“Hey, J,” Sydney said brightly.
“Hey, Syd,” he replied hesitantly. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Not at all,” she answered, smiling at the sound of his voice. Abandoning her search for the keys, she walked away from the front door. The last thing she wanted was to have this conversation within fifty feet of her mother’s supersonic ears.
“Yeah, so I see you called earlier…” Jason began.
“Mmm-hmm, sure did,” she said as she faced the water fountain.
“Sorry it took so long to hit you back. I offered to give a couple of teammates a ride out to Decatur after practice and it took much longer than expected,” he explained.
Sydney thought about all the horrible reasons she’d created in her mind for the time lapse. Carmen and Rhea were never going to let her live her schizoid car behavior down. “It’s fine. I figured you’d get around to it when you had a chance,” she said nonchalantly.
“Well, I don’t want you to think I was blowing you off or anything crazy like that,” Jason continued.
“Not at all,” Sydney said, pretending to be shocked at the idea.
“Cool, cool,” he replied slowly. “So here’s the thing. I really can’t do much ‘til next week besides eat, sleep, practice, and repeat.”
“Oh,” Sydney replied, immediately disappointed. Paranoia rising, she wondered whether his schedule was really that tight or if he’d seen the commotion in the gym and decided she was too much drama to deal with. “That’s too bad. I was kinda hoping—”
“But, um, I mean, I can definitely give you a call when I’m free,” he interjected before she could even finish her sentence.
Genuinely relieved again, Sydney happily accepted his rain check. “You know, I’d like that.”
“True,” Jason responded. “Me, too.”
6
LAUREN
“I mean, seriously—did you see her?” Lauren asked, leaning into the full-length mirror in the dance squad clubhouse, her new groupies, Cassie Aaron and Inga Union, clinging to her every word. After the embarrassing Sydney versus Dara screaming match at the pep rally the day before, Lauren was on the warpath, and Dara, her ex-best friend, was the official enemy. It was because of that heiffa that Sydney was mad at the world again, with Lauren back out in the doghouse. Normally, Lauren wouldn’t really give two buckets about Sydney’s attitude, but, right about now, her sister was the only person on the earth who knew all the intel on the West End saga. So she kinda needed not to be on Syd’s shit list (though she’d never admit that mess out loud). She wasn’t sure if going after Dara would get Sydney to snap out of her funk, but it was worth a try. Besides, Lauren needed to get back at her for getting all flip in the lip with her in front of the squad and half the student body while she was getting her shine on.
Forget what you heard: This was Lauren’s damn house, literally. Altimus had seen to it. The year before the twins made their way from Harbor Montessori Middle to Brookhaven, Altimus, at Keisha’s direction, contributed $150,000 to his daughters’ future school, half of which Brookhaven officials quickly dedicated to a fund created specifically to benefit the schools’ cheerleading squads. The donation came with the strong “suggestion” that a building be erected in honor of the dance squad, and, of course, its generous benefactor. The wall in the clubhouse made very clear who ruled the edifice: A month before the twins began their freshman year at Brookhaven, the janitorial staff, at the direction of Brookhaven’s vice chancellor and dance squad faculty advisor, painted the inside walls hot pink with light pink polka dots in Lauren’s honor and hung portraits of the past dance squad captains in order of service, with a spot reserved for whichever Duke girl would be anointed dance squad captain. Lauren’s picture went up in her sophomore year, smack in the center of all the others at the head of the room (double the size of all the others, of course). Shoot, the name on the façade said all anyone needed to know—it wasn’t called the Duke House for nothing. Of all people, Dara should have known better than to disrespect the legacy.
So on this day, as the dance squad prepared to move the crowd at the football game against College Park High, Lauren’s mission was to remind everyone, but especially Dara, just who the hell was in charge. She was going to absolutely obliterate her ex-best friend’s rep at Brookhaven—so let it be said, so let it be done. Lauren dabbed some Bare Escentuals nude gloss on her bottom lip, rubbed both lips together to spread the shine, then went in for the kill. “Are ‘honey blonde streaks randomly dispersed throughout jet-black Hawaiian silky-past-the-shoulder-blades’ hot now? Really? Wow,” Lauren said wryly to her audience. Cassie and Inga howled so hard they practically had to hold each other up.
