The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel - By Sarah Addison Allen Page 0,16

looked up from the yearbook when she heard voices gliding through the still night, coming from the back porch next door. A woman’s laughter. A tinkling of glasses.

Sitting at the old patio table she’d cleared of leaves, she smiled and leaned back. The stars looked twisted in the limbs of the trees, like Christmas lights. She felt like part of the hollow around her was filling. She’d come here with too many expectations. Things weren’t perfect, but they were getting better. She’d even made friends next door.

She took a deep breath of the sweet evening heat, and began to get sleepy.

She only meant to close her eyes for a moment. But she dozed off almost immediately.

WHEN SHE woke up, it was still dark. She blinked a few times, trying to figure out what time it was and how long she’d been asleep.

She looked down and saw the yearbook had fallen from her lap to the leaves on the balcony floor. Her back stiff, she leaned down to retrieve it. When she sat back up, her skin prickled.

The light was back! The light Julia said people thought was a ghost.

Frozen, she watched it in the woodline beyond the old gazebo in Grandpa Vance’s backyard. It didn’t disappear like it had last night. It lingered instead, darting from tree to tree, hesitating in between.

Was it … was it watching her?

She quickly looked next door. There were no lights on. No one to see this but her.

She turned back to the light. What was that?

She made herself stand and slowly walk into her room. She set the yearbook on the bed and paused for a moment. She didn’t know what came over her, but suddenly she took off in a run, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood floors. She slowed down so that she’d be more quiet as she went down the stairs and past Grandpa Vance’s room, but then she took off again. She was briefly foiled by the locked kitchen door, but after fumbling with the lock, she finally opened the door and ran out.

The light was still there! She ran after it, into the wooded area behind the gazebo. The light quickly retreated and she heard footsteps in the leaves.

Footsteps?

Ghosts don’t have footsteps.

After about five minutes of chasing it through the gloomy, moonlit woods, her hands up to swat away the low-hanging branches, it began to occur to her that she had no idea where she was going, or where this patch of trees ended. When the light suddenly disappeared, she felt the first twinge of real worry. What was she doing? But a few more steps and she unexpectedly broke through the trees. She stood there for a moment, out of breath and painfully aware that she was barefoot. She lifted her foot and saw a fine trickle of blood. She’d cut her heel.

Out of the quiet came the distinct sound of a door being closed.

She jerked her head up and looked around and realized she was on the residential end of Main Street, standing in the middle of the park facing the old brick mansions. The woods behind Grandpa Vance’s house must zigzag through other neighborhoods in a crazy labyrinth, ending here, by the bandstand with the crescent moon weathervane. She looked up and down the street, then she looked back into the woods. Surely she saw the light end here?

She limped back home the long way, taking the sidewalks. Her mind was whirling. She couldn’t believe she’d just run through the woods in the middle of the night, chasing a so-called ghost. This was so unlike her.

When she reached Grandpa Vance’s house, she remembered the front door was still locked, so she had to go around back. She saw a hint of light as she walked to the corner.

The back porch light was now on.

Obviously, Grandpa Vance had heard her run out and was waiting for her. She sighed. It took running around at night to get him to come out of his room. How was she going to explain this? She hobbled up to the kitchen porch and almost tripped over something as she approached the door.

She bent and picked up a box of Band-Aids.

A crunching of leaves invaded the quiet, and she turned with a gasp to see the white light disappearing back into the woods, as if it had never left.

And she would also soon discover that Grandpa Vance had slept through everything.

Chapter 4

From his bedroom window the next morning, Win watched Vance