CHAPTER THREE — THE EMPTY SEAT
The morning air in Abuja was heavy, that kind of dense warmth that clung to the skin and made every movement feel like resistance. The school bell shrieked, slicing through the murmur of students dragging their feet across the dusty assembly ground.
Liliana stood at the back, eyes scanning faces without really seeing them. Her mind was elsewhere floating in that space between distraction and discontent. Her body was present, but her spirit… tired.
In that moment, she remembered that one of her student Martha had not been in school for weeks.
When she got to her class, her gaze immediately fell on the seat by the window empty.
It had always been Martha's spot.
At first, she told herself it was nothing. Students missed class all the time malaria, family drama, rent trouble, unpaid school fees, even heartbreak. Life had a thousand ways of pulling you away from routine. But still, something about that untouched desk unsettled her.
Three days, No Martha, No message, No whisper from the usual gossip channels, Nothing.
The class was alive with noise, chatter about assignments, hairstyles, and boys. Someone was complaining about the heat. Another girl was painting her nails under the desk. Liliana sat, resting her chin on her palm, pretending to listen as the teacher in the next class droned about colonial structures in post-independent Nigeria.
But her mind was elsewhere. On Martha.
She remembered her small-framed, light-skinned, with hair that never seemed properly combed. The kind of girl whose uniform always looked washed but never truly clean. She had that polite silence people mistook for calmness but was really exhaustion. The kind you get from life demanding too much too soon.
Liliana remembered the day Martha had walked into class with a torn hem and a faraway look. The others had giggled, whispered something cruel, and gone on with their day. But Liliana had seen it. That quiet scream behind her eyes.
"Miss Eze!"
The teacher's voice yanked her back.
"Yes, sir?"
"You've been staring at that window for minutes. If the answer to the Future is out there, please, go get it for the rest of us."
Laughter rippled through the class. Liliana smiled faintly, embarrassed, but her heart wasn't in it. She scribbled something random on her notebook to look occupied. When the bell finally rang, she stayed behind, watching the students pour out of the room like a burst dam.
The seat still looked too empty. Too clean.
She reached out, tracing the faint scratches on Martha's desk doodles, names, numbers, words carved deep into the wood like desperate confessions.
Her eyes lingered on one: "God sees me."
Something twisted in her chest.
That night, Liliana couldn't sleep. The silence of her small room pressed in on her that heavy kind of quiet that amplifies every memory. She pulled her notebook closer and began to write, words tumbling like fragments of a storm:
Some silences aren't peaceful they're screams that no one can hear.
Some absences aren't accidents they're escapes.
Her hand trembled. Maybe it was empathy. Maybe guilt. Or maybe it was recognition because she had once been that girl with the unseen bruise, the fake smile, the desperate need to pretend that "fine" meant being Okay.
She sighed, shut her notebook, and leaned back. Outside, Abuja's night roared with generators, distant laughter, and the faint rhythm of a city trying to forget itself.
But Liliana couldn't forget. She knew she'd go looking for Martha. Not because it was her responsibility but because something inside her couldn't rest until she understood why that seat had to stay empty.
Before falling asleep, she whispered to the darkness:
"If I don't tell their stories, who will?"
And that was how the next storm began.....