Believing

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Missing is her cell phone. She never left the house without it back in Florida, but there’s no need to carry it around now; she can’t even get a signal here in Lily Dale.

  Nor can she get online to check her e-mail, IM with her friends, maintain her MySpace page, write in her blog, surf the Web . . .

  To do anything on the Internet, she has to go next door to use Odelia’s neighbors’ computer. Luckily, the girl who lives there, Evangeline Taggart, is her age and has fast become a good friend to Calla. The computer belongs to her aunt Ramona, who’s raising the orphaned Evangeline and her brother, Mason, but she said Calla’s welcome to come use it anytime.

  Still, it’s not the same. In her old life, Calla was used to being plugged into the world around her. Well, maybe not the world immediately around her . . . but, electronically, to the world beyond her family’s doorstep.

  Here in Lily Dale, she can be in tune only with her immediate surroundings.

  Maybe, she’s starting to realize, that’s made her more sensitive to . . .

  Well, a new kind of energy, which has nothing to do with electronics.

  Even now, as she reaches the shadowy front hall, a sound reaches her ears: steady rapping.

  She looks around, half expecting to see another inexplicable shadow . . . or perhaps a manifestation of Miriam, the resident ghost, who lived in this house a hundred years ago. She likes to make things go bump, not just in the night, but all day long.

  Nope, no Miriam. This time, the rapping sound is coming from somewhere outside.

  Calla glances out the window and immediately spots the very human source. One of Odelia’s neighbors across Cottage Row is using a hammer to nail a sheet of weather-proofing plastic over the windows of his little house.

  Farther down the street, a pair of heavyset women in plaid flannel shirts load boxes into the SUV parked in front of another cottage that’s already been boarded up.

  Wow. People are leaving town in droves.

  The official Lily Dale “season” just ended on Labor Day weekend. According to Evangeline Taggart, the place empties out as most of the resident mediums head for warmer climates to avoid the harsh western New York winter.

  They sure don’t waste any time, Calla thinks, watching a car towing a U-Haul trailer rumble past.

  Beyond the lofty trees and Victorian rooftops of the little houses across the way, the sky is heavy with rain clouds. Cool air gusts through the screened window. Shivering, Calla pulls it down a little. Her thin Florida blood isn’t used to weather like this—not in September, anyway. Her grandmother mentioned that the first snowflakes start to fall around mid-October, and the wintry weather doesn’t fully let up until May.

  Not that it matters, because Calla expects to be out in California with her dad by the time the real snow accumulates and winter gets under way. Which is kind of a shame, because she’s seen snow only once in her life, on a family ski trip to Utah.

  Leaving the chilly air and the misty gray view behind, she heads into the kitchen, where the overhead light dispels the gloom.

  She remembers seeing the room for the first time a couple of weeks ago and comparing it to her Florida home’s sleek, modern, expensive granite-and-stainless-steel kitchen with custom cabinetry.

  Here, the floors are green-and-white linoleum and the walls are papered in an ivy pattern, peeling at the seams. There are white metal cabinets with metal handle pulls, an outdated olive green fridge and stove, and pale green countertops crammed with everything anyone could ever need in a kitchen, and cluttered with a lot of stuff nobody but Odelia could possibly ever need anywhere.

  Today, the room—like the rest of the house—seems charming. Homey. Familiar.

  “Happy first day of school!” Standing at the stove, Odelia looks up from the griddle where she’s frying . . . something.

  It doesn’t look like eggs, or pancakes. It pretty much looks like . . .

  “Mush.” That came from Odelia.

  “Mush?” Calla echoes.

  Odelia lifts the corner of the griddle and points at the yellowy goo. “Fried cornmeal mush. Ever had it?”

  “Nope.” And she isn’t particularly anxious to try it.

  “Really? I’m surprised. It’s a real southern thing. I’d think growing up down there . . .”

  “Yeah, well.” Calla shrugs. “I guess we’ve never eaten much Southern food. Maybe since Mom is—was—from here, and Dad is from Chicago . . . I don’t know.”

