Hotlanta (19 page)

Sydney paused and looked at Marcus. She considered how relaxed and at ease she felt during those few times she'd hung out with Jason, compared to the constant pins and needles she walked on to be the perfect girlfriend to Marcus. She just didn't want to do it anymore. “I'll do you one better. How about, I don't have anything to say to you ever again. How about that?”

“You all right, Sydney?” Rhea asked upon arrival as she looked suspiciously from her obviously upset best friend to Marcus. “You need to step outside or something?”

“Actually, Rhea,” Sydney said, “I think my night may have just come to an end. Would you guys mind giving me a ride home tonight? The carriage I arrived in is officially a pumpkin.”

“I have to see it again,” Keisha announced as she practically bounced into Lauren's room, smiling and giggling like she was the one who won the Homecoming Queen crown. It was the third time that evening alone that Keisha parked herself on Lauren's bedroom chaise to discuss the details of the Ms. Brookhaven Prep Homecoming Ceremony and relive her glory days as the girl who took the crown in her junior year at West End High. Lauren wasn't sure if it was the semiprecious sparkles in the jeweled crown that had Keisha all drunk with her delusions of grandeur, but she did know that she was tired of her mother interrupting her quiet time. As much as she thought she'd be happy about standing dead center in the Homecoming court in her fabulous gown and hearing her name called—and as beautifully as she played it
off—Lauren wasn't as giddy as she thought she'd be about being named the flyest chick in her school. Without Jermaine there to congratulate her, dance with her, and hold her, the title and all the trimmings that came with it—the serenade, the traditional Homecoming Queen walk, the crown—felt, well, insignificant. Well, just a little. She had a good time dancing with Andre, and an even better time watching the sparks fly when Sydney cut Marcus's doggish ass off. Tonight, though, Lauren just wanted to finish watching the last ten minutes of
Law & Order SVU,
catch the first ten minutes of the news, then go to sleep so she could wake up, get to school, and IM Jermaine about her weekend. Couldn't none of that happen with Keisha buzzing in and out of her room.

“It's over there in the box, in the same place it was the last time you came to visit it,” Lauren said, pointing lazily at the heap of mess on top of her bureau.

“Don't act like you're not excited by all of this, sweetie,” Keisha clucked as she peered into the box. “This crown right here says you're the baddest girl in your school, which means that all the money, time, and effort I put into turning you into a Mini-me paid off.”

Lauren rolled her eyes and tried her best to concentrate on the argument the defense lawyer on
Law & Order
was making for why the teenage boy on trial wasn't the real murderer.

“I still don't understand why you only have one picture to show me,” Keisha continued, oblivious. “Didn't anybody
have a digital camera? I figured someone would have e-mailed you some pictures by now. Dara doesn't have any?”

Lauren wasn't about to go into details with Keisha about why she and Dara weren't speaking—the blog about her Thug Heaven debacle, her knowing about Marcus's affair with Dara, the whole Sydney brouhaha on the dance floor—all of that needed to be kept from her mother's knowledge bank lest she take the Homecoming Queen sash and strangle Lauren with it. It was bad enough she was sitting up in her room at nine-fifty on a Sunday night, hair wrapped, pajamas on, with absolutely no means of communication to speak of to get to her man; the last thing she needed to do was set Keisha off and get into it with Sydney again. “Dara's spending the next few days with her dad and didn't have time to download her pictures yet,” Lauren said easily. “I'll check tomorrow to see if the yearbook committee has any more they can forward.”

Keisha, still lost in her own thoughts, fingered the one printout Lauren did have on hand, given to her by the staff photographer who snapped all the Homecoming shots. “Well, you certainly look beautiful in this one,” Keisha said. “Not as fly as I was when I won, of course, but you look good. Too bad I don't have any pictures of that day to show you—had this bad dress on and a flyboy on my arm. Girl? Who you tellin'? You don't know nothin' ‘bout that!” Keisha said.

“It was a nice moment, Mom, it really was. I wish my man
was there to see it. Um, Donald, that is,” Lauren said, trying to clean up her major slip. “I really wanted him to be there. I mean, Andre Brown is handsome and all, and looked good in his Homecoming crown, but he wasn't the one I wanted to go with.”

“Oh, stop it with the Donald mess,” Keisha snapped, tossing the picture back onto Lauren's bureau. “I know you're not still holding on to the whole ‘Donald is my boyfriend' charade.”

