"Oh great, another guy trying to private message me," she thought as she sat reading the text on her computer monitor. This one's screen name is furball . . . I wonder what's on his mind. Well, there's no harm in answering back I don't guess; after all, this is all only for fun.

"furball . . . where from?"

"Atlanta right now. You?"

"I live in Savannah . . . seems we're not too far from each other, huh?"

And so the conversation went. Two people who, out of the blue, found something in common in a little Internet chat room. By the time the "conversation" was over, she'd given him her phone number and made him promise to call as soon as he could buy a phone card.

"Maybe my luck's finally gonna get better." He'd never known a Sabrina before, and this one didn't seem all that bad. Takes classes in a small community college down in Savannah and works at one of the radio stations as a d.j. "And she's already promised me a date if I ever happen to pass through Savannah." He could almost feel his heart skip a beat with the sudden happiness he'd found. He'd never actually had a girl say yes to a date before, and he thought that there was surely something wrong with him; he was 18 and girls didn't seem to want him for anything more than friendship. Maybe things were finally looking up. "I'm going home this weekend, and I can pick up a 30 minute phone card for about $9, then come back and call her. I wonder if her voice is pretty . . . ."

The weekend came and went, and he put in another 15 hours at the drug store, a job which he'd taken right after his high school graduation. It was supposed to end when he went off to school in Atlanta, but he kept it and worked one weekend a month. "Every little bit helps," he could hear his father saying one time too many. This time it gave him the money to buy the phone card to call Destina, as Sabrina was known in the chat room.

The two hour ride back to school seemed to last an eternity for him. His mother kept wanting to stop everywhere and go shopping, or do this or that. "What was I thinking going to a school where freshmen can't have cars?" he silently wondered. "I'll find a way to have a car up here next year . . . can't go through this again!"

Finally they arrived back at his dorm. He lived on the top floor of the building, four stories above street-level, and carrying his suitcase (full of a month's clothing) was no easy task. His mother huffed and puffed as she carried some of his groceries up the stairs, complaining with every step. After introducing her to some of his friends up and down the hallway, they finally came to his room, where his roommate was playing some shoot'em up computer game. Again.

His mother and roommate (he and his roommate had grown up together, finally graduating together just a few months before) talked for a few minutes, and then he started to rush her back home. She made of big show of saying goodbye, trying to get two or three hugs and a kiss before leaving her "Baby Boy" at school for another month.

He quickly unpacked his clothing, and then checked his clock. He promised her he'd call right around 8:30 that night, and he still had about two and a half hours to wait. "Well, might as well check my mail and grab something to eat before it gets too dark out." The student center was a good ten minute walk, most of it being up a very steep hill with a nice set of stairs at the very end of it to ensure that the walker was out of breath. He'd grown accustomed to it, though, in his two months there, and enjoyed the walk. He passed the football stadium, several of the ROTC buildings, and the library, and then came to one of the most spectacular views on campus: he was able to stare straight down at the Kessler Campanille, rising in all it's enormity in the middle of a fountain in front of the student center. The sun, setting behind him, caused the fountain to be colored an orange-ish hue, reflecting back off of the Campanille. He stopped and admired the scene for a moment before continuing on his way. "After all, Sabrina's expecting my call. I don't want to keep her waiting."

His mail box turned out to be empty, as usual, and all of the restaurants in the student center were closed on Sundays, so he was just out of luck. Instead of becoming frustrated, he just walked back downstairs and back towards his dorm, having decided to stop at the McDonald's that stood right in front of his dorm. The journey back down the monstrous hill was always a lot easier than the one up it, and he was at the bottom before he even knew it . . . .

Two hours later, 8:30 finally came around. As he moved down to his computer area, he could feel his heart begin to beat a little more quickly with excitement. He had to move a stack of papers to find the phone number, and then another to bring the phone down to a comfortable position. Glancing over at his roommate, he saw that he was enraptured in The Simpsons, meaning he could count on not being interrupted, at least until the phone card ran out. Picking up the phone, he thought "Am I really doing this? Calling some strange girl in Savannah that I met online?" He set down the phone, swallowed, and tried to regain his confidence, and then picked up the phone and dialed the numbers.

"Is S-S-S-Sabrina there?"

"Yes...hold on while I go and get her."

thump-thump-thump his heart felt like it was in his throat.

"Hello? Who's this?"

