“I was going to say that you should watch for armed robbers on the road, but you two look too dangerous to bother.” Their father laughed.

Adebayo flexed a muscular arm. “No bullet can penetrate my flesh,” he said.

Chukwu laughed hard, and they both exchanged a look, sharing some sort of inside joke.

“Just drive carefully and quickly,” Sunny’s mother said. “Get to campus before dark.”

“Mummy, campus is a half hour away,” Chukwu said. “It’s morning.”

“Better to be safe,” she said.

“Sunny,” Chukwu said, smirking. “Stay out of my room.”

“As if I have a reason to want to go in that smelly place,” she said, leaning against the house. Her legs felt so weak. She sat down on the curb, gazing at her brother. He was really going off to university. “Wow,” she said to herself.

“Ugonna, stay away from my side of the room,” Chukwu said, waving a dismissive hand at Sunny.

“Your room?” Ugonna said. “You don’t have a room anymore, and I have a big one.”

“We’ll see about that when I visit for Christmas,” Chukwu said, starting the Jeep.

“Call when you get there,” their mother added, opening the door and hugging him in the driver’s seat.

“Study hard, my son,” his father said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Sunny leaned to the side, her hand in the dirt, as they all watched him drive through the gate onto the road. Then he was gone. Sunny frowned, her mind jumping to what she’d just “read” in her Nsibidi book, that the Idiok who’d adopted Sugar Cream were Baboon Leopard People, and they all had the same name as their spirit faces. That is just . . . bizarre, she lazily thought. Then she laughed and slowly got up. Good luck, Chukwu.

7

THE NUT

Later that day, Sunny dribbled the soccer ball between her bare feet as she ran toward Ugonna. She moved it faster and faster the closer that she got to him. As she approached, Ugonna prepared to challenge her. As she did so, she watched his face shift from smiling to frowning.

“Shit,” he exclaimed.

She kicked the ball to the left when she got to him, doing a quick whirl and catching it easily as she shot around him.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed, turning around to watch her.

She slowed down, working the ball with her feet. She flipped it onto the top of her foot and tapped it three times. Then she bopped it to her knee where she bounced it.

“Maybe you should try out for Arsenal.”

Sunny’s smile grew even broader. “They don’t allow women.” She popped the ball onto her head and then back to her feet. Then she kicked it to her brother.

“You can show them how to make an exception,” he said, clumsily dribbling the ball between his feet.

“Maybe,” she said, looking up at the shining evening sun. She’d gotten her Leopard teammates at the Zuma Cup in Abuja and then the group of boys from school to make exceptions, who said she couldn’t do it a third time? “Maybe.”