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1 Graffiti Dreams & Rusted Swings
Long before CJ called her his muse—before fame whispered their names on rooftop winds—Shantel Achieng Mwangi was just a quiet girl clutching a chewed pencil and a second-hand sketchbook.
She lived in Umoja's Block C, Unit 46: peeling teal door, corrugated roof that drummed symphonies every rainy night. Her mother made andasa cakes outside the matatu stage; her father hauled sacks at Gikomba market. Money was a shy visitor, but laughter filled the one-room house like bright paint on a dull wall.
Shantel's childhood playground was the abandoned estate park: bent goalposts, rusted swings, and a cinder-block wall that new gangs tried to tag each Saturday. While kids chased half-flat footballs, Shantel traced the graffiti with her gaze—the swoops, drips, hidden messages. She wondered who these invisible artists were, turning concrete into color. A seed sprouted: Maybe art can make walls tell stories.
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2 Joseph the Poet
Her big brother Joseph Mwangi—five years older, voice smooth as late-night radio—saw her sketch bony superheroes on scrap paper. He slid a blue biro behind her ear, grinning.
"Keep that," he said. "Every artist needs a signature weapon."
Joseph wrote poetry on brown grocery bags, recited them over the sizzling of their mother's frying pan. His words were simple but hit like sunrise:
> "Hope is a drum / beating inside broken tin roofs / louder than rain."
Shantel idolized him. He snuck her into Umoja Youth Centre's open-mic nights, claiming she was "sound crew." She'd sit cross-legged backstage, eyes wide as emcees bared souls and Joseph spun verses that made grown men nod, tears softening their edges.
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3 When Shadows Got Names
A year before Joseph was killed, a new crew surfaced: N9N—Nine-Nine, named after the estate's main bus route. They weren't interested in rap shows; they ran control—cheap liquor, stolen phones, protection "fees."
Joseph believed words could tame wolves. One Saturday he performed a piece called "Our Streets Aren't for Sale."
Shantel remembered the hush after his final line, the way some men in black beanies exchanged dark glances.
"Maybe skip that poem next week," she whispered outside.
Joseph smiled. "If we don't speak, nothing changes."
He never skipped it.
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4 The Night of Gunpowder Rain
Shantel was fourteen the night the gunshots cracked like fireworks. She'd fallen asleep shading a portrait of Joseph mid-performance. Their father burst in breathless.
"Stay home—lock the door," he said, eyes wild. "Joseph…"
But Joseph wasn't at the door.
He lay two blocks away, on the shortcut path behind Mama Mugo's kiosk, a single bullet in his chest, notebook soaked crimson. Witnesses say N9N wanted to "teach the poet a lesson." No arrests. No trial. Just a white chalk outline washed away by the next rain.
Shantel's world shrank to a hospital corridor stinking of iodine and grief. When the doctor shook his head, sound became muffled, like she'd been pushed underwater.
At the funeral, she placed Joseph's blue biro in his casket—the one he'd tucked behind her ear. That night she swore two promises:
1. "I'll never stop drawing what words can't say."
2. "I won't let fear steal another voice I love."
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5 Silent Years
Grief hollowed her laughter. School felt irrelevant. She quit open-mics, kept her sketches hidden. Nights, she covered her ears as N9N motorbikes roared past, remembering the echo of the gun.
Then came the day she almost stopped drawing: an art teacher confiscated her sketchbook—said "pretty doodles" had no exam value. Shantel trudged home, dumped the book in a rubbish barrel. As flames licked the paper, Joseph's biro clattered to the ground, unburnt. She snatched it back, heart hammering.
That was the moment she realized: art was not a hobby; it was oxygen.
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6 The Meeting That Sparked Color
A year later, Umoja Secondary announced a charity talent show to raise funds for new science labs. Shantel planned to skip—until she heard a freshman freestyling behind the science block: raw, shaky, honest bars about streetlights and single mothers.
