How Do I Love Thee

Book One: Night Vision

**Not Edited**

        The girl danced alone in the moonlight. Brett Noland stood behind a tree watching her, mesmerized. His watch dial glowed 1:00 A.M. When he'd left the cabin where his mother lay asleep to walk and think and figure out how he was going to accept all that had happened in the past month, he hadn't expected to see another living soul. Then he'd rounded a curve in the trail and seen a girl with long, dark hair twirling, swirling, spinning in an open field under the light of the bright full moon.

        She wore a long ballerina skirt and held a filmy scarf that fluttered behind her like gossamer wings. There was no music that Brett could hear, only the sound of her graceful leaps in the tall grass. He wasn't sure if he should go back the way he came or wait until she left. The last thing he wanted was for her to catch him. It wasn't right to spy on people, but for the moment he felt glued to the ground.

        She ran across the field, jumping and turning in the air like a gazelle. She slipped into the shadows of some trees. Brett, held his breath waiting for her to merge into the field. She did not. He blinked, listened to the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. Where was she? She has seemed to disappear into thin dinner. Brett exheld slowly, and feeling shakened, wondered if she had been there in the first place. Maybe he'd imagined her. He'd felt stressed and hassled lately. So maybe the girl had only been a figment of an overactive imagination. The idea depressed him. On top of everything else, now he might be going nuts.

"Why are you spying on me?"

        Her voice came from behind him, startling Brett so badly that he yelped. Whipping around, he saw her standing in the center of the trail, blocking his escape. "I-I wasn't spying," he said, his voice raspy, his heart pounding. "I was walking. I saw you. I didn't mean for you to see me."

        "Then you shouldn't wear watches with glow-in-the-dark dials." She gestured to his wrist.

        He covered the wtch self -consciously, feeling foolish, and turned to fce her more fully. "You do this often?" he asked, trying to regain his composure. "Dance under the moon?"

        "Are you a reporter?"

        "No...I'm Brett Noland. Who are you?"

        She studied him, tipping her head to one side. Moonlight flecked her hair. "Shayla," she said.

        She stepped forward, and he saw that she was tall, almost as tall as he was, which, according to his mother, was shorter than his father had been. When he'd had a father. "I just moved here," Brett blurted out when Shayla brushed past him to retun to the open field.

        "I didn't think you looked like a regular."

        "What do regulars look like?" He followed her, suddenly not wanting to be alone. The girl intrigued him.

        "Where are you from?" she asked.

        "Key West, Florida."

        She stopped. "Did you live near the sea?"

        "Key West is almost surrounded by the sea, so yeah, I lived near it."

        "Is it beautiful in the sunlight?"

        Brett thought it a very odd question but he decided to humor her. "Well, yes. But why-"

        "Different from the sea up here, isn't it?"

        "Everything's different up here, including the sea," he said bitterly. He and his mother had moved to the costal town of Harden, Massachusetts, two weeks before. She'd taken a new job with a small seafood manufacturing planet, telling Brett it was time for a change, and no amount of begging her not to move had changed her mind. She kept telling him it was a big promotion, more money, a better opportunity. "And we'll be living closer to Boston Children's Hospital than we do to Miami Children's Hospital," she'd added, as if that would justify totally uprooting his life.