BEFORE WE LEAVE

A story in parts

PART FIFTEEN: BOTH

The multipurpose hall had been transformed.

The teachers had clearly been planning this longer than the students knew. Round tables with white cloths, small flower arrangements at each centre, string lights draped along the ceiling that made the whole room feel warm and enclosed. A small stage at the front where a keyboard player was softly running through something Eliana recognized as a slowed-down arrangement of a worship song. Photo frames along one wall with pictures from their JSS1 through SS3 years — a timeline of people who had arrived small and were leaving changed.

Eliana stood at the entrance for a moment before she went in, letting the sight of it settle.

“Oya, we’re going in,” Bunmi said from behind her, and walked past her with the decisiveness of someone who had earned every good thing about this evening.

The first hour was loud and warm and exactly what a room full of seventeen-year-olds who had just survived secondary school together was supposed to feel like. There was food — jollof, fried rice, peppered chicken, the puff puff that Kelechi personally supervised the arrival of as Food Prefect until one of the kitchen staff gently moved him aside. There were speeches from teachers that made people cry and speeches from students that made people laugh. There was a slideshow that paused on an JSS1 class photo and produced a collective sound of delighted horror from the entire SS3 section.

Kelechi stood up at some point and gave a toast that no one had asked for, referencing seven different memories by name and describing Biodun as “the conscience I never listened to but always needed,” which made Biodun set down his fork and look at the ceiling with an expression that was not entirely dry-eyed.

Simi, sitting beside Tito, leaned over and said quietly: “It’s a good night.”

“It is,” he said.

He had been watching the room the way he watched things when something mattered not obviously, not with any particular destination in his gaze, just present. Eliana was at the table nearest the window with Bunmi and Chibuzor, laughing at something Chibuzor had said, her head tilting back slightly in the way it did when the laugh was genuine. The burgundy dress caught the string lights and the updo had come slightly loose at one side in a way she had clearly not noticed and would probably have fixed immediately if she had.

He thought about the garden. The subheadings. Eight words on the back of a folded note. The mango tree.

Before we leave, she had said from the front of the hall this morning. Just know — we were already becoming who we needed to be.

He had written that down too.

Midway through the evening, the keyboard player shifted into something slower, a gentle Nigerian gospel ballad, the kind that could carry weight without demanding it. A few couples from the class took the small open space near the stage. Mostly friends, mostly just swaying, the way SS3 students danced at school events when nobody was performing anything for anyone.

Tito stood up, said something to Simi, and crossed the room.

Eliana saw him coming. She said something to Bunmi, who turned to look, turned back to Eliana, and then very deliberately picked up her glass of juice and studied its contents with intense personal interest.

He stopped in front of her. “I know this school doesn’t do prom,” he said.

She looked at him.

“But can I have one dance? Before we leave?”

The string lights were warm above them and the room was full of every person they had spent the last three years becoming alongside, and the song was quiet and unhurried and there was nothing to manage here, nothing to coordinate, no note to return or fellowship to run or answer to give.

“Yes,” she said.

They moved to the open space near the stage. Just two people standing at a comfortable, honourable distance, the way the song required and nothing more. His hand at her back, her hand at his shoulder, and the music doing the rest.

For a moment neither of them said anything. Then Eliana said, without looking up: “I’m glad you wrote it.”

He knew what she meant. “I’m glad you kept it,” he said.

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I’m going to keep it for a long time, I think.”

“Good,” he said simply.

The song continued. Outside the string-lit hall, Lagos was doing what Lagos always did, loud and alive and entirely unconcerned with the small important things happening inside this building. But in here, for a few more minutes, it was just this. The last evening of a chapter that had shaped them both in ways they were only beginning to understand.

When the song ended they stepped back, and Eliana said: “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She walked back to Bunmi, who was visibly exercising every form of restraint available to her. Tito walked back to Simi, who looked at him with calm satisfaction and said nothing at all, which was the perfect response.

The evening continued. More laughter, more food, more teachers pulling students aside for private words that would be remembered for years. Daddy T.O. moved through the room like a man storing up moments. At some point near the end, the keyboard player began a slow reprise of the evening’s opening song, and the room quieted naturally, the way rooms do when something is finishing well.

Eliana stood beside Bunmi and Chibuzor near the window and looked at all of it — the decorated hall, the faces of her classmates, the teacher who had once caught half of them talking during devotion and was now smiling over a camera at the same people. She thought about ordinary days. About formation. About everything she was carrying out of this place.

Before we leave, she thought.

And she understood now, fully, that leaving was not loss. It was the first step of everything the formation had been building toward.

She was ready.

Author’s Note: I have actual tears in my eyes writing this note. 😭 “I’m glad you wrote it.” “I’m glad you kept it.” One dance. A comfortable, honourable distance. The string lights. The song. I cannot. Something beautiful has just come to an end and I feel it in my chest. These characters grew up in front of us, from a folded note at the bottom of a school bag to this moment on a dance floor in the last hour of their last night and I am so grateful you stayed for all of it. 🤍

Now. I have been thinking. Maybe a bonus chapter. Maybe two — a glimpse further into the future, because some of you deserve to know what happens next. I am already writing. But here is my honest motivation: this story deserves to reach far and wide. Because at its heart it is saying something simple and true: feelings are okay. We just need to learn how to handle them with grace. And I want that message to find every young person who needs to hear it.

So here is what I am asking: share this story. Restack your favourite chapter, your favourite quote, your favourite moment and tag me on Substack. Let us see how far we can get before the end of the week. If the story reaches far enough, I will drop both bonus chapters in one day. For you all. Because you stayed with me and I love you for it. Let it reach the people it was written for. 🤍