“You like Dino, Chansenga?” Noemia asks me the following week, as we are getting ready for bed.
I wasn’t too thrilled when I discovered I’d have to share a room with her, but at least there was someone to wake me last night, when I had this nightmare about Mucus and Squealer abducting me.
“Obviously you do,” I say, closing my lip balm. “So are you going to warn me to back off?”
Perhaps she’s about to show some spirit at last, and we’ll have a big fat fight.
“It is all right,” she says softly. “Remember, I said that for Dino I am just a friend, so you … how do you say it? Go for it, Chansenga!”
She’s pathetic, giving up so easily, scared to fight for what she wants.
“Thanks,” I drawl, not that I need her permission. “You know Rui warned me to stay away from Dino because of you?”
She laughs. “Ah, Rui! Always he must be my big brother, even when we were small. Because he has no sisters, no brothers, you understand?”
“You don’t think his feelings might have got more … romantic?” I get this weird, uncomfortable feeling, suggesting such a thing.
She shakes her head as she gets into the fold-out mattress bed she’s using, having given up her nice big bed for me.
“I am not so … lively and fun, like you. Boys, they don’t … fall for me?”
She’s smiling, but I hear something like longing in her voice.
“You could try being different,” I suggest.
“It would feel wrong.” She settles down while I’m still busy rubbing in hand cream. “This is nice, no? Sharing a room, having this talking time before we sleep.”
“If you say so.”
I do sort of go for it with Dino. He laughs at my jokes and sometimes teases me, but I can’t tell if it means anything real. I mean, he makes no move to get close, and if we walk together or talk to each other, he assumes Noemia will join us.
If Rui is around I see something in the way he looks at me that gives me this churning sensation in my stomach.
“You do not even really like Dino,” he says one time, catching me when the others have moved off. “So why don’t you leave him alone?”
“Who says I don’t like him?” I demand.
“I say. I can see.” Unexpectedly, he smiles at me. “He is too quiet for you.”
“Just because he and Noemia are both quiet, they must end up together? Haven’t you heard opposites attract?”
“I do not think you attract Dino so much,” he says, the smile gone, and then he strides off.
That weird feeling fills me again, and I’m back to hating being here. I check out Facebook on my phone to see what my friends are doing. It’s the Heritage Day long weekend in South Africa, so Ma will be working, and everyone else playing. Xongisa has gone to Badplaas with some relatives. There are photos of her fooling around with her seriously hot-looking male cousins.
I remember what Ma said about social media, but it can’t hurt just to like or comment on someone else’s post, can it?
Wish my cousins were so much fun, I type.
***
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