"S-Sabrina? This is Jason . . . from the chat room."

Twenty-five minutes later, he was on Cloud Nine. Glancing at his watch, he noticed his time was almost up. "Bree, get out a pen and paper, quick. Now write down this number," he said, and then gave her his phone number. A minute or two later, his card ran out, and they had to hang up. In less than five minutes, she'd already called him back, though, and they talked for another three or four hours, both online and on the phone. And she was covering the bill herself, not trying to call collect, which went a long way towards winning his trust. "After all, if she's paying for the bill, then she must really want to talk to me."

The one phone call turned into two, and then a week's worth of calls, and then, before he knew it, she'd called him every night for two weeks. It turns out she was only part time at the radio station where she worked. She was also a model, doing a lot of shoots down in Savannah. And she shared his main interest, computers. It turns out the she was studying computer repair at her community college, and he was studying Computer Science at his school, Ga Tech. Every night, she'd tell him more about being a model, or something funny that had happened to her at the radio station the day. He'd talk his share of the time about things that interested him, but he was more than happy to just listen to her talk. He found her voice so beautiful, almost like that of a mermaid's song.

He'd had to get a picture of himself scanned for one of his classes, and he emailed that to her so she'd know with whom she was really speaking. Despite his best efforts, she was still reluctant to send him a picture of her, though. Being a model, she explained to him, had caused her to grow to dislike her having her picture taken because it was done so much, so she didn't have all that many personal pictures of herself. He accepted her explanation, but he still wanted a picture of her, and she finally conceded. But on her terms. She was going to cut out a high school yearbook candids page and send it to him. The picture contained her and several of her former fellow cheerleaders, and he would have to guess at which was her. She would put a few clues in an accompanying letter, and then tell him if he was right or wrong. Not being one to balk at a challenge, he said ok, and gave her his address.

During this time, they'd also begun to plan to meet. Savannah was only a few hours' drive down the Interstate from Atlanta, so that would make things a lot easier than, say, if she were in California. But he didn't have a car, due to that damned freshman rule. So she'd have to come to Atlanta and meet him. And Luck was with him once again. She had a modeling shoot coming up the week after Thanksgiving in Atlanta, which would give her the perfect excuse for coming up and taking time off from the radio station. She'd be spending three days on the shoot, but she thought she could get the entire week off, which would give them two days just to be together.

Another week passed, and their plans were going smoothly. There was a Confederate memorial called Stone Mountain, an actual mountain that had the busts of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson carved into the side of it, which had many little things to do throughout the day, and an awesome laser show every night. He planned on taking her there on of their free days. There were some other little things he wanted to do. He was working on a budget of about $70, and he told her so, but she didn't care as long as she got to spend some time with him. Everything was going so great for him. His friends had never seen him so happy before, and he couldn't even remember ever having been so happy or confident in anything before.

The Thursday before Thanksgiving break, he was talking with Bree and she suddenly broke down crying. He knew the joke he'd just told her couldn't be that bad, and he couldn't figure out for his life what could possibly be wrong with her. She told him that she hadn't been telling him the entire truth, and she had to come clean with him before Thanksgiving break. There was another guy -- he felt his heart sinking -- that she was engaged to, and -- his heart was crushed -- he lived out in Idaho. They'd grown up together in Savannah, and he'd asked her to marry him before he'd left for college, up at Idaho State. She'd accepted, but now the both of them were having second thoughts about the whole deal. He'd met other girls out in Idaho, and he wanted them to try dating other people before finally settling down. During Thanksgiving, she was going to fly up to Idaho to see him, and they were going to decide if the wedding was still on or not.

He was devastated. He was so angry and yet so sad at the same time that he couldn't really speak at first. She told him that she didn't know what to do anymore, she didn't really want to marry the guy (Rick, whom he'd actually talked to at the chat room where she and he had met), or if she would rather see how things worked out with him. He made up some lame excuse for getting off of the phone, and told her he'd be online later if she wanted to talk, and then went to another chat room to talk with someone he'd grown to trust almost as much as a mother, someone with whom he could voice his emotions and who'd answer him back as honestly and as straightforward as she could. They talked for an hour or two, and then he went back to the chat room where he knew Bree would be awaiting him, and pleaded his case. He told her that, after thinking for a long while, he understood her side of things. He wanted nothing more than for her to be happy, and, if that meant that she chose Rick over him, then so be it. That night, as he lay in bed trying to sleep, a small tear ran down his cheek and onto his pillow.

