The Weight of Choices

SAT -- 4:47 AM -- Oriade Family Flat, Mushin -- Nysaria

The rooster that lived somewhere in the maze of courtyards began its daily assault on silence. Elisha was already awake, had been for the past hour, staring at the ceiling and listening to Uncle Femi's snores compete with the distant hum of early morning traffic.

Six months until WAEC. Six months until the examinations that would supposedly determine the trajectory of his life. The West African Examinations Council didn't care that Willowgrove Secondary's chemistry lab had been "under renovation" for three years, or that their physics teacher moonlighted as a taxi driver and often missed afternoon classes. WAEC expected mastery regardless of circumstances.

Elisha rolled off his mat and padded quietly to the small table where his books were stacked. Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Language, Literature, Government, Geography, and Economics. Nine subjects that might as well have been nine mountains to climb with his bare hands.

The morning light filtering through the window was still gray and uncertain, but it was enough to read by. He opened his Mathematics textbook to the chapter on logarithms—a concept that seemed designed to torture students who were already struggling with basic algebra.

By 7 AM, the household was stirring. His mother emerged from her room, already dressed for another long day at the market, her wrapper tied with the efficient movements of someone who'd been doing this routine for decades.

"You're up early again," she observed, spooning garri into a bowl for his breakfast.

"WAEC preparation."

She nodded approvingly, but he caught the worry lines around her eyes. They both knew the mathematics of their situation: even if he passed all nine subjects with distinction, university fees were another conversation entirely. The federal universities were cheaper, but getting admitted was like winning a lottery where the odds were determined by who your father knew in Abuja.

Uncle Femi shuffled to the table, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "This boy go kill himself with book. Elisha, when last you see sunlight?"

"I see sunlight every day."

"Through window no count. You need to go outside, talk to people, live small."

His mother set down the garri with a sharp motion that suggested Uncle Femi had touched a nerve. "Leave the boy. At least somebody in this family is working toward something better."

The comment hung in the air like smoke. Uncle Femi had been "looking for work" for eight months now, a search that seemed to involve more drinking palm wine with his friends than actual job hunting. But criticism was a luxury they couldn't afford in their small flat, so everyone pretended not to notice the obvious.

At school, the atmosphere had shifted. Final year students moved with a particular kind of intensity—the urgency of people who could see the finish line but weren't sure they'd reach it. Teachers who'd been coasting through the term suddenly remembered they had syllabi to complete. Extra lessons were announced daily, each one carrying an additional fee that made parents wince.

Mrs. Adenuga had organized weekend Biology sessions. Mr. Bello offered Government tutorials for anyone serious about understanding the constitution (though he still avoided discussing why the same constitution seemed so easily ignored by those in power). Even Mr. Adamu had started staying after hours to help students who'd fallen behind in Mathematics.

Elisha attended everything. He took notes during classes, copied additional exercises from textbooks he borrowed from the few students whose families could afford complete sets, and studied by candlelight when NEPA failed them, which was most nights.

The routine became meditation: wake before dawn, study until breakfast, attend classes with complete attention, study during lunch break, attend extra lessons after school, walk home while mentally reviewing the day's material, study until his eyes burned, sleep for five hours, repeat.

Three weeks into this intensive schedule, Kemi approached him after a particularly brutal Chemistry session where Mr. Okonkwo had demonstrated that most of the class couldn't balance a simple equation.

"You're going to burn out," she said without preamble.

"I'm fine."

"You look like you haven't slept in days."

Elisha glanced at his reflection in the classroom window. She wasn't wrong. His eyes had developed the hollow quality of someone running on pure determination, and his uniform hung looser than it had at the beginning of term.

"What's your plan?" Kemi continued. "After WAEC, I mean. University?"

The question he'd been avoiding. "Maybe."

"Maybe? With the way you're studying, you could probably get into any course you want. Medicine, Engineering, Law—"

"What if I don't want any of those?"

She stared at him. "What else is there? You're not going to waste all this effort to become a mechanic or a bus conductor."

