Awakening

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  September.

  Wow, when he puts it that way, Calla isn’t so sure she’s going to be okay at all. Homesick, she merely nods before he says, “Honey?” and she remembers he can’t see her.

  “Yeah, Dad, I’m going to be fine here. I just wish . . . I mean, I can’t get online here, either. There’s no computer. So, that’s a little . . . disappointing.”

  She sees Odelia lift her head abruptly. She assumes it’s because of the computer comment, but she realizes Odelia doesn’t even seem to be paying attention to her conversation. Her head is cocked expectantly, almost as though she’s listening to something. Or for something.

  “Maybe there’s an Internet café there or something,” her father suggests as she watches Odelia set down her spoon, wearing a thoughtful expression.

  “Here? Um, no.” Where does her father think she is, in civilization?

  “Well, what about the library? Sometimes they have computers the public can use. You need to check it out.”

  Suddenly, Calla sees a shadow pass through the open doorway behind Odelia’s head, where the door to the sunroom is propped open by a doorstop.

  There’s someone in there. Only . . .

  There shouldn’t be anyone there at all. Calla and her grandmother have been sitting here for twenty minutes, eating sorbet and talking. Odelia never once mentioned anybody else being in the house. And surely she would have.

  If she knew about it.

  Even as Calla looks on, her grandmother turns her head sharply toward the sunroom.

  “Calla?” her father is saying in her ear. “Why don’t you check out the library?”

  “Right. I will.”

  “Good. Let me know what you find out. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” she echoes absently, her attention on her grandmother, who has stood and walked to the doorway of the sunroom.

  “I’ll call you around this time tomorrow night, okay?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Calla murmurs.

  Odelia is talking, so softly Calla can’t hear what she’s saying. She suspects that’s because her grandmother doesn’t want her to hear.

  “I love you, Calla.”

  “I love you, too, Dad.”

  She hangs up the phone.

  “Who are you talking to?” she asks her grandmother.

  Odelia doesn’t turn around right away. When she does, Calla expects her to deny that she said anything, but she shrugs. “That’s just Miriam.”

  “Miriam? So there is someone there?”

  Odelia’s eyebrows shoot up. “You saw her?”

  Something makes Calla shake her head promptly and say, “No. I didn’t see anybody. I just heard you talking, so I thought someone was there. So,” she adds tentatively, her heart pounding like crazy, “who’s Miriam?”

  “She’s just someone who used to live here, years ago.”

  “Before you moved in?”

  “Long before that.” Odelia gives a staccato laugh. She crosses to the window above the sink, gives it a tug, and pulls it closed. “She lived here long before I was born, actually. Her husband built the house in eighteen eighty-three.”

  Calla feels as though a giant just stepped on her lungs, squashing the air right out of them.

  “So . . . Miriam’s a ghost?”

  “She’s passed, yes,” Odelia tells her. “I don’t use that word.”

  “Ghost?”

  “Right.”

  “Sorry.” Calla takes a deep breath and asks, “Is she your spirit guide?”

  “No. Not a guide.” Calla watches her grandmother turn back to the other room, then say, “All right. I will.”

  She’s talking to the ghost, Calla realizes, and the pale hair on her arms stands straight up.

  Odelia returns to the table. “Miriam wanted me to tell you that she’s harmless.”

  “Oh. That’s . . . good to hear.”

  “She just likes to keep an eye on things around here.”

  “Is she . . . always around?”

  “Not twenty-four seven. She comes and goes. You won’t notice her. Most people don’t, although . . .”

  When Odelia breaks off, Calla prods, “Although what? What happened?”

  “She gave the plumber a scare last fall. She kept turning the lights on and off and flushing the toilet to get rid of him.”

  “Why?”

  “She just didn’t like him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Who knows?” Odelia shrugs. “I’m sure she had a good reason. When she tells me something, I’ve learned to listen. So I waited until my regular plumber got back to town and used him, and everything was fine.”

