How Do I Love Thee

Three

        Deciding he'd better take care of business first, Brett found his way to the high school, an old brick building covered on two sides with ivy. He parked and went inside. The halls were painted a pale, institutional shade of green and smelled of chalk dust and floor wax. The old wooden floor creek, and banks of battered lockers ran the length of the walls. He wasn't impressed, especially since his high school in the Keys had been newly built and outfitted with the latest equipment. He found the main office, talked to a secretary about transferring his record up from Florida, filled out paperwork,oo and was told he'd receive room assignments in late August. He was given a packet and was leaving the office when a guy about his age said, "Hey, man. Your new, huh?"

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

        "I'm Douglas Tredmontt, 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 the summer session. Which is why I'm here today." Dooley pointed down the hall. "I 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 the Ghost Girl."

        Brett's pulse quickend. "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've never heard of being allergic to the sun."

        "Me neither, but it must be pretty serious because she never comes to school. Only the kids 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 into 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.

        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 like 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 hell ish years of treatment with a relapse at age twelve. He'd practically lived at the 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 the 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 passed 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 constantly 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 big just the two of them.

        He put his arm around her shoulders. "Turn off the water works, 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 wipped 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 summers sky, lit by a waning moon. Under his breathe, he said, "Hello, Shayla. I think it's time we meet again."