Why I Killed My Best Friend Read Online Free

Why I Killed My Best Friend
Book: Why I Killed My Best Friend Read Online Free
Author: Amanda Michalopoulou
Pages:
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Apostolos.
    â€œBut Mom, the dictators killed the students, don’t you get it? They ran them over with tanks!”
    â€œThat’s none of your concern.”
    Angeliki comes over and tries to kiss up to my mother. When there are no adults around I call her Diaboliki. She calls me Teapot, ever since the first day of school with the toilet paper and thejungle. She says “teapot” over and over until it sounds like “potty.” Who’s she to speak, with that smushed turd on her eyebrow?
    â€œAre you Maria’s mom?”
    â€œYes, dear. Who are you?”
    â€œI’m Maria’s friend, Angeliki.”
    â€œSee, here’s a nice girl for you to be friends with. No more scribbling on desks. Will you promise me that?”
    And that’s how I lose my only friend, Apostolos. I had no idea he was seventeen years old, and studying to be plumber. Now that I know, I invent a dramatic story in my head. He’s Hausa, I’m Yoruba, and we can’t get married because we’re from different tribes. Apostolos climbs onto the gate of the Athens Polytechnic and shouts: “Give the junta to the people!” Then he pulls me up beside him and I shout: “No matter how wrong things go, salt never gets worms!” The police beat us up a little bit, but the worst that happens is that they break my tooth and cut off one of my fingers, and in the end we win. All the dictators from Greece and Nigeria come pouring out of the tanks and run off as fast as they can. Then we climb into one of the tanks, which turns into a house-submarine, and before we even realize what’s happening the current has carried us all the way across the Atlantic and, oops, here we are on the coast of Nigeria. We wring out our clothes, spread them on the sand to dry and eat a couple of bananas. The tank is a tank again and we head toward Ikeja. Dad and Gwendolyn are waiting for us on the covered veranda, under the bougainvillea. Apostolos will help Unto Punto with the plumbing in the house. Until we get married, that is. Because afterward he’s going to be a doctor and I’ll be a painter and we’ll have lots of kids, and Gwendolyn will take care of them. On second thought, we won’t have any kids, because one of them might die and then what would become of us? We would pull our hair and cry and eat nothing but lentils and biftekia.
    A tear rolls down my cheek, then another. I keep forgetting to bring my monogrammed handkerchiefs with me to school.
    When a ripe fruit sees an honest person, it falls, Gwendolyn always said. I decide to forget all the dramatic stories and say an honest person’s prayer. I stand in front of Mom’s little shrine of icons, cross my hands on my chest the way I’ve been taught, and say, “Lord have mercy, the Father and the Son, let us go back to Ikeja and I’ll never ask you for anything else ever again. Amen.”
    One Sunday morning when he’s probably still lying in bed, like me, without much of anything to do, God actually listens.
    â€œWake up, Maria! I have a surprise for you!” Mom calls from the kitchen.
    I jump out of bed and run into the hall in my pajamas.
    â€œYour father can’t come to Athens for Christmas, so we’ll go and see him. How does that sound?”
    I jump up and down and twirl around in circles and dance a dance I made up myself, singing tourourou and lalala and heyhey. Out of habit, I glance up at the ceiling, too, to see if some piece of fruit might be about to fall on my head.
    I’m honest, and Ikeja is my ripe fruit.
    I squeeze my eyes shut and swear I’ll die. It’s another Sunday, we just got back from Nigeria, Mom is making her biftekia, cars are screeching to a stop outside the blue building. I try to hold my breath as if I were swimming underwater at the beach in Tarkwa, only for longer. If I can just die a little, if I can at least make myself turn blue, they’ll bring me back
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