How Do I Love Thee (3 page)

Brett turned and faced a short, muscular kid with bleached blond hair, an ear stud, and a big grin. “Sure am” Brett said, liking the guy at once.

“I'm Douglas Tredmont, but everyone calls me Dooley. I wasn't eavesdropping, but I did hear you registering. So you're from Key West? Long way from here.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I understand culture shock; I moved here from Chicago three years ago.”

In the hall, Brett paused. “You like it?”

Dooley shrugged. “About as much as dental surgery—at first, anyway. I'm okay with it now.”

“I don't think I'll ever be okay with it. I'm a senior. How about you? “

“Same. That is if I pass algebra during die summer session. Which is why I'm here today.” Dooley pointed down die hall. “I'd give you a tour, but I'd be late to class.”

“I'll tour it when I have to, but thanks for the offer.”

“Look, if you really get bored, come to Bud's Pizza Palace on State Street any night. It's where most of us hang. Us cool ones, that is,” he added with a wink. “Bud's got a few pool tables, and there's always a game going.”

Pleased by the invitation, Brett grinned. “I was wondering what people did for fun around here. Thanks, I'll check it out.”

“I'll look for you.”

Brett started to walk off, stopped, and asked, “Say, you must know your way around the town. Can you tell me who lives in that creepy house up on the bluff when you're driving along the coast highway? “

Dooley thought for a moment. “You must mean the old Brighton house—home of die Ghost Girl.”

Brett's pulse quickened. “A
ghost
lives there?”

“Not a real ghost, but a girl who only comes out at night. They say she's allergic to the sun. I've heard plenty of talk about her.”

“I never heard of being allergic to the sun.”

“Me either, but it must be pretty serious because she never comes to school. Only the Idids who've lived here since they were babies have ever seen her, and that was in elementary school. I saw her once walking around on some little balcony on the roof of her house in the moonlight. Weird, huh?”

A tingle shot up Brett's spine. “Sounds weird to me.”

The bell rang. Dooley headed up the hall. “Talk to you later, man. Remember, Bud's Pizza Palace. Come meet the gang.”

Brett left the school, certain he'd found the mysterious Shayla but uncertain what to do about it. He headed inta town, parked, and hit. a few of the businesses to fill out job applications. Most of the summer work available was at the docks and harbor, but that wasn't where he wanted to be.

A fast-food place offered him a job on the spot. “You'll have to work the evening shift,” the manager told him. “I need someone from four till eleven, Tuesday through Saturday. You'll get forty minutes for a supper break at six.”

Brett almost turned it down, then realized
that evening work would allow him to keep the car all day. He could drop his mother at her job, then go home and sleep. And if he used his supper break, he could pick up his mother, take her home, and drive himself back to work so that she wouldn't have to pick him up so late. If he liked hanging at Bud's with Dooley and his friends, he could meet them after work, while his mother slept. Brett told the manager he ‘d take the job.

Brett drove home, pleased with his progress. His mother had no need to crab at him now. He'd registered for school and gotten a job. In the process, he'd touched base with a potential friend and found out about Shayla. Whether she was a ghost or a vampire didn't matter to him. He wanted to get to know her because there was something about her that wouldn't let him go.

His mother wasn't crazy about Brett having the car almost full time, but she said they could try the schedule for a while and see if it worked. She added, “I made an appointment for you with a Dr. Packtor at Children's Hospital a week from Thursday, so you'll have to make arrangements with your new boss to get off.”

Brett complained, knowing that the trip into Boston would eat up an entire day.

“It's not up for negotiation,” his mother said.

“My doctor checked me before we left Florida. I'm fine.”

“You need a specialist to keep an eye on you. Besides, I want a medical team in place… just in case.”

“You mean just in case it comes back?” Brett grumbled. “It's been five years, Mom.”

“You're going. That's final,” she told him.

“We don't have to broadcast it all over town, do we? I mean, if I'm lucky enough to make friends here, they don't all have to know I've had leukemia, do they?”

“No.” She rubbed the back of her neck wearily. “The administration at the new school needs to know, but you don't have to tell anyone else.”

“They'll treat me like a freak, you know.”

“I can't understand why anybody would treat you life an outcast just because you had a horrible disease when you were ten.”

“But they do,” he said. “Take it from me.”

She would never understand what it had
been like for him. First the mysterious bruises on his body, fatigue, and pain in his bones. Then the diagnosis and two hellish years of treatment with a relapse at age twelve. He'd practically lived at die children's hospital in Miami, where he'd been poked and jabbed and filled with toxic chemotherapy that made him so sick he couldn't even get out of bed without throwing up. He'd lost his hair, about a third of his body weight, and almost all of his friends. And when remission finally came, he still wasn't home free. There had been monthly trips to die hospital, then semiannual visits, now annual ones for blood work and the possibility of painful bone marrow aspirations. But the doctors had told him that if he got past the magic five-year mark there was a good chance he'd beaten the odds. At seventeen, he thought of himself as cured. It was his mother who constandy worried about him relapsing.

“I almost lost you, Brett. A trip to Boston to meet with a new doctor will give me peace of mind.” Tears welled in her eyes, making him feel instant guilt for giving her a hard time. She'd always been there for him. Before leukemia, during leukemia when his father had
cut out, after leukemia when it had been just the two of them.

