Though Lenny could not see him, she knew he was there.

Daniel was resting, if you could call it that, on her bed, reading a book of hers that he had taken off the shelf earlier.

"Are you enjoying Little Women?" she asked with a teeny grin on her very pleased face.

The book slowly motioned up and down, hovering just a few inches above the foot of her bed.

He had told her, during another one of their laptop chats later on in the day, that he would often read along with her whenever she read a book, and that whenever he could manage he would lift some books off of the shelf and take a look at them whenever she was gone.

This was his third time reading Little Women.

"I really need to go to the library for you and pick up some new reading material, huh?"

The book nodded in agreement.

Lenny giggled and turned back to her laptop screen. She was sitting at her desk and working on an assignment for her history class. She had paired up again with her classmate, Kelly, to work on a project about Ancient Egypt.

Kelly was a little too boy-crazy for Lenny's liking, but the two girls got along really well and Len loved Kelly simply because it was easy for her to smile whenever she was around.

Just as she was finishing off a paragraph about the benevolent goddess, Ma'at, the glow of her smartphone beckoned her attention. Erik was calling. Lenny whipped her head behind her and then looked back at her phone. She swiped the screen quickly and answered.

"Hey, babe, can you hold on a sec?"

Len brought the phone to her chest and motioned over to Daniel that she was going to take the call outside of her room. Somehow knowing that he was around made her more self-conscious about things--like talking on the phone with her boyfriend.

She closed her bedroom door gently behind her and made her way to the kitchen. The household had already eaten dinner. Juliette was in her room, studying, and the guys were in the living room watching a movie. She took a seat at the table.

"Hey! Oh, the movie's kinda loud so I wanted to go into the kitchen so I could hear ya better... I'm pretty good, how are you?" A deep bubblegum blush popped up on her cheeks. "I've been thinking about you, too ... Yeah, mostly reading and doing homework," Her eyes lifted up from the kitchen table and averted their gaze to the direction of her room. She bit her bottom lip and placed her free hand on her opposite shoulder, slouching back into the chair. "I can't wait to see you tomorrow either."

Lenny was smiling so much she feared her face would soon ache. Her heart was beating a little faster than it was at the beginning of the call, too. Having Erik in her life felt a lot like going to a rock concert and she was right up front, touching the stage, feeling everything the band had to offer, making it extremely hard for her to even believe she was there in the first place.

"Ok ... Nope, I was taking a break. I'm not finished yet. Kelly's already ahead of me, so I really need to get it done... Ok. Yeah... See ya tomorrow morning, under our tree ... I love you, too."

She let out a deep sigh, slightly shaking her head as she did so. That same rock concert feeling from before was washing itself over her. She decided she needed something sweet, so she reached up into a cabinet for a cookie before going back to her room.

Little Women was still floating above the foot of her bed, patiently waiting for her return.

Lenny smiled, took a bite of her cookie, shut the door behind her, and strolled over to her desk. She had approximately forty-five minutes to finish her part of the assignment before the sun would set and she was determined to get it done.

***

"Unbelievable."

She began blinking her eyes as if this were all some spectacular dream. But it was not. It was real.

He was real.

"Come closer to the window, like you were last night. Yeah, right there."

Lenny brought her hand to her mouth and just stared and stared. Looking at him now, for the second time, brought a course of chills through her body that she did not experience the first time.

Daniel looked different, too. His eyes could not figure out whether to look into hers or at the moonlight outside the window.

"Lenny, I--can you hear me?"

"Yes. Perfectly."

Daniel swallowed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his loose fitting jeans. Blue jeans that had a colorful and feverish dance of oil paints on them, scattered wildly about the length of his long legs.

"I did not notice that the other night," breathed Lenny, pointing to his jeans.

He broke his eyes away from her face and looked down as well.

"Oh." A smile slowly reached his lips as he stood there, in deep reverie, his eyes wandering over to the moonlight again.

"You like to--you liked to--paint?"

