How Do I Love Thee Read Online Free PDF Page A

parents are good people. They've done everything they can to make my life as normal as possible. I used to get mad at them because they wouldn't let me do anything they thought might hurt me. Actually, now that fin older, I feel sorry for them. They never asked to have an XP child. But because they did, they knew they carried the genes for it and so they never had another one. They feel responsible for bringing me into the world, and now that I'm here, they feel responsible for keeping me safe.”
    “How did they find out you had XP?” Now that she was willing to talk to him about her disorder, he wanted to hear everything.
    “When I was a baby, Mom took me outside and sat me on a blanket under a tree while shedid some gardening. I started to scream bloody murder. She ran over and discovered that I was covered with huge red welts and blisters. She rushed me to the emergency room, and the doctor said I had third-degree burns on my arms and face. He believed my mother had deliberately burned me, that I was abused.”
    “But it was the sunlight, wasn't it?”
    Shayla nodded. “Even fluorescent lights burned me. My parents had to completely reconfigure this house and make it lightproof. We started fixing up the basement for me when I was eight. It was much easier to live down here than upstairs.”
    “Didn't you ever go to regular school?”
    “I tried in third grade. The school had to cover the windows and lower the lights whenever I came for the day. My mother had to toss a blanket over me so that I could ride in the car to even get there. I felt like a freak sitting in the backseat with a blanket over my head. In fourth and fifth grade, I came less often because kids started making fun of me. They called me Ghost Girl and Earthworm. By sixth grade, I stopped coming altogether. Teacherscame here, and of course, there was the Web. No big deal.”
    It was a bigdeak Brett recalled how he'd felt when he ‘d been called names. “And now?”
    “Now I've moved ahead and left them in die dust.” She offered a smile. “I've already completed a year of courses from Boston College on die Internet. College is more fun anyway, and a whole lot more challenging.”
    “I'm impressed. I can hardly keep up with high school.”
    “There's nothing to distract me, you know, like football games, or cliques of dopey girls talking about their boyfriends.”
    She'd left unsaid the things that were good about school, but he didn't argue. He asked, “Do you ever go out in the daytime?”
    “Sometimes, you when the sun's just gone down, or first thing in the morning. But I don't stay out long, and I have to rub on gobs of sunscreen.” She went to the bookshelves, selected a videotape, and inserted it into die VCR. The TV screen lit up with a clip of the sun glowing like an enormous red ball over die plains of Africa. The scene shifted to images of a white-sand beach where people sunbathed and a palegreen sea lapped the shoreline. Brett could almost feel the heat on his skin.
    Shayla froze the tape on a shot of the sun burning white-hot in a blue sky. “Dirty pictures, “ she joked, making him laugh. “The sun fascinates me. I wish … I wish I could feel it without it hurting.”
    The longing in her voice unsettled him. He held out his arm, tanned from a lifetime of beach-going and skin diving in the Florida Keys. By comparison, her skin looked white as milk. “Your skin is beautiful,” he said. “You should see some of the old guys in Florida who've spent too much time in the sun. They look like old leather saddles.”
    She ran her hand across his skin and made a tingling sensation race up his back. “Why are you being nice to me, Brett?”
    “Because I like you.”
    “You're going back to the others to tell them all about meeting up with the Ghost Girl, aren't you? Please don't talk about me.” She sounded so sad that it hurt his heart.
    “I told you I wouldn't do that.” He took a deep breath. “Shayla, I know what it feels