She dragged herself up. Carefully, she picked up the ghost hopper. She was surprised when it didn’t struggle. She’d seen one move lightning-fast when it wanted to, and she was sure its legs were very powerful. It weighed about a pound, and she had to use both hands. Its body felt substantial, despite its ghostly appearance. She set it on her dresser.
She lay on her bed and brought out her new juju knife. It truly was magnificent. What was the blade made of? She held it and at once felt that odd sensation of it being part of her.
She yelped when she felt something moving in her pocket. She was about to tear off her jeans, thinking it was a remaining wasp or ant from the masquerade, then she remembered. It felt long ago since Junk Man had given her the small blue bean. She held it up as it softly giggled and shook between her fingers. She placed it under her bed as he had instructed. Then she picked up her newspaper.
When she unrolled it, a smaller circular newspaper fell out. Special Leopard Report, it read. There was a soft drumbeat that reminded her of the terrifying masquerade.
CORRUPTION IN THE OBI LIBRARY
OTOKOTO THE BLACK HAT STEALS TOP-SECRET BOOK FROM THE FOURTH FLOOR
“My God!” Sunny flung the newspaper across the room. “No more!” Not a second passed before she heard a loud crackling sound. The bean. “Thought he said to wait a few days,” she said, frowning. She hung over the bed and watched a small blue wasp emerge. She shuddered, but then she relaxed. This wasp didn’t seem full of stinging, deadly mischief.
It moved groggily around the empty casing. Then it picked up half, flew to her dresser, and dropped it. It retrieved the other half and did the same. Then it rested for a moment. A minute later, it began to noisily eat the casings, making crunching and cracking sounds.
“I hope you’re not poisonous,” she muttered, putting the opened package of biscuits next to the wasp. Before she knew it, she was asleep.
Something woke her around midnight. PHC had taken the lights, and because it was a cool night, the generator had not been turned on. A clicking sound came from her dresser. She grabbed her flashlight and turned it on. The biscuit package was empty, and beside it was a castle the size of her hand made of what looked like crumbs. The blue wasp stood on top of the castle as if waiting for applause.
“Oh my goodness,” she said, smiling at the nonsense of it all. “That’s-wow!” She softly clapped and the wasp buzzed with pleasure. She spent the next two hours doing homework before finally going back to bed.
17
The next two weeks passed quickly. Sunny spent most of it studying and reading and practicing and reading more. She was living two lives. In Lamb school, she did well in her classes and kept away from Jibaku, who seemed to believe that what she’d seen during their fight was just Sunny’s extremely ugly face. In Leopard school, she did as well as she could.
The next time they met after Abuja, they didn’t do much. Chichi was still recovering from her caning. Sunny winced when she saw Chichi’s back. The skin wasn’t broken, but it was very bruised and tender. The council people didn’t make empty threats; if you broke the big rules, you paid a big price. Chichi refused to talk about it and got angry at the slightest mention of Sugar Cream.
After that, to Orlu’s great dissatisfaction, Sasha and Chichi grew more obsessed with Udide’s Book of Shadows. Thankfully, they only read and discussed the book.
They also grew obsessed with something else. Days after Chichi’s caning, Sunny and Orlu had gone to Chichi’s hut after school, only to find Sasha and Chichi standing in the doorway locking lips.
“What the-!” Sunny exclaimed. Sasha and Chichi jumped apart, straightening their clothes. Sasha grinned and shrugged. Chichi only laughed. Orlu rolled his eyes and Sunny just stood there, shocked. Totally unexpected. She glanced at Orlu and looked away.
“It’s nothing,” Chichi said, going into the hut.
“Yeah,” Sasha said.
But Sunny saw how he watched Chichi go inside. This was not “nothing.” And it wasn’t the last time she saw them kissing, either.
On top of this, Orlu was careful around her. He was the same Orlu she’d always known, except that he made it more of a point to open doors for her, things like that. Once, he even bought her some chocolates. Chichi and Sunny never discussed her and Orlu, or Chichi and Sasha. It was an unspoken agreement between the four of them.
By the second week, Sunny knew several basic knife jujus, like how to amplify her voice, move small things, and keep mosquitoes away. But nothing that would harm a monster like Black Hat Otokoto.
“It’s so weird,” she said one day as they sat outside Chichi’s hut. “It builds something new every day. I leave my window open so it can go out and find new materials and hide from my mother.”
“It’s a wasp artist,” Orlu said. “They live for their art. If you want it to live for a long time, make sure you let it out like you’ve been doing, and show it that you appreciate its work.”
“I’d smash the thing,” Sasha said. “My sister had one when she was small, and when she forgot to give it praise once, it got pissed and stung her. Its sting paralyzes you for ten minutes so you can do nothing but watch it build its ‘final masterpiece’ and then keep watching as it dramatically dies. The damn things are psychotic.”
“Not if you treat them well,” Orlu said.
“You shouldn’t be forced to treat anything well,” Sasha said, giving Orlu an annoyed look. “It should be your choice.”
“Not all things are a choice,” Orlu said. “Some things should come naturally.”
“For me, it-”
“Will you two shut up?” Chichi snapped.
Sunny laughed. Things were back to normal.
18
Even though it was the middle of harmattan dry season, it had been raining for almost a week. The markets were muddy. The streets were flooded. The schools had closed two days ago. The rain was so unexpected that, though it was perfect mosquito weather, there were no more mosquitoes than there usually were. It was as if someone had flipped a switch marked RAIN.
The morning of the seventh rainy day in a row started like almost any other.
The first thing Sunny did when she woke up was look at her cabinet. Her wasp artist, whom she’d decided to name Della (after the famous sculptor she’d read about on the Internet named Luca della Robbia), had built a mud sculpture of the mermaid deity Mami Wata. As always, the wasp stood on top of its creation waiting for her response.
“That’s really beautiful, Della,” she said, meaning it.
It buzzed its wings with glee, circled its creation, and then flew out the window. Sunny unrolled her Leopard Knocks Daily. Tomorrow they were to meet with Anatov and probably find out what they were expected to do about Black Hat. She braced herself for news of his latest act of debauchery.
Instead, the headline read, RAIN, RAIN, PLEASE GO AWAY!
She laughed, relieved. Everything was rained out. Even the criminals seemed to have taken cover. Maybe Black Hat’s hat wasn’t broad enough to protect him from the rain, either.
She went to get some breakfast and froze. Her heart threatened to leap from her chest. There at the kitchen table sat her mother, and she was handing a cup of hot tea to… Anatov.
“Good-good morning?” Sunny squeaked.
“Sunny,” her mother said, looking uncharacteristically rattled. “Sit.”