"Yes. Very much," he smiled, bringing his pale, grey-blue eyes back onto hers. "Though many people did not know it. A few did."

"Please, sit down," Lenny caught her breath and shivered. "You're making me nervous."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Sure thing."

His smile widened then, truly showing off its powers of magnetism. Lenny had never seen a smile quite like his before. Warm, playful and oddly knowing.

She tried as best as she could to regulate the pounding of her heart, but after a smile like that, she felt completely helpless.

"I also liked to write. That's when I would paint, when I could not think of what to write. Sometimes a more visual way of looking at life spoke to me more."

Lenny loosened her hands, that were gripped onto her mattress just seconds before, and rested them onto her lap. "I like to write, too. Whenever I can't think of what to write, I listen to music. It helps a lot."

Daniel tilted his head before he spoke. "I have seen you, often, listening to music while you're doing your homework or writing."

A pang coursed through Len's heart. "You read my writing? My poetry?"

Daniel answered with haste. "Only what you leave on the screen--only when I am around." His smile faded as he inched his way closer to her a bit, a touch of worry swimming in his eyes. "You should really do it more often, like you used to."

Lenny crossed her arms in front of her chest and sighed. "I suppose so. Just haven't felt inspired."

"Really?" He tilted his head to the other side and searched her uneasy face. "Does not thinking of Erik whip you into a pool of feelings?"

With that question firing off in her mind, Lenny rocketed from the bed and asked, "How about we go outside?"

His eyes narrowed as he got up from the bed, "Lead the way."

Lenny gulped, grabbed one of many notebooks strewn over her desk, two pens, and her phone.

Daniel picked up her cardigan, "You may need this."

"Ah, thanks." She took her cardigan and held everything close to her chest. She was thankful for all that she carried because her hands were starting to quiver.

Lenny and Daniel walked past the kitchen and into the living room. For a second, she actually looked behind her with a start, frightened at the thought of either her brother or uncle seeing the ghost, too, but they remained entranced by the screen before them.

"I'm gonna go out to the porch, get some air. Maybe do some writing. Homework. Ya know."

Daniel chuckled at her expense and only Lenny could hear him.

"Alright, sweet pea." Uncle Andy nodded, his eyes engrossed in the action of the film.

Jude's eyes were trying to stay awake. Lenny noticed, for once, he was the only one sprawled on that couch--no electronic mistress in sight. Her eyes set about him, happily, before smiling at her uncle and exiting the house.

She actually held the door open a second for Daniel, but then realized that was unnecessary. By some magic only visible in the movies, the screen door snapped shut behind her and it whisked right through the ghost, as if it were nothing. The content expression on his face remained unchanged as they ventured around the house and onto the porch.

"Where would you like to sit?" he asked.

Lenny made sure to keep her voice at a whisper. She did not want her family thinking she was going cuckoo.

"I was thinking the swing, but now I'm thinking the grass." She flicked the porch light on before descending the stairs and followed Daniel out onto the yard. She let her hands play with the tips of the wildflowers that grew close to the house along the way.

She sat down and the ghost sat next to her as she rested her things on the grass and put her cardigan on.

"You brought two pens."

"Yeah. Maybe you'd like to write something, too--and I might end up doodling on the page, or something."

"I am a bit out of practice," he confessed, grinning. "Can I?"

"Sure," she handed him the notebook she had just picked up from the ground. "All yours."

They both sat with their legs spread out in front of them. Lenny tightened her cardigan around her and snaked her hands into its long and soft sleeves. Though the light from the porch made it a little harder for her to see the parts of him it was touching, the moonlight was plenty to see the rest of him. She smiled as he clicked his pen and turned the notebook to a clean, white page.

"So much promise."

"Hmm?"

"So much promise," Daniel repeated. "My English teacher, Mr. Dockins, used to say that about blank pages. I just remembered now." His free hand caressed the page below him, gently, somberly.

