Make A Wish

11:11. Make a wish.

***

It seems like so long now since I've been searching for you, seems there was never a time that I wasn't. I have learned to stop telling people it's you I'm looking for—what a fool thing to even have told people at all. But it's not really my fault, it is written all over me in bold capitals and bright red ink that I am searching for something—for someone— and it doesn't help that I was raised by staunch christian parents who taught me that whatever ugly truth was better than a lie. I have let go of most of their teachings—the state of me, spending each day and night looking to find you, is a proof of that; you are a proof of that—but that one, for some reason, that lying, that DO NOT LIE NO MATTER WHAT SORROW THE TRUTH MAY CAUSE YOU, has been the hardest to shed off. Isn't it funny that it's the reason they, they who taught me that, do not talk to me anymore? Truth. It is the reason I lost my parents. And sometimes, in those very desperate moments when I'm lying in our bedroom, when there is nothing outside the window but a vast darkness, when I can't bear to turn to your side of the bedroom and hear only a ghost, when I beg myself to believe that you still think about me every night before you go to sleep, every second before you step into the lights, I remind myself that it is why I lost you too.

***

Back when I used to tell people it was you I wanted to find, that I just wanted to see you and I hadn't in a long long time, they looked at me like I had spoken Italian or some other language they didn't understand. “Everyone sees him all the time, he's everywhere.” Pa Bandele even added, “I think we see him too much.” The first time I told Josephine, she laughed before she said, “We literally just watched his movie yesterday.” But Josephine—who gives a monologue once a month about how much she misses you, and my heart goes heavier and heavier with the guilt of not being able to tell her that it's all my fault, it's my fault you two don't get too see each other anymore—doesn't understand, none of them do. I wonder how they think it's you they're seeing on their screens, it is clearly not! I don't care whether there is a screen between us, all I need is to see you, the actual you. It will take me a long time to accept that it can't happen, not as long as the screen is there, forever a barrier between you and me, between you and yourself.

***

Josephine said to me in my second month of looking for you, “I know what you mean, you want to find him in person, you want to see him in flesh, 3D.” That wasn't what I meant, but there was no way I could explain it, so I said yes; yes that's what I meant. “You can find him,” she responded. “You know where he lives, go. When his security tells him who it is, they'll let you in. It's you, he can't reject you.” I could have wanted to laugh, but laughter had already become too foreign to me by then, so instead what I wanted to do was place my palm on her cheek and say softly, “Oh Josephine, but he has already rejected me. Why else are we having this conversation?” but she wouldn't understand, or rather she would and she would ask for more, more that I can't give her, so what I say instead is a question: why don't you go? 

She responds, “Because I don't go looking for what doesn't want to find me.”

***

You told me once that the day we met, the day I found you, you were looking for me even if you didn't know it then. I laughed when you said it but I was secretly blushing. You said, “I'm not even joking, because I really can't think of any reason why I went there ”

I goaded, “You said you wanted to be alone, away from everyone for a while, away from the house.” I wanted this to last a little longer, wanted to revel in the implication that you considered our meeting something orchestrated by destiny, and in a good way too, when you would usually dismiss this type of thinking. But I've always thought it was destiny, all of it. You taking a walk to wherever because you wanted to be by yourself for a while, me sneaking out of the house for the first time ever after faking being sick to avoid watching The Passion of Christ for the 16th time. Me finding you by the river, looking for your way back home. Later in that same conversation, you smiled at me and said, “I was looking for my way home, and God did it find me” and I cry every single time I remember that. I still think it was destiny but now I think when destiny was working, its plan wasn't to bring us together, it was to take you away from me. I know if my parents ever heard about all of this, they'd tell me it was God punishing me for sneaking out that night, for going ahead to be with you, and goodness, I wish you know how hard I try to not believe that. You were looking for me even if you didn't know it then, and now I'm the one looking for you and you still don't know it. I beg you to find your way home again, please.

***

“…Happy Birthday dear Tofi! Happy Birthday to you!”

“Blow out your candles!”

“Make a wish!”

It's my first birthday since you left, I decide to take a break from searching for you today, but just like every other day, you decide to haunt me.

