Believing (7 page)

Relieved and grateful, Calla weaves her way toward them. Willow was in a few of her classes this morning, but they were kept so busy there was no time to talk. Unlike Calla’s school back in Florida, there’s no coasting into academics as the school year gets under way. Here,
bang
—day two, and you’re in the thick of it.

“Hi, want to eat with us?” Sarita asks, pulling out the empty chair beside her.

“Sure, thanks.” She sits, and notices that Willow is awfully busy peeling an orange. She pulls off the last wedge of peel, then goes to work removing every thread of white membrane.

“How’s everything going for you guys today?” Calla asks a little uneasily, and Sarita tells her everything is great. Willow looks up briefly, says, “Okay,” and goes back to the orange.

There’s a definite chill coming off her today that wasn’t there yesterday.

She knows,
Calla realizes.
She knows I’m seeing Blue again.

For a moment, she’s glad she didn’t go over and talk to him just now. The last thing she needs is for Willow to spot them together.

Then she realizes that’s ridiculous. Willow and Blue are broken up. He can talk to—and date—other girls if he wants to.

Yeah, but Willow doesn’t have to be friends with those girls.

“So, what were you saying about that trip your parents are planning?” Willow asks Sarita as Calla unwraps her straw.

Sarita goes back to what she was saying before Calla arrived. It’s a good thing she talks a lot, Calla decides by the time the lunch period is over, because there was no awkward silence, and there might have been. Sarita and Willow are both on the homecoming dance committee, and they’re working on a flyer. Sarita at least asked Calla for some input—not that she had anything worthwhile to add—but Willow didn’t say much to her at all.

It isn’t that she’s being particularly rude or cold-shouldering Calla. She seems more . . . detached. Or maybe even hurt. Sad.

She still cares about Blue,
Calla realizes.
They might be broken up, but that probably wasn’t her idea.

Just like what happened with Kevin and me.

And if Calla found herself sharing a lunch table with his new girlfriend,Annie, she probably wouldn’t be all that chatty, either.

Oh, well. What does any of this matter? She’s not staying in Lily Dale forever. She’ll be heading out to California soon enough for a fresh start.

Only . . .

She can’t go until she’s taken care of unfinished business here.

Again, she looks around for Jacy. He’s not here.

That will have to wait.

“Calla?” Mr. Bombeck, who is wiry and middle-aged, with thick glasses and a swoop of graying hair, comes to a halt beside her desk. He looks over her shoulder at the pop quiz in front of her. “Is there a problem?”

Not unless you count the fact that I have absolutely no clue how to even set up the first problem, much less solve it.

The classroom is hushed; all around her, pencils are scratching and her classmates are intently focused on the quiz.

“It’s only the second day of school. How can we have a test when we haven’t learned anything yet?” someone protested when Mr. Bombeck sprang it on them.

The stern reply: “That’s the point. I want to see where your math skills are.”

Calla realized, a few seconds in, that hers seem to have vanished into thin air, the way things often do in Lily Dale.

She looks up at the teacher now, shrugs, and whispers, “I’m sorry . . . I just don’t understand these problems.”

He nods a little and crooks a finger at her, gesturing for her to come with him.

She hesitates, then pushes back her chair. It makes a loud scraping sound on the hardwood floor and the entire class looks up at her. Everyone except Jacy Bly, that is. He’s intently focused on his test.

“I want you all to keep working,” Mr. Bombeck announces. “I’ll be right outside the door, and I’ll be monitoring you through the window. Keep your eyes on your own work, please.”

Calla follows him out of the classroom, her face burning.

Mr. Bombeck closes the door behind them and positions himself in front of the rectangular window so that he can keep watch on the classroom.

“I was afraid you might have trouble, Calla.”

“No, but . . . I’ve always been good in math. Straight A’s. I was supposed to be in Advanced Placement Calculus back in Florida.” Sharing that with him doesn’t feel like bragging.

Right. It’s more like sheer desperation. She can’t let the toughest teacher in her new school conclude she’s ignorant.

