WHERE THE LOST ARE FOUND : CHAPTER ONE

 

Chapter One

THE GOLDEN SHELL

It’s strange how people praise silence in children. They call it maturity. Good manners. Discipline.
But sometimes, silence isn’t peace—it’s pressure.
It’s the weight of everything you can’t say, buried deep where no one will look.

I learned early how to keep things hidden: the doubts, the fear, the aching loneliness. I became a master of it. At school, I was “so well-behaved.” At home, “such a quiet boy.”
But nobody asked why.

They say home is where you feel safe.
For me, home was where I perfected my mask.
My room was both my refuge and my prison. The door stayed shut more often than not. I told myself I liked it that way, but the truth was, I was afraid—afraid that if I opened up, if anyone really saw me, they’d turn away. Or worse, they’d tell me to stop being dramatic.
To toughen up.
To be normal.

But I wasn’t normal. I knew that.

I felt too much, thought too much, and said too little. There were days I’d lie awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, feeling like I was floating outside my own body—watching someone else live my life.
I smiled when I was supposed to. I nodded when I had to. I laughed on cue.
But the more I played the part, the more I disappeared.

Then came the day that shattered it all.

It didn’t start as a storm. It started like every other ordinary day—sunlight leaking through the curtains, the sound of plates clinking in the kitchen, voices carrying through walls.
But sometimes, the quietest mornings hide the loudest truths.
Sometimes, a single moment—an offhand comment, a look, a forgotten promise—can be the final straw on a soul already cracking under the weight of pretending.

And on that day, I broke.

But before we get to that, you need to understand what led me there—the small fractures, the missed signs, the slow collapse behind the curtain no one ever bothered to pull back.
This isn’t just a story about pain. It’s about perception.
About what people choose to see—and what they don’t.

Have you ever imagined a child so misunderstood that even his own parents couldn’t truly see him?
A child whose world was hidden behind a curtain—quiet, watchful, and known only to himself?

I was that child.

To others, I was good as gold—polite, obedient, promising.
But beneath that shine, I was only gold-plated.
A hollow shell masked in smiles.
Like a mango, ripe and golden on the outside, but inside? I was rotting.

No one saw it.
No one wanted to.
Not until everything cracked wide open.

Have you ever been praised so much it starts to feel like a curse?

That was me.

Everyone said I was the perfect child.
Teachers admired me. My parents never worried. The church clapped when I sang.
I was the soft-spoken one—always in uniform, always on time, always respectful. I said the right things, kept quiet when needed, and read my Bible like it was the only book in the world.
To them, I was a shining example. A walking testimony. The golden boy.

But gold can be deceiving. Sometimes it’s just a thin coat of paint over something broken beneath.

For fifteen years, I carried something I couldn’t explain. I didn’t even know what to call it. All I knew was that it didn’t fit into the sermons, or the prayers, or the careful plans everyone had made for me.
It was a feeling. A longing I didn’t ask for.
It showed up in my thoughts when I least expected it—in my dreams, in the way I noticed certain people, in the tight grip of guilt that always followed.

I buried it so deep, it started to feel like it belonged to someone else.
I called it my “silly behaviour.”
Because if I gave it a real name, it might become too real.
Too dangerous.

I begged God to take it away.
I fasted. I cried.
I whispered my fears into pillows late at night, too ashamed to say them out loud.

But the feelings didn’t disappear.
They just got quieter.
Trickier.
And I became better at pretending...

It was second term, Form Two.
I remember the weather—it had rained for days. The football field was soaked and muddy. My shoes never dried properly, and the laundry line behind the dorms sagged under the weight of wet uniforms.

Life looked normal from the outside.
But inside, everything was shifting. Quietly.

Malik wasn’t the kind of boy I normally talked to. He was loud, confident, always surrounded by people. He said whatever he wanted, laughed too loudly, and moved like someone who owned the world.

But somehow, over a few weeks, he started coming closer.
Asking strange questions.
Standing next to me during meals.
Walking with me when I fetched water.
He said it was about choir practice—even though he couldn’t sing.

One night, just before lights out, he followed me back to my bed.

“Help me with that line you were singing,” he said, sitting down beside me. “The one from the chorus.”

I looked at him. My heart was already racing, though I didn’t know why yet.

“You don’t even sing,” I said, smiling faintly, trying to brush it off.

He shrugged. “I’m trying to learn.”

I opened the songbook and hummed the melody, hoping the moment would pass.

Then he asked a question I wasn’t ready for.

“Do you ever get… weird feelings?”

I froze.

He was staring at the ceiling, but I could feel his eyes on me. My heart thudded against my ribs. I wanted to ask what he meant—but I already knew. I had lived with that question for years.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whispered.

“Yes, you do.”

There was a long silence between us. Not the uncomfortable kind, but the dangerous kind—the kind that opens doors to things you’re not supposed to feel.
He leaned in slightly, just enough for my breath to catch.
And for a moment—just a moment—I leaned too.

But I stopped.
I pulled back.
I shook my head. “We can’t.”

He didn’t say anything after that.
Just got up and left.

But the damage was already done.