“Make a wish, Tofiyin!”

I close my eyes, like I did that day, almost eight months ago now, but I wish for the opposite result. Something inside me tells me it's a waste of a wish, especially as I have learnt that your own wishes play tricks on you, turn around and twist a knife into your back, but I blow out my candles and do it anyway. Everybody cheers, we cut the cake that they surprised me with, my found family that only found me because you did, and hasn't let me go even if you did, but all I can think of is your voice like the taste of candy, sweetening the air between and around us, make a wish.

***

Because I don't go looking for what doesn't want to find me.

She hadn't meant for it to hurt me, but it stung, hard, especially because I knew she was right. It is a foolish thing to do. It is a foolish thing to think I can do, but I need to find you. I'm not even asking that you come back, I just need to see you, to know that you're still there. When you left, it was very sudden, very unexpected. From “I'll call you when I'm done with this interview” to 0 calls missed, to 5 calls unanswered and then 15 and then 30, to DMs left on read, to DMs left unread, to this number is no longer available, to you have been blocked by this account, to “RISING STAR, ANDREW IRABOR, SAYS HE'S 'TOTALLY SMITTEN' WITH NEW GIRLFRIEND, TEEN MODEL, PATRICIA ANTHONY” to flinging pillows in my bedroom all over the place, screaming, “but he doesn't even love her, he can't even love her” to crying, not for myself but for you, for what they're—what it's—doing to you. You left too suddenly, too unexpectedly—what a fool thing to have let myself believe it would last, what good thing ever has?—and I just want to be able to say goodbye, to finally close the chapter. I know what you would say to this; “Tof, haven't I told you that there's no such thing as closure? You can never find 'closure'” But I didn't say I was looking for closure, I said I wanted to say goodbye, that's all I want. If I can't save you—and it is getting clearer and clearer to me every day that I definitely cannot—at least I can find myself peace, or be able to pretend, to the world, to myself, that I have found it. So I hope that person I see on my screen, and on the magazines, on the posters, and on the billboards, hasn't completely taken over you, and you're still there somewhere. Please, tell me you're still there, even it's just a little part of you. If you're vanishing slowly and slowly, and the man on the screen is stretching himself to fill the places you have vacated, or stretching himself to push you out of the places you should occupy, whichever it is, save a piece of you, however tiny, for me, do not let it vanish until I find you, so that I can at least pay my respects to the dead.

***

“Tofiyin, see.”

Josephine and I are sitting in the grass at the back of the house, just like you and I used to on warm nights, telling stories about our day, or our past, or just enjoying each other's company in silence, the breeze blowing our shirts, making us feel like we have no trouble in the world. I am only able to sit out here with Josephine because the moon is bright, so it's not one of my desperate nights, so I can think of you without feeling like I'm tipping over the edge of madness.

“See what?” 

“A shooting star.”

“Are you sure that is what that is?”

“Well it looks like it. Make a wish. I've already made mine.”

Make a wish.

I close my eyes, just like I did that day, a little over a year ago now, and I want to wish what lately I've been starting to think I should have wished instead that day, but I hear Josephine beside me, “Have you made your wish yet? I hope it's for yourself.” I think about the people inside the house: Pa Bandele, who accepted all of us who had been disowned or abandoned or just found ourselves alone in the world, Aunty Maria and little Seyi and Siju, Gideon, Mercy, Halima, Emeka, all these people who accepted me because you brought me to them and said they should, and haven't looked back since, who treat me like they've known me my entire life and love me like a brother, like a son, an uncle, a nephew, who I'm certain would accept me for who I am. And then I think of my parents, who turned their backs on me and have never come back, just because I refused to denounce a sentence, a boy. And I change my mind. If they wanted me, they'd come and get me. My eyes still closed, I decide wishes aren't worth it, what good have they done for me anyway; they either undo me or do nothing at all—afterall, where are you?—but I do it anyway. I make a wish, something for myself, I hope they don't leave me too.