“I’m sure you did well there, but you did come from out of state.” He jerks the doorknob, pushes it open, and calls, “John, put all four chair legs on the floor.” Without missing a beat, he closes the door and goes on to Calla, “Our math curriculum here is extremely challenging.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“What should I do?” she asks helplessly.

“I’m going to assign you to a study partner for the next week or two. Let’s see if we can get you caught up. You’re staying with your grandmother in the Dale, right?”

When she nods, he says conclusively, “Willow York lives near you, and she’s got a terrific track record in math. The two of you can start working together right away.”

Willow York . . . again.

Could her life be any more complicated?

“Jacy! Wait up,” Calla calls, spotting him in the hallway just after the last bell.

His long legs were about to carry him around the corner to the stairwell, but he turns and looks back at her.

He doesn’t smile, but as she hurries toward him, she can’t help but decide he seems glad to see her. Smiling—and flirting—just aren’t his style.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” she asks him, watching him swing his backpack over his shoulder after zipping his gray hooded sweatshirt.

“About math? Is everything okay?”

So he did notice that she had to leave the classroom with Bombeck. After their little talk, the teacher sent her to the school library for the remainder of the period. He said it made no sense for her to sit there while everyone else finished the test. She could feel them all watching her while she gathered up her things and left the classroom.

“Everything’s okay with math,” she tells Jacy, “I just need some extra help.”

“I can help you if you want.”

Yeah, I wish.
If only Bombeck had assigned Jacy to be her study partner, instead of Willow. Maybe she can suggest that to—

No. She’d better not mess with Mr. Bombeck. He’s been human enough so far, but she can tell there’s a steely core underneath. Besides, he said he’d tell Willow to call her after school, so she must already know about being assigned as Calla’s study partner. If Calla backs out now, Willow might think she doesn’t want to work with her because of Blue.

Which is kind of true,
she admits to herself.

“I was looking for you during lunch,” she tells Jacy. “Where were you?”

“Outside. I took a walk in the woods.”

“Really?” She checked the student handbook yesterday and found out the school has a closed lunch rule, meaning you have to stay in the cafeteria. Or so she thought. “So we’re allowed to go outside, then? During lunch?”

“No.” He shrugs. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

She looks around, not wanting anyone to see them together.

Anyone? You mean Evangeline.

“Calla?”

She likes the way Jacy says her name. Some people around here, with their Great Lakes accents, make the
a
’s flat and nasal, drawing it out into
Key-alla.

Not Jacy.

Who, by the way, is still waiting for her to say something.

“Uh, sorry . . .” She tries to remember what it was she wanted to talk to him about.

Oh. Right.
That.

Instantly, she’s plunked right back down to grim reality.

“Yesterday you said something about my being gifted. Well, not in those words, exactly, but . . . you know what I mean.”

He nods. “I know.”

“Can we—” Again, she looks around to see who might be eavesdropping.

The hallway is filled with the sound of slamming lockers and chattering voices and people are scurrying around, not seeming to pay any attention to Calla and Jacy. Still . . .

“Are you . . . ,” she begins again, and then, “I mean, do you want to . . . ?”

“I’ll walk home with you. Yeah. Come on.”

“Good thing you’re a mind reader.” She grins.

Again, he doesn’t.

And this time, it occurs to her that it’s because he doesn’t think she’s joking. Around here, it seems, some people don’t take things like mind reading lightly.

Calla just hopes Jacy can’t read
all
her thoughts. Especially the ones about him.

They head down the stairs and swing by her locker so she can get her stuff. As they step outside into an unexpectedly balmy breeze, Calla notices that the shifting sky is ominously dark in the west, beyond the lake, and wind-driven ripples cover the surface of the gray-black water.

“It’s going to storm,” she comments, reminded of Florida in the late afternoons.

Jacy shakes his head. “No. It’ll pass.”

“How do you know?”

He ignores the question and asks one of his own as they head down the path toward the road back to Lily Dale. “So what’s been going on?”

“I don’t even know where to start.” She searches her memory. “I guess the first thing was the clock. This digital one that was in my room—my mother’s old room. When I first got here, it was flashing.”

“Because the time wasn’t set?”

