Believing

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Lisa! It’s me.”

  “Tiffany?”

  Stung, she replies, “No . . . Calla.” Tiffany Foxwood goes to Shoreside Day School with Lisa—and isn’t one of Calla’s favorite people in the world.

  “Calla! Wow, it’s so good to hear your voice!”

  Wondering if Lisa and Tiffany have been hanging out, she tries to say lightly, “That’s funny, since you didn’t even recognize it.”

  It comes out entirely the wrong way, though, and Lisa snaps back in her familiar drawl, “Well, it’s been a while since I’ve heard it. How come you never called me back the other day?”

  “I’m sorry,” Calla says immediately, and means it. “I know I’ve been bad about staying in touch since you left. It’s just . . . I’ve had a lot going on.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s been crazy here, too, between school and cheerleading practice and trying to find something to wear for senior portrait day.”

  Knowing Lisa can’t possibly understand that what Calla’s been through this last week in Lily Dale can’t begin to compare to her own life, she asks, “What’s been going on at school? Fill me in.”

  As Lisa talks about people she used to know and places she used to go, Calla finds herself wistful, once again, for the routine daily life she left behind in Florida. She never realized, at the time, just how blessed she really was. It isn’t only about having lost Mom—or even Kevin.

  It’s just . . .

  Having exchanged ordinary for extraordinary, she wonders if she’ll ever get used to seeing and hearing what others can’t, to disembodied shadows and spirits popping up to show her bloody corpses, to just knowing things about other people, strangers, even—things she can’t possibly know.

  “I’m going on and on,” Lisa says after a few minutes of updating Calla, “and you haven’t even told me how you like your new school.”

  “Oh . . . it’s good.”

  “Have you made some new friends besides . . . what’s the name of that girl next door?”

  “Evangeline. Yeah, I’ve made a few. This girl,Willow—I eat lunch with her and another girl, Sarita. They’re really nice.” Before Calla left tonight, Willow said something about sitting together in the cafeteria again tomorrow, so Pam—or Shakespeare—at lunch is history, thank goodness.

  “What about those guys?” Lisa asks. “Blue and Jason?”

  “Jacy.” Wow. It seems like a million years ago that Calla told her about them, but it was only a few weeks, right on the heels of finding out about Annie, so she made it sound as though she were juggling two guys.

  “Did you choose?” Lisa asks. “Or are you still into both of them?”

  “Oh, uh, I’m going out with Blue Saturday night, and . . . and I had lunch with Jacy the other day. So, yeah. Both, I guess.”

  “Lucky you.” Lisa fills her in on her own love life. She’s decided she has a crush on Nick Rodriguez, but he’s going out with Brittany Jensen, though he keeps flirting with Lisa when Brittany’s not around.

  “What do you think I should do about Nick?” Lisa asks.

  “I don’t think you should do anything right now,” she says firmly. “Let him make a move, if he’s going to.”

  “I guess you’re right. I just don’t think he’s really all that into Brittany.”

  The conversation drifts on, and Calla lets Lisa do most of the talking.

  “It’s so hard to do all this catching up in one quick phone call,” Lisa says. “When are you coming to visit? You got the airline voucher, right?”

  “I got it. I’m not sure. My dad doesn’t want me to leave here just yet,” she white-lies.

  “I wish you were at least online, so we could stay in touch better. And you could blog again, and update your MySpace page. People have been asking what’s up with you.”

  Calla murmurs an agreement, but she can’t help thinking it would feel wrong to go back to blogging these days. She can’t imagine sharing most of the details of her daily life with anyone in her old world, let alone putting it out there in cyberspace.

  “When I do eventually get down there, I’m going to get my mom’s old laptop and use that here,” she tells Lisa. “My dad said it would be okay.”

  “That would be great! The sooner the better, right?”

  “Right.” I guess.

  “You name the weekend, and I’ll start making plans,” Lisa tells her, and Calla halfheartedly promises to do just that. It won’t be for a while, though. As much as she misses Lisa—and as much as she wants a computer to use—she isn’t particularly eager to face her old house and its bloody memories.

  Realizing she should probably hang up and get busy on the rest of her homework, she says, “Listen, I just wanted to ask you one last thing . . . about Kevin. How’s he doing?”

  “He’s good. Actually, that’s funny, because I just talked to him, and he asked me about you, too.”

  “What did he ask?”

  “Just what you were up to lately. I think he misses you . . . although when I asked him if he was going to break up with Annie, he got annoyed.”

  “They’re still together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’d you ask him about breaking up with her? I thought you liked her?”

  “I do. But I love you. Anyway, Kevin’s talking about bringing Annie down here for Thanksgiving, so . . .”

  So, so much for that, Calla thinks.

  She hangs up with Lisa a few minutes later, with a promise to call and e-mail more regularly, and a “love you, too,” in response to Lisa’s.

