Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Yes, and even then, as they shook hands, Calla was literally jolted by . . . something. Some kind of static electricity, sizzling up her arm.

  Early on, Jacy—bronzed and usually barefoot—had a way of popping up when she least expected it, kind of like the many spirits who tend to hang around Lily Dale. And, like the spirits, his presence tends to rattle Calla—tie her tongue in knots and make her heart beat faster, though not for the same reasons.

  The foster son of a pair of local male mediums, Jacy’s a relative newcomer to the Dale himself. But Calla never would have guessed that, considering his insight into how things work around here—and on the Other Side.

  Until she spilled her suspicions to Lisa the other day, Jacy was the only one who knew about Calla’s theory that her mother’s death was no accident. He’s the one who helped her decipher the spirit messages that led to that conclusion, and he’s been helping her try to track down the long-missing Darrin Yates, her mother’s long-ago boyfriend.

  Maybe he’s just being a good friend and nothing more.

  He did hold her hand as they walked home together after that troubling confrontation with Darrin’s parents . . .

  But that was probably because he felt sorry for her, after the way the Yateses treated her—as if her mother possibly had something to do with Darrin’s disappearance years ago.

  Anyway, Blue’s the one who’s been asking her out, not Jacy. It was Blue who kissed her good night, and Blue who invited her to homecoming, and if she had any common sense, she’d get over Jacy right now.

  Uh-huh. Good luck with that.

  “What’s up with you lately?” she asks him over the chaotic chatter that echoes through the crowded corridor.

  “The same. Homework. Running.”

  Running. He’s on the cross-country team.

  “Is it my imagination, or have you been avoiding me lately?” She waits for him to deny it, but he does the opposite.

  “No,” he replies evenly, “it’s not your imagination.”

  Caught off guard, she wonders what she’s supposed to say to that.

  “Did I . . . um, do something to make you mad?”

  “Mad? No.”

  Jealous, then?

  She doesn’t dare ask that.

  She has a moment to think of something else to say as they take opposite routes past a handful of girls gathered around someone’s cell phone in the hallway, laughing about a text message one of them is typing in.

  “Hi, Calla,” a voice calls from the group as she passes.

  It’s Pam Moraco, a petite, sharp-featured blonde who might be more attractive if her smile ever reached her close-set eyes.

  “Hey, Pam,” Calla says briefly, and is glad, and not at all surprised, to see that Pam and her friends are much more interested in the cell phone than in her.

  She moves past them and meets up with Jacy again on the other side, still wondering what she’s going to say to him. But before she has a chance to come up with something, he stops walking and turns to her.

  “What?” she asks, taken aback by the accusation in his narrowed black eyes.

  “I know what happened last Saturday night.”

  “Last Saturday night, I was at home playing cards with my dad and my grandmother and the Taggarts,” she tells him, confused. “Is that a problem?”

  “No . . . last Saturday night. Not this past one.”

  Last Saturday: her date with Blue, and Blue asking her to homecoming . . .

  So she was right. He’s jealous.

  “Well, it’s not like you didn’t have the opportunity to do it yourself,” she shoots back, not sure whether to be irritated or flattered by his blunt honesty.

  Something flickers in his expression, but he says nothing.

  “I was actually kind of hoping you would,” she goes on, “but he beat you to it.”

  There. Total honesty in exchange for his. It’s only fair.

  Now what?

  Now, most likely, Jacy will tell her how much he regrets missing his chance, and that he hopes to make up for it.

  If he asks her out now, she’ll definitely say yes, Blue or no Blue. They might have a homecoming dance date, but it’s not like she can’t go out with anyone else in the meantime.

  She glances back at Pam and her gossipy friends, to see if any of them are paying attention to her and Jacy.

  It doesn’t seem like it, but you never know.

  Calla might be free to talk to other guys, or even date them, but she really doesn’t need anyone running back to Blue and starting trouble.

  “Come on,” she tells Jacy. “Let’s go.”

  Jacy obliges, but he’s wearing a confused expression. “What do you mean, ‘he beat you to it’?”

  “I mean, he asked first. What was I supposed to do, say no because I’d rather go with you?”

  “Go where?”

  Suddenly uneasy, Calla asks slowly, “What do you mean, ‘go where’?”

  There’s a long pause.

  “I, uh, don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

  “You said . . . last Saturday night.”

  “Right. I was up late that night, and I saw the cops over at your place, and—”

  She gasps, pressing her hands to her flaming cheeks. “That was what you meant?”

  “Some lunatic breaking into Odelia’s house and attacking you. Yeah. After I warned you to be careful.”

  Totally mortified, Calla shakes her head, barely hearing his words.

  So he wasn’t talking about Blue, and her love life, and his wishing he had asked her out.

  No, he was talking about that lunatic killer coming after her.

  Meanwhile, I just basically told him that not only do I have a thing for him, but that I’d much rather go to the dance with him than Blue.

  It’s a wonder he’s even still here talking to her, but he is, not that she can really even grasp what he’s saying.

