Chapter 1
Stella hated the smell of freshly washed clothes. From the moment she turned eight, she knew she couldn’t stand it. Maybe it was because of the excessive use of So Klin detergent or the clothes being left out in the hot sun, but she couldn’t breathe next to a heap of washed clothes. And as her sight began to fade away, her heightened sense of smell made it even worse.
Stella was 12 when she was diagnosed with juvenile macular dystrophy. Her parents tried all they could to treat it, but there was no cure, and the disease progressed rapidly. By the time she was 14, she was considered legally blind and could barely see shapes.
At first, she felt sad about it. Later, she felt angry, but by the time she was 15, she had made her peace with it and tried to find the bright side. Her parents were surprised by this behavior, but to be fair, Stella had always been a weird kid. When she was five, she asked the neighbor why he didn’t die after surviving a terrible accident. When she was 10, she glued her baby tooth to a doll to make it a monster.
So, granted, they weren’t too surprised that she wasn’t panicking.
She never liked movies or books, but she loved building things with her hands, and she loved puzzles.
“Stella, eat your food, please. The spoon is right in front of you,” her mom said while preparing to go to work.
“Mummy, did you put onions in these noodles? Because I can already smell it,” Stella asked, using her left hand to add a Lego piece to the complex structure she was building.
“Stella, abeg, don’t stress me. Just finish your food so I can drop you at school. I have a busy day at the hospital today,” her mom responded as she looked around for her keys and slung her bag over her arm.
Stella scrunched up her nose but ate the food anyway. She knew how hard her mom worked, so she didn’t like stressing her out. She would get her way somewhere else. She always did.
Stella attended a school for the blind. It was a unique school born out of the needs of visually impaired individuals. It was expensive, but luckily for her, her mom was one of the few neurosurgeons in Nigeria, and her dad worked with an architectural company that exclusively catered to building houses for the wealthy.