The next morning, everything had changed. Whispers followed me down the hall. Eyes lingered too long.
People I had never spoken to suddenly knew my name.

By lunch, I could hear them clearly—
“That’s him.”
“That’s the boy.”
“Did you hear what he did?”

And Malik?

He told them I tried to touch him.
That I had done things to him in the dorm while he was asleep.
That I was confused. Sick. Not like the rest.

They believed him.

Because he was loud. Because he was confident.
Because I was the quiet one.
And quiet boys don’t fight back.

By evening, I was sitting outside the headmaster’s office.
My hands were cold. My chest felt hollow.
I was waiting—for my parents, for the punishment, for the shame.

The chaplain sat next to me, flipping through a worn Bible, glancing at me every few seconds like he was waiting for me to confess.

He didn’t know the truth.
No one asked me for it.

When my parents arrived, my mother looked like she’d aged ten years in one afternoon.
My father didn’t even look at me.
He just signed the forms.

No one said my name.
No one asked me what really happened.
No one wanted to know.

I was expelled the next morning.

Just like that, fifteen years of goodness—wiped away by a single accusation.
A single moment of almost.

The ride home was silent. I sat in the backseat, staring out the window, watching the world pass by like it was no longer mine.

I felt numb. Empty.
The voice in my head kept repeating: You didn’t even do it.

But that didn’t matter.

In their eyes, I had done worse.
I had tried.
And in a world like mine, trying was enough to condemn you.

At home, no one spoke to me.
I went straight to my room. Closed the door.
Sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall for what felt like hours.

I didn’t cry. I wanted to.
But I didn’t.
I just sat there, waiting—for someone to knock.
For someone to ask me if I was okay.

No one did.

Later that night, I heard the clinking of dishes in the kitchen.
I heard my father praying—louder than usual, as if he was trying to drown out the memory of me.
My mother moved through the house like a ghost.
Not once did she come to my room.
No one said my name.

The next morning, she dropped a pair of clothes on my bed.

“We’re going to Pastor Elkanah’s,” she said, her voice stiff.
“He said he’ll pray for you.”

I didn’t argue.
I didn’t speak.
I just got dressed and followed her out.

 

Pastor Elkanah lived just a few streets away. I had seen him preach since I was a child—tall, stern-faced, with a voice that always sounded like it came straight from heaven.

I used to admire him.
Now, I dreaded what he would say.

We sat in a cramped backroom of his house. Curtains drawn. Bibles open.
The air thick with the scent of anointing oil.
My parents sat on either side of me, their faces unreadable.

“Noah,” he said, folding his hands slowly, “we’ve heard the things that have happened. I want you to know there is healing. There is deliverance. But only if you’re willing to let go of this… confusion.”

Confusion.
That’s what they called it now.

He asked me to confess.
I told him I hadn’t done anything.
That I had thought about it—yes—but I hadn’t gone through with it.

He smiled sadly, like he already knew better.

“That’s how the enemy works,” he said. “He plants thoughts. Silly thoughts. Small desires. And before you know it, they grow into chains.”

I stayed quiet.

They laid hands on me.
Prayed over me.
Rebuked things I couldn’t name.
Declared me free.

But I didn’t feel free.
I felt like a ghost in my own skin.
Like they were trying to fix a version of me that never  even existed.

I developed a new routine to survive.

I started writing in secret.
Just in a notebook I found tucked away in a drawer.
I tore out the pages with prayers already written on them and started filling the rest with my own.

Not the prayers I was supposed to say—but the ones I actually meant.

“God, I’m scared.”
“I don’t know how to change.”
“I don’t know if I even want to anymore.”
“Why do You feel so far away?”
“Why do I?”

Some nights, I wondered what would happen if I never got better. If this “silly behavior” never went away. If I’d carry this secret forever, hidden under my skin, buried beneath everyone’s expectations.

Would I ever sing again?
Would I ever laugh the same way?
Would anyone ever hug me without thinking twice?

One afternoon, weeks later, I snuck out.

I didn’t plan to. I just needed air—real air.

Not the thick, prayer-soaked atmosphere of the living room.
Not the tight, watching silence of the kitchen.

I walked down the road with my hoodie pulled low, my hands in my pockets, hoping no one I knew would see me.
My legs took me past the field, through the shortcut we used to take to school, and toward the edge of the estate where no one ever went.

There was an old abandoned gate there, rusted and half-hanging, leading to an empty plot overgrown with weeds.

I sat there for an hour. Maybe two.

I didn’t cry.
I didn’t pray.

I just... breathed.

For the first time since everything had fallen apart, I felt like Noah again—not the disappointment, not the boy who almost did something wrong, not the burden his family was trying to fix.

Just a boy, sitting in the wind, letting the world move without him for a little while.

And maybe that’s what survival looks like sometimes—
Not strength.
Not certainty.
Not faith.

Just stillness.
Just staying.
Just not giving up.

That night, when I got home, no one asked where I’d been.
Maybe they didn’t notice.
Maybe they didn’t care.

I opened my notebook and wrote one more thing:

“I’m still here.”

THE END OF CHAPTER ONE.

JOSHUA PATRICK MAGEZI