Hot and Humid (Laurmani)

Chapter 15

The friendly, middle-aged woman gave me the gate code to give to my mother over the phone. She stayed with me until my mom arrived. My mother and I thanked her for being so caring to a stranger. We got in my mom's car and made our way to the house. Before we could get there, I urged my mother to pull over. The thought of Lauren being dead and imagining her lifeless body overwhelmed me to the point that I had to throw up.

When we finally got home, I asked my mother where my father was. She said he was at the grocery store and would be back soon. I wanted both of them with me. I needed all of the support I could get. While we sat on the living room couch and my mother held me, I began crying again. I must have been crying for at least 10 minutes straight before my father walked through the door. The tears wouldn't stop flowing.

"Andrea, what's wrong with Normani?" my father asked my mother.

My mother hesitated to respond. "Um. She just found out Lauren committed suicide."

My father had a look of amusement and a wide smile broke out across his face. "Pffffff!" He grabbed his stomach and cackled loudly.

"Derrick! There is nothing remotely funny about this. Your daughter is in pain," my mom scolded my dad.

He tried to say something, but started laughing even harder. Struggling to catch his breath, he finally got out what he wanted to say, "I just saw Lauren at the store. I know she's as pale as a corpse, but I'm pretty sure she was alive."

I lifted my head from my mother's shoulder to address my father. "What?"

"She told me to tell you that she misses you and is still waiting for you to come back to her. Where did you get the idea that she committed suicide?"

"I..." I was so confused. Lauren lives alone, and the description of the woman who died fit her. The ethnicity, age, her appearance, experiencing a breakup...everything matched. "I'm going to call her." I got up from the couch and went to my room for privacy. I pressed the call button for Lauren in my contacts, and on the second ring, she answered the phone. I have to admit that it was kind of eerie hearing her voice after being sure she was dead.

"Normani?" she said in her usual raspy voice.  

"You're alive!" I cried.

"Uh. Of course I am." She was obviously bewildered by my last statement.

"I went to your apartment, and they pulled a dead, 21 year old Hispanic woman out of it. She had shot herself in the head, lived in apartment number 303, was a college student, and had just gone through a breakup. I thought it was you," I explained.

"Normani, are you on drugs? If that dentist boyfriend of yours got you hooked on prescription drugs or something, I'm going to slit his throat."

"I'm not on drugs. This really happened. I know I'm not imagining things," I insisted.

"You were at 155 South Terrace Drive?"

"155 South Terrace Drive? You wrote down 1555 Terrace Drive," I informed her.

"No, that was an 'S' for south. 1555 Terrace Drive is the barrio," clarified Lauren.

"What the hell? The 'S' looked just like your fives and was right next to the street number."

"Sorry. I have sloppy handwriting. Wow. A Hispanic woman the same age as me, in the same apartment number, and a college student.... Oh! Now, I remember. I wasn't really paying attention, but I heard on the news that some chick named Laura Hernandez or something like that was found dead in her apartment. That must have been her. God, you must have been scared shitless"