  “Well, then, you’ve been missing out.” Odelia slides a spatula beneath one of the blobs and expertly flips it. “There’s nothing like starting the school day with a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast like fried mush and a side of bacon. I’ve got some under the broiler.”

  “I always just had cereal at home.” Organic, unsweetened cereal. “Mom’s pretty much a health nut. I mean . . . she was.”

  Will she ever get used to speaking of her mother in the past tense?

  “Not when she was a kid, she wasn’t.” Odelia snorts and shakes her unnaturally red head. “She always could eat everything I put in front of her, and then some.”

  Her grandmother’s back is to Calla. Her voice grows wistful, and her hand trembles a little on the spatula handle as she continues, “Back then, Stephanie loved everything that was bad for you. Her favorite was homemade fried chicken with mashed potatoes. She liked them with a whole lot of salt and butter and heavy cream. She’d pull up a chair to the counter and stand on it, and I’d let her do the mashing.”

  There’s a long pause. Calla pictures a younger, thinner Odelia standing at the counter, and Mom standing beside her on a chair, a little girl in pigtails, just like in the framed photo on the living room wall.

  Odelia’s back straightens and she swipes a hand at her eye, seeming to get hold of her emotions as she turns toward Calla. “If I do say so myself, I make the best fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy you’ll find north of the Mason-Dixon line.”

  “I bet you do, Gammy.”

  Odelia’s a good cook, even if her taste buds are a little wacky. The night Calla arrived, she was taken aback to find that her grandmother put raisins in the meatballs and sugar in the spaghetti sauce. Turned out, it tasted pretty good.

  She’s getting used to Odelia’s eccentric style in the kitchen. And in everything else.

  Like her wardrobe. Today, her grandmother’s plus-sized figure is crammed into leopard-print leggings and a yellowy orange fleece pullover. On her feet: a pair of beat-up purple rubber Crocs.

  “So tell me,” Odelia says. “Are you nervous?”

  “Me?” Calla busies herself taking a carton of orange juice from the fridge. “Nervous?”

  “You,” Odelia agrees, looking at Calla over the pinkish cat’s-eye glasses propped on the tip of her nose. “Nervous.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “I would be. Maybe a lot. Starting a new school and all.”

  It’s hard to imagine Odelia nervous about anything. She pretty much takes in stride everything from her semipermanent seventeen-year-old houseguest to Miriam and the other shadowy entities who hover around the house.

  “At least you know a few of the kids already, though,” Odelia points out.

  Some better than others, Calla thinks, and a faint smile curves the lips Blue Slayton kissed after their first date last week.

  Then she remembers Willow York, Blue’s ex-girlfriend, and her smile fades.

  Evangeline mentioned that Lily Dale High is pretty small. Meaning, Calla’s bound to run into Willow there. On the upside, she’s bound to run into Blue, too—along with Jacy Bly, who held the unofficial title of resident newcomer before Calla came along.

  With Native American blood and exotic dark good looks, Jacy captivated her from the second she saw him. He lives down Cottage Row with two foster dads who took him in after Social Services took him away from his alcoholic, abusive parents.

  He briefly told Calla about that when they spent an afternoon fishing together in Cassadaga L
ake. But even after spending a few hours alone together, she found herself with more questions than answers about Jacy and his difficult past. She’d love to get to know him better—if that’s even possible. Sometimes she sees him from afar, jogging past Odelia’s house with a couple of other boys. He mentioned he’s on the school track team.

  Other than that, he seems to keep to himself.

  But I can be that way, too, Calla thinks as she pours juice into a glass. She probably has more in common with Jacy than she does with the more confident Blue—who, come to think of it, hasn’t called her since their date. He was supposed to spend last weekend in New York City with his father, the celebrity medium David Slayton, who was doing some television appearances there.

  But he must have been back long before now.

  Oh, well. It’s not like Calla’s hoping to get hot and heavy with Blue.

  Well, maybe she was hoping it a little, after that amazing kiss.

  Still . . . a lot has happened since then.

