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ignored her classmate.
    “Yeah, we oughta kick her ass, snatch that weave off her head. Thinking she’s better than everybody, that bitch bettah recognize!”
    Destiny’s loudmouthed nemesis, Carmen, signaled her friends and began walking behind Destiny.
    “Hey, Destiny!” a young man shouted from across the street.
    “Hey, Adam.”
    Adam shot a mean look at Carmen before sidling up next to Destiny on the sidewalk. “Don’t pay those fools no mind, baby girl. They’re just mad they’re not you.”
    Destiny shrugged, but was thankful that her best friend had come along when he did. Carmen was always threatening her, but Destiny wasn’t afraid: partly because she felt Carmen was just full of hot air—hating on her because Carmen Cook’s mother, Patricia, couldn’t stand Katherine or her relatives by default—and partly because of the industry-strength Mace she always carried at the ready. Girls had despised her ever since she could remember. “Because you’re chosen,” her grandmother had told her. Destiny wasn’t going to risk getting her face scarred up fighting, but she’d Mace the hell out of anybody who attacked her.
    Adam unlocked his car doors and he and Destiny climbed inside. “Baby girl,” he said once he’d started the car and rolled out of the school parking lot. “You want to go with us to the movies tonight? We’re gonna check out Tyler Perry’s new movie.”
    “No. I have to study.”
    “On a Friday night? Girl, you’re already a straight-A student. What are you going for, teacher’s pet?”
    Destiny smiled. “Something like that.”
    Destiny and Adam kept up small talk until Adam dropped Destiny off at her house. After promising to hang out with Adam and his friends one day soon, Destiny jumped out of the car and ran inside. She’d managed to sneak Reverend Thicke’s manuscript out of her mother’s bedroom, and had made herself a copy. She was almost done, and the timing was perfect. Because later tonight, she was going to spend an entire twenty-four hours with the reverend. She knew this time would be special, and wanted to be as prepared as possible to impress him.
    Destiny stopped in the kitchen, fixed herself a salad, grabbed a sparkling water out of the refrigerator, and hurried to her room. She was anxious to read the last chapter of Nate’s book: “Now…Know It’s Yours.” She knew even before turning the page that this would be her favorite chapter. The title said it all. Her body had fairly tingled as she’d read portions of other chapters, so closely had the words mirrored ones she’d told herself, in one form or another, since she was twelve years old. That’s when she’d gotten up to use the restroom in the middle of the night and had accidentally glimpsed her reverend’s naked backside just before it turned the corner headed back to her mom’s room. She’d been shocked, of course, and in true preteen fashion had gone back to her room and dissolved into giggles, covering her head with a pillow to muffle the sounds. After the embarrassment wore off, however, another feeling had replaced it. A feeling near her private area, one she’d never felt before. The more she thought about seeing his hard, round buttocks, the more the feeling intensified. Destiny had tightened her legs to calm the flutters, but had gone to sleep with a schoolgirl crush that was now full-blown love. The next year she began fantasizing about Reverend Thicke coming to her bedroom instead of her mother’s. And she began employing some of the techniques her pastor preached about, such as speaking about what you want as if you already have it, believing to receive, and asking God without doubting that what you wanted, God could deliver. While other teenagers opted for children’s church or skipped the main service all together, Destiny never missed a sermon. After one of his more rousing ones, where her pastor had spoken specifically about the power of mantras, repetitive declaration,