Free Sanctuary by Meg Cabot

anything to say. I just stared at Tasha, looking neat and pretty and strangely not out of place in Douglas’s book- and comic book-filled bedroom.
    “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” Tasha said, helping me out a little. “At our house, I mean. It’s just so … Well, Coach Albright is there right now.”
    “I saw his car,” I managed to croak.
    “Yes,” Tasha said. “Well. I couldn’t stand it. Then I remembered that the last time I’d seen Doug, he’d said he had some really early issues of a comic book I like, and that I could come over sometime to see them.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “So I came over.” When I didn’t say anything, and just continued to stare at her, she said, looking vaguely troubled, “That’s all right with you, isn’t it, Jessica?”
    I tried to say yes, but what came out was some kind of garbled noise like Helen Keller made in that movie about her life. So I just nodded instead.
    “Don’t worry about Jess,” Douglas said. “She’s just shy.”
    That made Tasha laugh a little. “That’s not what I heard,” she said. Then she looked guilty. For laughing, though, not because of what she’d said.
    “I was asking Tasha about Nate,” Douglas said casually, as if he were continuing a conversation that had gotten interrupted.
    I tried to make an effort to speak intelligently. “I’m sorry,” was all I managed to get out. When Tasha just looked at me, I went, “About your brother, I mean.”
    Tasha looked down at her shoes. “Thank you,” she said, so softly, I could barely hear her.
    “It turns out,” Douglas said, after clearing his throat, “that Nate had a few unsavory friends.”
    Tasha nodded, her expression grave. “But they wouldn’t have done this,” she explained. “I mean, killed him. They were just a bunch of hop-heads who thought they were all that, you know?”
    When both Douglas and I looked at Tasha blankly, she elaborated. Apparently, it isn’t just that Chicagoans say hello instead of hey. They have a whole separate language unto themselves.
    “They were the bomb,” Tasha explained. “They ruled the school.”
    “Oh,” I said. Douglas looked even more confused than I felt.
    “It was all so lame,” Tasha said, shaking her head so that the curled ends of her hair, held back in a second clip at the nape of her neck, swept her shoulders. “I mean, the only reason they wanted Nate around was because of Dad. You know. Prescription pads and all. Oxy makes for a wicked weekend high.”
    I nodded like I knew what she was talking about.
    “But Nate, he was flattered, you know? I tried to tell him those guys were just using him, but he wouldn’t listen. Fortunately it wasn’t long before my dad found out. Nate had always been a good student, you know? So when his grades started to slip …” Tasha stared at a
Lord of the Rings
poster on Douglas’s wall, but it was clear she wasn’t seeing it. She was seeing something else entirely.
    “My dad was so mad,” she went on, after a minute, “that he pulled us both out of school. He took the job down here the very next day. We moved that week.”
    Whoa. Talk about tough love.
    But I guess I could understand Dr. Thompkins’s point of view. I mean, my family’s had problems for sure, but drugs have never been one of them.
    “So.” I didn’t want to bring up what was clearly going to be a painful subject for her, but I didn’t see how it could be avoided. “Is that what happened to him, then? Your brother, I mean? Those, um, hopheads got him? For not giving them any more prescription pads, or something?”
    Tasha shook her head, looking troubled.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, those guys were bad news, but they weren’t killers.”
    I thought for a minute.
    “What about that symbol?”
    Douglas, over by the desk, was making a slashing motion with his hand beneath his chin. But it was too late.
    Tasha looked at me blankly. “What symbol?”
    I had blown it. Tasha