  “I told you I thought there was something . . . I just had a bad feeling. I knew you were in trouble. You should have been more careful. If you had just—”

  “I, uh, I’m really sorry,” she cuts in, glad her locker is just around the corner. She needs to get there, fast.

  “You’re sorry for what?”

  “For everything.” Mostly, being a total loser and opening my big fat mouth and sticking my big old foot in it.

  Quickening her pace, as if she’ll somehow be able to just lose him, she makes the turn around the corner—and slams right into someone, who immediately drops what he’s carrying with a deafening slam and clatter.

  Donald Reamer. And the world’s biggest, loudest wooden chessboard, along with an entire collection of pieces.

  “Oh . . . I’m so sorry!” she tells Donald, a hugely obese kid whose looks aren’t helped by thick glasses and a line of dark fuzz on his upper lip, which is quavering as he looks down at his chess set.

  Oh, no. No, Donald, please don’t cry.

  Of all the people she could crash into, it had to be poor Donald, the resident scapegoat?

  He’s always tripping, bumping into furniture, dropping things . . . probably because he’s so nervous about the kids who constantly make fun of him. Of course, the clumsiness only fuels the teasing—a vicious, cruel circle.

  Sickened by the snickers around them as Donald grunts and struggles to bend his hefty body, Calla tells him, “No, it’s okay, I’ll get your stuff.”

  But Jacy’s beat her to it, already on his knees, handing the board to Donald and reaching to retrieve the scattered pieces.

  Calla drops beside him and crawls around grabbing what she can, aware that a bunch of kids have stopped to watch and, of course, make some mean-spirited comments about Donald.

  She sees Donald bend to pick up a black pawn in time for a clean white Nike to kick it out of his reach.

  Furious, she looks up to see a wiry, smirking freshman attached to the sneaker.

  “Oops, sorry,” he tells Donald.

 
Laughing with his idiot friends, he’s poised to kick a white rook when an arm snakes around his ankle and gives a sharp tug.

  The kid goes down hard, sprawled face-first on the floor.

  “Oops, sorry,” Jacy says, then calmly and swiftly retrieves the white rook, the black pawn, and the few remaining pieces.

  He stands and hands them to Donald with a casual, “Here you go,” as the freshman would-be bully slinks away with his henchmen and Calla gets back on her feet and dusts herself off.

  “Thanks.” Donald is focused on the pieces, taking inventory.

  Calla notices an older man, then, heavyset and bearing quite a strong resemblance to Donald. He’s standing just behind him, leaning over Donald’s shoulder and looking silently into the box.

  He must be a teacher. Calla wonders why he didn’t say anything to the kids who were taunting Donald. She’s noticed that faculty members, aware of what goes on with him, usually step in to stop the bullying if they’re around.

  “Got everything?” Jacy asks, and Donald nods. “Good.

  Chess club meeting today, huh?”

  “Yes.” Donald nods, then offers awkwardly, “One Christmas, my dad made me this board and carved all the pieces. It took him months to do it. He’s the one who taught me how to play, when I was little.”

  “Seriously?” Jacy leans in to get a better look. “That’s really a great set.”

  “Do you play chess?”

  “A little.”

  “Really? You should come to chess club.”

  “I don’t like clubs,” Jacy tells him with a shrug. “But I’ll play you sometime, if you want.”

  “Okay.” Donald’s obvious disappointment isn’t lost on Jacy.

  “Tomorrow,” Jacy tells him. “At lunch. We’ll play. Okay?”

  “I don’t go to lunch on Tuesdays. I have French Horn then.”

  “Then Wednesday. You bring the set.”

  Donald brightens immediately. “Sure.”

  “Good. See you then.”

  Donald lumbers away with the oversized male teacher protectively trailing along behind him, clearly intending to see him safely to chess club.

  Calla, still momentarily distracted from her own problems, stands with Jacy, watching them go.

  “I wonder why he didn’t give that kid detention,” she murmurs. “Who?”

  “The teacher.”

  “What teacher?”

  She points, then realizes that the man walking with Donald is no teacher. There’s something about the way he drifts along, almost weightless despite his obese build . . .

  “You don’t see him, do you.” It’s not a question, and as Jacy shakes his head, she acknowledges the truth.

  The man is yet another spirit.

  “I’m never going to get used to this,” she mutters with a sigh.

  “What does he look like?” Jacy asks, and she briefly describes him. “That’s Donald’s father, I bet. I heard he died a few years ago. Heart attack, I think.”

  Calla’s heart sinks.

  So Donald is part of the sad little club, too; he knows what it’s like to suddenly lose a parent.

  She swallows hard, picturing Donald’s father lovingly carving a chess set for his son, and knowing Donald lost one of the few people in this world who had been kind to him.

  She’s been here long enough to know that the Reamers don’t live in the Dale but somewhere on the rural outskirts. It doesn’t necessarily mean Donald isn’t psychically aware, but she figures the odds are against it.

  He probably doesn’t realize his father watches over him from the Other Side. He’s not aware that his father sees how the other kids torture his son, how he tries to protect him. All he knows is that he’s been robbed of the parent who loved him.

  She realizes she’s about to cry.

