Tokunbo.
                      "Did she pass out again?"
                      "But the fever is down na."
                       Someone sighed and she felt the hair on her skin prickle as heat engulfed her. Her nose wrinkled at a pungent smell.
                       "What..."
                         "Oh my God, she's awake!"
                        "Well stop screaming! You're going to give her a headache. We don't want her fainting again."
                        Tokunbo winced and tried to move her head. Her vision was still blurry, something still roved above her and the unharmonious sounds turned out to be her friends talking incessantly.
                      My friends.
  
                       "What happened?" She managed to croak. Someone grabbed an object and held it to her face while another helped her sit up.
                      I feel so tired. Why can't I see?
                      "Here drink. You've woken up and fainted repeatedly."
                       "Betty?"
                        "Yeah, it's me," Betty muttered and she felt a hand squeeze her right hand.
                        It wasn't Betty's.
                         "I would never have forgiven myself if anything worse had happened to you."
                         She turned in the direction of his voice and gave his silhouette what she hoped was a smile. "Hi... Enoch."
                       "Skinny you scared all. of us to death!" Eli yelled and wrapped her in a bone-crushing hug. She gasped and sputtered until the rest of the crew pushed him away.
                       "Give her space idiot. She's been muttering nonsense for hours. She finally stops and the next thing you do is try to kill her again. Drink the water kid."
                        "Missed you too Vi..." Her voice trailed off in a whisper and Vicky chuckled.
                        Someone nudged a cup between her lips and she gulped the liquid hurriedly. A few swallows and she pushed the hand aside.
                      "What happened? How... I'm in hospital. That's why everything smells like disinfectant right?"
                       "Yeah. You are." Betty replied. A few clicks disturbed her ears for a while. 
                        "My dad? Where's my dad?"
                        "He went to get medicine. The old old man wouldn't let us in to see you. We showed him we were made of hard stuff too." Eli said with a chuckle.
                         "You weren't so brave when he was here, fool." The hand squeezed her right hand again. "You should've seen him, Tokun, he was rattling in his shoes."
                          Eli scoffed. "I wasn't even wearing shoes."
                        She laughed softly and somehow the air in the room felt lighter.
                          "I am so glad you're okay Skinnine. You have no idea. I was scared that we had killed you with our drama. You weren't meant to go through all that shit. You're like the gooey stuff that holds all of us together, you know that right? If you hadn't interfered a lot with..."
                        She smiled and shook her head at his rambling. "What exactly happened?"
                       A hush fell on the room. Feet shuffled awkwardly until Vicky cleared her throat and began.
                       "Your plan sort of worked. Betty alerted your dad. She ended up telling him the whole story on the way. But what is expected? Your dad was going to come to Demi's place, but she didn't know the address and I was in the middle of... Something. Not exactly a situation where I could pick a call. So he came with three policemen, to the warehouse and there was this mighty shoot-out with the Skylars that I hope I never experience again."
                      Tokunbo could picture Vicky shuddering at the memory. "So I guess I got beat up pretty bad and landed here."
                      "About that..." Betty murmured. "Your dad rounded up the Skylars, but when they counted, two were missing."
                        Vicky sighed. "It was obvious then that during the shoot-out, the guy Emma had sent to collect the diary had slipped away. So well, your dad went all crazy. Enoch had to drive Eli, me and him at a very ridiculous speed to Demi's house and when we got there..."
                      At Vicky's silence, dread crept up her spine. She held Enoch's hand tight. "Tell me."
                     "You were unconscious Skinny. You were curled up in a ball all bruised with a bloody bicycle handle in your hands. The other guy looked worse though. He... He was battered all over. There was so much blood."
***
                  Enoch
                     Weak. Boneless. Her chocolate skin looked more like brown moss and her lips were chapped. Her hands felt smaller like she had shrunk in size.
                      ...She's going to hurt all of them, including Tokunbo. She's innocent. She doesn't deserve any of this...