“And her decision to pair the Catherine Malandrino knockoff mini with those nurse shoes was, um, interesting,” Lauren piled on, speaking slowly to make sure the duo could give a friends-and-family encore performance of her Dara disses. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but just because the tag says ‘Prada’ doesn’t make it so. Carrying bootleg handbags is against some kind of town ordinance in these parts, isn’t it? Really, she needs to put it back in her broke-ass mama’s closet, or somebody needs to call in the law, or both.”
“Oh, my God,” Inga said between gasps. “Stop. It. Now. I can’t go on—I can do no more.”
“For real, you know you wrong,” Cassie added, carefully rubbing tears from her eyes so as not to disturb her freshly applied mascara and eyeliner.
“No, Dara’s wrong for showing up to dance rehearsal with an unauthorized makeover a few hours before our game,” Lauren snipped. “I really was about to have a Naomi Campbell, hit-a-bitch-with-a-cellphone moment, but, lucky for her, my new iPhone is acting up.”
“Don’t you mean your mother confiscated your iPhone? That is why it’s ‘out of service,’ right?”
Lauren caught Dara’s image in the mirror, connected the voice with its owner, got a firm grasp of the words that had just come out of her mouth, and then saw red. No way she was standing in the middle of Lauren’s sacred domain, yelling out all her business for the world to hear and post on YRT.
“Actually, sweetie, no one was talking to you, so why don’t you pick up your lip and get the hell on,” Lauren sneered as she turned to face Dara. She let her eyes lumber slowly up Dara’s body, from her shoes up to the top of her weave, then shook her head, gave a little chuckle, and faced the mirror again, like she was finished. But Dara wasn’t about to go down that easily.
“You may not have been talking to me, but you damn sure were talking about me,” Dara snipped. “But let me tell you something, Ms. Duke. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
“Ew,” Lauren said, adding a mocking shiver. “You’re so…so…deep.” Cassie and Inga snickered, giving Lauren even more inspiration to bury Dara. “Did you pick that up at one of your sessions at the Total Learning Concepts tutoring program you’re in? Glad to see your mother’s getting her money’s worth.”
“Look, you can try to bad-mouth me all you want, but the fact still remains that Marcus is mine now, your sister is old news, and, well, your little Boyz N the Hood fantasy is crashing and burning right before your pretty little eyes,” Dara said. “How is your boo Jermaine, anyway?”
“Please,” Lauren laughed, turning around. Dara flinched when Lauren took a step closer; Cassie and Inga leaned in. “You ain’t nothing but Marcus’s plus one—a groupie who’ll be dismissed with a quickness after he finishes wearing you out. I give it, oh,” Lauren looked at her TAG, “to the end of the weekend. Tops. Hope you got someone lined up. Oh, wait—there’s always someone lined up for you, right, Dara?”
“I learned from the best,” Dara said, albeit weakly.
“Yeah, well, um, obviously, your note taking was about as effective as it is in most of your classes. Unfortunate for you, I’m not giving remedial lessons. Now, why don’t you run along, dear, get changed, and maybe pull that Hawaiian silky into a bun so you don’t call so much atten
tion to yourself while we’re out on the field. My field.”
“Actually, I won’t be cheering tonight, or any other night on this squad,” Dara said. “Screw this, I quit. I don’t need to be on this stupid team anyway.”
“Well yeah for us!” Lauren said, punctuating the “yeah” with a rah-rah toss of her hands and a kick for good measure.
“Look for me up in the stands—I’ll be sitting in Marcus’s lap,” she said, turning abruptly on her heels and heading for the exit.
“Tell Marcus he should use two condoms,” Lauren yelled.
This time, Dara didn’t bother answering back.
Lauren turned back to the mirror and checked her gloss one more time. She could hear the band lining up in the hallway, tuning up its instruments as it prepared to make its entrance. “Come on, y’all,” Lauren said, switching her hips on her way toward the locker room door, Cassie and Inga hot on her trail. “It’s showtime.”
