Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  4:33 p.m.

  For the first time since she left Florida back in August, Calla finds herself in utterly familiar surroundings.

  Okay, so she’s never actually set foot inside Buffalo’s Walden Galleria before today.

  But the sprawling suburban shopping mall could be back in Tampa, with its chain stores and food court restaurants, echoing high-ceilinged corridors teeming with trendy teenagers, stroller-pushing moms, slow-moving senior citizens.

  Looking around, Calla can’t help but feel relieved to be back among the living . . . so to speak.

  It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate the ambiance in quaint, rural Lily Dale, with its ramshackle gingerbread cottages and picturesque lakeside location. But strange things happen to her there.

  After another restless night, she was planning to tell Jacy about the map and ask him to go to the woods with her. She hasn’t been able to bring herself to go alone.

  She also wanted to know more about those visions of his.

  But Jacy wasn’t in school today.

  Probably just as well.

  Maybe she doesn’t need to know any of the gory details— hopefully, a figurative expression.

  Anyway, they wouldn’t have had much chance to talk about it during classes, and Ramona was parked out front at dismissal to drive Calla and Evangeline straight to the mall.

  Best to put it all behind her, at least for now.

  Not until this minute did Calla realize just how homesick she’s been for the real world, all the modern conveniences she used to take for granted—not just a computer and the Internet, but cell phone service, TiVo, takeout delivery, swimming pools, a car at her disposal . . .

  And gorgeous shopping malls filled with clothes.

  This was the first year she didn’t get to go back-to-school shopping with Mom and her Platinum American Express card.

  But you don’t want to get all upset thinking about that now, do you?

  You just want to have fun for a change, right?

  Definitely. Today, if she can help it, she’s not going to dwell on Mom’s death, or Jacy’s troubling warning, or anything to do with Lily Dale. She’s going to shop, and then she’s going to get to see her dad.

  “Okay, where do you two want to start?” Ramona asks as they pause beside the directory map.

  “How about if you decide where to go first, Calla,” Evangeline suggests, adding a little wistfully, “You’re the one who needs to get a dress for homecoming.”

  Evangeline was hoping someone would ask her to the dance, too. Well, someone other than Russell Lancione, her one prospect, whom she plans to say no to if he does ask.

  It’s not just because Russell is “blah,” as Evangeline claims. No, Calla suspects she’s been holding out, hoping the elusive Jacy Bly will suddenly decide to sweep her off her feet.

  Yeah . . . aren’t we all.

  Of course, Evangeline has no idea that Calla’s also got a secret crush on her secret crush—much less that Jacy and Calla have . . .

  Well, really, nothing has actually happened. It’s not like Jacy’s kissed her, or asked her out. And it’s not like he ever will, now.

  Calla feels her face grow hot just thinking about her misunderstanding yesterday afternoon—and what she inadvertently admitted to him.

  Fishing in her oversized fringed suede purse, Ramona announces, “I have a coupon for twenty percent off something at Lord and Taylor. And I bet they have some great dressy dresses if you want to go look, Calla.”

  “Oh, that’s okay . . . I don’t think I’m going to get something to wear to the dance today,” Calla replies, with a guilt-ridden glance at Evangeline.

  “Why not? I’m sure you could find something that would look gorgeous on you.” The well-padded Evangeline, still wistful, shakes her head at Calla’s slender build.

  “I doubt I’ll be able to afford much of anything. Anyway, you should use your coupon for yourself, Ramona.”

  “Do I look like I shop at Lord and Taylor?” Ramona wrinkles her nose, and Calla can’t help but laugh.

  In her ragged-bottomed jeans, dangly earrings, and a brown suede jacket, Ramona looks, as always, like a throwback to the flower-child era. A strikingly pretty throwback, at that. She’s even wearing makeup tonight.

  Calla wonders if that has anything to do with the fact that Ramona’s going to be seeing Dad tonight. Somehow, she doubts it.

  A cute older guy in a business suit checks her out as he passes, but she seems oblivious. Probably just as well. Ramona’s not shy about discussing her disastrous love life, and Calla knows all about her talent for falling for the wrong kind of guy.

