Hotlanta (12 page)

“Oh, snap,” Donald said as his eyes widened in glee at the Duke family carnage.

Consumed with rage and embarrassment at being
caught out, Sydney stormed toward the door past Lauren. She stopped just outside of the doorway and then turned around to face the room with her final thought: “You shut your closeted ass up, Donald! You don't get to say shit about me until you figure out how to tell your parents that you like boys!”

It was still fall, but the crisp, chilled Atlanta air smelled like winter—like burning oak and cedar and pine. Smoky. Lauren loved the scent; it reminded her of when she was a little girl and Altimus would take her and Sydney into his library and light a fire in the mammoth brick-and-granite structure and let the girls curl up in his huge leather chairs. If Sydney got her way, he'd read book after book after book. But on the days Lauren had his ear, Altimus would let her talk him into taking them out into their expansive backyard to count the stars peeking through the trees. They looked the best on nights like this, when the colorful leaves dropped like rain on manicured lawns, creating wide gaps of midnight-blue sky between the branches. That's when folks turned to their fireplaces for that warmth, that comfort—that Atlanta winter smell.

But tonight, not even her favorite scent could make Lauren feel comfortable. The mess with Sydney, the dinner blowup, the e-mail about her and Dara—all of that had Lauren off-kilter, and there was only one person she could think of to set her right, only one person who wasn't in the middle of all the drama: Jermaine. And she wanted that consolation in person, because on this particular night, the cell phone wasn't enough.

“But how you gonna get here?” he'd asked earlier, when Lauren called him to inform him of her big Buckhead escape.

“I don't know—I'll take a cab,” she said quickly, mentally kicking herself in the ass for not thinking of grabbing a few cab numbers before she snuck out the sunroom window, the only first-floor exit that didn't have an alarm sensor. She was already trudging through the leaves in the neighbor's yard, presumably safe from the prying eyes of Keisha's security cameras.

“That's gonna cost you like at least fifty or sixty dollars. You can't waste that kind of money,” he said.

“Don't they take debit cards?” Lauren asked as she finally made it to the sidewalk.

Jermaine chuckled. “Babe, taxicabs don't take debit cards. Cash-only business.”

“Damn,” Lauren said, taking a mental snapshot of the cash contents of her wallet. There might have been about
eleven dollars in there. Maybe. “Then come get me. I can meet you on Ponce. I can walk there and—”

“Whoa, whoa. It's close to eleven at night. You can't be walking around like that by yourself.”

“Jermaine. I live in Buckhead. Nobody's outside, and no one is going to do anything to me. Now, are you going to come get me or what?”

“Babe, I can't. I don't have my car.” His brother had his car. Again. “I know—get on the MARTA train. I can meet you at the West End Station.”

Lauren really didn't want to tell Jermaine that though she'd lived in Atlanta all her life, she'd been on MARTA only once—the day Altimus dragged her and Sydney, then about thirteen years old, to an Atlanta Falcons game. None of the Duke women could figure out, even years later, what was going through his mind when he decided his quality Daddy-and-the-twins time should be spent in a massive stadium full of drunken, foul-mouthed, rowdy football fans. But somehow, Altimus thought it was a great way to bond with his girls and give them, as he put it, “a new experience.” It was an experience, all right—a horrifying one that began with oodles of Falcons fans tumbling onto their train, already half-drunk and calling out their “who-hoos” and tossing high fives and trading football stories and stats like they were paid Super Bowl commentators, and ended with Altimus cursing out some big, fat, sweaty white guy (dripping in red and black,
literally, from his spray-painted hair to his old-school Converse) for pushing up too close to Lauren and Sydney as the entire trainful of passengers transferred onto another dingy train on the West Line. “You best watch where you puttin' your hands,” Altimus said with a tone neither of the girls had ever heard him use before. His eyes were narrowed like slits; his spine was so straight that, even though the sweaty guy was about his same height, Altimus seemed to tower over him. Lauren almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.

“Sorry, bro…” the guy began.

“I ain't your bro,” Altimus shot back. “Back off my girls.”

