Awakening
Page 20
Calla nods. She does know. There was a Donald Reamer at her school in Florida, too—only it was a girl, and her name was Tangie Alvin.
Surprised at Willow’s compassion, she watches her hand him a pile of napkins before stooping to salvage what’s edible from his dropped lunch. She can see that a group of girls at a table next to them are snickering and rolling their eyes.
After a cafeteria aide has appeared with a mop and bucket and Donald has lumbered on his way, Willow goes over to the table of girls and says something to them. Their smirks vanish and they immediately look uncomfortable.
Willow returns to the table and reclaims her chair without comment. Sarita seems to be taking the whole thing in stride, saying only, “I hope they give him another lunch without charging him.”
“Me, too. So . . . what’d you think of Kiley?” Willow asks Calla conversationally, and bites into an apple. Calla notices her tray contains only that, a small container of yogurt, and a bottle of water. Sarita’s holds the same.
“Kiley?” For a second, she’s blank. Then, “Oh! You mean the health teacher? She seemed nice.”
Willow and Sarita exchange a look.
“Yeah, she puts up a good front . . . on the first day. They all do. Just wait. Have you had math yet?”
“It’s last period.”
“Then you probably have Bombeck, with Willow. He’s famous for being hard-core,” Sarita says. “My sister was straight A’s until she landed in his class. She still talks about him, and she graduated four years ago. My mom even had him and said he was really hard even back then. He’s been here forever.”
“Well, hopefully I’ll be okay.” Calla picks up her fork, trying not to wonder whether her own mom might have had Bombeck, and whether she went to school with Sarita’s mom.
“I usually do pretty well in math.”
Straight A’s, actually. She’s been an honor-roll student all the way through high school, but she doesn’t mention that. She doesn’t want to sound like she’s bragging.
“Math is my strongest subject,” Willow tells her. “And even I’m worried. You don’t know Bombeck.”
“I’m so glad I didn’t get him for math,” Sarita says contentedly.
“So you have Davidson, right? And who do you have for English?” Willow asks.
As Sarita pulls her schedule out of her backpack to compare it to Willow’s, Calla toys with her fork. She’s reluctant to dig into her steaming, hearty sloppy joe lunch in front of the other girls. She should have gotten fruit, yogurt, and water, like they did. She wants to fit in.
Then again . . .
Mom was always telling her not to follow the crowd. Who cares what the other girls are eating? her mother’s voice asks in her head. Who cares what they think of you?
I kind of do, Mom. Just this once. Calla closes her eyes, barely aware of Sarita and Willow, who are chatting about a mutual friend. I can’t help it, Mom. I want to fit in here because . . . well, I don’t fit in anywhere else anymore.
Don’t worry, you will, her mother’s voice says, and she can hear it so clearly in her head that she wonders if her mother is actually here.
Focus. Maybe if you really focus, you’ll be able to see her.
She tunes out all the background noise, thinking about her mother. About how desperately she misses her.
Please. Please, Mom. If you’re here, let me see you. Please.
Gradually, Calla becomes aware of a strong presence. Someone is watching her. She can feel it.
She braces herself, opens her eyes, and looks up, expecting to see a shadow or even her mother’s ghost. Or . . . Kaitlyn’s.
Please let it be Mom this time. Please . . .
WENDY CORSI STAUB grew up in New York, just a few miles from the real town of Lily Dale. As a teenager, she and her friends visited the mediums there, hoping to find out whom they would marry. One medium told Wendy that her future husband’s name would begin with the letters M-A. She wrote down the medium’s prediction and forgot about it until years later, when she found her notes from that reading. By then she was married to her husband, Mark.
Wendy has published more than sixty books for adults and teenagers and is a New York Times bestselling author of several suspense novels. She lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband and their two sons.
Visit her Web sites at
www.wendycorsistaub.com
www.myspace.com/lilydalebooks
www.myspace.com/wendytheauthor
BOOKS BY WENDY CORSI STAUB
THE LILY DALE SERIES:
AWAKENING
BELIEVING
CONNECTING
DISCOVERING
Praise for
LILY DALE
AWAKENING
A Teenreads.com Best Book
“Readers will find this novel difficult to put down and will look forward to the second installment.” —Teenreads.com
“This is a real page turner.” —Bookdivas.com
“Characters are sharply drawn, and kids who like stories with psychic underpinnings will certainly appreciate the otherworldly goings-on and Calla’s reactions to them.” —Booklist
“Deft characterization couples with a compelling plot in a somewhat unique setting to create appeal particularly to young teens seeking meaning and agency in the face of life’s difficulties.” —VOYA
“If you love suspense, you’ll love this book.”
—Raven Gill, VOYA teen reviewer
Copyright © 2007 by Wendy Corsi Staub
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
While Lily Dale, New York, is a real place, all the characters in this novel are fictional, having been created solely by the author and not based on real people, living or dead.
First published in the United States of America in September 2007 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc. E-book edition published in December 2010 www.bloomsburyteens.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Staub, Wendy Corsi.
Lily Dale : awakening / Wendy Corsi Staub.
p. cm.
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Calla's mother suddenly dies, she goes to stay with her psychic grandmother in Lily Dale, a spiritualist community in western New York, where she discovers some disconcerting secrets about her practical, down-to-earth mother, and realizes that she herself may also have some psychic abilities.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-9654-7 • ISBN-10: 0-8027-9654-0 (hardcover)
[1. Psychics—Fiction. 2. Psychic ability—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction. 4. Mothers—Fiction. 5. New York (State)—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.]
I. Title.
PZ7.S804Li 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2007002370
IBSN 978-0-8027-8462-9 (e-book)
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
AUTHOR’S NOTE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
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