Discovering (15 page)

“Who is that?”she asks again, but nobody replies.

The plane drops lower still.

I know her. There’s something so familiar about her. If only I
could see her face. . . .

“Who is she? Can someone please tell me?”

“She’s your sister,”says the passenger in the next seat.

A passenger whose voice is hauntingly familiar.

Shocked, Calla turns to see her mother sitting there.

“Mom!”

Even as she cries out, her mother vanishes.

She jerks her head toward the window again, but the waving girl has disappeared as well, along with the buildings, and the sky, and . . .

With a gasp, Calla sits up in bed.

It was just a dream.

Of course it was.

She doesn’t have a sister.

The baby died.

She sinks back against the pillows, staring into the blackness, her heart still pounding.

It’s a long time before she drifts back to sleep.

FOURTEEN

Lily Dale
Thursday, October 11
7:54 a.m.

“So . . . he knows,”Calla tells Evangeline as soon as they round the bend in Dale Drive on the way to school beneath a steely gray sky.

There’s a pause as Evangeline— who, before Calla interrupted, was wondering aloud what to wear when she and Russell go to the movies together on Friday night—digests this information.

“He does?”she asks, wide- eyed.

The cool thing about Evangeline is that she can shift gears pretty easily.

Another cool thing is that she’s tuned in to Calla well enough to know exactly what she’s talking about without having to have it spelled out for her.

“You told him?”

“No. He figured it out.”

“Wow. I’ve been so careful not to say anything, and my aunt has, too.”

Calla doesn’t bother to tell her Ramona’s uncharacteristic silence on the topic of her work might be what tipped off her father.

No need for anyone to feel guilty about the cat being let out of the bag. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

And Calla has realized, in the last twelve hours or so, that sooner is better than later.

Last night, while she and Dad were going over her math problems, she was a lot more comfortable than she has been in a long time. It’s easier to spend time with him when there’s nothing left to hide.

Well, there are a couple of things. . . .

Like the fact that Calla herself has supernatural abilities.

And the fact that Mom had another child.

But even Evangeline doesn’t know about that.

And Calla doesn’t want to think about it now. Not with last night’s strange dream still lingering, still oddly clear, almost as if . . .

No.

She doesn’t have a sister.

Maybe she did once.

But she’s dead, along with both her parents.

“Wow . . . how much did your dad figure out?”Evangeline glances at the sky, then holds out her hand to see if drops are starting to fall.

“Everything. About your aunt and my grandmother being mediums . . . along with pretty much everyone else in town.”

“Including you.”

“No. Not including me.”Calla feels a raindrop land on her hand and flips up the hood on the fleece jacket she pulled on this morning. The temperature must have dropped at least thirty degrees overnight. So much for Indian summer.

“I thought you said he knew everything,”Evangeline reminds her, flipping up her own hood.

“Yeah, but not that.”

Not about Mom, either. But it’s only a matter of time.

“Why didn’t you just tell him about yourself?”

“Because I’m afraid to,”she says simply. “I mean, he’s surprisingly okay with the two of us living here with all of this stuff he doesn’t understand going on around us. But I think he’d be a lot less okay if he realized that I’m directly involved.”

“I think you’re right.”

“The other thing is, he’s decided he’s taking me away this weekend to go looking at colleges—including Cornell.”

“Doesn’t your ex- boyfriend go there?”

“You got it,”she says grimly. “I just saw him in Florida, and he kind of wanted to get back together.”

“You told him no?”

“Of course. He broke my heart. No way am I putting it out there again with him, especially now that . . .”

“Now that you have Jacy. It’s okay. You can say it.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

Evangeline shrugs. “If he had to fall in love with one of us— and it couldn’t be me— then I’m glad it’s you.”

Calla can’t help but grin at that, even as she protests, “He’s not in love with me.”

“Oh, yeah, he is. I saw you guys walking together the other day, and it was totally obvious. I’ve never seen him look that comfortable ever, anywhere, unless he was running.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But listen, about Cornell—just because your old boyfriend is there doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go look at it.”

“True.”

“Or that you shouldn’t go there, if you want to. I mean, it’s a huge school.”

Also true. But . . .

Hearing tires crunching on the road behind them, she turns to see Blue Slayton in his BMW.

“Want a ride?”he calls out the window.

“Definitely!”Evangeline answers for both of them. “It’s going to start pouring any second.”

Then, with a belated glance at Calla, she asks in a low voice, “You don’t mind, right? I left my umbrella at school the other day. Unless you have one?”

“No. It’s okay, we can ride with Blue.”She hasn’t seen much of him since they mutually, and without discussing it, concluded they’re better off as friends.

He leans over and opens the passenger- side door. A pair of crutches are propped in the backseat. Evangeline scrambles in beside them, leaving Calla to sit in front with Blue.

“How’s your leg?”she asks, thinking she probably should have called to ask him about it when she got back to town.

He was injured a few weeks ago in a soccer game, the night before she was supposed to go to the homecoming dance with him.

“It’s better. How was your trip to Florida?”

“Great,”she lies, not wanting to get into it.

“What’d you do?”

“Oh, you know . . . the usual Florida stuff.”

“The weather was great, right?”

