies. Men in church-appropriate suits and caftans jumped into driver’s seats. The cloudburst above was like nothing Sunny had ever seen. And poor Sasha kept having to pee and pee. He was soaked from jumping outside to urinate and then getting back into the Jeep. Needless to say, Chukwu was perplexed and deeply annoyed by Sasha’s problem.

“Did you eat some bad mango?” he asked, reaching beneath the seat and pulling out a blue battered towel. He threw it on Sasha’s seat.

Thankfully, within minutes the go-slow began to move. Within a half hour, they’d outrun the strange weather and were cruising down the road. Sasha’s peeing fit continued but decreased the farther they got from the Redemption Church Camp and soon, exhausted from the agony to his bladder, he fell into a deep sleep.