  Calla nods as though all of this makes perfect sense, because she’s starting to feel exhausted, mentally and physically, and it’s just easier than posing endless questions.

  But she does have one more. “Is Miriam the only ghost around your house, then?” Oh, wait—Odelia doesn’t like that word. “I mean, is Miriam the only person who’s, uh, passed, and is still hanging around here? Or are there other, uh, passed people, too?”

  “Spirit energy is all around us.”

  “All the time? And, uh, you mean, around all of us? Not just . . . people like you?”

  “All the time, all of us . . . everywhere.”

  Whoa.

  “Those of us who are sensitive to it learn how to tune in and out, though. If we didn’t, we’d go nuts.”

  I should be sitting here thinking you are nuts, Calla tells her grandmother silently, only for some reason, you’re almost making sense.

  “Want some more sorbet?” Odelia offers the carton to her. “There’s a little more left. Finish it up.”

  “Oh . . . no thanks.”

  “Try it with chocolate sauce. It’s better that way.”

  Calla makes a face. Now that’s nuts. “That’s okay.” She pushes back her chair. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “That’s a good idea. It’s been a long day.”

  And it’s going to be a long three weeks, Calla thinks as she makes her way through the strange little house and up to her mother’s old room.

  SIX

  “. . . The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake!”

  With a gasp, Calla bolts upright in bed, clutching the covers against her pounding ribcage.

  The room is dark. And filled with unfamiliar shapes—Oh. She’s not home. She’s in her grandmother’s house, in her mother’s old room. Mom is gone.

  And Calla was dreaming about her. About her grandmother, too.

  They were arguing shrilly. Calla was a little girl, eavesdropping, pretending to play with her dolls under the table.

  The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake!

  What did that mean? Which of them said it, Mom or Odelia? Did it really happen, or did Calla make it up in her dream? And why does it matter?

  I don’t know, but it just does. There must be a reason it keeps coming back to me.

  Breathing hard, she lowers herself to the pillow again and tries to relax.

  Snippets of the dream conversation come back to her.

  “. . . because I promised I’d never tell. . . .” That was Mom, distraught, tearful.

  “. . . for your own good. . . .” That was Odelia.

  “. . . how you can live with yourself. . . .” Odelia again.

  None of it makes any sense. Not in fragments, anyway. If Calla can slip back into the dream, she might be able to piece it all together.

  But that doesn’t work. Sleep eludes her; she’s wide awake now. It’s cold in here, but that’s not because of any ghost. It’s early August, yet she can feel the chill coming through the open window with the night breeze.

  She glances around the room just in case, though, making sure none of the shadows look human. She’s relieved to see nothing but the bulky geometrical outlines of furniture.

  At least the resident ghost—Miriam, Odelia called her— doesn’t seem to be lurking here at thi
s hour of the night. Or morning. What time is it, anyway?

  Calla glances at the clock. The glowing numerals, no longer flashing, show that it’s 3:17.

  Her grandmother must have come in to set the time. It was still stuck on 12:00 when Calla came up to bed, and she hadn’t bothered to fix it, too preoccupied with all that had happened.

  She did, however, shut the door behind her.

  If you want privacy, close the door and I’ll leave you alone.

  Yeah, right. Calla can’t help but feel annoyed that Odelia went back on her word so quickly. She doesn’t like the thought of anyone opening the closed door and creeping in here while she was asleep, even if it was just to set the clock.

  Then again, maybe she should be glad it was only Odelia. When she first came up to bed earlier, she was so uneasy about the face in the mirror—among other things—that she expected to toss and turn all night. She must have fallen right to sleep, though, because the last thing she remembers is turning off the light and sinking into the pillow.

  Now, all those anxious thoughts come at her full force once again, each more difficult to believe than the last.

  There’s a ghost in the house? Lily Dale is filled with mediums? Odelia is one of them?

  Finally . . .

