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opening the box after practice.”
    Why would she risk losing her scholarship? “Are you sure it was her?”
    “It’s her word against that of Mr. Sabatini and the assistant basketball coach. I’m sorry that you lost a housemate. It looked like you and Gabby were becoming friends. I just want to make sure you’re not thinking about leaving.”
    “No, I wasn’t thinking of it.” I was so confused. “Should I be thinking of that?”
    “Absolutely not. I want to be sure this whole incident doesn’t change your mind about staying here.”
    I shook my head. “No, no, I’m not going anywhere.”
    He smiled. “Wonderful. Goodnight then, Taylor.”

    I spent the next few days trying not to think about Gabby. I had a strange feeling about her leaving. The whole thing was so sudden and strange, and deep down I thought Dr. Rich either didn’t tell me, or didn’t know, the whole story. I was beginning to wonder if things at Hazelton were not what they seemed to be. Maybe that Abernathy case was a bigger deal than I first suspected.
    I sat in my blue room one night after dinner and decided to see what I could find on the internet about the lawsuit. I googled the name “Abernathy,” but the screen read, “Site Blocked.” I had noticed this before about the internet at Hazelton. They had a lot of blocked sites, including YouTube and Facebook. I guess they didn’t want kids wasting their time using the internet for anything fun. I tried a few more timesbut got nowhere. I gave up and instead sent an e-mail to Justin and my brother Dan, and then went to bed. At least my e-mail worked.
    For the first week, I had been too nervous to pick my head up and really look closely at anything. But after the incident with Gabby, I figured I should be on my toes. Maybe people were expecting me to do something, too, because of what Gabby did.
    I began to watch the boys in the hall. The hall was always a sea of blue and khaki. Some of the boys were tall and thin, some short, some rushing down the hall afraid to be tardy, some hanging at their lockers like they would someday be crowned princes.
    Sometimes, the perfectness of it all made me want to laugh, as if I was tarnishing the perfect-schoolboy setting merely with my presence. I again began to question why the school invited Gabby or me or any of us there in the first place. Were people really that charitable? Everyone here at Hazelton, it seemed, was always trying to impress someone else. I didn’t feel that “open our doors to girls in need of a better life” aura. And as the days dragged on, I was getting more and more homesick for a place where I knew I was welcome.
    I tried to overcome my homesickness by diving head-first into my workout program. On my first day with the assistant coach, Coach Davenport, I was given a pretty rigorous workout compared to the few exercises I used to do back home. My weight program was pretty extensive, too.
    At first, I wasn’t sure I could keep it up. I was doing chest, shoulders, and triceps twice a week, and back, biceps, and legs on the other two days. For each body part, the coach had me doing three sets of three different exercises. They wouldn’tmake my muscles big and bulgy like a guy’s, but he promised they’d be strong and toned, which was what I needed to increase the speed and control of my pitches.
    He seemed like he knew what he was talking about, but after one workout, I was so sore that the next day I was begging Mrs. Richards for some Advil. When I passed Coach Davenport in the hall the day after my first workout, I asked if it was normal not to be able to lift my arms. He just laughed and said, “If you think it hurts today, just wait until tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow the pain will be gone?” I asked, hopeful.
    “No, tomorrow it will be worse.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    The next day, I was back in the weight room for more torture and, unfortunately, the other members of the team were also there, doing their workouts.