“Mom, I don't care what Sydney told you, I did not—nor do I think—that Donald is gay. He's a little, well,
extra
sometimes, but gay? I couldn't have missed that,” Lauren insisted. Of course, admitting she knew would have opened her up to more questioning and exposed the pack of lies she'd told her parents over the past two years about who she was really with all those times she was supposed to be out with Donald. Nope, Lauren wasn't falling into that trap, either.

“Yeah, well, if his own daddy thinks he's gay, he just might be. A parent knows, Lauren,” Keisha warned. “A real parent knows.”

“Wait, wait,” Lauren said, turning back to the television screen. “This is the part I've been waiting for—they're about to break down this witness and find out his big sister had something to do with the little girl's murder.”

“Oookay,” Keisha said. “That's my cue. I'm outta here. Congratulations, again, sweetie. You're now a part of a rare group of girls who can forever claim Queen Bee status around these parts. I knew you had it in you, baby,” she added as she leaned down and kissed Lauren.

“Thanks, Mom,” Lauren said weakly, forcing herself not to roll her eyes.

Her mother walked out just as the
Law & Order
credits started rolling; Lauren missed the whole ending. Normally, she would have used the digital-video-recorder device on her cable box to rewind the show so she could see what she missed, but Lauren needed to flip over to
Fox News at 10,
a show she watched regularly for at least ten minutes every night to see what the weather would be like the next morning so she could plan her wardrobe and hairstyle accordingly. Annoyed, she settled back into her pillow and yawned while the news anchor droned on about the beluga whales at the Georgia Aquarium, the baby panda at Zoo Atlanta, a robbery at a Quick Trip in Marietta, and a hit-and-run in Gwinnett County.

“This just in: Fulton County police are investigating the brutal murder of a man found bludgeoned to death on his own front lawn. Police say Rodney Watson is a recently paroled convict who spent almost six years in prison for running a small drug smuggling operation out of his mother's West End home.”

Lauren bolted up in her bed and stared at the screen, trying to process just what in the world the anchor was talking about. Had she heard him correctly? Did he say Rodney Watson? As in Jermaine's brother? Lauren grabbed her remote and pushed the rewind button to hear the reporter's words again.

“Watson was found about an hour ago on his front lawn, where police say his body lay for two hours before an anonymous witness called police. Tonight, police say they're looking at two persons of interest, including Watson's own brother, and a recently paroled former convict who lives in the neighborhood. We'll have more on this investigation as it continues.”

Lauren pushed pause and jumped out of bed, tears welling in her eyes. What in the hell was going on? Jermaine's brother was dead? And her man was being sought in his murder? Lauren didn't know what to do with herself. She paced furiously from one side of her room to the other, stepping on shoes and clothes and papers she'd carelessly dropped there earlier when she settled into her TV-watching position. She raced over to the cordless house phone buried beneath her laundry and dialed Jermaine's home number and then cell phone, unconcerned at that particular moment about the repercussions of using the land line to call some guy in the West End. She needed to find out if he was all right. But both phones just rang and rang until they finally went to voice
mail. Lauren pushed “end” on the phone and paced back and forth in front of the television, looking at the still image of Jermaine being led away in handcuffs. The tears that had puddled in her eyes ran hot streaks down her face. And before she could get ahold of herself, she was running toward Sydney's room.

“Get the hell out of my room,” Sydney practically spit as Lauren burst through the door without so much as a knock.

Lauren paid her sister no mind. “Come to my room—you have to see this,” she whispered.

“What are you talking about? I'm not coming to your room to watch any damn TV—some of us have better things to do,” Sydney said, slamming her pen down on her notebook for emphasis.

“Sydney, please, just listen to me,” Lauren implored, moving close enough to her sister for her to see her tear-streaked face and red eyes. “Something's popping off with my boyfriend, and…”

“Boyfriend?” Sydney sneered. “What happened, he got stuck in a boy sandwich down at his dream all-boy school?”

“I'm not talking about Donald,” Lauren said. “I'm talking about my boyfriend, Jermaine.”

“Jermaine? Who is—”

Lauren cut Sydney off. “Please, Sydney, come into my room. It was just on the news. Just come with me.”