Lauren swore she saw her life flash before her eyes. The burly offensive lineman from College Park High was intent on not letting tight end Jason Danden make first down again, and so he did everything within his power to keep him from the 42-yard line, putting every ounce of his strength, speed, and brutishness into pancaking Jason into Brookhaven’s sideline, right at the feet of the dance squad. Lauren was just finishing up a chant, bouncing around on her toes, and hyping the crowd when they piled into a heap on top of her sparkling silver Reeboks, sending both her and her pom-poms flying into several other squad members. The College Park lineman bounced up like it wasn’t anything, hooting and high-fiving his fellow teammates over his victorious sack, but Lauren was clearly going to need a minute or two to get over her near-death experience.
“You okay?” Jason asked, rushing over and extending his hand to help Lauren up. Still stunned, Lauren couldn’t find any words for a response, but she grabbed his hand and let him pull her to her feet. Damn—he was kind of a hottie. If she wasn’t strung out on Jermaine like a crackhead, she might have had to make like a good Christian and extend the hand of fellowship to Jason in her cuddle corner at church on Sunday.
“You okay?” Jason repeated before shoving back his mouthpiece. Lauren, now surrounded by her fellow squad members swarming and clucking and dusting dirt off her knees and skirt, managed an “I’m good,” before Jason rushed back onto the field, his teammates slapping his back and yelling and offering up “way to hustle.”
“Ohmigod, Lauren, you almost got sacked by number ninety-five,” Cassie said.
“Well, nobody said this job wasn’t hazardous,” Lauren offered, still a bit stunned. “I hope they at least give his ass a flag for tackling Jason out of bounds.”
“Nope—nada,” said Inga, sucking her teeth. “I swear that ref must be on College Park’s payroll. He’s conveniently missing all the calls and we’re getting k-i-l-l-e-d out there.”
“Shoot, we’d be getting slayed even if every call went our way. Brookhaven football officially sucks ass,” Lauren chuckled as she grabbed her pom-poms from Cassie. “Come on, everybody—I’m all right,” she insisted. “Time for the basket toss. Cassie, Inga, you guys base me.”
And with swift precision, the squad lined up in three groups of four, with Lauren in the middle, smiling and happily accepting her applause from the crowd, which was on its feet and clapping for her miraculously quick comeback.
“B-R-O-O-K-H-A-V-E-N,” the squad yelled as Lauren and the two other flyers were hoisted into the air. Lauren, who learned from Keisha how to concentrate and hold the attention of the crowd by focusing on one specific person in the audience, scanned the bleachers to find someone to stare at as Cassie, Inga, and another squad member, Morgan, hoisted her into the air. The field lights blared down on the bleachers, giving a spotlight effect on the crowd, which pulsed with blue-and-silver “Brookhaven Eagles” sweatshirts and flags, and painted faces contorted into angry directives for the team to “Come on!” and “Hustle, Eagles, hustle!” Somehow, Lauren’s eyes landed on a shirt that wasn’t blue, perhaps because it stood out from the school colors that dominated the stands, perhaps because he was one of the few people not clapping and yelling like a maniac. This person, a young man, was wearing neon yellow—a hoodie—with an oversized gray T-shirt with a silver skull peeking from beneath. His cap was twisted to the side of his face but pulled down low, almost as if he were trying to hide behind it. But, for Lauren, that face was unmistakable.
It was Jermaine.
Lauren’s heart raced as Cassie and Inga popped her into the air. She’d performed the move she was executing—a kewpie—a million times, but this minute, right now, she could barely breathe, let alone stick her jump with her man staring back at her. As she waited for the count-off that would signal her bases to pop her into a basket toss, Lauren searched Jermaine’s face for a sign that he was watching her back. Their eyes connected just as Lauren pushed off Cassie’s and Inga’s open palms; if she wasn’t mistaken, she saw a smile cross his face just as she hit the ground.