Was it? That was so far off her radar, given what happened, that there could have been a hurricane and she probably wouldn’t remember.

“Sure,”she agrees, because it’s easier that way. “The weather was great, and I hung out with my old friends.”

“Yeah. I kept seeing you there.”

Seeing her?

Oh! He means in a psychic vision, of course.

“What did you see?”she asks cautiously, aware that now he’s going to ask her about Sharon Logan, and about her mother, and maybe even about the baby.

And then she’s going to have to explain it all to Evange-line, too.

Life was so much less complicated when she wasn’t surrounded by people who know as much— or more— about what she’s been doing than she does.

“You know, you were in the water—couldn’t tell if it was a pool or the Gulf,”Blue says.

Now he’s going to tell me someone was trying to drown me, and
he’s going to ask why . . . unless he already knows.

“You were wearing a bathing suit, and you looked great in it, of course— and you were really relaxed, and there were palm trees, you know, and a bunch of people. You were having a great time.”

“Really?”Calla doesn’t dare look at Evangeline, who now knows the truth about what happened there.

Calla hasn’t worn a bathing suit in ages.

And her time in the water was hardly relaxing.

“Yeah, really.”Blue flashes her his familiar, flirty smile. “I like to keep tabs on you, you know?”

Uneasy, she watches the wipers’ rhythmic arc across the rain-spattered windshield. “Well, anyway . . . thanks for picking us up. I thought your dad didn’t like you to drive to school.”

That’s because Blue got a speeding ticket one morning, doing sixty in a school zone.

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have much choice. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Hobble down the road on crutches?”

“He could drop you off,”Evangeline points out.

“Yeah, he
could
. . . if he were around. But he’s not.”

Typical. Blue’s father, David Slayton, is a celebrity medium who spends far more time in front of television cameras in New York and LA than he does with his son in Lily Dale.

Calla has only met the man once, and was unnerved by his warning that she was going to find herself in a dangerous situation. He didn’t specify water, as others had, but somehow, his warning left just as great an impact on her.

But . . . what about Blue?

Why is he talking about things that didn’t happen, as if he’s trying hard— too hard— to convince her of his psychic abilities?

Maybe because he doesn’t have any, she realizes, and her stomach turns a little.

Maybe, living in his father’s larger-than- life shadow, Blue feels obligated to live up to a larger-than- life reputation. And maybe he thinks that the only way he can do that is to lie.

Sitting beside him, driving toward the school, Calla is certain she made the right choice when she chose Jacy over Blue, the guy all the Lily Dale High girls want.

With Jacy, what you see is what you get.

He doesn’t play games, and he doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not.

They pull into the crowded school parking lot, and Blue instantly finds an empty spot close to the door.

“This is a miracle,”Evangeline declares, as he turns off the engine. “I thought you’d have to park in, like, the next state. How’d you manage this?”

“Guess I was born under a lucky star. Hey, Calla, can I talk to you for a second?”

Uh- oh.

“Sure.”

As Evangeline scrambles out of the backseat, she raises her brows at Calla, who shrugs.

She has no idea what Blue wants to talk about, but she has a feeling it’s not the weather.

“See you later, guys. Thanks for the ride, Blue.”

“No problem.”

Evangeline closes the door behind her, leaving them alone in the car to watch her splash off through the rain toward the redbrick school.

“Calla . . .”

She turns toward him reluctantly, wondering what to say if he asks her out again. She can tell him she can’t because of Jacy, though she and Jacy haven’t exactly discussed whether they’re free to see other people. She knows she doesn’t want to, and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t either.

“What’s up, Blue?”she asks breezily, as if she’s expecting him to ask her what the cafeteria is serving for lunch today.

“Before my dad left for London last night, he asked me if I’d seen you lately. I kind of . . . told him you were away.”

Puzzled, she says, “That’s okay. I was.”

“No, I mean . . . I told him you were
still
away last night. And that I didn’t know when you were coming back.”

“You lied? Why?”

“Because I didn’t want him bugging you.”

“Bugging me?”she echoes. “Why would he bug me?”

“He can be really pushy. I wasn’t even going to tell you about this, but . . . well, he called again this morning to ask if you were back yet. He hardly ever calls when he’s on the road, especially from overseas. I told him you were coming back today and that I’d let you know he wants to talk to you.”

“What about, though?”

“Something that I’m sure is none of his business,”Blue says with a scowl.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. He wouldn’t tell me. All he said was that it’s about your mother.”

“Tell me, Calla, how is everything going?”asks Mrs. Erskine, an attractive thirty-something blonde who has a framed, recent wedding photo on her desk.

How is everything going? You mean other than the fact that my
mother’s dead, my father’s here, someone tried to kill me over the weekend,
and I have no idea what I want to do next year?

“Everything’s going great!”She smiles so brightly her face hurts.

“I’m glad.”Mrs. Erskine opens a manila folder. “Your transcript shows that you were a straight- A student back in Florida. And your grades are very good so far this term . . . other than math, I see.”

She waits for Calla to reply.

What am I supposed to say to that?

“I’m kind of having a hard time getting used to how it, um, works here.”

As if math works differently in this part of the country.

Yeah, right.