                        And he had been right. The girl they had known for only three months laid bruised in a hospital bed while they stood without blemish. His gut churned and when Tokunbo squeezed his hands hard enough to hurt, he uttered no sound.
                       "Is he dead?" She whispered. Her head dropped as she stared at the bed with unfocused eyes.
                      "No..." Betty replied smiling ruefully. "He's in the emergency ward. They say he broke a lot of bon-"
                     Tokunbo looked like she would be sick. He signalled for Betty to stop.  When he had stepped into Demi's room with Tokunbo's father in tow, she had laid on the floor, crumpled, like his rough school uniform that morning. A trickle of blood gathered at her lips and forehead. Her hands were all bloodied with someone else's blood as he found out later. A guy lay beside her unconscious, his face towards the ceiling. Blood oozed from repeated gashes on his head. Enoch had cringed at the sight and grabbed his stomach so he wouldn't hurt. How a tiny human could do so much damage was crazy to imagine.
                         "Hey, on the very brighter side, you got the diary." He consoled. 
                         "Yeah! And you just proved to the world and everyone that I am not guilty." Eli bragged and everyone laughed. Everyone except her.
                         "But I am." She mumbled and his hand suddenly felt empty without the pressure on hers.
                        "Token-"
                         "So what happened after?"
                         He glanced at his friend's faces looking for someone brave enough to talk. Someone who would tell her that along with her guilty conscience, she had a permanent souvenir that would haunt her for life. No one seemed up to the task.
                       "Tokunbo." A foreign voice intruded the close circle.
                      Enoch watched as a pregnant woman stalked toward them with fear in her eyes. A boy who looked a lot like Tokunbo followed behind. Betty, Vicky and Eli shifted, drawing backwards to make space for her.
                      "Mom?" Tokunbo called out in surprise, her eyes moving around, searching. His gut tightened again.
                       "You always know how to cause trouble!" The woman yelled. "Trouble Tokunbo. How dare you put me through all these wahala? I'll just give birth to this baby right here."
                         "I'm sorry." The girl whimpered and he felt his blood boil. He resisted the urge to scream offensive words at her.
                         "You're always sorry." Tokunbo's mother moaned and pulled her daughter into a tight embrace. "I'm not losing my only daughter. I'm not."
                         "I'm sorry Mom. I am. I've caused you so much pain you must hate me." Tokunbo sobbed into her mother's shoulder. 
                         "I don't hate you Tokunbo." The woman scoffed and pulled away, cradling her daughter's face in her palms. "I could never hate you. You're my baby. Yes, I've been disappointed a couple of times..." She sighed deeply.
                       Enoch nodded at his friends and gestured to the door. He figured they would need their privacy.  Slowly they made their way towards the door only to be halted in their steps.
                        "Don't go. Stay with her. I have to go check if Francis hasn't beaten the pharmacist to bits." She giggled, patting her daughter's sweaty head. "You all must introduce yourselves to me later. My Tokunbo rarely has friends." And with a spring to her step, she waddled out again.
The boy who had come in with her stayed but remained quiet, staring at his sister in disbelief. He waved at her, frowned when her eyes didn't catch his hand and looked the rest of them in the face.
                     Enoch blew out a breath. "If no one's going to say it, I might as well."
                    "Say what?" Tokunbo inquired, turning her face in his direction.
                       Enoch took her hand again and rubbed small slow circles on it. "There's good news and bad news Tokunbo."
                        "Good news is, all the proof needed to ensure Demi's permanent disappearance from our lives is in that diary," Eli mumbled and everyone drew closer to the bed protectively.
                       "And the bad news?" She asked in a small timid voice.
                       He cleared his throat. "Your fight with the Skylar guy must've done something to your eyes. The doctors say they're still running diagnostics and all that stuff."
                      She chuckled dryly. "I noticed."
                       "Also...Remember when Betty said two people were missing when the police rounded the Skylars up?"
                       She nodded.
                      He bit his lip. "Demi was the second one."
                       A very weighty silence hung in the air. Timi shifted uneasily, raised his brows at the scene and shook his head. "I am surrounded by crazy people."