  Meaning, any guy who doesn’t embrace her habit of communicating with the dead.

  “Once they figure out what I do for a living, they head for the hills,” Ramona likes to say, and she doesn’t seem to be exaggerating much. A couple of romantic prospects have already come and gone since Calla arrived.

  Dad has no idea she’s a medium—yet.

  But once he finds out, any spark of attraction between the two of them—if there even is such a possibility—is sure to fizzle.

  “Let’s go take a look at Lord and Taylor. I’m sure there will be lots of stuff on sale,” Ramona tells Calla. “Plus, I’m paying for your haircut next week, remember? And you said you’ve saved up some babysitting money, right?”

  “Right.”

  It was Ramona who hooked Calla up with a regular after-school babysitting job for Dylan and Ethan, her friend Paula’s two sons.

  She does have almost a hundred dollars in her wallet. But that’ll go fast when she picks up the essentials, namely, more long-sleeved shirts and sweaters and another pair of jeans.

  Her Florida wardrobe of shorts, flip-flops, and sleeveless T-shirts barely saw her through the remainder of a chilly northeastern August. When Dad visited a few weeks ago, he did take her shopping at T.J. Maxx in nearby Dunkirk. By that time, though, Calla had figured out that Dad was broke without Mom’s banking salary, so she picked out only a down jacket and a sweater.

  Meanwhile, she’s been shivering her way through the increasingly chilly days. If she’s going to stay in Lily Dale, she needs a wardrobe of warmer clothes, and she can’t ask Dad to buy it for her. He’s spending enough money flying here for the weekend.

  “I just need a lot of everyday stuff,” Calla says as the three of them start walking through the mall. “A dress is kind of last on my list right now.”

  “But you need that, too,” Evangeline tells her. “I mean, you can’t go to homecoming with Blue Slayton dressed in jeans and sneakers, right?”

  “No, but . . . how dressy is homecoming, anyway?” Calla asks. “Are we talking gown dressy? Like a prom?”

  “It used to be like that,” Ramona says, “when your mother and I went to school there. But now I think it’s just semiformal.”

  “It is,” Evangeline confirms. “Not that I know from experience.”

  “Calla, how about if we schedule your haircut for the day of homecoming? Instead of just getting it cut, you can have it styled, too, for the dance. And you can have your makeup done, too.”

  “Oh . . . you don’t have to do all that.”

  “Let me. I want to. Your mom would want me to,” Ramona adds with a sad smile.

  “Do it, Calla,” Evangeline says. “Come on. How fun will it be to get a fancy hairdo and makeup for the dance?”

  “I don’t know . . . maybe.” She can’t help but be a little overwhelmed by Ramona’s kindness. It’s like she’s trying to help make up for Mom’s not being here to do mother-daughter things with Calla.

  Last spring before the junior prom, Mom treated Calla to a manicure, pedicure, facial, and fancy hairstyle. Too bad Calla was too miserable to enjoy the pampering—or the prom, for that matter. Her date—platonic, of course—was nice, smart, height-challenged Paul Horton, whom all the kids called Paul Shorton.

  When she thinks back to how many tears she shed over the breakup with Kevin, as
though it were the worst thing that could happen to her—not realizing the real nightmare was still ahead . . .

  “You know,” Ramona cuts into her thoughts. “I just thought of something, Calla. Maybe you could . . .”

  Ramona stops walking, tilts her head and frowns.

  “Maybe she could what?” Evangeline prompts.

  Apparently lost in thought, Ramona doesn’t reply.

  Calla and Evangeline exchange a glance and a shrug.

  “Never mind,” Ramona says abruptly, and starts walking again. “Hey, look—the Gap is having a sale.”

  “The Gap is always having a sale,” Evangeline replies, but she asks Calla, “Want to check it out?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You two go, and meet me at the food court in a half hour,” Ramona tells them. “I need to pick up some books in Barnes and Noble for that Crystal Healing seminar I’m teaching next week.”