They talked a little over the weekend, mostly online, and he told her how he thought a few more times, making sure to take all the pressure off of her side of the decision. He didn't want to make the choice anymore difficult for her than it had to be, and he only hoped that she would choose him and not Rick.

During the week-long break, he took his closest friend to see the UGA vs GT football game in Athens. The two schools held one of the longest-standing rivalries in college football, and the game was always a sell-out, even in down years like this one. She was a UGA student, and they enjoyed cheering against the other's school. In the end, her school won out, beating Ga Tech by a couple of touchdowns. That night, she cooked supper for him, and tried to make him feel better about Bree, but he never really gave her one of his patented smiles that meant all was ok. They watched a movie that night, and then went to bed, him on the couch as always . . . alone with his thoughts once again.

This time, the trip back to Atlanta was even worse than before. He couldn't wait to see the skyline of his beautiful city, and then the 12 or 14 lane section of Interstate that made up the Brookwood Junction, where I-75 and I-85 came together for a few miles right in front of his dorm. He and his mother struggled to get all of this things back upstairs again, taking several trips and being badly out of breath by the time they were done. Per custom, he rushed her off again, but she still managed to nab a kiss before she left, despite his dodging. Not even taking the time to unpack, he flipped his computer on to see if he had any email from Bree, and then, upon not finding any, rushed into the chat room to see if she'd returned home yet. And there she was.

FFFFUUUURRRRBBBBAAAALLLLLLLL!!!! rushed across his computer screen as soon as he entered the room. She still called him by his screen name when they were talking in public, only using Jason when they were talking alone. She'd ended up coming home from Idaho two days early, due to her ex(!!!!)fiancee being such a creep during the trip. It took a few moments for it to sink in for him, but he was almost speechless when it finally did. She had chosen him over the other guy. She'd actually chosen him!!!! He almost thought he was going to have a heart attack he was so shocked. They talked online for a bit, and then suddenly she disappeared and his phone rang. She'd gotten offline to call him, which suited him to a "T." They talked until the sun came up and they both fell asleep.

Another week passed, and she slowly regained all of his trust and then a little more, filling him on more and more of her life. Talking until the dark of night gave way to dawn's early light, and then sleeping for half the day, he'd begun to drop behind in some of his classes, but that was ok. He could always make it up on the weekends with a few extra hours of studying.

Another weekend rolled around, and this time he made sure he was ahead on all of his homework. This was to be the week that he met Bree, and he didn't want for there to be any distractions from his time with her. They talked online all day Sunday to shore up whatever holes might remain in their plans. He made sure she had his phone number, and then he found out where she was staying. He went through all of his assignments to make sure he didn't have any questions and that he was, in fact, slightly ahead of his classes. And then he went to bed a few hours early to be sure he would be wide awake for class and then for when he met her. Less than twenty-four hours away . . . .

The next morning, he showered and went down to the dining hall for one of their patented "imitation breakfasts," which consisted of several substances almost, but not entirely, totally unlike real food. Then he set out for the long, uphill walk to his morning classes. The entire time, he had a song from the play Oklahoma running through his head:

"It's such a wonderful morning,
It's such a wonderful day,
I've got this wonderful feeling
That everything's going my way . . . ."

The sky was a beautiful blue that morning, hardly a cloud in sight, and he enjoyed the walk more than usual. His classes seemed to take an interminable time, but that was only due to his growing excitement. "Bree should be almost into Atlanta now," he thought as the bell for his Calculus class rang and he headed hurriedly back to his dorm. "I don't want to miss her call." He got back to his room, and sat down to surf the `Net while he awaited her call.

A few hours later, he glanced down at his watch and noticed it was almost noon, time for lunch. "Now why hasn't she called yet? Maybe traffic was bad, and she got into town late and had to go straight into her shoot." He hoped his guess was right. She knew his schedule, knew he had class in another half hour. He went back down to the dining hall, hoping she didn't try to call in his absence. His Government class was an hour and a half long, and he barely made it through the entire lecture he was so agitated.

When class was over, he nearly ran back down the hill to his dorm and back up the stairs, taking them two at the time. DA (his nickname for his roommate, which stood for dumb ass) said that no one had called yet, which only served to heighten his tension a little more.

