Hotlanta by Mitzi Miller

Author:Mitzi Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

14

LAUREN

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,

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