Why I Killed My Best Friend Read Online Free Page A

to Nigeria for good. But I can’t: my cheeks burst and I gasp in air through my mouth, my nose, even my ears.
    Christmas vacation is over. Tomorrow school starts again. I feel as if I only dreamed the Mercedes at the airport in Lagos; Dadstanding and smiling in the doorway of our house in a new pair of beige shorts and socks pulled up to his knees; Gwendolyn’s hugs; hide-and-seek with Unto Punto behind the badminton court; my blue flippers; diving off the dock at Tarkwa; the New Year’s pie we cut on the beach. My piece had the lucky coin.
    â€œI don’t see what’s lucky about it,” I said to Gwendolyn. “They’re still making me go back to Greece.”
    â€œDon’t be ungrateful,” Gwendolyn had replied without lifting her eyes from the iron. “The big iroko tree sprouts from a small seed.”
    The coin is as small as a fingernail. It says 1977, and it’s supposed to bring me luck for this whole year. Mom hung it on the gold ID bracelet I wear on my wrist. I take it off and as I’m lying there snuggled in bed, I use it to pick my nose a little, then put it in my mouth and suck on it. I have no idea how it happens: it just slips gently down my throat, like a fresh, warm puff puff. Oh no, what have I done? I swallowed my luck!
    So it isn’t strange that the very next day Anna Horn enters my life.
    Anna slides into the other seat at my desk in the front row and winks at me. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life! An angel—blond, with eyes like the waters of Tarkwa Bay and a tortoiseshell clip holding her bangs back. She has a dimple in her chin and half of one of her eyebrows is totally white, as if it’s been dyed, which makes her look wise and just, exactly how a person should look who’s waiting for a ripe fruit to fall on her head. She’s wearing a marinière , as she tells me with a sort of foreign accent—which is to say, a shirt with blue and white stripes.
    â€œYou in the front row, new girl,” Kyria Aphrodite says. I’m glad Anna is here so I’m not the new girl anymore.
    â€œYes?” Anna answers imperiously.
    â€œMake sure to wear your uniform to school tomorrow.”
    â€œI don’t have a uniform. We haven’t had a chance to go shopping yet.”
    â€œPerhaps you’ve come from Africa, too, like Maria?”
    â€œNo, I came from Paris.”
    â€œWhat am I going to do with all you immigrants?”
    â€œWe’re not immigrants, Kyria, we’re dissidents. My father had a scholarship from the Institut Français. My mother had me in Paris so I wouldn’t be a child of the dictatorship. Now that Greece is free again, we came home. Well, not my father. My mother and I. My father is so busy he doesn’t even have time to sleep. He has a huge office with over a thousand books, all in French. And he’s read them all twice!”
    The words come rushing out in a torrent. Kyria Aphrodite doesn’t dare interrupt. You could hear a pin drop in the classroom. Anna is a human bee buzzing around, bringing back stories like pollen: about how beautiful the gardens in Paris are, about eating breakfast on Sundays at Café de Flore, or how kind and funny Melina Merkouri is in real life, how you pronounce the French r as if it’s coming from the inside, from a well in your chest. During recess all the kids flock to her. But Anna chooses me.
    â€œFirst, because you’re my deskmate, and second, because you came from somewhere else, too. Were you guys dissidents in Africa?”
    â€œKind of,” I murmur as we run hand in hand through the schoolyard. Dissidents resist, and resistance is the opposite of dictatorship. Dictators are bad guys, so dissidents must be good guys, and we’re with the good guys, for sure. I holler Apostolos’s slogan in a sing-song—“Give the junta to the peeeeople!”—and Anna hugs me enthusiastically.