Headphone Boy

HEADPHONE BOY

by Nana Afadua Ofori-Atta

Edited by Kerry C. Byrne

Every time I tell the story of how I met Headphone Boy, I tell it differently.

My children think I am remembering wrong but I have met their father in all these ways. In my other lives. I am not supposed to remember Headphone Boy as anyone but as the man I married; as Yaw. But I recall all his other incarnations: Virgil, with whom I shared all my secrets, and Diego, who first showed me the dragons.

You see, the first time I met Headphone Boy was on a bus to Takoradi.

I was a runaway who had never been anywhere without parental supervision. I forgot to pack a lot of things in my haste to get out of the house; left my meds, a toothbrush, and a t-shirt with long sleeves for the bus ride—and that turned out to be the most grievous mistake; the bus was fucking cold. So I sat in my window seat, rubbing the sides of my arms, wondering what would happen when my parents woke up and realized I wasn’t home. It might have taken them a day or two.

He spoke to me first—asked if I wanted him to cast a warming charm. Now, there were certain things you just didn’t go doing, and refusing a mage’s help was one of them. Also, I was fucking cold. He mumbled something under his breath, orange sparks cackling at his fingertips as he moved his fingers in a pattern I didn’t recognise. It didn’t take long for the spell to kick in. 

 “Thank you,” I said. 

 “No problem,” he replied, before pulling his headphones back over his ears. I tried to contain my laughter as he sang to himself. His voice was terrible. I failed and he pulled his rose gold headphones back down so they hung from his neck. Headphone Boy was gigantic: over six feet, dark skin, dimples, and an afro almost as big as mine, but he looked so tiny with confusion etched into his features.

 “Is everything all right? I didn’t accidentally cast a laughter jinx?”

 “You can’t sing,” I replied. It was a thoughtless thing to say. Especially to someone whom I hardly knew—and who had been so nice to me. 

But before I could apologize, he said, “I know. I didn’t think you could hear me.”  

The bright orange glow was at his fingertips again. He was preparing to cast another spell. I wondered which one.

 My mother used to cast spells that kept sounds confined to certain spaces. It was always disconcerting walking out of the relative silence of the front room into the chaos of the kitchen.

 “I can, but still shouldn’t have laughed. Can we start over? I mean you could have let me freeze to death.” The orange glow disappeared from his fingers.

“Don’t think you can freeze in these conditions.”

I smiled. “Name’s Molly.” It wasn’t. It was Rose but I always liked the name Molly, don’t know why. 

 “Mine’s Diego. My father is obsessed with football, named me after Maradona.” Like me, Headphone Boy also lied about his name. He said it was because he thought we would never see each other after we got off the bus. He was right. Sort of. If you want to know though, Diego’s real name was Kweku. 

Me and Headphone Boy played games for most of the bus ride. The bus had these big frilly curtains that were better suited for an antique store. The way some of the other passengers complained when we drew the curtains open you would think the sunlight could kill them. We played I Spy till all we could see for several kilometres were hills covered in wild grass. Headphone Boy pulled out a pair of earphones from his bag and shrugged when I questioned why he had both them and his headphones and plugged them into his phone. We had a new game to play: Guess the Song. We didn’t play that game for long, mostly because Headphone Boy knew his playlists too well and I was disinterested, so we decided to try something else. We were going to tell each other a story. Mages always had strange tales to share and as the daughter of one I had seen a lot of weird.

Headphone Boy told his story first. His story was about a place he liked to visit at home: a river. Home for Headphone Boy was where our bus was headed. The river was supposed to be so clear you could see all that lived in it like you were looking in an aquarium. And he said there were all sorts of things down there—things most people thought didn’t exist anymore. But that wasn’t the magical part of the river. The river could grant wishes; all you had to do was make a wish on a pebble and then toss it into the river. I had questions. First of them was: why was he telling me this? Wasn’t this the kind of information people hoarded? Second, how did nobody know about the wish-granting river? The government patrolled every magical natural feature the same way they inflated fuel prices. With regularity and insanity. 

Headphone Boy shrugged. It wasn’t the whole river that was magical. Just that bit—and there were more ways to hide magical features than most mages knew.

When it was my turn to tell a story I wasn’t sure what to talk about. Suddenly, my mother bringing the kitchen appliances to life to help her cater an event didn’t seem good enough. 

So I asked him to take me to the riverside.  

There used to be a pitstop on the N1 between Accra and Takoradi; it isn’t there anymore. Headphone Boy took off the warming charm on me when we got off the bus there. We got kebabs while the bus refuelled. I plucked a piece of rabbit meat out of the brown paper in my hand and tossed it into my mouth, taking in everything in front of me. There were people younger than me getting on buses alone. Made me a little self-conscious—it had taken me over twenty years to do it. One of the bus conductors was screaming about leaving in five minutes even though his mates were still packing luggage into the undercarriage of his vehicle. I spotted a girl with her feet on a wooden box further away from the buses. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her chin rested in her palm. Next to the wooden box was a sign which said HAPPINESS 4 SALE. It didn’t take long to realise she was dealing.  