  What about me? Why can I see and hear and sense the same things she does—like Miriam? Do I have supernatural powers, too? Am I psychic?

  That thought wants to make a whole lot of sense to her— if only she would accept it. But she does her best not to.

  That’s crazy. I can’t be psychic. I’m a regular person.

  Then again . . .

  All right, the thing is, Calla has always had a way of anticipating things she shouldn’t—couldn’t—know about in advance. Usually, it’s just everyday surprises that catch other people off guard. Like a pop quiz in biology or an underdog team winning a game. Sometimes, though, she wakes up just knowing something isn’t quite right. Something in her own life. Something major.

  That happened to her back in April, just before Kevin sent her that breakup text message out of the blue. It struck again in May—not another electronic breakup, but the inexplicable sensation that something bad was going to happen. She was powerless to figure out what it might be, let alone stop it. She just knew it was out there, lurking, waiting to happen to her.

  And then Mom died.

  What if she had told Mom about the bad feeling she had that morning? Would that have changed anything?

  She still remembers feeling uneasy as she ate her cereal, watching her mother gulp down a cup of coffee and pack up her briefcase for an early meeting. But she didn’t realize the bad feeling had anything to do with Mom. It was mostly just a vague sense of dread, which she didn’t mention because Mom didn’t want to know about those kinds of things. She had made that clear years ago.

  One morning, back in elementary school, Calla faked a stomachache. She doesn’t remember clearly why she did it, only that she knew she shouldn’t go to school. Mom had to scramble her schedule to stay home with her, and she wasn’t happy about it.

  That afternoon, they found out there had been a fire at her school. Everyone was evacuated safely, but it was pretty scary for the kids.

  Shaken, Calla confessed to her mother that she wasn’t really sick, that she had pretended because she had a feeling something bad was going to happen at school that day.

  She remembers that long-ago conversation clearly because her mother’s reaction was so disturbing—and so strange. It wasn’t that she was angry Calla had lied about being sick, and it wasn’t that she was the least bit skeptical, either. It was more that she was upset that Calla had had a premonition in the first place.

  “Just keep it to yourself,” Mom said sternly. “Promise me that you won’t tell anyone about this. Or anything like this, if it ever happens again. You have to promise!”

  “But why?”

  “It might make people upset. Even Daddy, so don’t talk about it to him either, okay?”

  “But what is it? What happened to me?”

  “It’s just . . . women’s intuition,” Mom replied, and laughed a little hollowly when Calla protested, “But I’m not a woman!”

  She’s still not a woman, age-wise, anyway. But somehow, she does seem to have women’s intuition, frequently able to feel vibes other people, like Lisa, don’t even realize are there.

  Is she now picking up on things other people can’t see or hear or smell, too? Ghosts?

  Good Lord. She can imagine what her mother would say about what’s been going on since she got here.

  Wait a minute. Mom lived for years right here in Lily Dale, with Odelia, in this very house. She had to know Odelia is a medium and that the town is devoted to the supernatural.

  Okay, so why didn’t she ever tell Calla and her father about it?

  Maybe she did tell Daddy, Calla considers—before quickly dismissing that idea. If Mom had mentioned any of this to him, Calla wouldn’t be here now. Period.

  Maybe I should have told him right away, when he called, she thinks guiltily. Maybe I should tell him now.

  She looks again at the clock. 3:19. What time is it in California? Past midnight, she realizes with regret. Too late to call.

  I will in the morning, though, she decides, turning over and closing her eyes resolutely.

  He might make her leave.

  Might?

  He’ll definitely make her leave.

  So what?

  Anything would be better than staying here with a kooky grandmother in a haunted house . . . right?

  Burrowing into the quilt made from her mother’s little-girl dresses, Calla feels the soft fabric against her cheek and experiences a pang of regret.

  If she leaves, she won’t get to sleep here in her mother’s old bed, in her old room. She won’t get to know her mother’s hometown, or Odelia.

