""Are you willing to do anything to help your slimy pledge brothers become Distinguished Gentlemen?" Sharp demanded.

"Anything, sir," Jericho said. He just wanted it to be over.

"Then suck my big toe."

"Sir?" Jericho wasn't sure if he had heard correctly...."

When Jericho is invited to pledge for the Warriors of Distinction, he thinks his life can't get any better. As the most exclusive club in school, the Warriors give the best parties, go out with the hottest girls, and sail through their classes. And when Arielle, one of the finest girls in his class, starts coming on to him once the pledge announcements are made, Jericho is determined to do anything to become a member....

But as the initiation week becomes progressively harrowing, Jericho is forced to make choices he's not entirely comfortable with. And one member seems to have it in for the sole female pledge in the group...a pledge who will stop at nothing to show she can handle the pressure. But when is she being pushed too far, and when should Jericho and his friends step in and risk losing their places in the pledging process? As Jericho becomes increasingly uneasy, his cousin Joshua breezes through the initiation, never thinking of the consequences, even when the fine line between fun and games, and life and death is crossed.

Sharon M. Draper proves once again that she knows just how real kids think, act, and feel in this haunting story of peer pressure, popularity, and hazing.

Sharon Draper is a two-time Coretta Scott King Award-winning author, most recently for "Copper Sun", and previously for "Forged by Fire". She's also the recipient of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Author Award for New Talent for "Tears of a Tiger" and the Coretta Scott King Author Honor for "The Battle of Jericho "and "November Blues". Her other books include "Romiette and Julio", "Darkness Before Dawn", and "Double Dutch". She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she taught high school English for twenty-five years. She's a popular conference speaker, addressing educational and literary grou