Connecting (24 page)

“I’ve been looking into a few places I think you’d like.”

“Where are they?” She folds the takeout pizza box from dinner and crams it into her grandmother’s kitchen garbage.

“They’re all over.”

“Near here?”

There’s a pause. “You didn’t say you wanted to stay near there.”

“The thing is, Dad, I’m just not sure where I want to be.”

“Then it sounds like you and I have something in common.” The dry comment catches her off guard. “What do you mean?”

“I’m thinking of getting out of California, Calla. This doesn’t feel right for me.”

“You mean, before the semester’s over?”

He sighs heavily. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Would you go back to Florida, then?” Her mind races.

Would he want her to go with him?

A few months ago, that would have been a godsend. Not anymore.

“That would depend,” her father says.

“On what?”

“On you. Would you want to go back to finish your senior year at your old school?”

Go back? And leave Odelia, and Jacy, and Lily Dale, and— “No,” she says firmly. “I don’t want to go back. Not until the school year’s over here, anyway.”

“I didn’t think so. I guess that means I’d better start looking for a place there.”

“Where? Back home?”

“No,” he says. “Lily Dale—or someplace nearby.”

“What?!”

“It’s not a hundred percent certain, but I’m thinking it would be best for me. And for you. It’s not good for us to be apart right now.”

“But what would you do here?”

“I don’t know. Get my head together. Read. Write. Something.” “Will the college there let you go?”

“Yeah. I’ve talked to the department about it.”

“So when would you—” She cuts off, hearing a beep on the line. Call waiting cutting in.

Calla welcomes it. Yeah, she misses her father, but she isn’t sure how she feels about him invading her turf. If he moves here, he’s bound to figure out what goes on in Lily Dale, and he’s not going to like it.

“Listen, I have to go, Dad. Odelia has another call coming in and I have to get it.”

At the moment, her grandmother is behind closed doors reading a newly bereaved widow. Calla made a point of not being around when the woman showed up earlier. After what happened with that con man Owen Henry or Henry Owens or whatever his name is, she’s steering clear of her grandmother’s clients from now on.

“I love you, Cal’. Be good.”

“I will.”
And careful, too.

She disconnects the call, then answers the new one.

“Hello?”

“Calla, it’s me!”

“Lisa! How are you?”

“F-ah-n,”
she drawls. “How was homecoming Saturday night?”

“It was good.”

“Just good?”

“Well, Blue ended up getting hurt playing soccer, and I ended up going with Jacy instead, but it’s a really long story. . . . I’ll tell you when I see you this weekend.” Or not.

At least her friends at school have dropped the subject . . . for now.

“Okay. So guess what?” Lisa moves on easily before Calla can spill the latest news about her father. “Nick Rodriguez broke up with Brittany Jensen and I heard he’s gonna ask me out!”

“That’s great, Lis’.”

“Yeah.” As Lisa fills her in on the saga, Calla pictures her best friend back home in Tampa, wearing big black sunglasses and a sky-blue two-piece bathing suit, her honey-blond hair falling long and loose over her shoulders as she lounges by the backyard pool beneath the warm late-afternoon rays. Country music—Trace Adkins, Lisa’s current favorite—plays faintly in the background.

Remembering her vision of her father in his California kitchen munching an apple, Calla wonders if Lisa really does happen to have on big black shades and a sky-blue bathing suit out by the pool.

Before she can ask, Lisa changes the subject to college. There’s just no escaping it, Calla decides with an inner sigh.

“I swear all I’ve done lately is fill out applications and write essays,” Lisa says. “How about you?”

“Not yet. I’m still figuring out where to apply.”

“Well, we always said we’d apply to all the same places, remember?”

“I remember. Where have you been applying?”

Lisa rattles off a list. Of course, her top ten schools are all in the Deep South.

“So get your butt in gear, and we can be roommates,” she drawled. “Wouldn’t that be great?”

Of course, Calla agreed that it would, out of habit. But the more she’s been thinking about it, the more she wonders whether she might want to stay here in the Northeast next year.

There’s something pleasant about the change of seasons, and she’s even getting used to the cold, and most of the Ivy League schools are here . . .

And so is Lily Dale.

She just told her father she wants to stay through the end of the school year, but maybe even that won’t be enough time. Whenever she thinks about uprooting herself again, leaving the new life that’s just starting to feel comfortable . . .

Well, it isn’t that she doesn’t want to go to college.

It’s . . .

Who knows what it is?

She has enough going on right now; she doesn’t want to worry about college just yet.

Too bad she has to. Time is running out, according to Dad and the guidance counselor and even Lisa.

“Listen,” her friend says, “you’re still planning on coming down here Friday, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Good.” Lisa hesitates. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but I probably should . . .”

“What?”

“Promise me you’ll come no matter what?”

“No matter what,” Calla says firmly, shoving aside Jacy’s latest warning about Florida. She has to get to her mother’s laptop.

And get away from here.

The thought comes out of nowhere, but she realizes it’s true. She loves Lily Dale, but she needs a break from all of this. Feeling like Darrin is stalking her, and seeing spirits everywhere she looks, and Evangeline still not speaking to her.

“I’m glad you’re coming no matter what,” Lisa says, “because Kevin’s going to be here.”