  Wiping her wet eyes, she realizes that lately, her life is all about missing people. Lisa, her father, her mother, Kevin.

  Yeah. But no way is Calla going to tell Kevin to come visit her in Lily Dale.

  Why should she?

  He has Annie, she reminds herself as she turns off the kitchen lights and heads into the living room. And you have enough friends.

  No, she doesn’t need one more. Especially not one who shattered her heart and wasn’t there when she needed him most.

  Calla’s thoughts drift back to Althea York and what happened in her kitchen. So, Mom’s spirit really is around her. Somehow, that’s almost more frustrating than it was thinking her mother had simply ceased to exist.

  Mom’s still out there . . . or right here. I just have to get past this block and open myself to her.

  Back in the living room, she gently touches her grandmother’s shoulder.

  “What? What?” Odelia wakes with a start.

  “I’m home, Gammy, and it’s getting late. Come up to bed.”

  “Oh . . . I’ll be up in a minute. Did you lock up?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Are you sure?” Odelia sits up straighter in her chair and looks at Calla, once again triggering that sense of uneasiness.

  Why is she asking about locking the door? She never has before.

  “I’ll double-check,” she tells her grandmother, frowning, thinking about Dylan and his dream and wondering if Odelia is worried for any particular reason.

  Calla goes into the front hall, where she finds that the door is, indeed, locked. She turns the switch by the door and the outdoor light goes off.

  Almost immediately, she realizes that someone is standing beside a tree just across the way.

  Shocked, Calla feels her breath lodge in her throat as she gapes at the silhouette of a human figure wearing a long dark coat or cloak.

  Goose bumps sting the back of Calla’s neck as she watches whoever—whatever—it is slip away into the shadows, leaving her to wonder if her imagination is playing tricks on her . . . or if someone really is out there.

  Is it Spirit?

  Or is it human?

  It’s no one, she tells herself firmly. You’re losing it. You really are.

  Exhausted—physically and emotionally—she forces herself to turn away, to climb the stairs, to sit at her desk and tackle her homework.

  After she finally gives up and climbs into bed
, though, it takes a long time for her to drift off to sleep.

  When she does, she dreams that she’s being chased by a menacing figure in black, and she can hear her mother somewhere in the distance, frantically screaming at her to run for her life.

  ————

  Did she see him when she turned off the light and looked out the window of her grandmother’s house?

  Or did she just feel his presence, the way people like her claim to do?

  You think you know everything, he taunts her silently as he drives back down the thruway toward Ohio.

  Well then, you must know I’m coming to get you.

  And you must be afraid.

  His lips curl into a smile. All the better.

  Now that he’s seen her, it doesn’t even matter that she doesn’t have long blond hair. No, it doesn’t matter at all. Because killing her, and putting an end to her meddling, will be more satisfying than what he’s done to any of the others or what he’s going to do to Hayley Gorzynski when her turn comes. And again and again, after that.

  But Calla Delaney will come first.

  Sweet dreams, Calla. Until we meet again . . .

  SIXTEEN

  Thursday, September 13

  7:27 p.m.

  As dusk falls over Lily Dale the following night, Calla finds herself standing beneath another medium’s shingle at yet another unfamiliar Lily Dale cottage.

  This one is neatly kept and fairly modern, located at the far eastern end of town, on Erie Boulevard—a narrow, rutted road that is like no other boulevard Calla has ever known.

  “Are you positive we should be doing this?” Calla asks Jacy as she peers through the slatted screened window of the metal front door.

  The glassed-in porch looks like an extension of the house, with teal carpet, several lamps, a television, a dining set, and lots of white indoor-outdoor furniture topped in bright blue-and-white striped vinyl cushions.

  “No. I’m not positive.” Jacy’s finger is poised over the bell as he turns to look at her. “But what other option is there?”

  Oh, geez. Why did he sound so much more convincing earlier, at school? When she told him she was ready to confront Darrin’s parents, he said he was glad she had decided to go ahead with it, that he would go with her, and that they shouldn’t waste any time because the Yateses usually head out to Arizona for the winter.

  “You’re not very reassuring, Jacy,” Calla hisses now. “We should leave.”

  All at once, a dog erupts in frantic barking from somewhere inside.

  “I think it’s too late for that,” Jacy says, a moment before the door leading from the house to the closed-in porch is thrown open.

  The man on the threshold is mostly bald, with a fringe of gray hair and wire-framed bifocals. He’s wearing a dark green cardigan sweater and corduroy slippers. There’s a folded newspaper in his hand. At a glance, he could be anyone’s grandfather.

  I’m glad he’s not mine, though, Calla can’t help thinking. He would have been, if Mom had stayed with his son Darrin instead of moving on and meeting Dad.

  Then again, if that had happened, she would never have been born in the first place.

  The thought makes her shudder inwardly as Mr. Yates steps into the porch, peering out at them through the slatted window of the outer door. “Yes? Did you want a reading?”

