Read an Excerpt

1

Camille

These chicks were off the chain!

I couldn't do anything but stare in awe at the twelve girls on the auditorium stage. Not only did they look cute as all get-out in their tight black low-riders and pink satin T-shirts with "Theta Diva" spelled out in rhinestones, but they were doing moves I'd never seen before. We were at my school's step show. The Thetas were the third act, and they were turning the place out.

As a member of my high school's drill team, I can appreciate a good dancer, but these girls were dancing and stepping like they were starring in that Stomp the Yard movie. They had the crowd going wild.

One of my best friends, Alexis, must've been thinking the same thing because she leaned in to me and shouted over the thumping rap music, "Girl, what's the name of this group again?"

"They're called the Theta Ladies. It's a sorority at my school," I responded as we stood with the crowd and applauded like crazy while they exited the stage.

Although the sorority was on campus at a lot of other high schools here in Houston, the Thetas had just started at my school last year. I'd seen the girls around campus, wearing their pink-and-white T-shirts, but I'd never paid them much attention. Until now.

"Gimme a break. They ain't all that," my other best friend, Jasmine, said as she turned up her nose. I ignored her. Jasmine always had something negative to say. Not many things impressed her and she always found something wrong with everything.

Jasmine had come a long way from when we first met her a year and a half ago, though. That's when we all joined the Good Girlz, a community service group formed by Rachel Jackson Adams, the firstlady of this church in our neighborhood.

I know the name may sound a little hokey, but don't get it twisted. We aren't some Goody Two-shoes group. In fact, Miss Rachel started the group as part of a youth outreach program at Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church, where her husband was pastor. Even though her daddy was a preacher, Miss Rachel was buck wild as a teenager; and now that she was grown, she wanted to do something to help teens who were headed down the wrong path. And boy, were we headed down the wrong path.

I was actually facing jail time when I hooked up with the Good Girlz. It's almost unbelievable, since I had never been in any major trouble before that, but the dog who used to be my boyfriend had my nose wide open. Six months after me and Keith started going together, he got arrested for carjacking an old lady. He kept saying he didn't do it. I believed him, but he couldn't wait for justice to prevail so he broke out of jail. (We later found out he really didn't do it. It was his stepbrother.)

After he escaped, Keith had me hide him at my grandma's house. The thing was, I didn't even know he'd broken out. He told me they let him go. Anyway, the police eventually found him at my grandma's house, and that fool took off through a back window and left me to take the rap for hiding him.

So when the judge told me it was either jail or the Good Girlz, well, you can see that was a no-brainer. Let me just tell you, I'm too cute for jail. (People tell me all the time I look like a prettier version of Kyla Pratt, that girl who played on the TV show One on One.)

It's a good thing I joined the Good Girlz because the police later found Keith hiding out at his baby mama's house. Did I mention that I didn't know he had a baby? Or a baby mama? So, I probably would've been in prison for real for killing him if it wasn't for the Good Girlz.

"Look how they're strutting around like they're all that." Jasmine's voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

I grinned as I watched the Thetas walk down the aisle. Everyone was stopping them and giving them props. "They are all that," I said, my voice full of admiration.

"Really, they're not," Jasmine snarled.

I blew her off because Jasmine was my girl, funky attitude and all. Miss Rachel had made Jasmine join the Good Girlz after breaking up a fight between her and this boy named Dedrick. At six feet tall, Jasmine wasn't anybody you wanted to mess with. Just ask Dedrick. She had beat him like he stole something just because he was teasing her.

Jasmine has actually toned down some of her mean ways over the last year and a half. Although you'd never know it by the way she was sitting over there with her nose all turned up.

"I didn't know they even had sororities in high school," Alexis said.

Alexis was the rich girl of the group. Her dad is some big-time businessman, and her family has beaucoup money. She resembled Beyoncé (and she didn't hesitate to let you know it) and was always dressed in the tightest clothes, looking like she had just stepped off the cover of a magazine. But she's so cool that her bourgie ways don't bother me. Most of the time anyway.

I turned my attention back to Alexis, since she was just as hyped as I was.

"Yeah, lots of high schools have sororities," I said.

"Have you ever thought about joining?" the fourth member of our group, Angel, leaned in and asked. She'd been so quiet I'd almost forgotten she was there. But that was Angel's nature. She was the sweet, quiet one of the group. Getting pregnant at fifteen had made her grow up pretty fast, especially because her baby's daddy was this triflin' boy named Marcus, who didn't even claim their daughter, Angelica. I loved Angel, and her daughter was so adorable, but I wouldn't trade places with her for anything in the world.

"I think it would be cool to be a Theta," Alexis said wistfully. "But they don't have them at my school."

Alexis was the only one of us that didn't go to Madison High School. She went to a private school called St. Pius on the other side of town.

"I told you about that new rule the school district has that lets students participate in extracurricular activities at another school if your school doesn't offer it," I said. "So, you could join the Thetas at our school."

"For real?" she asked, wide-eyed.

I nodded as the next sorority made their way on to the stage. Sure, I'd watch them perform; but for me, the Thetas had already stolen the show.

Copyright © 2008 by ReShonda Tate Billingsley