“What!”

“Yeah. He’ll be home this weekend on a fall break. My mother just told me. I didn’t even know about it till now.”

Calla sighs inwardly. Kevin knew she was going to Florida that weekend, and he didn’t mention any plans to be there, too.

Maybe that’s because he didn’t have any . . . yet.

But why would he want to see her, when he has Annie?

That doesn’t make sense.

Whatever. There’s no way she’s going to let his presence keep her from going to Florida next weekend. She’ll simply pretend he doesn’t exist.

Kind of like he must have pretended she didn’t exist when he first met Annie.

After assuring Lisa she was still coming and hanging up, Calla lugs her heavy backpack upstairs to her room. She closes the door securely behind her, then hesitates for a minute before looking under the bed and in the closet.

No Darrin.

Today, Calla tried hard to convince herself she imagined Darrin ever being here in Lily Dale. She did her best to pretend everything is normal.

Going about her daily routine in school, despite being alienated by Evangeline and avoided by Jacy, definitely helped.

Takeout pizza for dinner was another dose of normal, and so, in a less welcome way, is the pile of homework now waiting in her backpack.

As Calla begins to clear a spot on the desk, she comes across the library book that led her to that spot in Leolyn Woods where the lilies were inexplicably blooming.

“
She’s not there.
”

Aiyana’s words keep coming back to her, and she still has no idea what they meant.

She riffles through the pages of the library book, as if the answer might magically appear.

Maybe she really should read it cover to cover. Just in case there might be some other clue to—

Wait a minute.

How can this be?

She’s opened the book to the map . . . but where’s the circled X?

Frowning, Calla holds the page directly beneath the glare of the desk lamp, figuring the mark must be too faint to see in regular light.

No.

It’s still not here.

Various scenarios chase each other through her mind.

Someone could have erased it . . .

Except, who would come into her room and do such a thing?

Darrin?

Anyway, the mark was made in ink—old-fashioned-looking ink, which couldn’t be erasable, could it? And even if someone managed to erase it, there would still be a faint trace, wouldn’t there?

Definitely. So this must be the wrong map page.

Except, it’s identical to the one she saw before.

A thorough page-by-page search reveals that it’s the only map in the book.

So there’s only one explanation.

Spirit placed the mark there for her to see, and Spirit took it away.

Spirit wanted to get her to the woods, to see the flowers and the tombstonelike rock, and to know that “she’s not there.”

Wherever
there
is.

In the ground, beneath the rock and the lilies?

And she . . . who?

Not Mom.

Aiyana was pretty clear about that.

Spooked, Calla returns the book to the shelf, steps back, and narrows her eyes at it.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

Okay, you’re talking to a book.You realize that, right?

In the grand scheme of things, that’s the least of her problems, but still . . .

Come on.You can’t freak out about this. Just do your homework.
Get your mind off it for now.

Feeling helpless, Calla sinks into the desk chair, opens her calculus notebook, and wishes she could manage to shake the pervasive feeling that she’s being watched.

EIGHTEEN

Wednesday, October 3
8:15 p.m.

“Want to come over for a little while?” Blue asks as they drive back to Lily Dale after a bad movie at the small cineplex in nearby Dunkirk.

Well, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

It’s not like Calla was paying all that much attention. Sitting there in the darkened movie theater, with Blue’s arm around her shoulders, her thoughts were a million miles away.

She can’t stop thinking about Darrin.

“Calla? Do you want to?”

“Hmm?”

“Want to come over to my house?” Blue repeats. “It’s still early.”

She glances at the dashboard clock. He’s right. It’s not even nine yet.

She’s exhausted, though. Emotionally and physically. “I don’t know . . . it’s a school night. I think I’d better just go home.”

“Come on. You said you’d take a look at that English essay I wrote—it’s due Friday.”

True, she did tell him, earlier, that she’d try to help him with it, when he confessed he’d gotten a D on his last essay. His grades, Blue said, aren’t terrific, and he’s worried about getting into a decent college.

“Isn’t everyone?” Calla replied, and he looked surprised.

“I figured you were straight As all the way.”

“I was, back home in Florida. Here, I’ll be lucky if I don’t fail math.” She mentioned casually that Willow York is her study partner. No reaction from Blue.

“So do you want to come over?” he asks now.

She hesitates. She is exhausted and she’s still so stressed . . .

And she hasn’t told him yet that she just wants to be friends.

You really should,
she reminds herself.

“Maybe you can meet my dad,” Blue adds. “He should be home by now—he’s been away since Monday morning, but he was supposed to fly in tonight.”

So David Slayton left town the day after his son got out of the hospital, leaving him in the care of Mrs. Remington, their longtime housekeeper, as usual.

Wow. That’s cold. If she were injured and on crutches, Dad would never leave her side.

“Okay, sure,” she says reluctantly, feeling sorry for him.

“I’ll come in, just for a little while.”

Blue laughs and shakes his head. “Works every time.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just . . . everyone always wants to meet my dad.”

“That’s not why!”

“Just do me a favor and don’t ask him for an autograph, okay?”

“But I wouldn’t do that!”

“He loves it, actually.”

“Huh?”

“My father,” Blue clarifies. “He loves it when people ask him for autographs.”