Connecting (5 page)

Still.

“What’s wrong?” Willow asks as Calla arrives at the table where she and Sarita are nibbling on their usual sparse lunches: apples and bottles of water.

“Do I look like something’s wrong?”

“Yeah,” Sarita says. “You do. What is it?”

“Nothing, it’s just . . . I think Jacy just seriously dissed me.”

“Jacy Bly?” Sarita shakes her chic short haircut and cuts off another chunk of apple, which she can’t bite into because of her braces. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s dissed someone. He’s got a major attitude problem.”

“Yeah, well, after what he’s been through, he’s allowed.” Willow’s wide-set brown eyes focus intently on Calla. “Are you and Jacy . . . ?”

“Friends. Yeah.”

“Oh.” Willow nods like she buys it—and really, it’s the truth—but something tells Calla she suspects there might be more to it than that.

She’s not going to elaborate, though. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Willow, who’s become one of her closest friends at Lily Dale. Which is ironic, since Calla’s first impression of her, unfairly based on her extraordinary beauty, was that she’s standoffish.

She’s not. She’s just quiet.

Meaning Calla could probably confide her interest in Jacy and Willow would keep it to herself.

Maybe she will confide in Willow. Just not with Sarita here. She’s more social, and if she mentions it, it’ll get back to Evangeline, who has a not-so-secret crush on Jacy herself.

“Jacy really doesn’t seem to be into making friends or getting involved in stuff here,” Sarita points out. “I mean, he runs track, but that’s pretty much it. And it’s not exactly a big team sport, you know?”

Calla can’t help but glance over at the table where Blue and his soccer buddies are laughing raucously. “Not everyone’s into team sports.”

“Right, and maybe Jacy’s afraid to get too plugged in at this school,” Willow says. “Maybe he’s afraid he’ll get yanked away from Peter and Walt and moved to a new foster home somewhere else or, God forbid, back to his parents.”

“He probably is,” Sarita agrees with a shrug, then resumes their earlier conversation. “So, you’re, like, positive you have to go to your dad’s tonight?”

Calla looks up from her yogurt with interest. This is the first mention she’s heard of Willow’s father.

“I’m positive. I skipped last week because of the homecoming committee meeting.”

“Did he even notice?” Sarita asks.

“Probably not.” Willow tries to laugh it off, but Calla can see that Sarita’s comment has struck a chord.

“Where does your dad live?” Calla asks.

“Dunkirk.”

“With his new wife and her kids,” Sarita puts in.

“Oh.” Calla isn’t sure what to say to that. “Well . . . that’s good. Dunkirk’s not so far away. Like, ten miles, right?”

“Less, but you’d think it was a hundred, the way her dad acts,” Sarita says. “It’s like he can’t be bothered to come down to Lily Dale and pick her up. Half the time, he stands her up.”

“Oh, Calla . . . I meant to ask you.” Willow, obviously uncomfortable with the route the conversation has taken, blatantly changes the subject. “Are you ready for the math quiz this afternoon? Do you want me to go over a couple of problems with you, just in case?”

Mr. Bombeck has been on her case from day one, and quickly assigned Calla a study partner: Willow, who happens to be as brainy as she is beautiful.

At first, Calla was reluctant to work with her—after all, she’s Blue Slayton’s ex-girlfriend—but to her surprise, that didn’t seem to matter much to Willow. Either she’s long over him, or she’s pretending to be, because she hasn’t mentioned him, or the fact that he’s dating Calla now. Willow must know about it, though. In a town the size of Lily Dale, everybody knows everything about everybody else.

“If you wouldn’t mind going over some problems, that would be great,” Calla tells Willow, sensing that she needs the distraction.

“Good. Let’s do it.”

As Calla reaches for her notebook, she glances over to see if Jacy’s still over there, absorbed by his book.

He’s there . . . but he’s not absorbed by his book; he’s looking right back at her.