"There are other ways to serve."

Something in his tone made her step back slightly. "You're still thinking about the military."

It wasn't a question, and he didn't treat it like one. They stood in the empty classroom, afternoon sunlight streaming through windows that needed cleaning, and for a moment the only sound was the distant shouts of students playing football in the compound.

"The Nysarian Defence Academy," he said finally. "They take applications after WAEC results are released."

"Elisha..." Kemi's voice carried the tone people used when they thought you were making a terrible mistake. "You know what the military is like in this country. The coups, the corruption, the way they treat civilians—"

"I know the history."

"Then you know it's not a place for people like you. People who actually want to help."

"Maybe that's exactly why people like me need to be there."

That evening, he walked home through streets that had become a familiar maze of preparation and possibility. Hawkers called out their wares with voices hoarse from repetition. Commercial motorcycles wove between cars with the confidence of people who'd made peace with mortality. Children played games that seemed to involve equal parts joy and chaos.

At the junction where the former soldier had spoken weeks earlier, a different crowd had gathered. This time it was a pastor with a portable generator powering his sound system, proclaiming that God would deliver Nysaria from the hands of evil leaders. The same message, essentially, just wrapped in different language.

Elisha paused, remembering the soldier's words: "Change no come from outside. It come from inside."

The pastor was promising divine intervention. Politicians promised legislative solutions. Activists promised that enough protests would eventually change hearts and minds. But what if the change that Nysaria needed couldn't come from speeches or prayers or demonstrations?

What if it required people willing to work within the system—even a broken system—and fix it from the inside?

Back home, he found his mother counting money at the kitchen table. Small denomination notes sorted into piles, each representing a day's profit from selling tomatoes and peppers in the market. The mathematics of survival: transport costs, stall fees, the percentage lost to spoilage, the thin margin that remained to feed a family.

"How much did you make today?" he asked.

She looked up, surprised by the question. "Enough."

"How much is enough?"

"Enough to buy rice for tomorrow. Enough to pay school fees next month if I'm careful. Enough to hope that things will get better."

He watched her hands—calloused from years of handling rough produce, stained with the juice of countless tomatoes, efficient in their movements because efficiency was the difference between profit and loss.

"What would 'better' look like?" he asked.

She stopped counting and really looked at him. "Better would be a country where hard work actually leads somewhere. Where your education means something. Where young people like you have choices beyond just surviving."

"What if I want to help make that country?"

"You will. Whatever you choose to do after school, you'll make it better. I know this."

"Even if what I choose isn't what you expected?"

Something shifted in her expression. The kind of recognition that passes between people who understand each other without needing all the words.

"Elisha, I've been watching you since you were small. You see things other people miss. You care about things other people ignore. Whatever path you choose, it will be because you believe it's right. That's enough for me."

Later that night, after the compound had settled into its usual rhythm of generators and televisions and conversations that carried through thin walls, Elisha sat on the balcony with his Mathematics textbook. But instead of logarithms, he found himself thinking about trajectory.

In physics, trajectory was the path an object followed through space and time. It was determined by initial velocity, angle of launch, and the forces acting upon the object during its flight. You could calculate where something would land if you understood the variables.

But human trajectory was more complex. It involved choices that changed the equation mid-flight. Decisions that altered not just destination, but the person making the journey.

Six months until WAEC. Then the results, and the applications, and the interviews that would determine whether his trajectory would curve toward lecture halls and textbooks, or toward parade grounds and service to a country that might not deserve it, but needed it nonetheless.

For the first time since he'd started his intensive study schedule, Elisha closed his textbook before his eyes began to burn. Instead, he sat in the darkness, listening to Lagos breathe around him, and allowed himself to imagine a different future.

One where the uniform meant something. Where the oath was sacred. Where young men and women who loved their country more than themselves could actually protect it.

The decision was already made, had been made the moment he'd heard that former soldier speak about change coming from within. Now it was just a matter of earning the right to try.

WAEC first. Then everything else.

But the destination was clear now, even if the path remained uncertain.