Chapter One

August 1997

Melia

Melia sat on her front porch and starred down the street. She still couldn’t believe that the summer was already over. She didn’t even get a chance to do half of the traveling she wanted to do. Messing around with Ivan, the only place she actually did get to go was Atlanta.

She didn’t think much of Atlanta. To her, it was just another Chicago and besides, she went down there just about every weekend anyway. What she really wanted to do was visit her cousin in LA. Her cousin had been trying to get her to go out there since she moved after their junior year of high school.

Melia walked back inside and looked at the time on the wall in their family room. It was already 9:30 a.m. and Ivan still hadn’t come to pick her up.

I should have let my parents drive me to campus like they wanted to in the first place. But oh know, Mr. Ivan Daniels just insisted on driving his “Shorty” to campus for her first day of college. Whatever!

She hated when he called her, Shorty. It made her feel like a little kid. She’d been telling him ever since she got her roommate assignment in the mail that she wanted to get to campus as early as possible so she could pick her side of the room. Since Melia is an in-state student, she had to wait until today to move into her dorm, and lucky for her, her out-of-state roommate had a church conference to attend and wouldn’t be checking in until today.

It was her mother’s idea to call her future roommate. She said she wouldn’t be checking in until sometime this afternoon. Now Melia could get a head start if Ivan would hurry up and get there.

She checked the clock again. It was now 9:45 a.m. 
“This is what I’m talking about,” she ranted to herself. “That boy is so not dependable. I don’t even know why I’m with him. I take that back, yes I do, cause he is absolutely gorgeous and I do love him.”

Melia met Ivan her freshman year of high school. He was the only bright spot of her first day at Luther High School South. At first she didn’t want to go to the school but eventually grew to love it. Back then, she was mad at her parents for making her go and didn’t speak to them for two weeks. All of her friends from grammar school were going to Curie. But her parents wouldn’t allow her to go to a public school. So that first day of school, she was angry. She didn’t know anybody and really wasn’t trying to meet anyone. She was slamming her new books down in her locker when she first saw Ivan, actually, she heard him first.