That thing around your neck

Author's name: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My father and mother would gaze at Nnamabia's laughing face with silent concern, and I knew they were secretly wondering whether their son was a gang member. Sometimes I was certain he was, for gang members had a reputation, and Nnamabia's was widespread. The other boys would call him "coward" and shake his hand whenever he passed by, while the girls, especially the well-known "Big Beauties" group, would hug him for as long as they could every time they said hello. He attended all the parties, the quiet ones in the dorms and the rowdiest ones in town, and he was truly the girl's favorite, the boy who was popular with the boys, the guy who could smoke a Rothmans pack a day, and even had a reputation for being able to drink a case of beer in one sitting. Other times, I suspected he didn't belong to any particular group, because his reputation was so widespread, and his style required him to befriend boys of all stripes and not be an enemy of any of them. I also wasn't sure my brother really had what it took—the courage and the insecurity—to join a gang. The one time I asked him if he was in a gang, he looked at me in surprise, through his long, thick eyelashes, as if to say, You should know better than to ask such a question, only to reply firmly, "Of course not." Then I believed him.

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