In my defence, it was unguarded

Maya had been planning Tasha’s birthday Trail for three weeks, which is two weeks and six days longer than anyone should plan anything.

Five stops. The café where they met, arguing over the last almond croissant. The stage where Tasha once waited forty minutes for a matatu that had, it later turned out, stopped running in 2019. The mural of the giraffe in sunglasses. The stall that makes chapati the way Tasha’s mum does, a claim Tasha’s mum disputes. And the rooftop, where everyone would be waiting with a cake.

Each stop held something. A voice note. A photo from a phone so old its screen had a crack shaped like Madagascar. A clue to the next place, which only appeared once Tasha reached this one. That’s how a Trail works: you can see where you’ve been, and that there’s more. Where it goes, you find out by going.

The plan

The cake was the easy part. Brayo would collect it. Brayo would carry it up to the rooftop. Brayo would guard it.

Brayo, it should be said, had one job.

Stop three

Tasha was doing beautifully. She cried at the café (the croissant voice note), laughed at the matatu stage, and stood in front of the giraffe for a long time saying “I forgot about this” to nobody in particular.

Maya left you something.

The giraffe mural · Opens here

Meanwhile, on the rooftop, Tom had arrived an hour early. Tom arrives an hour early to anything with food at it. It is his gift, and our burden.

He found the cake box on the table. He found Brayo downstairs, looking for ice. He found a knife. What happened next is a matter of public record, in the sense that there was a lot of evidence.

The last stop

When Tasha reached the rooftop, everyone was there. Four of four. The photo from last year’s birthday opened on every phone at once, and for a moment nobody said anything, which with this group is a medical event.

Then Brayo opened the cake box.

Half a cake. An exact half. Cut with the confidence of a man who believes that taking precisely half is a form of sharing. Beside it, a napkin with three words on it: “Check your Drops.”

0:09

Tasha laughed until she had to sit down. It is, she says, the best birthday she’s ever had. Maya maintains that this was despite Tom, not because of him. Tom maintains nothing, because Tom is not on next year’s Trail.

Some things only work because you went. Cake, it turns out, is one of them. Especially if you’d like some.