Soul Fire by Nancy Allan Page B

came into the waiting room to give us an update. She looked wiped. “Ashla’s doing a little better,” she told us. “Because of her previous concussion, the doctor is concerned. She has been admitted and will be moved up to the ward once she stabilizes.
    “Is she conscious?” I asked.
    “She’s pretty disoriented.” Laine looked from me to Delta. “What exactly happened?”
    I knew Ashla hadn’t told her parents about being bullied at school, so I felt conflicted. Do I tell them? Or not? I didn’t want to up-step Ashla, but this was getting pretty serious. Given the fact that my best friend was in Emergency, I decided to risk Ashla’s wrath and give Laine a quick rundown. I explained what it had been like for Ashla the past few weeks.
    Laine listened, her expression grim. “I don’t believe this,” she whispered. “It doesn’t make any sense. A girl like Ashla, being . . . being . . .”
    “ Bullied ,” Delta supplied.
    Laine stared at him. “ Bullied? ”
    I interrupted. “Did Ashla ever tell you what happened to her the day she overdosed?”
    Laine’s eyes registered a new level of pain. “No.”
    I glanced at Delta hoping he would take over. Thankfully, he did. “A big guy, Rand Riley, took her down. Kicked her. Punched her in the stomach. Happened in class before the math teacher got there.”
    Laine collapsed into a chair. “Why didn’t she tell us? We never hold back in our family. We talk about everything. I don’t understand.” Her voice quivered. She looked up at Delta. “Was that why she took Ecstasy?”
    Delta met her gaze and held it. “She was in bad shape that day. I heard what happened to her from a friend of mine who saw it. Knew she’d bail, so I went out looking for her. Found her in the park. Looked like she’d been there for hours.”
    “Why didn’t she come home?” Laine looked at Delta accusingly. “And why didn’t you bring her home, like you should have?”
    “If she’d wanted to go home, she would have.”
    Laine appeared shell shocked. “I just can’t believe things could have gotten this bad without Ashla coming to us about it.” She ran her hands through her hair in frustration. “I’m going to take this up with the principal. This stops now. How in the heck can the school let this happen?”
    I had wondered the same thing over the last couple of years. “I just hope Drake takes you seriously.”
    Laine's confusion was obvious. “I’m sure he will." She pushed out of the chair and faced me. "How did all this get started?”
    Delta replied, “Ashla has always been part of an elite group of kids the rest of us call the ‘Untouchables’. They’re the pampered kids. They exist in a silver-lined bubble.” He turned to me. “Ashla, you, Brenna, Tara, all of you.” He ran his hand around the back of his neck. “After the ski accident, news got out that the ski resort had officially found Ashla in the wrong for being on that closed run. The media made a huge noise about it and made it sound like Ashla had committed some reprehensible crime.”
    Laine nodded, her face suddenly crimson. “We saw that.”
    Delta continued, “Justin Ledger has super star status at our school, in fact, in the whole Seattle area. The media got everybody mad. That happens easily when it comes to hockey in this town, and especially if it involves Justin. Almost instantly, everyone vented all over Ashla. She became the target of their anger and their outrage, real or not. Ashla’s friends cut and ran, or to be more accurate, they cut her out, so she lost protection from her peers and became extremely vulnerable. In other words, she became open season for just about everyone, but especially for the Tarantulas. Ashla's sudden vulnerability presented a rare opportunity to lay into, pardon me for saying this, one of the snobs—”
    “Ashla’s no snob!” Laine and I reacted almost in unison.
    “No, she’s not, but a lot of them are. They have things other kids never dare