When she catches him, though, he lowers his eyes again to the page.

Calla sighs inwardly.

After school, backpacks over their shoulders, hoods raised against the cold breeze, Calla and Evangeline trail a couple of other school kids along Dale Drive toward the entrance to Lily Dale.

At this time of year, nobody mans the gatehouse, with its sign that reads L
ILY
D
ALE
A
SSEMBLY
. . . W
ORLD’S
L
ARGEST
C
ENTER FOR
THE
R
ELIGION OF
S
PIRITUALISM
.

Beyond, the winding lanes of the town are deserted against a cold gray backdrop. Clumps of late-summer flowers, blooming profusely in defiance of an almost perpetually sunless sky, bend and shift on fragile stems in a brisk wind off the choppy lake waters.

“. . . so then I casually mentioned to him we might be out of town that weekend,” Evangeline is saying, “just in case he was thinking of asking me. What do you think?”

“Hmm?” Distracted by a sense of uneasiness that’s been nagging at her all day, Calla’s barely been listening to Evangeline’s long-winded account of what happened between her and Russell Lancione during study hall.

“Never mind. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I—hey, what are you looking at?” Evangeline follows Calla’s gaze off to the right, in the opposite direction of Cottage Row and home.

Leolyn Woods is over there.

“Nothing, just . . . want to take the long way home today? I feel like getting some fresh air.”

“Fresh air?” Evangeline asks dubiously, as a strong gust whips a clump of frizzy orange hair over her face. “You’re joking, right? It’s like a hurricane out here. Any more fresh air and we’ll be dangling from a tree branch somewhere.”

Her words are punctuated by the familiar, furious silvery clanging of metal wind chimes, as common above local doorsteps as medium shingles are.

And it isn’t just wind chimes. Calla has no idea whether all Lily Dale residents are as big on indoor clutter as Odelia, Ramona, and a handful of others have proven to be, but they all seem to love outdoor clutter. Birdbaths, garden gnomes, fluttering American flags or smaller nylon ones imprinted with harvest pumpkins and autumn leaves. Now that election season is here, political signs have been popping up, too.

Calla hasn’t been able to pinpoint any practical or spiritual reason for the jumble of exterior ornamentation. It simply appears to be, to the Lily Dale landscape, what neon-lit signs are to Las Vegas: part of the local tradition.

“The thing is,” Calla tells Evangeline, with another glance toward Leolyn Woods, “we always go the same way, every single day.”

“Uh, maybe because that’s where we live?” Evangeline frowns, shaking her head a little and longingly watching her brother, Mason, bear to the left up ahead, toward Cottage Row and home.

“I’m taking the long way today,” Calla decides. “You don’t have to go with me, though.”

“But why do you—” Suddenly Evangeline’s round face breaks into a grin. “Oh!”

“What?”

“I know why you want to go that way.”

She does?

“You do?”

“Sure.”

Then why is Evangeline smiling? There’s nothing amusing about a ghost showing a person an old map marked with an X.

And anyway, how could she know?

How does anyone around here claim to know anything?
Calla reminds herself.

Okay, Evangeline does claim to be a budding psychic medium, but as far as Calla can tell, she’s got a long way to go. It’s highly unlikely that she had a psychic vision of the book and the map.

Still, Calla decides to humor her. And in Lily Dale, you really just never can tell.

“All right,” she says patiently. “Why do I want to go that way?”

“Blue.”

“Blue? Blue what?”

“You mean Blue who. Blue Slayton.
Duh
. I bet he’s hanging over at Jeremy’s today, right? Jeremy lives there—on East Street.” Evangeline gestures off in the distance, beyond the path toward the woods.

Actually, he isn’t. He had soccer practice right after school. But Evangeline just gave her a good cover story, so . . .

“Oh . . . fine. You got me.” Calla feigns a sheepish grin. “That’s why I want to go that way. You coming?”

Evangeline hesitates.