  Including a visit from her ex-boyfriend Kevin, who drove up from Tampa and dropped his sister, Lisa—Calla’s best friend—in Lily Dale last weekend. Seeing him again brought it all back: the exhilaration of her first love, and the heartache of being dumped for a college girl.

  Kevin stayed only a few hours before heading on to Cornell—and, no doubt, his new girlfriend,Annie.

  Monday night, Lisa flew back home to Tampa.

  Calla was originally supposed to leave this week, too, headed to California, where she would have been starting school today. Dad, who is a science professor, is there on sabbatical, teaching at a university near Los Angeles.

  At this point, he’s still camping out on a friend’s couch in Long Beach. He hasn’t had much luck finding an affordable apartment for the two of them in a good public school district. Money’s been tight without Mom’s salary, and it turned out she didn’t have a life-insurance policy.

  Why would she? Who would have ever thought something could happen to Mom? She was so young, so together, so alive, so . . . needed.

  Calla forces saliva past a hard lump in her throat and pushes away the painful thought.

  Anyway,Dad seemed . . . well, not happy, but maybe a little relieved when Calla asked to stay in Lily Dale for a couple of months and attend school here. That would buy him more time to find them a place to live.

  Of course, he doesn’t know about Lily Dale’s spiritual connection. If he did, no way would he have agreed to let Calla stay—or, for that matter, to have come here in the first place.

  He can’t find out, no matter what. I have to stay—at least until I figure out what’s going on.

  Her knees a little wobbly, she sinks into a chair at the table. Sipping her orange juice, Calla makes a face at its wateriness. Back in Florida, it was always freshly squeezed and thick with tangy-sweet pulp.

  Florida.

  Not home.

  When did she stop thinking of Florida as home?

  Is this creaky little cottage in this spooky little town her home now?

  No. Not really. But it was Mom’s home for eighteen years, and Calla feels closer to her here than she would anywhere else at this point.

  Sure, she’s had occasional flashes of homesickness for Tampa. But she couldn’t stand living in the house where Mom died, and she isn’t anxious to go back . . . maybe not ever.

  How can she face going up and down those stairs every day? The bloodstains at their foot were scrubbed away with bleach . . . but the memory of those horrible red splotches on white tile can never be wiped from Calla’s mind.

  Calla closes her eyes, remembering her mother’s crumpled body, wearing an elegant charcoal gray suit with round, shiny black buttons. She remembers the unnatural angle of Mom’s neck, the frozen look of horror in her gaping eyes . . .

  The official ruling was accidental death. Mom, in a pair of high-heeled black Gucci pumps she often wore, had tripped and fallen down the stairs.

  Mom, who had never made a careless mistake in her life . . .

  Until she burned the Irish soda bread on Saint Patrick’s Day after the stranger calling himself Tom—who wasn’t a stranger at all—showed up at the door.

  The telephone rings abruptly and Calla is lifted, gratefully, from those grim thoughts.

  “Can you pick it up?” her grandmother asks, busy at the stove. “It might be your dad, calling to wish you luck on your first day.”

  Calla doubts that. It’s barely four a.m. in California.

  “Hello?”

  “Calla? It’s me!”

  “Lisa?” Her friend’s familiar drawl is a welcome sound. “What’s up?”

  “You are. And so am I, unfortunately.” Lisa yawns loudly in her ear as Calla steps into the next room with the phone, away from her grandmother’s perked-up ears. Odelia can be pretty nosy. Even nosier than Mom.

  “What are you doing calling me this early?”

  “Being a good friend. Today’s your first day, right? I thought you might be stressing and I figured I should call and tell you it’s going to go great.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m psychic.”

  Calla can just see Lisa’s sly grin. “Well, that makes one of us, because I have no idea what to expect. I wish . . .”

  She trails off wistfully.

  “I know,” Lisa says somberly. “I wish the same thing. But hang in there. You’ll be okay.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yup. It’ll be fun to meet new people. Here I am, stuck with the same old faces we’ve seen since kindergarten.”