CJ.
His words carried the same fragile bravery Joseph once wielded, but with a new rhythm—like a storm refusing to quiet.
She hid behind a pillar, sketching him on stray notebook paper: oversized hoodie, eyes burning with something unbroken. A melody of pencil strokes met his rap. By the time he finished, she had her first CJ portrait.
They didn't speak that day. But Shantel went home and pinned the drawing above her bed, next to Joseph's last poem. She began sneaking to every cypher CJ performed in, feeling her vow glimmer: "I won't let fear steal another voice I love."
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7 A Sketchbook Reopens
The day CJ finally approached her—nervous grin, asking about her drawings—was the day Shantel realized healing could look like collaboration. He treated her art like treasure, not "doodles," asked her to design mixtape covers he couldn't yet afford to print.
In return, she found herself humming hooks under her breath, lines Joseph used to highlight. Slowly the grief-fog parted. Shantel's laughter returned, softer but resilient. Her sketchbook bloomed: CJ mid-verse, kids dancing in matatu dust, Joseph's memory lingering as a silhouette in every skyline.
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8 Confronting N9N
But healing isn't linear.
On her seventeenth birthday, Shantel spotted two N9N members vandalizing Joseph's old performance wall with their tag. Her lungs froze. Fight or flee? The biro felt like lead in her pocket.
She stepped forward. "That wall belongs to the people. Not your brand."
The taller thug laughed. "Run along, sweetie."
Rage boiled. She dipped a finger into the wet paint and wrote over their tag:
> J + S LIVES.
They advanced; she braced for blows—when a new voice cut the alley: CJ, Charles, Lulu, Tico. "Problem?"
The gang backed off; they'd heard CJ's name buzzing in underground rap battles. Shantel's knees shook after they left, but she also felt Joseph grin somewhere past the clouds—proud that silence hadn't won.
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9 Why She Flinches at Blaze's Name
Unknown to CJ then, N9N had merged with smaller sets, rebranding under new leadership: Milo and Brian—soon to be Blaze. When Shantel first saw Blaze on stage, her blood iced: the scar-cheeked boy from that alley was on his crew.
Fear threatened to clamp her throat shut again. But CJ's fierce determination reminded her of Promise #2. So she stayed, watched from a distance—until destiny forced their stories to collide, rooftop after rooftop.
Now Blaze's rehab verse proved monsters could bleed, too. Maybe forgiveness was the final shade missing from her sketches.
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10 Present Moment – Rooftop Fathoms
Shantel closes her eyes, wind tangling her braids, as she finishes telling CJ the story beneath the story—the night Joseph died, the vows she made.
CJ's hands cradle hers. "Thank you for trusting me with the shadows."
Tears slip, but they taste of rain after drought. "You helped me turn them into color."
CJ opens his notebook, writes a single line beneath their latest chorus:
> "Some angels trade wings for pencils, fight nightmares with graphite."
He hands the page to her. The biro Joseph gave her slides easily over CJ's words as she sketches a bridge stitched from musical notes—three silhouettes crossing: Joseph, Shantel, CJ.
The past hasn't vanished, but now it has context. Pain became promise; promise became art; art became love.
And somewhere beyond the estate, in rehab, Brian finishes a letter to Shantel:
> "I was there the night your brother fell.
I can't undo that bullet,
But let me spend the rest of my verses
Building walls no gang can graffiti over again."
Shantel doesn't know this yet. She only feels a strange warmth as if the universe is mending seams she thought were unpatchable.
Below, Nairobi's evening lights flicker on—each bulb another story waiting to be told. Shantel closes her sketchbook, laces her fingers with CJ's, and whispers to the skyline:
"Joseph, I kept my promise. I found a voice worth fighting for—and he found me."
With that, the past folds gently into the present, not as an open wound, but as a mural—vibrant, painful, honest—stretching across the canvas of their shared future.
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End of Chapter Fourteen