Lauren decided that day that nothing on God's green earth could convince her she'd ever set foot on somebody's MARTA train. But then again, she never imagined she'd have a reason to be in the West End, either. But this night, she wanted—needed—to be there. And seeing as her car was off-limits—Sydney's keys had been confiscated from both girls—and there was no way in hell she was going to call in a favor with Dara, who still wasn't really talking to her, MARTA it would be.

“You're going to meet me, right?” Lauren said nervously.

“Yeah,” Jermaine said. “Just get on the North-South line, headed south. I'll be standing at the exit.”

Within fifteen minutes, Lauren was sitting on a train, squeezed up against the cold window, hoping the cooties of the thousands of commoners who had ridden that nasty train throughout the day wouldn't rub off on her. There were only a few people riding with her—a girl about her age, sitting with some boy who looked like he was straight off the set of
Menace II Society
; an older woman in a uniform, maybe a waitress or office cleaner; two men in work suits; and the thirty-something guy in a dirty, dusty, funky coat sitting closest to her. He stank. Lauren, horrified at the prospect of having to smell him much longer, pulled a tissue from her purse and not so discreetly held it over her nose until the computerized voice on the loudspeaker said, “Next stop, West End.”

And when she stepped out of the door and ran up the stairs and toward the exit, there he was. The tears welled in her eyes with each step and turned into a full-on sloppy cry when she fell into his arms.

“Damn, babe,” he said, squeezing her in his embrace. “It's going to be all right. Come on, don't cry.”

“It's all just a shitty mess, and I don't know how to fix it, Jermaine,” Lauren sobbed. “I can't take this—I just can't.”

“I know, I know—shh. It's going to be all right,” he said. Jermaine pushed Lauren back, tilted her head up toward his, and kissed her lips. “Come on, let's get outta here. My man let me borrow his car; it's parked right up the steps,” he said,
wiping the tears from her eyes and grabbing her hand. They walked out into the bright streetlights of the still bustling neighborhood.

Lauren didn't know what to expect or how to act walking into the tiny, decrepit house Jermaine called home. After all, what do you say to someone whose place could practically fit into your foyer: Love what you've done with the place? Nice “vintage” furniture? I'm feeling that old, stale-fish smell, reminds me of home?

Jermaine sensed her discomfort. “Well it ain't much, I know, but it's home,” he mumbled, looking around at his place almost as if it were the first time he'd seen it, too.

Lauren wiped her eyes some more and folded her arms. She heard some movement in a room toward the back of the house. “Your mom here?” she asked, startled.

“Nah, she's, um, out,” Jermaine said. “That's my brother.”

“I didn't know you had a brother,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, well, I do. He ain't around here much.”

“Oh,” Lauren said, growing uncomfortable. She was so sure that running to Jermaine was the right thing to do, but just then she started to question what the hell she was going through when she decided it was a good idea to darken a doorway in the West End after midnight. “You know, maybe I should go,” she said.

“No,” Jermaine said softly, taking her hands into his. “No, stay. I'll drive you home in a little while. Just—just stay. Let me talk to you. I want to know what happened.”

He led her to his room, which was down a small hallway just off the living room/dining room area. It was neat—a small bed covered with a hand-sewn quilt was pushed up against the white wall next to a small window overlooking the faded yellow siding of the neighbor's house. An iPod hooked up to a speaker sat on a small, rusted table next to the bed, squeezed next to a metal folding chair. Sneaker boxes were piled one on top of the other in the closet, which was covered awkwardly by a curtain that Jermaine hadn't gotten around to closing.

“Soooo…this is where the magic happens, huh?”

“Oh, you got jokes, huh, Ms. Duke?” Jermaine laughed.

“Actually, I'm not really in a joking kind of mood,” Lauren said, getting quiet.

“Just trying to lighten the mood up a little, you know…” Jermaine said, extending his hand to invite her to sit on his bed.

Lauren gave a half smile and sat on the folding chair next to the table. Jermaine chuckled and fell backward onto his bed.

“So?”

“So?” Lauren mimicked back.

“What happened? Whose ass I got to kick tonight?”

Lauren looked down at her hands and fiddled with her fingernails, buying herself time while she decided just how much she wanted to tell this boy. She looked up and into his eyes and, without having one good reason why she should trust him, Lauren let the events of the past few weeks—the Dara and Marcus mess, the dance-squad debacle, the nasty e-mail, Sydney's outing Donald—tumble from her lips.