He quickly went back to the chat room to see if Bree's sister, Heather, had gotten out of school and knew where she was. Luck was with him, and Heather was there, waiting with a message for him. It turned out that Bree wasn't able to come to Atlanta that day because she'd had to go to the emergency room that morning with some type of allergic reaction. Heather told him not to be worried, though, everything was ok and Bree should be back online that night to better explain things to him.

He was both relieved and saddened at the news. He had been so looking forward to meeting her that afternoon, but he was glad that she wasn't suffering any lasting ill-effects due to the reaction.

That night, he found her back in the chat room, and they both went to a private room to talk. It turns out that she was allergic to aspirin, and she had accidentally taken a couple of tablets after having misstaken them for a non-aspirin headache medicine. Hearing that all was ok with her now, he decided to ask her if she was going to be able to make it up to Atlanta for her shoot later on in the week, and could they possibly meet if she could. The doctor had told her that she had to stay in Savannah and come back and see him twice more that week to make sure there were no lasting effects in her body, and that she'd have to be on some type of treatment for a while which required twice a week visits to the doctor. That pretty much knocked out any week-long trips to Atlanta for her, and killed their chance of meeting for a while. "Oh well," he typed to her, "at least I'm caught up on my homework for a week. =)"

Their nightly talks had begun to take a darker tone, and he began to find out even more about her. She told him of her first major boyfriend, a guy named Robbie who had gotten her her job at the radio station. He was in his late twenties (she was only Jason's age, 18), and had been a major radio personality in Savannah for a long time. She'd fallen in love with him almost from the start, and they'd moved in together for around a year to a year and a half. He'd grown to be too over-possessive of her, and she'd just gotten tired of him.

There'd also been the matter of the letters. One day, when he wasn't home, she'd been looking through some of his things, and had found a few letters from a woman she didn't know. Well, being human, she naturally opened them up and read them, and found out some things she almost couldn't believe. Robbie was married. Still had a joint checking account with his wife and everything, and somehow managed to split his time between Bree and his wife. She was outraged, and she quickly broken things off with him.

That's when Rick had come into the picture, seeing his opportunity at last to ask her out. That had been the previous March or April, and things had moved pretty quickly between them. Before he left in August for school in Idaho, he'd asked her to marry him.

But Robbie had never left her alone. They still worked together at the radio station, which gave him ample opportunity to try and win her affections back, something she told him over and again that wasn't going to happen. He even kept her abreast of his divorce case with his wife, telling her how long it would be until he'd be free of her and could be back with Bree again.

Robbie had done a few good things for her, though, before their break up. Before he'd settled in Savannah, he'd toured with several opening acts for major heavy metal groups, and had managed to introduce her to the lead singer of White Zombie. She now had an autographed picture of the guy and herself she kept on her nightstand.

Speaking of pictures, he asked her if she'd bothered to mail his picture of her to him yet. She paused for a second, and suddenly remembered that she hadn't. They joked about it a little, after all, it had only been three weeks or so since he'd asked her for it, he thought sarcastically.

One day he came in from classes, and the phone rang. DA looked at him and rolled his eyes, so he quickly picked up the phone. "Jason?"

"Yeah, it's me Bree."

"Guess what!!!!!! I've gotten my modeling contract!! I can't believe it, I actually got it!" She went on to explain how, after she'd missed her shoot in Atlanta, she thought that her chance was gone for the contract. He hadn't known about any previous attempts at obtaining one, and he asked her about it.

It turns out that she'd applied to this modeling school and she'd been accepted. There was only one catch, though. The school was out in Hawaii, which meant that they may never get the chance to meet. And she wasn't even sure if she could take it due to the medical treatments she was still on for the aspirin incident.

And then she started telling him how stupid she was for the whole thing, and getting down-trodden. He tried to console her, and then she told him that there was something else she hadn't told him: It hadn't been an accident, her taking the aspirin. She'd been so upset over the whole thing where she hadn't told him about her and Rick that she couldn't think rationally. Overdosing on the aspirin just seemed like a logical step so she wouldn't have to make the decision. He spent the rest of the night consoling her, telling her that she wasn't stupid, and that she had made the right choice when it was all said and done.

It never really occurred to him that there had been almost two weeks between the time she'd told him about Rick and the overdose, and a week after she'd made her decision. He'd sacrificed a lot of sleep lately just so he could talk to her, and he wasn't thinking as fast as he once did.