  Twenty minutes and sixty-seven dollars later, Calla has a new pair of jeans, two long-sleeved tops, and a soft pumpkin-colored yarn sweater that has a small rip in the neckline.

  Ramona said Odelia will be able to sew it for her, no problem.

  Evangeline got a sweater, too—same exact style, but no rip and in a different color, saying the pumpkin was too close to the shade of her hair and freckles.

  “You know what? We should wear them to school on the same day, like twins!” she tells Calla as they settle at a table with an Orange Julius, two straws. “Hey, let’s buy some other matching stuff!”

  Calla raises an eyebrow and fumbles for something polite to say.

  Evangeline bursts out laughing. “I’m just kidding! You didn’t think I was serious, did you?”

  Relieved, Calla grins. “Only for a second.”

  “Come on. I might be a loser, but I’m not that much of a loser.”

  “You’re not a loser at all.”

  “Sure I am,” Evangeline says cheerfully, then takes a sip from her straw before adding, “Good thing I have one cool friend.”

  “Who?”

  “Duh. You!”

  “Me! I’m cool?”

  “Yeah, and the cool thing is”—Evangeline grins broadly— “you don’t even know it.”

  “No way. I am so not cool.”

  “Think about it, Calla. You’re gorgeous, too—come on, don’t shake your head like that, you know you are—and you waltz into Lily Dale out of nowhere and fit right in, and now you’re going to homecoming with this hot guy every girl in school wants to go out with, and you’re having lunch with Willow York and Sarita Abernathie every day.”

  “So?”

  “So, they’re gorgeous.” True. Willow, with her porcelain skin and delicate features, and Sarita, with her dark skin and exotic beauty, are two of the prettiest girls in school.

  “Plus, they’re cool,” Evangeline adds.

  “So that . . . what? Makes me cool by association?”

  “Ha. If it worked that way, I’d be cool by association with you,” Evangeline points out wryly. “Listen, all I mean is, people like you, and they admire you. Things are going great for you here. You should enjoy it.”

  While it lasts.

  She doesn’t say that last part, but Calla hears it in her own head, accompanied by an inexplicable twinge of foreboding.

  “Dad, you remember my friends Evangeline and Ramona.”

  Calla leads him over to where they’re standing at the top of the airport escalator.

  They held back when she spotted her father coming through the gate just now, obviously wanting to give her time for a private reunion.

  “I remember. Nice to see you again.” Dad shakes their hands.

  Calla can’t be certain, but his eyes might linger a little longer on Ramona than is absolutely necessary . . . and vice versa.

  The airport is jammed with people on this Friday night.

  Calla realizes, as they head for the escalator, that not all of them are alive.

  It’s just a flash, but she just had a pretty clear vision of a young boy, maybe ten or eleven, wearing Depression-era knee breeches, argyle socks, a vest, and a flat newsboy-type cap.

  He’s there, and then he’s gone, haunting her without so much as a “Boo.”

  “Your dad is hot!” Evangeline whispers to her as the four of them take the escalator down to the short-term parking lot. “How come I didn’t notice that before?”

  “Um. . . because he wasn’t?”

  Calla herself is caught off-guard by the change in her father’s appearance. His hair is longer than usual, shaggy, as if it needs to be cut, but it actually looks better like that. He looks younger. He’s shaved off his beard, which had a lot of gray in it. And he’s not wearing his glasses, but he is wearing a casual short-sleeved cotton button-up shirt and loafers—no socks—with his jeans.

  Wait till Mom sees him, Calla finds herself thinking, before she remembers, with a sharp pang of grief, that her mother is gone.

  Will this ever stop happening to her?

  “I was just telling Jeff we haven’t eaten yet, and he hasn’t either,” Ramona tells Calla and Evangeline as the four of them step off the escalator and head toward the car. “So we’re all going to go get some wings, if you two aren’t too tired.”

  “Too tired? Are you kidding?” Evangeline grins. “That sounds great! You haven’t had real wings yet, have you, Mr.

  Delaney?”

  “No, only the synthetic ones.”

  Calla is used to her father’s dry sense of humor, but it takes Evangeline and her aunt a while to figure out that he’s joking. When they do, they laugh. Hard. Especially Ramona.

