Free Sanctuary by Meg Cabot Page A

didn’t know. Tasha didn’t know the details of her brother’s death.
    “Nothing,” I said. “Just … um. There’s been some graffiti popping up around town, and some people were speculating that it was a gang tag.”
    “You think my brother was in a gang?” Tasha asked, in an incredulous voice.
    Douglas dropped his forehead into one hand, as if he couldn’t bear to watch.
    “Well,” I said. I couldn’t tell her the truth, of course. About the symbol having been carved into her brother’s chest. “That’s kind of the rumor.”
    Tasha may not have been able to see things up close without the aid of prescription lenses, but she could see things far away without any problem. She glared at me pretty hard.
    “Because he’s black,” she said, in a hard voice. “People assumed Nate was in a gang, and that he was the one going around tagging things, because he’s black.”
    “Um,” I said, throwing an alarmed look at Douglas. “Well, not exactly. I mean, you even said he was hanging out with, um, a bad element… .”
    “For your information,” Tasha said, standing up. Like almost everyone else in the world, she was taller than me. “That bad element happened to be, for the most part, white. We did not, as you seem to think, move here from the ghetto, you know.”
    “Look,” I said, defensively. “I never said you did. All I said was that it’s weird this symbol would start cropping up around town the same time that you happened to move here, and I was merely wondering if—”
    “If we brought the criminal element down with us from the big, bad city?” Tasha reached down and grabbed her coat, which had been draped across the bed beside her. “You know, the police have been asking us the same kind of questions. They all want to believe the same thing you do, that my brother deserved to be killed because of who he associated with. Well, I’ve got news for the cops in this town, and for you, too, Jessica. It wasn’t some evil street gang from the big city that murdered my brother. It was a homegrown killer all your own.”
    With that, she stomped from Douglas’s room. It wasn’t until we heard the front door slam shut behind her that Douglas started to applaud.
    “Way to go,” he said to me. “Have you ever considered a career in the diplomatic corp?”
    I sank down onto the spot on Douglas’s bed Tasha had vacated. “Oh, bite me.”
    Noting my dour expression, Douglas said, “Aw, cheer up. She’ll get over it. She just lost her brother, after all.”
    “Yeah, and I really helped,” I said. “Implying he was a gang-banger who might have had it coming.”
    “You didn’t imply that,” Douglas said. “Besides, I was basically asking her the same thing when you walked in.”
    “Yeah, well, I notice she didn’t fly off the handle at
you
.”
    “Well,” Douglas said. “Who could? Considering my personal charm, and all.”
    But I noticed a slight redness to his cheeks that hadn’t been there before.
    “Whoa,” I said, sitting up straight. “Douglas!”
    He looked at me warily. “What?”
    “You like her! Admit it!”
    “Of course I like her.” Douglas turned back to his computer, and began to type rapidly. Douglas can out-type even Mikey, when he puts his mind to it. “She seems like a very nice person.”
    “No, but you
really
like her,” I said. “You
like
like her.”
    Douglas stopped typing. Then he turned around in his computer chair and said, “Jess, if you tell anyone, I will kill you.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Who am I going to tell? So, why don’t you ask her out?”
    “Well, for one thing,” Douglas said, “because thanks to you, she now hates my guts.”
    I took umbrage at that. “You said she’d get over it!”
    “I was only saying that to make you feel better. Face it. You ruined it.”
    “Oh, no way.” I got up off the bed. “You are not pegging her not wanting to go out with you on me. Not when you haven’t even asked her yet. Why don’t you ask