Now I had never tried bootleg emotions before then. They were supposed to be fun and the high didn’t last long or harm anyone unless you mixed them. I heard a story of some guy who once downed a vial of happiness, awe, and craving in one go; the poor guy ended up needing his stomach pumped and a two-day stay in the hospital. I wanted to try, though. The most reckless thing I had done in my life was this bus trip—befriending Headphone Boy didn’t count. I let go of his hand and headed toward the girl.

I still think she could smell the fear on me when I asked her what emotions she had. The vials in the box were individually tagged: happiness, joy—or what everyone called laughing gas and ecstasy. I pointed to the vial of ecstasy mostly because it was bright purple. I counted a couple of ten Ghana cedis and handed it over. I had officially committed the first of my many crimes. It felt good, like the sort of rush you get when you drive a car so fast it’s almost as if you are losing control, but hit the brakes right before you crash. I stuffed the vial into one of the pockets of my cut-off shorts before heading back to Headphone Boy. He shot me a look of disapproval but didn’t say anything. Instead, he pulled his headphones over his ears and made his way back into the bus. I didn’t want to care what he thought. I had just met him.

I uncorked the vial and took a sip. It made my fingers tingle and everything sounded louder than before.

•••

Takoradi was nothing like I expected. It didn’t look like a city. A small town with a lot of tall buildings was a better description. My only possession, a drawstring bag, was slung over Headphone Boy’s shoulder as I followed him down a rocky, untarred road. I was holding his hand again; we had made up somewhere between the last toll booth on the N1 and the bus station. I heard the river before I saw it. The way it was gushing it would break anything in its path. There were voices. High-pitched voices that made my ears hurt. Headphone Boy helped me down a small hill and the river came into sight. 

He wasn’t lying; it was clear. Even the sand at the bottom of the river was pristine. It really did look like an aquarium with how colourful it was, both the flora and the fauna. There are certain things that scare the fuck out of you even if you know they are going to be there. The merfolk. They didn’t like to be looked at but I couldn’t help it. People think the merfolk look like us; they don’t. They’ve got scales, gills, dorsal fins, and hair that is venomous. The only humanoid thing about them is their mouths. One of them snarled at me then dove into the river. I stared at her yellow tail till she was out of sight.

I sat down on the bank of the river and pulled my legs into my chest. Headphone Boy mimicked my action.

 I said, “It’s really beautiful. Thank you for bringing me here.”  

 “Never brought anyone here before. The mermaids aren’t so bad once they get used to seeing you.” 

 “You said there are things that live in the river, things people think are extinct. What things?”  

 “Dragons.”

 “Dragons? You cannot be serious?” I asked. “You are serious? You are actually serious?” 

Headphone Boy shifted his weight backward so he was resting on his palms. “They have to show themselves, but they are somewhere in the river.” 

I didn’t see the dragons that day. It took four more visits for them to think I was worth seeing them. And they were nothing like I thought dragons should look like. They didn’t look any different from an eel except for the ability to talk and turn invisible at will.

 “Huh. So, what do you do when you come here? Practice your spells?”

 “No. Sit around. Soak everything in. I like the silence.”

I cocked my head in the direction of the group of mermaids who were chattering. Their voices weren’t as high as before but their voices still hurt my ears.

“What silence?”

 “They aren’t always here. They migrate and spend most of the year in the ocean.”

 “No one told me that in my Bestiary Class in secondary school.”

 “Academicians tend not to ask merfolk anything. They only assume.”

It grew silent between us. I pulled out the vial of ecstasy and took another sip. The high came a lot quicker than the first time. My heart was pounding loudly yet everything seemed to have slowed down. Felt relaxed like I was floating on a cloud. I kissed him. It’s the only time in all our lifetimes I kissed him first. Headphone Boy doesn’t remember our past lifetimes but he always seems to know about the river and he always brings me to it when he meets me. It’s our special place regardless of which body we inhabit. I handed him the vial of ecstasy. He drank like it was a shot of tequila.

We didn’t act much different after drinking the bootleg emotion. Maybe Headphone Boy showed me spells he shouldn’t have and maybe I asked him to go skinny dipping with me. It was all a blur but I don’t mind not remembering some parts of that first time. The water was freezing and Headphone Boy laughed as he cast the warming charm. 

I swam to the bottom of the river and picked up a pebble. A tiny toss and wished to always have Headphone Boy around.