The impact made Lauren black out, if only for a second. But she quickly came to her senses—had to. What kind of mess was this, the captain of the dance squad busting her ass in front of a stadium full of people? “Seriously, I’m fine, dammit,” Lauren insisted as she struggled to get up off the turf. Truthfully, her head hurt like hell, and her left knee, which was scraped and bleeding, felt like it was going to fall off her leg. But the last thing she wanted to suffer through was everybody fussing over her while she sat on her behind humiliated in front of hundreds of onlookers, who’d sent up a collective “Doh!” when Lauren missed her queue and fell directly on top of Cassie before rolling onto the ground. A few people stood up to get a closer look at Lauren mopping up the floor; still others covered their mouths and pointed as they exchanged “Did you see that?” stories with their seatmates. Lauren caught a glimpse of Dara mid-fallout, pushing on Marcus’s shoulder while the two of them laughed it up. That made Lauren see red.
“Don’t touch me,” Lauren yelled at Cassie and Inga, whom she made a mental note to torture at the next practice. Maybe she’d make them do ten-pound arm curls for a half hour straight, so they’d have the strength next time to catch their flier before she hit the turf.
Lauren popped up on to her feet and a forced herself to do a “high V” and a “herkie jump” to signal to the crowd that it was all good, and then hopped through the squad’s signature Eagles chant while she scanned the bleachers for Jermaine. But he was gone, his spot in the center thirteenth row now filled by some fool with his face painted silver and blue, screaming at the top of his lungs and waving a “Go Eagles!” flag.
He was not at the concession stand. He was not near the funnel cake booth or the Brookhaven paraphernalia tent. He wasn’t by the bathrooms. Lauren pushed past the rowdy Brookhaven fans waving their flags and hooting and hollering and chanting and bumping chests like the football team had just won the Super Bowl—Brookhaven was victorious, 36 to 35—hobbling all over the state-of-the-art football complex, looking for him under the bleachers, near the football clubhouse, and in the parking lot near her car. But Jermaine wasn’t in any of those places, either. Indeed, by the time she finished searching for him, Lauren pretty much convinced herself that her eyes were playing tricks on her and that the guy in the neon yellow hoodie really wasn’t Jermaine—just her wishful thinking. She hobbled back to the Duke House, anxious to nurse her swollen knee with an ice pack and then change out of her dirty uniform so she could get back home. Most of the squad had already made their way to their cars while Lauren was on her Jermaine hunt, so, thankfully, she had the locker room all to herself. Just as she hobbled up to her locker, situated right in front of the full-length mirror and flat-screen television, she heard a cell phone ring tone sound out in the quiet room. She looked around to see who might be there with her and got a little frightened for a moment as she searched for the source of the ring tone—it was D’Angelo’s “Lady.” Her ears led her to her own locker; she moved her tow
el and makeup bag and felt around the top shelf until her hand landed on the vibrating piece of metal—a KRZR with a note attached to it that said, “Answer Me.” Lauren opened the phone and pushed out a tentative “Hello” that sounded more like a question than a greeting.
“I’ve missed you,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
Lauren, who was holding her breath, exhaled and let out a tight little scream. “Jermaine? Is that you?” she asked excitedly. “Where are you?”
“Whoa, whoa, first things first,” he laughed. “How’s that knee?”
“Knee? What the?…Boy! Where are you?” Lauren demanded. “And how did you get into my locker? And whose phone is this?”
Jermaine was quiet at first. “I wish I could be right there next to you, but it’s just not safe right now.”
“So I hear,” Lauren said under her breath.
“Lauren, look, I’ll give you more details later,” he continued, missing her comment completely. “But right now, I just want to make sure that you’re straight. You good?”
“The best I’ve been in weeks.” Lauren sighed. “I’ve been so worried about you, wondering where you are, thinking you didn’t want me anymore because you didn’t answer my e-mails and phone calls, and your moms has made it clear she doesn’t want me to call the house. Your cell phone is disconnected.”
“Yeah, I had to drop the number; it was hot. But I got a new phone, and a friends and family plan so that I could get one for you, too. Don’t give the number out, okay? Think of it like our special hotline. I’ll only call you, you only call me on this number, okay?
“Now look, ma, I gotta bounce, but I’m going to try to call you later on tonight, or maybe tomorrow. You should put the phone on vibrate so your pops don’t know you got a phone—”
If Only You Knew Page 6