“I mean, everybody thinks that just because we're twins we're supposed to act alike, too, but my sister and I are two totally different people and there's no changing that,” Lauren said, getting teary again. “We fight like everybody else, and every once in a while it gets a little nastier than it should, but what she did this time was bananas. What's worse is that I'm starting to think she had something to do with that e-mail.”

“But why would she tell everybody you was shaking your ass in a video? That's some foul stuff that nobody would even believe—” Jermaine began.

Lauren cut him off. “Well, uh, thing is…” she hesitated, trying to find the right words to explain why she was at the video shoot in the first place.

Jermaine laughed. “Hold up—you did try out for a Thug Heaven video?”

“It's not funny, Jermaine,” Lauren shot back, jumping out of her chair.

“No, no, come on, I'm not laughing at you,” Jermaine said. “It's just that, you know, you all from Buckhead and whatnot, dressed in the hot clothes, riding in the hot car, Daddy all rich and stuff. I can't really picture you getting grimy on a Thug Heaven video set.”

“I didn't get grimy, Jermaine!” Lauren sneered.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way…”

“Then what did you mean, Jermaine?” Lauren asked as she paced the room. “I mean, if I wanted to be judged I could have stayed home.”

Jermaine stood up and pulled Lauren to him. “Come on, baby, I'm not judging you. I'm here for you—you know that,” he said, looking in her eyes. “You know that, right?”

“Well, let me break it down for you, okay, so you have all the right information. I did try out for the Thug Heaven video. I did not screw anybody in Thug Heaven or on the set. I do not know why my sister is telling the whole school I'm a ho, or what made her tell my folks that Donald is gay. Well, Donald
is
gay, but still…”

“Who's Donald?”

Lauren's shoulders slumped; she pulled back from Jermaine's embrace. “Donald is my friend, is all.”

“A friend, huh?”

“It's complicated,” Lauren said, twirling onto his bed.

“Complicated, huh?”

“For the record, Jermaine, Donald
is
gay. And up until tonight, my parents thought he was my boyfriend.”

“Now I'm really confused.” Jermaine laughed as he sat down next to Lauren.

“I'm his beard, he's mine when I need him to be,” Lauren said simply. “Or at least he was. His parents are shipping him off to boarding school on Monday.”

This time, Jermaine contained his laughter. “Wow. Um, and you don't know why Sydney did all of this?”

“She's mad about something—probably her damn boyfriend. I just can't figure out why she can't take it out on him. It's not my fault he's a dog.”

“But didn't you say he and Dara had something going on?”

“Yeah, but it wasn't a big deal, and I made sure that Dara ended it.”

“So how you know your sister didn't know about it?”

Now as crazy as it sounds, this was the first time that Lauren had considered just how much intel her sister might have had on the Dara and Marcus situation. “Damn,” she said.

“Look, Lauren, word is bond; your sister went out like a sucker if she sent that e-mail calling you a ho. But imagine if she really does know about the Dara situation? I mean, at the end of the day you can't care so much about what the people at your school think about you. You know what you are, and
your sister does, too. And I'm guessing it's the same for anybody else who truly cares about you.”

She didn't know what came over her when she did it, but just at that moment, Lauren leaned over and kissed Jermaine full on the lips—a soft, passionate one that said all the “thanks” she needed to convey. Jermaine returned it with a hearty “you're welcome,” as the two of them fell back onto his bed, kissing and touching and kissing some more. Jermaine touched her face softly, then let his hands linger from her neck, down to her shoulder, and along the side of her body. She returned his passion with an embrace, inviting him into her mouth and wrapping her arms around his neck. Lauren hadn't had any intention of doing this; she truly went to Jermaine's house to talk—just talk. Not do this. But she couldn't help herself.

Still, when he climbed on top of her and she felt his fingers on her breasts, she got nervous. And when she heard shuffling in the living room just beyond Jermaine's bedroom door, she jumped up.

“I gotta get out of here,” she said in a loud whisper.

Jermaine looked over at his digital alarm clock; it read 12:52
A.M.
“Yeah, it's late, huh?”