“Right. Exactly. I didn’t bother to set it, but then I woke up in the middle of the night and it said 3:17 a.m.”

“So, someone set it while you were sleeping?”

“My grandmother said she didn’t. And it started happening every night. I’d go to bed with the clock flashing, and I’d wake up and it was 3:17. Every single night.”

“Maybe you were dreaming.”

“I wasn’t,” she says firmly. “Not about waking up. But I was definitely dreaming before I woke up. The same exact dream, every night. It was about my mother and my grandmother, and this argument they had when I was really little. After that, they never saw each other again.”

“What was it about?”

“I don’t know, really. They kept saying something about dredging the lake.”

Both she and Jacy glance again at the dark water. What secrets does it hold?

Calla shudders and turns away, going on with her story. “I was starting to get really freaked out, so I unplugged the clock, and . . . this is the really creepy part . . . it happened even then.”

“It was unplugged, and it was showing the time anyway?”

“3:17. Yeah. So I threw the clock away, and bought a new one, and . . .” She wonders how she’s going to tell him this without sounding like she’s really lost it.

But she doesn’t have to, because he says it for her. Like he already knew.

“And it happened anyway.”

“Yeah. And I found out that spirit energy can supposedly tap into appliances and, you know, manipulate electronic energy. Feed off of it or something.”

It’s Jacy’s turn to nod. Obviously, this isn’t news to him.

“The thing is . . . last weekend, when I was at Wal-Mart buying the new clock, this green shamrock bowl somehow fell off a shelf by itself and broke into a million pieces. And then I saw this woman again. This Spirit,” she remembers to say, instead of
ghost
. Here in Lily Dale, people like to say Spirit. With a capital
S
. “I think she made the bowl break to get my attention because . . .” She takes a deep breath. “This is going to sound far-fetched.”

Jacy shrugs.

“Okay . . . green shamrock bowl. 3-17. That’s not just a time, it’s a date. March seventeenth. Saint Patrick’s Day. That’s what this was all about. I realized I was supposed to be remembering something that happened on Saint Patrick’s Day. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Jacy says simply, and she wants to hug him. “What happened on March seventeenth?”

“This man came to visit my mom. I remember the day because she was baking Irish soda bread, and she burned it. She never made careless mistakes like that. She must have been thrown off by seeing him, or maybe something he said, or something he gave her—he had an envelope with him.”

“What was in it?”

“I have no idea. I thought it must be work stuff, but it turned out he wasn’t a coworker after all. And his name isn’t really Tom, either. The other thing is, he was whistling this tune. I had never heard it before, but I heard it again, when I got to Lily Dale. It’s the same song that plays in this old jewelry box I found in my mother’s room.”

Jacy’s black eyebrows raise, just a little. He’s not the kind of guy to react to anything in a big way, Calla’s learning. But he looks surprised.

“And in the middle of the night last Monday—Tuesday morning, really—at 3:17—it opened by itself,” she hurries on, “and the music woke me up, and I found my mother’s emerald bracelet in there, and it couldn’t have been there, because it fell into her grave at her funeral and I lost it.” She breaks off, breathless, wondering if Jacy thinks she’s crazy. Sometimes, lately, she thinks that herself.

“What about the woman you saw that day, when the bowl broke?” Jacy asks. “Who was she?”

“I have no idea. But this word—
Aiyana
—popped into my head when I saw her. Does that mean anything to you? Is it a name or something?”

“It can be. It’s Native American. It means ‘forever flowering.’ ”

Her jaw drops, and she remembers the distinct floral smell that sometimes inexplicably fills her room back at Odelia’s house, and infiltrated the bathroom the other night, when she saw that strange disembodied shadow. The scent belongs to lilies of the valley. Mom’s favorite flower.

“I think that’s the woman’s name,” Calla tells Jacy. “She keeps popping up . . . even before I came to Lily Dale. And she looks beautiful and exotic, like you.”

It takes her a second to realize she just told Jacy she thinks he’s beautiful. Oops.

Open mouth, insert foot, once again.

Not that she doesn’t have more important things to worry about right now.