Hotlanta by Mitzi Miller Page B

dark.
    â€œYou won’t be at Paintless anymore? What…”
    â€œYou didn’t think your father would eventually catch on to what I’ve been doing for you? In case you were wondering, he wasn’t a happy camper knowing I was helping you deceivehim. So my boss fired me. Just wanted to call and tell you to have a nice life.”
    â€œOh, God, Hal, I’m so—”
    Lauren’s apology was cut off by a dial tone. She silently cursed to herself; Altimus hadn’t let on that he knew about the accident or the loaner car when she and Lauren left for practice. He was probably home waiting for her ass, figuring out a way to punish her for real. For sure, this one probably would be worse than the time she and Sydney took the cherry red Sting Ray coupe—one of twelve in his classic car collection—for a spin to Lake Lanier sans his permission. He had called them everything but a child of God when they pulled back into the driveway with his ride, and then not only proceeded to bar them from driving their own cars for a month, but relegated them to calling a car service and begging rides from their friends (taking MARTA, Atlanta’s ridiculously inadequate commuter train system, was so not an option—the thing didn’t go past Stone Mountain, for Christ’s sake. And besides, it was gross—that much Lauren knew from riding on it once). Thank God Dara and Donald could shuttle her around, but it was still a major pain to have to depend on others for rides.
    Lauren put her Sidekick on vibrate and pushed it back into her purse, then walked out into the sanctuary. Though at any given choir practice she could find herself in a compromising position with one of her side pieces in her cuddlecorner (really, it was a small closet just off the pastor’s office), she didn’t often find herself on her knees in the Grace Temple AME Church of Christ. But today, she decided, she was going to have to do a little kneeling on that pulpit to ask God to save her ass from Altimus.

7
SYDNEY
    â€œHey, Lauren,” Sydney called across the hall to her sister’s room, “Lau-ren!”
    â€œWhat?” was the grumpy response she finally received.
    â€œWould you do me a favor?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œLauren, I’m serious.” Sydney gritted her teeth against the sound of her sister’s voice.
    â€œSo am I. Leave me alone,” Lauren replied in the same annoyed tone of voice.
    Sighing, Sydney walked over to Lauren’s room. “Lauren, it will take two seconds.”
    â€œGod, Syd, what part of ‘no’ don’t you get?” Lauren questioned from a very comfortable-looking spot on the middle of her extra-deep queen-size bed. “Besides, after that shityou pulled about you know who —trying to guilt me into going to see him. Man, please.”
    â€œI get what you said. For the record, nobody’s trying to guilt you into anything, I just thought you should know. Besides, you’re the last person that should be telling me no to anything considering I’m the one with the car you’ll need to borrow while you’re on punishment. Again,” Sydney said, referring to the two-hour, high-decibel chew-out Lauren got from Altimus as soon as they walked in from rehearsal for getting into a car accident and using the guys at Paintless to cover her tracks. Sydney tried desperately to make Altimus understand that his supposed punishment for Lauren—that she be “forced” to share Sydney’s ride until she could appreciate having and taking care of her own—was really a punishment for her, too. But Altimus was too pissed to bow to logic. Which Sydney thought was some straight bull. “I’m just saying, you’d think a girl would be grateful—or at least scared—the car she needs to drive will be unavailable to her when she needs it.”
    Sydney turned around and walked back to her room. By the