Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  She glances at his big brother, Dylan, kneeling on the floor in front of the coffee table, busily coloring.

  “Why don’t we do something together?” she suggests.

  “Dylan, do you want to play a game?”

  “Okay. Candyland.”

  She should have known. She’s played more rounds of Candyland in the past few weeks than she did in her entire childhood. Dylan loves it because, as he points out every time, his name is in the title. Ethan loves it because he loves life in general. He’s the most exuberant kid Calla has ever known— and quite the opposite of his big brother.

  Not that Dylan is a downer. He’s just . . . intense. Especially for a five-year-old. And he’s an incredibly gifted psychic whose imaginary friend, Kelly, Calla suspects, might actually be a spirit guide.

  He actually warned Calla that a bad man with a raccoon eye was going to hurt her just before Phil Chase—sporting a black eye—attacked her.

  She hasn’t told Paula about her son’s prediction being legitimate—she doesn’t dare tell anyone what happened to her—but she’s been paying close attention to Dylan’s mentions of Kelly ever since. Mostly, they just seem to play together, which is reassuring.

  “Toes!” Little Ethan shouts, thrusting his feet at Calla.

  “Toes again!”

  “No, Ethan, we’re going to play Candyland with your brother now, okay?”

  “Candyland! Candyland!” Ethan starts to dive off the couch with glee, and Calla collars him in the knick of time.

  “Come on, Dylan, let’s go upstairs and get the game.”

  Calla struggles to hang on to a wriggling, giggling Ethan.

  “Okay. This is for you.” Dylan finishes his picture with a flourish and holds it up.

  “Wow, for me? Thanks!” She sets Ethan on his feet and bends to look at the crayon drawing.

  It shows a brown-haired stick figure girl, completely scribbled over in blue.

  “What beautiful artwork, Dylan! Who is she? Is that Kelly?” she guesses.

  “No, she’s you!”

  “Oh, of course! Now I see. And I love how you made the sky so pretty.”

  And I must not be here in Lily Dale, because it’s not gray, she thinks wryly.

  “Hey, Ethan, not that way, get back here!” She scurries across the room and catches him before he can toddle toward the kitchen, where his mother is trying to throw together dinner for Calla and the kids so that she can go get ready for her night out with her husband.

  “That’s not the sky!” Dylan informs her. “That’s the water!”

  “You mean the blue?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh . . . so I’m in the water?” she asks, man-handling Ethan into her arms and trying not to crumple Dylan’s picture in the process. “Am I swimming?”

  “No. You’re trying to get out, but you can’t,” Dylan says matter-of-factly.

  Calla frowns. That was an odd thing for him to say.

  Coming from any other child, it wouldn’t necessarily bother her.

  But coming from Dylan . . . and on the heels of Jacy’s vision . . .

  “Why can’t I get out?”

  “I don’t know. Can we go upstairs and get Candyland now?”

  “Candyland!” Ethan shouts, close to Calla’s ear, and she winces and sets him back on his feet. He makes a beeline for the stairs with Dylan at his heels.

  Calla follows, shooting another troubled glance at the picture before she folds it and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  After dinner that night, as Calla sits at her mother’s old desk in her mother’s old room trying to study for a science test—and trying not to think about her mother—Odelia knocks on the door, then sticks her head in.

  “Telephone, Calla.”

  “For me? Is it my dad?” she asks hopefully. Better him than Willow or Sarita, both of whom must still be wondering where she and Jacy were on Saturday night. She has yet to come up with a good story.

  “Nope, it’s not your dad.” Wearing a mysterious smile, Odelia crosses the room and hands over the receiver.

  “Who is it, Gammy?”

  Her grandmother is already on her way back out of the room, saying, “Don’t forget to bring the phone back downstairs,” before closing the door behind her.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, stranger.”

  “Kevin?” She almost drops the phone.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m good. I . . .”

  . . . don’t know why you’re calling me. Didn’t you break my heart into a million little pieces? Aren’t you in love with some other girl?

  Of course she doesn’t say any of that.

  “My sister gave me your grandmother’s number. I sent you a card . . . did you get it?”

  She fleetingly considers telling him that she didn’t, just so she won’t have to deal with his offer to come visit her.

  But there’s no point in lying, and anyway, he’ll probably just repeat the offer on the phone.

  “I got it,” she tells him. “Thanks.”

  “I thought maybe I’d ride over and see you this past weekend, but I didn’t hear from you.”

  Ride over? He makes it sound like he’s just around the corner . . . which he literally was, back in the old days, in Florida.

  “It was homecoming here. I went to the dance.”

  “Oh, right. I think Lisa mentioned something about that.”

  She did?

  Hmm.

  Maybe that explains why Kevin’s suddenly sending her cards and wanting to visit. He’s just jealous—as if he has any right or reason to be jealous when he has a serious new girlfriend himself.

  Then again . . . Lisa didn’t know about Calla’s homecoming date with Blue until Wednesday, and Kevin’s card was postmarked in Ithaca on Tuesday. Calla checked it. In fact, she analyzed everything about the card and envelope, as if she were a forensic scientist.

  “Maybe this coming weekend, then,” he says. “We have a semester—”

  “I’m going to Florida this weekend.”

  Pause. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really. Friday.”

  Apparently Lisa doesn’t tell him everything.

  Just the stuff that will keep him on his toes.

  Calla can’t help but smile a little smugly as she says, “You know what? I’m kind of busy right now, so . . .”

  “Yeah. I’ll let you go. I just wanted to see how you are, and, you know, see if you need anything.”

  “No,” she replies almost airily, “I don’t need anything.”

  Not from you, anyway.

  When I needed you, you weren’t there.

  “Okay. Take care, Calla.”

  “You, too.”

  She hangs up.

  And finds herself on the verge of tears.

  How is it possible to miss him so much—and care about him so much—when he callously broke up with her, and in a text message, no less?

  At least you didn’t let him know he was getting to you, she congratulates herself. Good job of playing it cool.

  She let him know she has a new life now, and he’s not a part of it.

  She should feel good. Great, even.

  And she probably will . . . just as soon as she lets herself have a good, long cry.

  SEVENTEEN

  Tuesday, October 2

  5:32 p.m.

  “No, listen, I know we’re going to get this college thing straightened out,” Calla’s father reassures her over the phone.

  “You just have to get organized and figure out what you want in a school, and where you can go to get it.”

  He makes it sound like they’re choosing a fast-food restaurant for lunch.

  “It’s not that easy, Dad.” She spent a few hours this afternoon trying to read up on various universities. When she wasn’t keeping an anxious eye out for Darrin Yates, or spotting spirits lurking around her. “I’m not sure what I want in a school.”

  “I’ve been l
ooking 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. ”<
br />
  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.