Free Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart) by Anna DeStefano

other?” Lisa asked Sally.
    They were in the Dream Whip dining room, restocking the napkin holders instead of washing and cutting potatoes. Dru had asked them to, after she’d finished fighting with Officer Douglas and he’d left. Only the grown-ups hadn’t wanted Lisa and Sally to know they were fighting, and Dru had made it sound like nothing was wrong.
    “I heard someone at the Y last night,” Lisa said, “say they’ve hated each other since they were in high school, and Officer Douglas did something bad and had to run away.”
    “He didn’t run away.” Sally pulled another wad of napkins from the big bunch she’d dug out of the storage room. She handed them over. “I heard it was Dru’s older brother, Oliver, who left. Except he didn’t run. The Dixons made him go. But Officer Douglas left town, too. And Oliver’s girlfriend. No one knows what it was all about, it was so long ago. No one in this town knows what anything’s really about.”
    “That makes Oliver my older brother, too, right?” Lisa asked. “My foster brother, anyway, just like he’s Dru’s?”
    Like their foster brother Travis, at the sheriff’s department.
    And Oliver had gotten into so much trouble, he’d had to run away, or leave, or whatever. Just like Lisa kept getting into trouble wherever she went.
    It had been so cool at her radKIDS graduation having everyone be so nice to her. But even after last night, she knew the kids in her class at school still wouldn’t want her around. Not when she was noisy again, or got into trouble again.
    People thought she was weird, even the other foster kids at the Dixon house, when she couldn’t sleep at night and kept them up doing whatever she could in the dark, but still making too much noise. And she kept bringing notes home from her teacher for Mr. and Mrs. Dixon to sign, because she’d broken more class rules: blurting out questions, not keeping her hands and her things to herself, not staying in her seat, not being quiet even when she had silent lunch because she was in trouble for talking too much in class.
    Her foster parents had known about her problems with school when they got her. Foster parents always thought they knew everything. They’d read her file. The people at the county had told them about the other homes Lisa had been in. But the Dixons had had her for months now. She could feel them sometimes not liking her—or not liking the things she did, Mrs. Dixon said. How long would it take for her to do something so bad she couldn’t stay with them, like Oliver hadn’t?
    “Do Officer Douglas and Dru really hate each other?” Lisa asked again.
    She liked Dru a lot. Dru was always nice to her. She didn’t think Dru could hate anybody, especially Officer Douglas. He’d been so cool last night.
    Sally shrugged. “I think they really like each other.”
    “I heard they were fighting at the YMCA yesterday, in the hall before radKIDS.”
    “Sometimes people don’t like it when they like each other too much. So they fight.”
    “What?”
    “Never mind,” Sally said, all grown-up-sounding.
    Sometimes she confused Lisa more than the adults did.
    “Don’t you and Cade Perry fight all the time at school?” Lisa asked her.
    “So?”
    Sally and Cade were like the most popular kids at Chandler Middle. They’d been boyfriend and girlfriend when they’d been at the elementary school, too.
    “So,” Lisa said, “is that like Dru and Officer Douglas fighting in the kitchen? You know, how when you and Cade aren’t kissing each other at lunch, you get mad over stupid stuff? That’s what I heard, from one of the girls in my class. Her sister goes to middle school, too.”
    “No.” Sally looked mad. She’d never looked at Lisa like that before. “Cade and I don’t fight all the time. What do you know, anyway? Have you ever had a boyfriend?”
    “No.” Lisa shrugged. “Well, sorta . . .”
    If she counted a friend online she’d never met and probably never