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Turn off the waterworks, Mom,” he said kindly. “We'll go see this new doctor, and I won't go all postal on you. Maybe we can check out Boston while we're there. Home of the Red Sox, you know.”

She sniffed and wiped her cheek. “Not to mention the Boston Tea Party and the start of the Revolutionary War.”

“Did that happen in Boston? Who knew?” he joked, and was rewarded by her smile.

Brett drove home from work along the coastal highway so that he could pass the Brighton house. He'd had his job barely a week before he was rewarded by the sight of a lone figure on the rooftop balcony. He pulled over to the side of the road, turned off his headlights, and got out of the car. He saw the girl quite clearly etched against the summer sky, lit by a waning moon. Under his breath, he said, “Hello, Shayla. I think it's time we meet again.”

a cognizant v5 original release september 20 2010

rett crossed the deserted highway and walked up the steep side road that led to the yard and driveway of the old house. He was panting by the time he got to the top. Except for a lone candle that glowed by a back door next to the turret, the house was pitch-black. He saw a narrow outside spiral staircase that wound up the turret and he started toward it.

This is stupid
, he told himself,
not to mention risky. What if there s an alarm? Or a vicious dog?
But he ‘d gone too far to stop now. He made his way up the winding stairway, careful to be as quiet as possible. By the time he reached the top, he was soaked with perspiration. He
remained on a rung of the ladder just below the landing and peered onto the narrow balcony.

Shayla was leaning on die rail, staring at the ocean. He also saw a stool and a book, although he couldn't figure out how she read in the dark. With his heart hammering, Brett pulled himself onto the narrow walkway. “Hello,” he said. “Are you planning to fly down, like a vampire bat?”

She started and cried out.

“Don't be scared. It's me,” he said hurriedly. “Brett Noland, from the woods.”

Even in the scant light he could tell she wasn't pleased to see him. “You're trespass-mg.

“I know, but I chanced it anyway because I wanted to see you again. I went out to die woods for a while but you never came back.”

“You did?” She looked surprised.

“You got to me, Shayla. I've never met a girl with such a great pickup line.” He tried humor. “I mean, most girls only have bad hair days— hardly a topic for deep conversations.”

“How many girls do you know?”

He grinned. She was quick. “Actually, you're the only girl I've met since I moved
here, and you won't even talk to me, so that makes none.”

She walked to the stool, picked up the book, and held it across her chest like a shield. “But you've heard something about me, haven't you?”

“Yes, on the day I registered for school.” He didn't want to lie to her.

“So you're here to see the Ghost Girl. Don't look surprised. I know what they call me. What else did they tell you?”

“They said you were allergic to the sun.”

She neither confirmed nor denied the information.

He tried again. “I work nights. I was on my way home, and I saw you up here, so I came up to talk.”

She kept looking at him, as if sizing him up.

He wanted her to relax and trust him. He peered over the side of the balcony, at the jagged rocks far below. “Is this the widow's walk?”

“Yes;” she said.

He'd read enough to know that during the whaling days, when ships went out for months at a time, wives and girlfriends went up to the
rooftop balconies to watch for a ship's return. If it came with its flag flying at half-mast, it meant men had died. One of his favorite books was
Moby Dick
,so he knew how dangerous harpooning whales could be. “This house must be really old,” he said. “And I'll bet it knew plenty of widows.”

“My grandfather bought it from a ninety-three-year-old widow who lost her husband at sea. She became a recluse, and after she died people could see her ghost walking up here at night.”

“Have you seen her ghost?”

“No. But ghosts like to keep to themselves.”

“Is that what you'd like? To be by yourself?”

“I usually am.”

“I'd like to come see you again.”

“Why? So you can talk about me to people at school?”

“Fm not going to tell anyone about us if that's what you want.”

“Us…” She said the word slowly, as if tasting it. “I've never been an His.’ “

He felt her loneliness as if it were a living thing and realized why she was so defensive.
No one could hurt you if you didn't let anyone get close to you. “Look, I'm going to write down my phone number. Gall me if you want me to come back. Otherwise, I won't bother you.” He patted his pockets for a pen but couldn't find one.

She watched, then finally pulled one out from under the book she was clutching. He began a new search for something to write on, failed, and gave her a helpless shrug. She smiled slightly, offered the book. He noted that it was
Sonnets from the Portuguese
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He scribbled his phone number on the inside cover and handed it back. “Call me, Shayla. Please.”

She gave him a lingering look, then turned and stepped through a window that was also a door, disappearing into die darkness of the great house. He stood alone on the widow's walk, missing her, imagining a storm-tossed sea and generations of sailors who had never returned, now watched over by a girl who could not walk in the sun.

Brett and his mother drove to Boston Children's Hospital in the rain. The hospital was
enormous, encompassing several blocks along the river. A playground for younger children stood sodden in die downpour. Indoors, the building housed an atrium filled with gray light from massive windows and a skylight. They rode up to the oncology floor, where Brett met a round of doctors, assistants, social workers, and technicians. His final stop was with Dr. Leonard Packtor, who looked to be in his forties and was a specialist in blood cancers of adolescents.