  It’s just too much. She can’t handle this. Any of it.

  “I’ve got to go,” she tells Jacy abruptly. “I’m babysitting for Paula Drumm’s kids today, and I can’t be late.”

  Jacy says nothing, just keeps up with her as she resumes her sprint down the hall.

  Arriving at her locker, she reaches for the combination lock, but Jacy puts his hand on her arm. “Wait. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What?” Something tells her it’s not going to be a heartfelt declaration of true love.

  “It’s been bugging me all week, ever since I found out about that guy attacking you.”

  “Wait . . . how did you find out about that?”

  “I asked one of the cops.”

  “But they said they weren’t going to let it get out!”

  “Not to the public. But I know this guy, Figeroa, he’s sort of a friend of mine.”

  “You have a friend on the police force?” she asks dubiously, then sees his expression and remembers that he’s been through a lot more than most people his age.

  “Figeroa knows I’m not going to say anything to anyone, and he knew I was worried, so . . .” He shrugs.

  He was worried about me.

  But that doesn’t mean he has feelings for me.

  “Whatever, Jacy.” She pulls her arm from his grasp, then forces herself to look at her watch, as though he’s keeping her from an engagement far more pressing than babysitting.

  Yeah, like hurling herself off the nearest tall building—not that there are any for miles around.

  Looks like you’ll just have to carry on indefinitely in sheer humiliation. Nice going.

  Jacy touches her arm again, more gently this time.

  “Calla . . . I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you all week. Bad way to handle things—maybe I suck at communication. What can I say? But I’m trying to talk to you now.”

  Okay, that’s encouraging . . . not that it takes away a shred of her embarrassment.

  “Can you please just . . . what is it you need to tell me?

  Because I really have to get to Paula’s.”

  He clears his throat. “Last week I told you I was worried about you because I’d had a vision of you in some kind of trouble.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I did. I told you that night after we went to see the Yateses, remember?”

  Remember? It was when he was holding her hand, right after he almost kissed her . . . how could she forget?

  Except he didn’t say anything about a vision.

  “You just said you were worried,” she reminds him, “and that I should be careful.”

  “Oh. I guess I didn’t mention the vision. I didn’t want to scare you with the specifics.”

  “So you saw a man coming after me?”

  “I saw . . . listen, the details aren’t important. When I heard what happened to you Saturday night, I figured that must have been what I was seeing. But . . . it wasn’t.”

  A chill slips down her spine. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I still have this feeling that you’re in some kind of trouble, or . . . more like danger. And it’s been getting stronger every day. Every time I see you.”

  “You’ve been having more visions about me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are they?”

  He sidesteps that again. “I’ve been trying to figure out what it all means, whether what I’m seeing is supposed to be interpreted literally, or if it’s some kind of psychic shorthand.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me before now?”

  Another shrug. “You didn’t listen to me last time.”

  Exasperated, she says, “But I didn’t—”

  “Wait, just listen. I told you to be careful. You weren’t. You walked into the house alone that night, with that guy waiting there, and you almost got yourself killed.”

  “That’s not my fault. It’s not like I knew someone was there.”

  Or did she?

  She remembers the overwhelming feeling of foreboding as she crossed the threshold
that night. It grew stronger by the second. If she had listened to her instincts, she might have walked right back out again.

  But she didn’t.

  She pushes her self-doubt aside, though, needing to settle this with Jacy, who’s acting as though she personally offended him. Which is ridiculous.

  “So that’s why you haven’t been talking to me? Because you think I should have heeded your big, dramatic, ominous warning?”

  She’s being sarcastic; she can’t help it. She just feels like she’s in way over her head with him and there’s no getting back on solid footing. Not anytime soon, anyway.

  “I said it’s not all your fault,” he reminds her. “It’s mine, too. It’s—look, I don’t like feeling like this, okay? I’m not good at it.”

  “Feeling like what?”

  He looks away, obviously uncomfortable.

  Whoa.

  Jacy, who’s managed to maintain a level of emotional detachment since they met, is no longer entirely in control.

  Looking at him, she glimpses for the first time the wounded child whose alcoholic, troubled parents lashed out at each other and at him one too many times. The authorities intervened, took him from his home, and placed him in the system.

  Peter and Walt are good to him; according to Evangeline, they want to formally adopt him, and his parents are prepared to sign away their rights.

  How does that feel? For your own parents to hurt you, badly, and then be willing to cut all ties?

  No wonder Jacy spends so much time alone—running, fishing, hiking in the woods.

  He’s got a lot to think about. So much pain to absorb, a tremendous amount of healing to do . . .

  He probably doesn’t want to be too close to anyone after what he’s been through. He probably needs to keep the world at arm’s length.

  Gazing at Jacy, aching for him, Calla wills him to turn his head and look at her again.

  He does, and she clearly sees the vulnerability in his eyes.

  That lasts all of a few seconds before some defense mechanism kicks in and they flash with anger.

  “Hey, it’s not like I want to worry about you,” he snaps at her.

  “So don’t.” She shrugs, clenching the straps of her backpack with both hands so he won’t see them shaking.