  If she leaves, another connection to her mother—and the past—will be severed.

  Is that really what you want? Calla asks herself. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.

  She only knows what she doesn’t want: to see another ghost. Unless, of course, it’s her mother. Then again . . .

  I don’t want Mom to be a ghost. I want her to be real. I want things to be back to the way they were.

  When at last Calla drifts off to sleep again, it’s on a tear-soaked pillow.

  In the morning, she calls Lisa long-distance from her grandmother’s kitchen phone. Without permission. But only because her grandmother isn’t available to ask, she tells herself. She also tells herself that Odelia won’t mind. And that she’ll pay her back for the charges.

  “Calla! I’ve sent you, like, fourteen e-mails and left a zillion voice mails. Where have you been?” Somehow, Lisa’s drawl seems more pronounced than Calla ever noticed in person.

  “I’ve been here. I just can’t get online yet and my phone doesn’t have service.”

  “Why are you whispering? Is your grandmother still sleeping?”

  “No, she’s up,” she says in a low voice, glancing at the closed door to the sunroom.

  She heard the doorbell ring a little while ago, as she was coming out of the upstairs bathroom. She stood still in the hall, trying to eavesdrop on her grandmother’s conversation with whoever was on the porch. Then the screen door squeaked open and banged closed, and voices and footsteps faded to the back of the house. When Calla came downstairs a few minutes ago, the sunroom door was closed.

  She’s positive Odelia is in there, giving a reading. It’s an educated guess—not a supernatural premonition or whatever you call it when you just know things.

  What she can’t begin to even guess is what time it is. The clock in her room was flashing 12:00 again when she woke up, the stove clock in here is broken, and she can’t tell much by looking outside at the angle of the sun because there is no sun today. It’s a depressingly gray day. Warm, muggy air seeps in through the windows Odelia has opened throughout the house.

 
“What time is it?” Calla asks Lisa. And why isn’t my clock still set? Was there a storm in the night? Did the power go out?

  “It’s almost eleven thirty,” Lisa informs her. “Why?”

  “Eleven thirty! I can’t believe I slept so late.”

  “Wow. You just got up? You must be really relaxed up there.”

  “Not exactly. It’s . . . more the opposite.” She quickly explains to Lisa, in a hushed tone, with one eye on the closed door, what’s been going on. She doesn’t go into the creepy “dredging the lake” comment—which, after all, might not even be a recollection but a mere dream. She also instinctively neglects to tell her friend about the ghost she herself glimpsed.

  She’s glad she didn’t mention that part when she hears Lisa’s response to the news that Odelia—and, reportedly, everyone else in town—sees and talks to dead people.

  “What a bunch of freaks! You need to get out of there, before you get into trouble.”

  “Like what?”

  “Who knows? With all those freaks running around, there’s no telling what can happen.”

  “Well, where am I supposed to go? My dad’s in California now.”

  “You could come back here. Please, Calla. I miss you so much.”

  “I miss you, too. But I can’t come back. There’s no place for me to—”

  “You know my mom said you’re always welcome.”

  Yes, she knows. She also knows Kevin is still home from college. Then again . . .

  She can’t help but remember how right it felt when he touched her arm that day in the cemetery. Or how he told her to let him know if she needed anything.

  She does. She needs familiarity. She needs Kevin and Lisa and . . . home.

  “What abou—” She breaks off, takes a deep breath, and allows herself to ask Lisa, “What about Kevin?”

  There’s a pause. Never a good sign.

  “What about Kevin?” Lisa asks. “He’s here. That’s about it.”

  It isn’t like her to speak so tersely about her adored older brother. There was a time, when they were much younger, when Lisa’s nonstop “Kevin this” and “Kevin that” drove Calla crazy. Then Calla fell for him, and she and Lisa had even more in common.

  After the breakup, Calla alternated between warning Lisa that she didn’t want to hear a thing about Kevin to pumping her for information. Lisa was willing to oblige in either case.