12 The Lull Before The Storm

IMANI

"You got home early," a voice said, startling Imani and making her drop the phone she was holding to the floor.

She had been going through the spam section of her e-mail, looking for the e-mail she had received from Vinay Sanjana when she was in the institute, and was about to check the trash section when the voice broke the silence.

She picked her phone from the floor before looking up from the couch she was sitting on to see Lola standing in the doorway of the living room. Lola was wearing a greenish-blue gown that was made of soft, satiny fabric and her chestnut brown hair was pulled into a ponytail. She was also holding a couple of shopping bags that had Kron and Lancaster written on their sides.

She hadn't expected her friend to come home today since Desmond said her boyfriend, Takeda, had picked her up in the morning and whenever that happened she always stays at his place for the night and comes home at dawn the next day.

"How do you know?" she asked and Lola raised her phone up, reminding her that the car always sent an alert to the phone it was connected to whenever it was commanded by someone that wasn't its primary owner.

"There are a lot of reporters and drones outside," Lola said and Imani nodded.

She knew they had arrived due to the incessant ringing of the doorbell, which she eventually turned off, a few minutes after Desmond and Kyle left the house at eight-thirty PM.

"Parisa gave me the day off," Imani stated before remembering that Lola had been picked up by her boyfriend earlier in the day. "I was expecting you to come home tomorrow."

"Takeda had something to attend to." Lola walked into the living room and sat next to Imani, dropping the bags she was holding on the floor, before looking around. "Where's Des?"

"He and Kyle went to the shopping mall. They're getting new clothes and shoes to prepare for their internship at your dad's company."

Desmond and Kyle were in there final year in the Barnes Academy of Science and Technology. They were going to graduate in a few months and one of the requirements for being able to graduate is interning at a company.

Desmond had told his sister that he and Kyle had chosen to intern at Sutton Inc. and they were starting on Monday.

"Oh... They could have ordered it online though," Lola muttered as Imani checked her phone for cracks in the screen that it might have gotten from the fall.

Ordering online was quite simple since the person ordering could see how the clothes would look on them. After clicking on the cloth that one wants to order on an online shopping website on a phone, the camera emanates a white glow that scans the person's body. Then the cloth is displayed in a holographic form on the body. If it's a perfect fit, the white glow turns green and if it's not, it turns red.

It wasn't always reliable though because the scanning interface could be wrong about the cloth being the right fit at times.

Imani had suggested that to them when they came home after school but Desmond reminded her of what once happened when she ordered clothes online. It became a 'what I ordered versus what I got' post on Lola's social media account on the Weaver platform.

"I told them but they didn't want to."

"Okay. I'll go drop these in my room," Lola said, gesturing to the bags at her feet before she picked them up and headed out of the living room.

Imani continued searching for Vinay's e-mail after she didn't find cracks in the phone's screen. She didn't see the e-mail in the trash section either.

'Should I e-mail the customer support?' she thought. She wanted to assume that the message was not meant for her but her name was in the e-mail.

She checked if Jacob Peterson had replied to the message she sent to him after she left the institute.

Last night, Jacob had texted Imani and the message said that he needed to talk to her today and it was urgent.

There were no reporters in the parking lot after she left the institute in the morning so she had waited in the car and called him but his number was switched off. She then went back into the institute to ask the receptionists if he was around but they said he wasn't so she texted him on her way home.

Lola came back to the living room. She was wearing pyjamas and holding a shopping bag that had 'Lancaster' written on its side.

"I got this for you," she said as she held out the bag to Imani. "For your date tomorrow."

Kurt had called Imani shortly after she left the institute to tell her about the date and ask if he should come pick her up tomorrow.

'No wonder he's a musician,' she had thought when she heard his melodic voice.

"Awww," Imani cooed and collected it before pulling out its content. "Thank you."

It was a red one shoulder dress with a hem that finished below the knee and a slit that ran up to mid-thigh on its left side.

"Thank you," she said again with a smile as she hugged the dress.

"You can wear it with the Kron high heels you got last week. I'm going to make something to eat. Do you want something too?"

"No. I'm okay," Imani replied and Lola walked out of the living room.

She dropped the dress back into the bag and placed it next to her on the couch before opening her email again.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Lola announced from the kitchen. "Your car has been fixed. It will be brought home tomorrow, either in the morning or afternoon."

"Okay. Thank you."

She clicked on compose before quickly typing and sending a message to support about the e-mail she couldn't find.