  Calla wants to tell her she’d trade places in a second, but a wave of homesickness clogs her throat.

  They chat for a few more minutes, and she tells Lisa to say hello to all her old friends and teachers.

  “I’ll tell them you’ll be back to visit soon,” Lisa promises.

  “How am I going to do that?”

  “I have a comp airline voucher you can use. They handed them out when my flight was delayed because of the storm the other night.”

  “Don’t you want to use it yourself?”

  “Nah. If I want to fly up north again, my parents can pay,” Lisa says with a laugh.

  Calla smiles, knowing the Wilsons would be more than willing. Kevin always did say they spoil his sister.

  Her smile fades when she remembers that Tampa is no longer home, and nothing there is the same. Not without Mom and Dad.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Calla tells her, and swallows hard. “For now, I’ve just got to focus on getting through this day.”

  “I know. Good luck. Love you.”

  “You too.”

  She hangs up and returns to the kitchen.

  “Good timing. Here you go.” Odelia bustles over to set a heaping plate on the table, along with maple syrup and butter. “Dig in.”

  Calla swallows hard. “I . . . I’m not really that hungry.”

  “Eat anyway. It’ll calm down those first-day-of-school butterflies in your stomach. Trust me.”

  If only the first day of school were the only thing I had to worry about.

  With a sigh, Calla reaches for a fork.

  The redbrick school building is outside the actual town, beyond the wrought-iron gate with its sign that welcomes people to LILY DALE ASSEMBLY . . . WORLD’S LARGEST CENTER FOR THE RELIGION OF SPIRITUALISM.

  Evangeline Taggart joins Calla for the ten-minute walk down the winding country road along the lake’s grassy shore. Her younger brother, Mason, lags behind them with a couple of his friends. Calla can see a couple of other kids with backpacks up ahead, also headed toward the school.

  As they walk along, Evangeline chatters away as usual. Her hazel eyes dance as she tells Calla about shopping for school clothes yesterday at the Galleria in Buffalo with her aunt, who thought she should start dressing up more for school now that she’s getting older.

  “I didn’t listen, in case you didn’t notice,” Evangeline says with a laugh, and gesture
s at her sneakers and simple long-sleeved blue T-shirt, untucked over her jeans to help camouflage her well-padded hips and thighs. Her slightly frizzy reddish hair is tamed more than usual, though, held back with a silver barrette. And she’s wearing lip gloss.

  “So what’s it like not to have to wear a uniform to school for a change?” Evangeline asks.

  “I don’t know yet . . . I used to complain about it, but maybe in some ways a uniform was easier. You never have to think about what to wear.”

  “Well, if you’re worried, don’t be. You look fine.”

  “The thing is, I’m going to run out of stuff to wear in, like, two days,” Calla tells Evangeline. “I didn’t come up here thinking I was going to stay past summer.”

  “If you want to go shopping for warmer clothes,” Evangeline tells her, “I’ll go with you. That would be fun. We can go to the mall and you can get some sweaters and a down coat. What do you think?”

  “Yeah, that would be good,” Calla murmurs, realizing there’s just one problem with that scenario: she’s broke.

  Money wasn’t a problem when Mom was alive. She gave Calla a generous allowance and they often went shopping together. Mom loved to buy clothes for her. Now, even if Calla found her way to a mall, it’s not like she could buy anything. And it’s not like she feels comfortable asking her grandmother for money, or even Dad, for that matter.

  Having faced far more traumatic problems these last few months than a wardrobe that’s seriously lacking, she puts the matter out of her head.

  At least she looks halfway decent today, and that’s what counts.

  She took the time to brush on mascara and rim her hazel eyes with a smudged liner pencil. She worked gel into her long, sun-streaked brown hair before she dried it, to make it look thicker and help keep her bangs out of her face. She’s overdue for a haircut, and the bangs are starting to bug her.

  Disturbed as she’s been about what’s been going on around here, she didn’t overlook the fact that she’s going to be seeing— and be seen by—both Blue Slayton and Jacy Bly today.