Sydney sucked her teeth, slowly rose to her feet, and reluctantly followed Lauren into her bedroom, but the frantic, frightened look on Lauren's face made her stomach curl.

“Look,” Lauren implored as she hit rewind and then play on her cable box's digital video remote.

“Ohmigod, Rodney is your boyfriend?” Sydney asked, obviously still confused.

“No—no! Jermaine is my boyfriend; Rodney is Jermaine's brother.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know,” Lauren sobbed. “I was just watching the same thing as you just did and I called Jermaine and he didn't pick up and I don't know what to do because they think he killed his own brother.”

“Wait, Lauren, calm down,” Sydney said. Finally, she recognized the gravity of the situation. “They said he's a person of interest—not the person who did it.”

“What's a person of interest?” Lauren asked.

“I don't know,” Sydney said. “I don't know, Lauren. I just don't understand all of this. How do you know those guys?”

Lauren sat down on her chaise and buried her face in her hands. “It's a really long story,” Lauren said.

“Tell me,” Sydney said, walking over and sitting next to her sister.

Lauren sighed and recalled for her twin how she met Jermaine, how they'd been kicking it over the past month,
and how her love affair with the man who'd thoroughly turned her out came to a crashing halt the day Altimus walked into The Playground and found her cursing out Jermaine's hood-rat ex.

“Wait, Altimus saw you in the West End?”

“Yeah,” Lauren said, reaching for a tissue.

“What was he doing there?” Sydney inquired.

“I don't know—business, I guess,” Lauren said, confused.

“Was he there with somebody? Did he have paperwork spread out? Was he selling somebody a car?”

“I don't know, Syd. God—what you do you want me to say?”

“Think!” Sydney yelled. “I need to know why Altimus was in the West End.”

“Why? He's not the one in a police station somewhere getting beat down and forced to cop to something he didn't do—Jermaine is!”

“Look,” Sydney snapped, “I can tell you this right now: I think Altimus has something to do with this.”

“Altimus? Why Altimus, Syd? He's our father, and he's always loved us and treated us like his own daughters,” Lauren insisted, though she was trying just as much to convince herself of this as she was Sydney. She got a chill just conjuring up a mental image of Altimus leaning into her face in his car that day on the side of the highway, after he'd busted
her in the West End. And then just as easily as Lauren defended her stepfather, she remembered what Rodney said to her the last time she saw Jermaine. She put her hands to her mouth, wishing that her hand could reach back and erase the words Rodney spewed. “Ohmigod,” she yelled.

“What!” Sydney said. “What is it?”

“Oh, no, no, NO!” Lauren said, a fresh round of tears working their way up from her gut.

“Lauren, come on, tell me,” Sydney said, grabbing her sister's wrists and looking her in her eyes. “What do you remember?”

“The last time I saw Jermaine, Rodney walked in on us and said he knew Dice.”

“Dice? How does he know our father? Go on,” Sydney urged.

“He didn't say—just that he knows him. And then Jermaine threatened Rodney. He told him he could kill him. Oh, God, what did he do?
What did he do?
” Lauren broke down.

“Shh,” Sydney said, rubbing Lauren's back to try to comfort her. “Listen, I wouldn't be so quick to ask what Jermaine did.”

“Then Dice—what about him? I know he's capable of something like this,” Lauren sneered. “Maybe he thought Rodney would do something to you or me to get at Altimus. That's possible, right?”

“
Dice is not capable of beating a man to death,” Sydney huffed, pulling back from Lauren.

“Sydney, look, I know you love him and all, but Dice is a criminal through and through. Even if he got busted for running guns, how do you know he didn't pick up a few new bad habits in the Big House? Tell me that! I mean they said on the news that the other person of interest is a recently released former convict. That's Dice!”

“Because I know our father. He wouldn't do something like this.”

“But I know Altimus, and he wouldn't do anything like this, either.”

“Don't be so sure,” Sydney said. She got up and disappeared into her room, only to emerge with a timeworn photo in her hands. She thrust it into Lauren's face.

Lauren looked at the picture and squinted a little. “This is Mommy and Dice's wedding photo?”

“Yes.”

Lauren ran her fingers over the picture. “What does this have to do with anything, Syd?”

“Look closer,” Sydney said. “Look at the wedding party.”

Lauren leaned into the photo a little more. “That's Altimus standing next to Dice, isn't it?” she asked her sister.