Another night she asked him if there was anything dark in his past, something he'd never told anyone. He said there wasn't, and then asked her the same question. At first she said no, but he sensed something and finally she admitted to there being something. He put her on hold for a second, and crawled up into his bunk so he could listen to her story with no distractions, and then picked the phone back up.

It turns out that Bree had a twin sister. They'd grown up together, but were never really close. Her sister was always a little prettier, and the boys tended to like her more. Both of them were slightly on the wild side, but her sister had her beat. She tended to play it safe, where her sister pushed the limits.

One Fourth of July a few years back, the two of them and a bunch of their friends had wanted to shoot off some fireworks. It's against the law in the state of Georgia to sell fireworks, and illegal in most (he wasn't sure about all) cities in the state to fire them within a city's limits, so the teens were forced to ride over to South Carolina to buy some. They split up, and went in groups of twos and threes, about five vehicles total.

First Bree and her car had arrived, then her sister, and then two more cars to this little shack in the middle of nowhere where they could buy the fireworks. They waited about an hour and a half, and finally the fifth car showed up. Gathering around, they were all about to question the guy about what had taken him so long when they noticed the large crack in his windshield. It hadn't been there when they had all met back in Savannah. And the girl who'd ridden with him was nowhere to be found. All that he had with him was her arm, torn from her body in a very painful-looking fashion. He told them all that, if any of them turned him in, they would all die. The incident left them all very shaken, but no one said anything to the police about it, and the guy wasn't seen very often after that. But they did see him often enough to where they always remembered.

The next Spring was to be Bree's family reunion. The night before the occasion, her sister hadn't come home. Bree just assumed that she'd spent the night with one of their friends or something, and didn't really worry about it.

The reunion was to take place down on the Savannah River at a nice little shaded picnic area. Bree's immediate family was the first to show up, and they never could've expected to find what they did: Bree's twin sister was floating face down in the river, apparently having been there all night long. Needless to say, there was no family reunion that day.

After the funeral, she'd found a note to her from her sister saying that she was finally fed up with hiding the truth all this time. She was going to confront the guy from the past summer, and force him to go and tell the police what he knew about the death of their friend. It seems that Bree's sister was now with her friend, and both murders could be traced to the same guy.

The tale left Jason shivering inside from the sheer horror of the whole situation, and he asked Bree why she hadn't gone to the police after that. Her answer: She was scared for her life now. She didn't want to give the guy any reason at all to kill her like he had her sister. Some of the friends had moved away since then, and this would be a vivid reminder to the rest of them about his warning.

The spent the rest of the conversation just making light conversation, neither of them wanting to go into anything else that deep.

During another of their conversations, she was going through her CD collection, trying to decide if she should trade any of them for newer, better CDs, when she ran across one she'd been looking for. It was a CD put out by the group Blessid Union of Souls, and it had her all-time favorite song on it, Forever For Tonight. He told her that he'd never heard the song before, so she moved close to a speaker and then got quiet so they could both listen.

He couldn't hear all of the words, so he got her to sit down and email them to him, and then play the song again so he could see the words as he heard the music. It was simply beautiful. But one part of the song had him slightly worried. It talked about not having very long to stay with his love, and having to make that night count, having to make that night be forever. He couldn't help but wonder if something was about to happen to end it all.

One night, around the second week in December, she was in a panic all over again. It seems that her family, who was originally from California, still owned a house out there. It was supposed to be hers on the day that she turned 18, which was only a few months before. Since she lived and worked in Georgia, and she had a sister who lived out in California, she had allowed her sibling to take temporary control of the house and property.

Well, in the mean-time, something had gone wrong. The California Highway Department had decided to build a road in her hometown, and the road would pass right through her house.

He had been planning on coming to see her over the Christmas break, and now it seems as if their meeting would be delayed yet again. He talked with her for a while, finding out as much information about the house as he could. It turns out that her sister, who still had control of the house, had moved to another section of California, leaving the house vacant. Since no one had lived in the house for around six months, and since no one was planning on living in the house in the near future, the local D.O.T. didn't accept any of her family's arguments for saving the house. In fact, the only way that the house could be saved would be for Sabrina to go out to California herself and occupy the house. And she had to do it before the end of December. This cancelled their meeting over Christmas break, and effectively killed any chance they had of meeting for a long time to come.