"My English teacher, Mrs. Henley, looks at us with beady eyes and she's too caffeinated for her own good."

Daniel frowned. "Adults are people, too. Maybe she has a hard time sleeping, so the coffee keeps her awake, helps her get through the day. Teenagers can be pretty intimidating."

Lenny was caught off guard by his candor. "I know she's a person. I don't laugh at her or anything, but others sometimes do."

The ghost slid his pen onto his ear and set the notebook down on the grass in the space between him and her. He lifted his chin up to the moon, some of his auburn hair catching a sheen under its beams. "I did not mean to make you feel bad. Perhaps, she's going through a kind of rough spot."

"Yeah, maybe." Lenny tugged at her sleeves and held the ends of them tightly in her hands. "You're right. Teenagers can be cruel."

"Why do you think that is?"

Lenny's eyes traveled the profile of his face as she thought, appreciating the straight drop of his nose, the curve of his lips, the defined line of his jaw.

She breathed out and answered, "I think it's just all too much for them. For us. We take it out on others. And on each other."

He nodded. "That sounds about right."

Lenny wanted to add something else, but she was silenced as he brought the notebook onto his lap and took the pen from his ear, waiting and ready.

"Let's write something together," he offered.

The moon could not even match the beaming smile on Lenny's sweet, mild-mannered face.

"Okay," she bit her lip and swept her bangs out of her eyes.

"A story or a poem?"

Lenny thought, stroking at the strands of hair that finally started to grow past her collarbone.

"A poem."

"The moon agrees," Daniel grinned.

"About?"

Daniel eyed her smartphone, resting in a patch of dirt just beyond her feet. "Maybe some music would help."

"Alright." Lenny reached over, grabbed her phone and opened up her music app. "What are you in the mood for?"

The ghost shrugged. "Whatever you are."

"Hmm," the phone glowed blue onto her face as she scrolled through many choices. "Washed Out?"

"Yeah. You seem to write pretty well when you listen to him."

"Which album?"

"The one that sounds more..."

"Like a ... fantasy?"

"Yes. That one."

"It's called Paracosm, Daniel. C' mon, you may be a ghost, but you can be a cool ghost, too."

He let out an airy laugh, and Len pressed play. Soon enough, the first track's sounds of tropical birds and dreamy chimes intermingled with the sounds of frogs and crickets in the flowers and trees around them.

"Let's write about a mermaid... ," Lenny mused.

Daniel titled his head back a little. He looked at Lenny's mouth as she spoke.

"Let's write about a mermaid. She wants to run away. Well, she wants to swim away, I guess. She can't run." As she giggled, the ghost smiled and looked into her eyes.

"Okay. A mermaid."

He began to write, his hand a little wobbly to start with but it was able to scrawl out the word, Swimaway, in a sweeping, looping cursive.

"Swimaway?" Len inched closer to him, setting the phone down between them and turning the volume up a little before doing so. "I really love that."

Just then she felt a chill fall upon her face and neck. She could not quite tell if it was the late-September evening breeze, or the poem they were about to write, so full of promise, or if it was simply her ghost, Daniel.

💙 💙 💙

A/N:

I've finally come back with a new chapter. Definitely a simple one, but I hope still enjoyable and sweet. Only the best for my Lenny and Daniel.

Thank you so much for sticking around! I really want to finish this book so I can hop on over to other pastures. This lady has so many ideas bursting to come at ya! Once I finish this one, there will be a sequel---more about that when the time comes.

I appreciate your comments and votes so much! I sincerely hope to hear from someone new this chapter.

So does Daniel. I tell him everything about you all. He loves it.

The moon shines for you....

xo,
Leanne

P.S. I selected the song "My Favorite Thing" by Silverchair. It had been in my mind a lot these past few days, a sweetly dark song deep with themes of love and death, and I got all misty-eyed when I figured how beautiful the song was as a love song from Daniel to Lenny. Perfection. Please, enjoy.

♡ ♡ ♡