***

Do you know what was so funny about Josephine saying I wanted to see you in flesh? It's that I've never tried searching for you in person, the thought hardly even occurs to me. I know how seeing me would make you feel, and I would never put you through that. To make things easier for you, I decided from the beginning to help you pretend that I do not exist, that I never existed, so I will never come to your home or wherever you are 'in flesh' demanding to see you, that would be too much for you and me, so I have just taken to burying myself under my sheets, watching movie after movie, interview after interview (you're still charming and funny, but even the sense of humour isn't the same, even the charm isn't the same), hoping to catch a glimpse, but you've always been such a damn good actor haven't you, and even better at hiding. I think I have the best shot of finding you scrolling through the paparazzi pictures of you and one of your girlfriends that you change every three months, but I still can't find anything. I zoom in on every picture of you I see, zoom into your eyes, but the view through those windows isn't the soul I know. Maybe I'm the problem, sometimes I wonder. These days, I have found myself hoping less to find you and more to accepting the fact that I probably won't. Please just show me something, send me some kind of secret message, I just want to say goodbye.

P.S. you can reach out to one of the others, you don't have to pretend like they don't exist too. They're annoyed with you but they still love you, they're rooting for you (except me, I'm sorry). They comment on how you look healthier, more handsome, more put together, and I am so annoyed, want to ask them how that's the only difference they see. We watch a movie of yours together every other Friday night (the house favourite is Man Out of Time, you did amazing but they actually love it because of your pretty co-star, who they were elated to hear that you were dating in real life and deflated to hear four months later that you had broken up). We all miss you, I hope you know. I don't know how you're going to do it, but as you vanish, try and find a way our memories won't vanish with you.

***

Josephine comes to me later that night, after we have gone inside the house and to our separate bedrooms. She sits on my bed, tells me to sit up, look her in the eye. The lights aren't on, so it's easy to not do it. “Don't lie to me,” she says, even she knows I can hardly do that, “you and Andrew were more than best friends, weren't you?”

I'm surprised, not because of the question but because I'm not shaken by it. I nod, then I realize she may not have seen it, so I whisper, “yeah”. She's quiet at first, then she says, also in a whisper, “When did it start?” “It has always been.” “2 years. No one here would have judged you, who do you think we are? I thought we were supposed to be a family. I thought you and I were supposed to be really close.”

She leaves the room and in that moment, I long for you like I haven't in months. I hear you in my head, “you shouldn't feel bad, she can't blame us for not saying anything.” I know you're right but I still feel bad. She doesn't speak to me the following day, and the day after that, she comes to our bedroom around that same hour. I'm about to apologise but she says it first. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spoken like that” and before I can respond, she hugs me. I return it, and we're like that, quiet, we don't need to speak to communicate, it's like she's passing it to me through her body, it's going from her body into mine: I'm sorry. This time it means something different: I'm sorry that he turned out to be shit. I want to pass back into her that she shouldn't say that, it's not like that, it's not your fault, you hardly have a choice, but I'm too tired to pass any form of message, I just want to remain in her embrace, as we mourn you together, because I've seen that this is what this is: a sort of funeral for the boy we have loved, the boy we have lost. In this embrace, I realize—or rather, accept—that I am not going to see you again, and I would have to find a way, somehow, to say goodbye.

***

Five years, new places, new people, new loves, but still I think of you almost every day—it's hard not to, you're still everywhere, I just hope you're not completely unhappy—and I know that for the rest of my life, when I see or hear the word ‘wish’, see or hear anything that alludes to it—when I look at a clock or a watch and it's 11 minutes past the 11th hour, or even the 23rd hour, I would think of two days before you got that email that changed your life forever; us lying on your bed, facing the opposite wall where the clock sits just below the ceiling, that your sweet breezy voice that I still hear in my head everyday but hardly ever on my screen, 11:11, make a wish. I will think about that day and wish to go back, so I can wish for something else. I know that sounds selfish but you can't lie to me that you're happy as you are, dating actress after actress after model, surrounded by people who you had to vanish for, who would never know the real you. I would do anything to go back to that day and close my eyes again, and think not ‘I wish your dreams come true’ but ‘I wish you'll always happy’. And every time I close my eyes, I hope that it's not too late.