  “You can sit in the front with me, Jeff,” she says when they reach her car.

  Evangeline nudges Calla. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she whispers as her aunt and Calla’s father climb into the front seat together.

  “That depends . . . are you thinking you’re starved and you have to pee?”

  “Calla!” Evangeline swats her arm.

  “What? That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Evangeline rolls her eyes and gets into the backseat.

  Okay, it isn’t what Calla was thinking.

  But she doesn’t want to let on to Evangeline that she, too, has noticed some kind of connection between her father and Ramona.

  Oddly, it isn’t that Calla feels as though he’s betraying her mother in any way . . . though maybe she should.

  No, the thing is . . .

  They’re wrong for each other.

  Dad is a level-headed professor who on his last visit referred to a couple of Lily Dale mediums as “New Age freaks.”

  No way would he ever in a million years be interested in Ramona.

  Then again . . .

  Just months ago, Calla couldn’t have imagined him clean-shaven and wearing loafers without socks, either.

  Still . . .

  People change their looks far more easily than they change their minds.

  No way, Calla thinks stubbornly, settling into the backseat as her father and Ramona laugh together about something. Absolutely no way.

  SIX

  Saturday, September 22

  10:25 a.m.

  “Calla Delaney! You’ve decided to join us again, I see. Welcome.” Petite, middle-aged Patsy Metcalf—who, in her trim jeans and beige turtleneck looks more like a suburban mom than a medium and metaphysics class instructor—takes her place among the circle of chairs in the octagonal mediums’ league building.

  Calla returns the pleasant smile and wishes she could edge her chair closer to Evangeline, sitting beside her, and ask if people are allowed to leave halfway through the class if they aren’t entirely comfortable.

  She tried to get out of it this morning, with her grandmother.

  “I wasn’t going to go, with Dad here,” Calla protested in a whisper as they got breakfast ready.

  “I think you should. Don’t worry about Jeff. I’ll keep him occupied while you’re gone. I could use a ma
n to do a few things around the house for me.”

  “Dad isn’t exactly handy,” Calla pointed out. “And anyway, where are we going to tell him I went?”

  “To a study group. That’s what it is,” Odelia said innocently. “Right?”

  So that was the story they gave Dad, over Odelia’s rich creme brulee French toast. Calla wasn’t in the mood for it, having had a late, heavy dinner of chicken wings, followed by a gooey dessert, but she ate it anyway.

  She definitely wasn’t in the mood to come to class, either, but here she is.

  “You liked it last week,” Evangeline pointed out to Calla as they walked over. “And anyway, you need help figuring out how to deal with your gift.”

  No denying that, considering how many stray spirits have been popping up around her lately.

  Though Calla wishes Evangeline, and everyone else around here, would stop calling it a gift. Mostly, it feels like a curse.

  Brooding, she stares at the flickering candle in the middle of the circle, unable to glean much from the class discussion about billet reading. She does learn, though, that it’s a century-old exercise once used by mediums to hone their skills and refute skeptics.

  She also catches glimpses of people in the room who aren’t really here, and wonders if she’s the only one who sees them: the matronly woman in a hoop skirt, the gorgeous Hispanic-looking man in the seersucker suit and straw hat, even a ghost dog scampering about beneath the chairs.

  No one else comments.

  It’s just me, Calla realizes uneasily.

  When Patsy announces that it’s time for the class to give billets a try, Calla shifts her weight on the folding chair and raises her hand halfway.

  Patsy, busy gathering paper and pencils, doesn’t notice.

  “What’s wrong?” Evangeline whispers.

  “I need to get going.”

  “Home? Why?”

  Calla shrugs. “I just have to go.”

  “You can’t. We’re in the middle of class.”

  “I know, but . . . I don’t know how to do this.”

  “What? Billets? It’s really cool. You need to try it.”

  The woman on Calla’s other side nudges her. She’s middle-aged, with a pale, drawn face and telltale scarf tied over her head. Cancer, chemo. You see a lot of that around Lily Dale, the desperately ill in search of healing.