So there it is, Sunny, I . . . I am a member of a secret society of the most dangerous kind and I’ve just gone AWOL, I’ve deserted, run off. They will want to kill me. But if I stay . . .

Sunny just gazed at her brother as he looked away, shaking his head. “If I stay, they’ll turn me into a monster,” he said.

She needed a moment to get her mind around it. Her oldest brother, Chukwu, was in a secret society . . . just as she was. He’d been through an initiation as she had been. But it wasn’t the same. She loved her society; he was running from his. He could speak about it, but she could not. She blinked away tears as she felt something hard and hot in her chest. Rage. Her brother had been one of the banes of her existence for most of her childhood, though since she’d become a Leopard Person, their relationship had improved. Nonetheless, she could not ever, ever, ever bear anyone harming him. This realization surprised her as much as the intensity of her rage did.

“I have to go,” he suddenly said.

“Where?” she asked, grabbing his arm.

Her brother frowned, looking at her hand gripping the flesh of his upper arm. “I have a lady friend in Aba who I can stay with for a few days. Then . . . I don’t know.”

Sunny’s mind was so awash with anger and the pain of his story that she was finding it hard to focus. His face was so battered that he barely looked like her brother. Every motion he made was hindered by pain. On top of this, those idiots were robbing him of his future by scaring him away from school.

Her brother got up. Slowly.

“Wait,” she said, running to her underwear drawer. She took out the plastic box where she kept the little naira she had and twenty American dollars from when they’d moved back from New York years ago. “Here,” she said, shoving it in his hands. “Take this.”

“I can’t . . .”

“Yes, you can,” she said. The wheels in her head had begun to turn. She wouldn’t tell her parents. Not yet. “You have your phone?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Okay . . . stay with your friend for now,” she said. “But you’re going to go back to school soon.”

“Didn’t you hear all I told you, Sunny? They’ll kill me if I go back. They may even come here looking for me! I can’t . . .”

“Have faith,” Sunny said. “Have faith.”

She gave him a gentle hug and then helped him quietly leave the house. She watched him slowly climb into his orange Jeep.

“Keep your phone close,” she said. “Rest, eat, and . . . Chukwu, it’s going to be okay.”

He paused, looking into her eyes. “What makes you so sure?”