Come on, Evangeline . . . come with me . . .

Calla really isn’t anxious to go into the woods alone. She’s been there before, and it’s a creepy spot. The locals claim Inspiration Stump and its surroundings are a highly charged vortex of spiritual energy, and judging by her own reaction to the place, Calla suspects they’re right.

“Why not.” Evangeline shrugs and looks down at her chubby build, even more roly-poly than usual in her down jacket. “I could use some extra exercise. Let’s go.”

As they walk along, she resumes the saga of Russell Lancione and his unrequited crush on her, claiming not to care but spending an awful lot of time analyzing everything he’s said and done.

Calla hates to cut her off, but they’ve reached the turn-off for Leolyn Wood, and as a conversational rule, Evangeline rarely pauses for air.

“Hey, let’s walk through there!” Calla exclaims, as though she just thought of it.

Evangeline breaks off in the middle of a sentence. “What?”

“The woods. Let’s go that way.”

“That’s a dead end. Why do you want to go in there?”

“It’s just so . . . peaceful.” Calla is getting sick of keeping up the act, but she still isn’t ready to tell Evangeline the whole story. For all she knows, the map in the book, which is stashed in her backpack, is utterly meaningless.

But if not . . .

“We can’t go in there right now,” Evangeline says simply, shaking her head.

“It’s okay, then, you go home, and I’ll see you lat—”

“No.” Evangeline grabs Calla’s coat sleeve. “I mean, we
can’t
go in there. Not that I don’t want to. Not that I do, though.”

“Why can’t we?”

“Didn’t you ever see the sign?”

“What sign?”

“Here . . . come on.” Evangeline leads the way to the edge of the grove and points at, sure enough, a sign.

D
O
N
OT
E
NTER
L
EOLYN
W
OODS
IN
HIGH W
INDS

“What? That’s crazy,” Calla declares, even as she gazes overhead at the ominously swaying, creaking trees, their gnarled branches bony fingers grasping at the purple-gray heavens.

“Maybe, but it’s just as crazy to ignore it, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

“Anyway”—Evangeline flashes her a smile—“I guarantee you Blue Slayton’s not hanging in the woods on a day like today. In fact, I’m sure he knows you’re about to walk past Jeremy’s house, and I bet he comes outside looking for you.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because, duh. He’s one of the most powerful psychics around here. Like his father.”

Calla considers that. She hasn’t exactly seen evidence of Blue’s abilities since she’s met him . . . but that doesn’t mean Evangeline’s claim isn’t true.

“Come on, let’s go.” Evangeline hugs herself and stamps her feet a little. “I’m freezing.”

Calla considers ignoring the warning sign and Evangeline, anxious to see what—if anything—lies in the spot marked by the map.

Then that nagging sense of uneasiness gets the better of her.

Another time.

Maybe she’ll even get Jacy to go with her.

Though, now that she thinks about it, she’s barely had a chance to talk to him lately. Today when she tried in the cafeteria, he seemed almost cold. But that was probably because he was reading, and she was interrupting.

Then again . . .

The more she thinks about it, the more obvious it seems that he’s been avoiding her lately.

But why?

“Calla, you’ll never believe this . . . guess what?” Evangeline breathlessly greets her on the telephone later.

In the midst of clearing the dinner dishes with her grandmother, Calla grins. Evangeline often begins her calls with that phrase, and her news is rarely anything anyone else would consider earth shattering.

“I can’t even imagine,” she tells Evangeline dryly, “so you’ll have to tell me.”

“My aunt is going to take us shopping at the mall tomorrow after school!”

“Really?” Calla perks up. “Wow, that would be—oh, wait. I can’t. I forgot to tell you this afternoon . . . my dad’s flying into Buffalo tomorrow to visit me for the weekend.”

“That stinks. I mean, I know how much you miss him, but—hey, wait a minute. The mall is in Buffalo, too. What time is he coming in?”