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the situation more personal by reminding her shortsighted sister that her very own boy-friend was also being considered a suspect for the same unsolved crime. “We can’t help Jermaine or Dice if all the boxes are destroyed.”
    Lauren’s eyes suddenly became as big as saucers at the sound of their parents walking down the hall. “Oh, my God, Syd, what if Mom notices that her old photo album is missing? You know she’ll say something,” she whispered. “And then Altimus…he’ll know.”

2
LAUREN
    Put it this way: When Lauren cooked up this particular scheme in the middle of her 2:35 A.M. Godiva-chocolate-covered-strawberry eating haze, it really did seem like a good idea. All she had to do was convince the masseuse, the manicurist, and the girl who gave her the custom brown-sugar-lime exfoliating facial to pretend she was in the room getting her spa treatments while she hightailed it on over to the West End to have a look-see for Jermaine. She needed to see him. She needed to make sure he was okay. And most important, she needed him to know that she loved him and had his back, no matter what Dice or Altimus or anybody else was up to, no matter what anyone else thought about it.
    This, of course, was something Lauren had been tryingto tell Jermaine ever since he was arrested and named as a suspect in his own brother’s murder, and everyone in the hood started making it known that Altimus Duke’s finger-prints, not Jermaine’s, were probably on the bloody metal rod the killer used to beat Rodney Watson so badly his mama had to have a closed-casket funeral. But Altimus and Keisha weren’t making it easy for her to get that message to Jermaine. Though they’d ended the girls’ joint punishment and finally stopped holding their cars and cells hostage, Lauren’s parents still had the parental supervision programs installed on the Macs that alerted them every time an e-mail was sent to an unauthorized account, and the monthly cell bill was on lockdown, so her texting, e-mail, and phone calls were still limited to computer class, various phone messages made from the front office “emergency” phone, and borrowed cells from friends. Still, despite her desperate pleas for him to reach out, her clandestine calls went unanswered.
    She’d expected more of the same when she IM’d Jermaine from a computer in the cheerleading field house just before the football game Friday night, but that didn’t stop Lauren from sending him another message. “Why won’t you talk to me?” she inquired. As usual, there was no answer, and she needed to get out to the field for the pregame stretch, so she left it alone. She thought for sure that she would faint, though, when Elizabeth Chiclana, a sophomore on the dancesquad, called Lauren back over to the computer. “Um, I think this is for you,” she sneered, pointing at the computer screen. It was an IM from Jermaine.
    â€œI just need some space to figure things out,” the message said simply.
    Lauren stared at the screen, mouth agape—temporarily forgetting that Elizabeth was not only watching her every move, but now had evidence of the message right there in front of her to tell the entire world, which was already more enthralled in the Duke family drama than they were the current season of The Hills. And Elizabeth was a nosy heiffa, too, so it wouldn’t be but two seconds before she reported Jermaine’s IM to the entire Brookhaven junior class, or worse, posted it on YoungRichandTriflin.com. Damn, what the hell was I thinking, Lauren thought. Damn, what the hell is he thinking, Lauren thought some more. I’ve got to see him face-to-face.
    Which is how she ended up plotting out her harebrained scheme to get back to the West End—with her mother’s help. She was going to talk her way into Keisha’s spa appointment, then dip out and get back before Keisha realized