Hearing how upset she sounded over the phone, he immedately decided upon a course of action. Bringing out his (currently) favorite CD, he popped it into his stereo system. It was Four by Blues Traveler. Skipping to track 11 ("Just Wait"), he told her to be quiet and just listen. The he pulled a speaker over close to his ear so they could both listen to the words together. The song talks of a man and a woman, and a situation that seems to always be taking a turn downhill. He keeps his faith in the relationship, and then tells the woman how proud he is of her, how much he believes in her. And he tells her to "just wait and it will come." After the song ends, she takes out her copy of the CD and listens to the song over and over while he talks with her, telling her what the song means to him in terms of his relationship with her. He begins to share some of his religious beliefs with her. "God will never throw anything your way that He believes you can't handle," he told her. "The way I see it, that alone should give you the confidence to make it through this. If God believes in you, then that really means something." He went on to tell her how much he cared for her and that he didn't care if they didn't meet now, they would meet one day, that they just had to keep the hope of their future together alive.

The next week was the last week of Fall Quarter, which meant that it was time for finals. He'd fallen really behind in a few of his class, and had talked with some of his new friends to work out times they could help him catch up. He told Bree that he wouldn't be able to stay up too late talking with her because he couldn't afford to screw up his finals. He knew he'd more than likely be given an academic warning by the school for his grades this quarter, not to mention what his parents would think when they saw the grades they were paying for.

Sunday night, December 15th, 1996, his life changed forever.

That night, before supper, he and Bree were talking as always. She had gotten her plane ticket and had almost gotten all of her stuff packed away for her trip to California. He still had some last minute studying to do before his finals in the morning, and he was gonna go and do that while she ate. She was supposed to call him back around 8:30 or 9:00 that night, which would give him plenty of time to study.

Around 9:30 he pulled his nose out from his Goverment book and looked at his watch, and wondered why she hadn't called yet. He got down from his bunk and checked his email, but there were no new messages. Then he went into the chat room, hoping that maybe she'd just lost track of the time, but there was no one there who'd seen her either. After a few moments her sister, Heather, logged in and he asked her if she'd seen Bree. She hadn't, but she promised him that she'd get offline and call her for him (he didn't have a phone card handy) to see what the problem was.

A few minutes later she came back on and said that she'd gotten a recording saying that Bree's phone had been disconnected. "That's odd," he told her, "I just talked with her a few hours ago." As luck would have it, her brother logged in at that time also. He and Bree shared her apartment, so now Jason could get to the bottom of this.

"Hey, Kev, Bree wouldn't happen to be around now would she?"

"Listen dammit, don't you think that you and her should quit playing this little game already?" he answered back.

In the ensuing conversation, Jason learned that Bree had run up a $1500 phone bill over the past month and a half calling him. They hadn't been able to pay the phone bill, so the phone company had disconnected the line until payments had been made. Jason couldn't believe it. $1500 dollars!!!!!

He was up until late that night talking with Kevin about "the game" that Jason and Bree had been "playing." It turns out that Jason wasn't the only person that Bree had been calling. There was another guy in southern Georgia that she'd been calling, and she'd also called Rick (the ex-fiancee) every night when she'd told Jason she had to go and eat supper. How could he have misplaced his trust so badly? His light in the darkness had turned out to be a fire in the forest of his heart. In the following day or two, he talked with Heather and then with Rick, finding out everything that had happened. He logged their conversations into a text file so that he could go back later and make more sense of it. One of the files turned out to be eighteen pages long.

He ran through the entire gauntlet of negative emotions, going from being extremely bitter one moment to being almost in tears the next. He bombed most of his exams, earning the worst grades of his life up to that point. That Christmas turned out to be the worst he'd ever experienced. He was severely depressed the entire time. On New Year's Eve, he went back to his best friend's apartment in Athens. They were going to go out together that night to celebrate the coming of the New Year. Before the night was out, their friendship had suffered a derailment it never recovered from.

Author's Note: At the time of this writing, April 12, 1998, I have had no news of Bree since that fateful Sunday night. I still lie awake some nights wondering what might have been...wondering if I will ever find a girl who could ever be to me what Bree was without having to be that person in deception only. The pain and bitterness have long since ebbed away, and I do hold a small amount of thanks to her. For one brief moment in my life, she allowed me to catch ahold of one of the stars I'm always stretching to touch. I can only hope that, in the not-so-near future, I can hopefully find another story that won't leave me in it's wake.