Lead Me Home by Stacy Hawkins Adams Page B

kidding!” Monica whispered back.
    The girls leaned toward each other, and into their conversation, forgetting that Shiloh completed their circle. Though they were oblivious to her presence, Shiloh tried to mask her surprise. This was a first, too. Both girls were lovely, but they had always seemed more focused on their music and their studies than on the routine teenage socializing and romantic drama that often came with it. Maybe they had been interested all along, she surmised, but had used their other interests to mask what they thought they were lacking.
    “Girl, you should have listened to your grandmama a long time ago,” Phaedra said. “That straight hair and lip gloss is the truth! Got the men trippin’ over you!”
    “Men?” Shiloh raised an eyebrow and folded her arms.
    The girls turned toward her, startled that she was still standing there.
    “Oh, you know what we meant, Mrs. Griffin. Young men—boys,” Phaedra said.
    Shiloh shook her head and walked away. Monica’s grandmother may not know what she had started. That statement-making, but unassuming, afro may have kept sweet little Monica a little more focused. And safe. With the reaction she was getting this morning, she might never go back.

twenty-one
    That day, Shiloh struggled to maintain discipline in class for the first time, and it was her favorite student’s fault.
    Monica’s new look was the talk of the entire band period, among the girls and the guys. Half the girls were hating on her, while the other half were trying to figure out how she had gone from thick and poofy one day, to straight and sleek the next.
    The boys couldn’t focus, notes were being missed, and chatter ensued like never before. If Shiloh weren’t trying to get the group prepared for the upcoming fall recital, their reaction to a simple style change might have been laughable. Instead, she was frustrated.
    She rapped on her music stand to silence them, and tried to do so without bringing any more attention to Monica.
    “Okay, everyone. We have to pay attention. Let’s get it together!”
    They managed to practice three songs, but none were up to par, as far as Shiloh was concerned.
    Monica seemed both self-conscious and exhilarated by the stir she had caused. She and Phaedra exchanged glances and giggles the entire period. Shiloh prayed that the inner beauty and sweetness she knew Monica possessed wouldn’t get lost in her new outer fabulousness. But if this look that her grandmother had convinced her to try wowed the summer camp audition judges like her grandmother was hoping, more power to her.
    Later that morning, as Shiloh strolled to the teachers’ lounge, she saw Monica in a position she hadn’t witnessed before—staring intothe eyes of a boy, who seemed to be saying just what she wanted to hear. Shiloh fought the urge to walk over and snatch her away, and her reaction surprised her. She was fretting over this girl like an overprotective aunt. What was the big deal? What teenage girl didn’t want to have a high school romance? Many did have them, and Monica wasn’t doing anything inappropriate.
    Still, when she saw Monica take the guy’s phone number and walk away with a grin as wide as a half moon, Shiloh knew the rest of the girl’s day, and semester, were going to take on a life of their own. When the boy turned and walked in the opposite direction with a smug grin of his own, Shiloh understood.
    He wasn’t just any boy. This was Trey Holloman, Sherman Park’s handsome star quarterback and citywide Student Athlete of the Year. And, according to all of the girls Shiloh had overhead talking, also the school’s most eligible bachelor.
    Shiloh was excited for Monica on one hand to see what must be her high school dating dreams come true, but on the other, fearful that a distraction like this might take her way off course. She told herself to relax; her eldest son was dating occasionally, despite his continued interest in Lia from Alabama, and balancing