Free Home Is Where My People Are: The Roads That Lead Us to Where We Belong by Sophie Hudson Page A

absolutely nothing about this plan that didn’t appeal to me.
    A couple of days after the last exam of my freshman year, I packed my car and drove to Atlanta. Since I felt like it was important to strike the right chord in terms of what was sure to be a very sophisticated summer in the big city, I planned my outfit very carefully. I chose a two-piece maroon ensemble (#HailState) (#GoDogs) with an abstract, cream-colored print all over it, and I paired my stylish knitwear with some fairly horrendous white suede bucks that were my favorite wardrobe item at the time. They reminded me of something Jennifer Grey would have worn in Dirty Dancing , and it’s only now that it occurs to me that maybe I should have reevaluated my footwear standards.
    I also used my fake Ray-Bans as a headband because I thought that made me look cool, like Jami Gertz in Less Than Zero .
    So I think I’ve clearly established that I had some questionable style icons.
    Hindsight’s brutal, y’all.
    Since I’d planned most of my road trip sound track well in advance, I made sure that my red canvas cassette tape holder was riding shotgun as I drove east on I-20. I alternated between George Strait, Billy Joel, Amy Grant, the Dirty Dancing sound track, and James Taylor, and as I crossed the Georgia state line, I was giddy with independent feelings. I was going to be a CAREER GIRL (well, kind of) and TAKE ATLANTA BY STORM (well, not really) and SET THE CITY ON FIRE (well, not at all, and besides, Atlanta had already been on fire once before, thanks to General Sherman, so obviously my choice of metaphor was dicey at best). If Kelly Clarkson and Destiny’s Child had been around back then, I would have been blasting “Miss Independent” and “Survivor” out of my sweet Delco stereo speakers. I might have even rolled down the windows and screamed the lyrics at the Georgia pines, but the Buick’s windows weren’t always cooperative about rolling back up, and it would have been a shame to let the wind ruin my cool Jami Gertz hair or, even worse, lose those Ray-Ban knockoffs that were worth fives of dollars.
    (Also, I feel like I need to point out that even though the Destiny’s Child song would have totally fit my mood, I hadn’t really survived anything at that point in my life.)
    (Well, that’s not entirely true.)
    (I’d survived the whole acid-washed jeans craze.)
    (But that hardly merits a heartfelt rendition of a not-yet-existent pop anthem.)
    It was late in the afternoon when I finally arrived in Atlanta, and to my delight, Sister was at Kerri’s house when I pulled in the driveway. Kerri lived in a gorgeous older neighborhood off Peachtree Road, and she also drove a Volvo, so she was pretty much the yuppiest person I had ever known. After I said my hellos and unloaded my car and visited with Sister and Kerri in the dining room/makeshift office, I found myself filled with all manner of hope regarding the summer of 1988.
    It was going to be awesome.

    Kerri’s house was a 1920s bungalow with loads of charm: there were big windows, hardwood floors, and even a few original light fixtures scattered throughout. However, Kerri’s husband, who fancied himself a bit of a DIY-er, had passed away unexpectedly several years before, and several of the projects he’d started were still incomplete when Paige and I moved in. We were just young enough to see the unfinished stuff as interesting and not annoying, so we thought it was quirky and fun that the hallway between the kitchen and the dining room didn’t actually go anywhere. It was like someone had plopped down a giant, hollow Jenga stick in the most central part of the house, and while it would have made a lovely hallway if it had actually, you know, led to some rooms, as it stood, it gave Kerri some extra storage space for her winter clothes.
    The area on the other side of the kitchen was just as perplexing. Kerri’s late husband had added on an area that would have eventually been their master