When she confronted Chichi about this, Chichi merely shrugged. “Yeah, so?” she said. “All I have to show for it are three old CDs of his music and a DVD of his videos that he sent a long time ago. He’s never given us any money. The man is useless.”
After a while, Sunny decided that Chichi wasn’t so bad. She was certainly more interesting than any of Sunny’s ex-friends.
One day, Sunny found herself walking home alone. Orlu had some place to go right after school. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” was all he said as he hopped a bus. If he’s not going to tell me where he’s going, I won’t ask, she thought. Thankfully, Jibaku and company only sneered and snickered at her as she left the school yard.
Without Orlu to talk to, she kept looking around for Black Hat Otokoto. Then her thoughts moved to even darker territory, to what she’d seen in the candle-the end of the world. Yet another day had passed, bringing it closer. She shivered and walked faster.
“What’s your problem?”
She turned around to face Chichi, her face already prepared to look annoyed. But she was secretly pleased. “Why are you so rude?” Sunny asked.
“I speak my mind. That doesn’t make me rude,” Chichi said with a grin, giving Sunny a friendship handshake. Today, she wore a battered green dress and, as usual, no shoes.
“In your case, it does,” Sunny said, laughing.
“Wharreva,” Chichi drawled. “Are you going home?”
“Yeah. I’ve got some homework.”
Chichi bit her lower lip and made an arc in the dirt with her toe. “So you and Orlu are close friends now?”
Sunny shrugged.
“Well,” Chichi said, “if you’re going to be good friends with Orlu, then you have to be friends with me, too.”
Sunny frowned. She’d thought she and Chichi were friends, sort of. “Why’s that?”
“Because you’re his in-school friend and I’m his out-ofschool friend.”
Sunny laughed and shook her head. “I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Oh, neither am I. We’re just friends.”
“Okay,” Sunny said, frowning. “Uh… well, then… well, okay.”
“I don’t know much about you yet. Not enough to say we’re friends,” Chichi said. She cocked her head. “But I can tell there’s more to you. I just know it.”
“What do you mean, more?”
Chichi smiled mysteriously. “People say stuff about people like you. That you’re all ghost, or a half and half, one foot in this world and one foot in another.” She paused. “That you can… see things.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. Not this again, she thought. So cliché. Everyone thinks the old old lady, the hunchback, the crazy man, and the albino have magical evil powers. “Whatever,” she grumbled. She didn’t want to think about the candle.
Chichi laughed. “You’re right, those are silly stereotypes about albinos. But in your case, I think there’s something to it.” She paused, as if about to say something very important. “You know, Orlu can take things apart-undo bad things.”
Sunny frowned. “I see him messing around all the time, fixing radios and stuff like that. So?”
“So it’s not what you think.”
“What’s your point, Chichi?”
“Well, if you’re going to be Orlu’s friend, you should know the real story.”
They were standing by the side of the road. A car zoomed by, leaving them in a cloud of red dust. “Tell me something secret about yourself,” Chichi suddenly said. “That will seal our friendship, I think.”
“You tell me something about yourself first,” Sunny said, playing along. This was one weird game.
Chichi frowned and bit her lip again. “Hey, do you have to go home right now?”
Sunny considered. Her homework could wait a little while. She called her mother on her cell phone and told her she was with Chichi. After a long pause, her mother gave her an hour if Sunny promised to finish her homework as soon as she got home.
“Come on,” Chichi said, taking her hand. “Let’s go to my house.”
Chichi’s hut looked as if it would melt into the ground come rainy season. The warped walls were made of red mud, and the vines, trees, and bushes around it crept in too close. The front entrance was doorless, covered by a simple blue cloth. Sunny’s nose was assaulted with the smell of flowers and incense as soon as she entered. She sneezed as she glanced around.
The only sources of light were three kerosene lamps, one hanging from the low ceiling and two others on stacks of books. The place was full of books-on a small table in the middle of the room, packed under the bed, stacked against the wall all the way up to the ceiling. The corners of the ceiling were clotted with webs inhabited by large spiders. A wall gecko scurried behind a book stack. She sneezed again and sniffed.
“Sorry, o,” Chichi said, patting her shoulder. “It’s a little dusty in here, I guess.”
Sunny shrugged. “It’s okay. My room’s the same way.”
It wasn’t as bad as Chichi’s hut, but it was getting there. Sunny had run out of shelf space, so she had started keeping books under the bed. Most were cheap paperbacks her mother had found at the market, but she had been able to bring a few over from the United States, including her two favorites-Virginia Hamilton’s Her Stories and The Witches by Roald Dahl.
The books here looked older and thicker, and probably weren’t novels. Chichi’s mother was perched on top of a stack of books, reading. She looked up and saw them, and used a leaf to hold her place. The first thing Sunny noticed was that Chichi’s mother had the longest, thickest, coarsest hair she had ever seen. It was well past her waist.
“Good afternoon, Nimm,” Chichi said. “This is Sunny.”
Sunny stood there staring. That’s what she calls her mother? “Good afternoon,” she finally croaked.
“I’m glad to hear that you have a voice,” Chichi’s mother said, not unkindly.
“I-I have a voice…” Sunny managed.
Chichi’s mother chuckled. “Would you like some tea?”
Sunny hesitated. Where would Chichi’s mother warm up the water? Would she have to go outside and make a fire? But it was also rude to act as if there was nowhere to do it. “Um, yes, please,” she said.
Chichi’s mother picked up a tea kettle and left the hut.
“Sit on this,” Chichi said, pointing at a large thick book. “We’ve both read it so many times we really don’t need it anymore.”
Sunny couldn’t see the title on the spine. “Okay.”
Chichi sat beside her on the dirt floor and grinned. “So this is where I live,” she said.
“Wow, so many books. What about when it rains?”
Chichi laughed hard at this. “Don’t worry. I’ve lived here all my life and never seen a book come to harm.”
They were quiet for a moment, the only sound the whistle of the tea kettle outside. That was fast, Sunny thought. Must be a fire out back. But she didn’t recall seeing any smoke before they went in.
“So your mother has read all these?” she asked.
“Not all,” Chichi said. “Most. I’ve read a lot of them, too. We bring in new books and trade back the ones we’re sick of.”
“So this is what you do instead of school.”
“When I’m not traveling about.”
Sunny fidgeted. It was getting late. “Um… what secret are you going to tell me?” Before Chichi could answer, her mother came with the tea. Sunny took one of the porcelain cups. Its rim was chipped and the handle was broken off. The other two cups didn’t look much better.
“Thank you,” she said politely. She took a sip and smiled. It was Lipton, only slightly sweetened, just the way she liked it.