“Whose fault is it?” Tasha asks.
“My daddy says it’s because he doesn’t have a father figure. He sees that a lot in his congregation.”
“You mean his church of twenty that he holds in your basement?” Tasha asks.
“It’ll be a big church one day and you won’t be talking smack then,” Michelle says. “He used to have a good-size congregation when we lived in Texas.”
“My father skipped out before I was born and you don’t see me going to jail,” I say. “It’s Donnell’s third time in. Don’t make like he’s a choirboy.”
“It’s only his second time,” Michelle says, as if it still makes him eligible for that choirboy job. “Not that I’m defending him or anything.”
“Yeah, you are, and you need to give it up,” Tasha adds. “Donnell ain’t thinking about you, especially if he’s in jail. If he’s thinking about anything other than how his public defender is going to get him off, it’s going to be how he can get even with Chanti.”
Uh, what?
“Why does he care anything about her?” Michelle asks, looking at me suspiciously.
“I heard he knows it was Chanti who told you about Rhonda Hodges.”
“How would he know that unless you told?” I ask Michelle.
“Because I told,” she says, seeming not to care one bit that I now have an ex-con gunning for me. That’ll be the last time I mind someone else’s business.
“I also heard MJ isn’t talking to Chanti because she double-crossed her.”
“Tasha, how come half your sentences start with ‘I heard’?” I say, angry not so much with Tasha’s gossiping than with the fact that she’s probably right on both counts.
“You used to ask me for the scoop all the time, Chanti. Now that it’s about you, suddenly you don’t want to hear it.”
Tasha doesn’t understand. I’m starting eleventh grade and never had a real boyfriend, I have to keep my mother’s job a secret on a block where the truth would get us run out at gunpoint, and I have to start a new school tomorrow. With all that going on, I really don’t need to hear two crazy ex-cons might have it in for me.
DRAMA HIGH
by L. Divine
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SO NOT THE DRAMA
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THAT’S WHAT’S UP!
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FLIPPING THE SCRIPT
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PERRY SKKY JR.
by Stephanie Perry Moore
An inspirational series that follows the adventures of a high school football star as he balances faith and the temptations of teen life.
PRIME CHOICE
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PRESSING HARD
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PROBLEM SOLVED
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DAFINA KTEEN BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2013 by Kimberly Reid
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-8607-9
Sweet 16 to Life Page 19