  “No!” Calla replies quickly. “I just wanted to ask you about something.”

  He opens the door a crack. “Pardon me?”

  “Bob? Who is it?” calls a female voice inside the house. Calla can hear jangling dog tags and paws tapping on the floor, and the woman says faintly, “Be still, Jasmine.”

  “I’m sorry . . . how can I help you?” Mr. Yates asks Calla, looking more closely at her. “Have we met? You look familiar.”

  “No, we haven’t met.” But some people say I look just like my mother.

  My dead mother.

  Whom your son might have—

  “She’s new here,” Jacy cuts into her grim thoughts.

  The man’s faded gray-blue eyes flick in his direction. “You, I recognize,” he tells Jacy. “You’re the boy who’s living with Walt and Peter, right?”

  “Right.” Jacy nods.

  “Mr. Yates,” Calla speaks up as footsteps sound in the house behind him, “I wanted to ask about your son Darrin.”

  She hears a gasp and realizes a woman—Darrin’s mother; she has to be—has appeared behind Mr. Yates.

  “Bob!” the woman says sharply. She’s wiry and short, with cropped silver hair and angular features. “Who are these kids?”

  “I . . . I’m not quite sure.” The old man levels a thoughtful gaze at Calla. “Why are you asking about my son?”

  “Because . . .” She takes a deep breath and prepares to deliver her bombshell. “I think I saw him.”

  She waits for the inevitable shocked reaction.

  For some reason, it doesn’t come.

  Mr. Yates merely blinks behind his thick glasses. Mrs. Yates presses her hands to her forehead. Her bony fingers remind Calla of a bird’s claws.

  “Where did you see him?”

  “In . . . Florida,” Calla replies to Mr. Yates, realizing he and his wife must have already known their son is out there somewhere, and not . . . dead.

  Like Mom, she thinks bitterly, and clenches her fists in her jacket pockets.

  “Well, that’s a first, huh, Betty?” Mr. Yates asks with a tight-lipped smile. “Florida.”

  His wife doesn’t reply, just shakes her head wearily.

  “So, you know Darrin’s alive?” Jacy asks.

  “If he isn’t, I’d be surprised,” Mrs. Yates says. “Bob and I have consulted enough of our colleagues over the years who told us they feel that he’s still on the earth plane.”

  “What about you?” Calla asks. “You’re mediums yourselves. Couldn’t you figure that out on your own?”

  She remembers, then, something Ramona told her soon after she arrived in Lily Dale, when she asked how Darrin’s parents, as psychic mediums, could possibly not know what happened to their son.

  “Nothing is more powerful than the bond between a parent and a child,” Ramona replied. “There are some things a parent might not want to see, or accept.”

  Yes.And the same thing might be true with a child, Calla admits to herself, remembering what Althea said about her own grief acting as a barrier to her mother on the Other Side.

  Neither of the Yateses chooses to answer Calla’s question now.

  Instead, Mr. Yates asks one of his own. “When did you see Darrin in Florida?”

  “In March. And again in July, at my mother’s . . . funeral.” She stares—or maybe it’s more like glares—from Mr. Yates to Mrs. Yates. “I think he might have had something to do with her death.”

  Jacy elbows her.

  She ignores him. “Darrin was my mother’s boyfriend years ago, before he disappeared from Lily Dale. And now I’m getting all kinds of signs that seem to be linking him to what happened to her, and—”

  “What is your mother’s name?” Betty Yates interrupts, her voice and expression much chillier than they were moments ago.

  “It’s—I mean it was—Stephanie Delaney. Stephanie Lauder.”

  The Yateses look at each other.

  Then, as if in unspoken agreement with his wife, Bob Yates says, “I need to ask you to leave.”

  Jacy begins, “Sir, I’m so sorry—we’re so sorry—and we didn’t mean to—”

  “Go.”

  “But my mother—”

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” Betty says stiffly, “but my son had nothing to do with whatever it was that happened to her.”

  “How can you know that if you don’t even know where—”

  “Darrin would never have hurt Stephanie. He loved her more than anyone else on earth.” Including me.

  The last two words are unspoken, but they seem to hang in the air as if Darrin’s mother had actually spoken them.

 
“God only knows what Stephanie said or did to make our son decide to disappear,” Mrs. Yates goes on, “but—”

  “So, you blame my mother for your son’s problems?” Calla cuts in incredulously. “Why?”

  “Go,” Mr. Yates says again, more wearily. “Please. Just go.”

  “But I—”

  Calla’s protest is cut off by the door being closed in her face. Jaw hanging, she looks at Jacy.

  “Come on,” he says quietly.

  They walk in silence for a few blocks.

  After they’ve turned the corner, away from the boulevard, Calla stops walking and looks at Jacy.

  “I can’t just drop this.”

  “No. I know.”

  She wishes she could see his face, but it’s cast in shadows. “So what do I do now?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere with them. And there’s something . . .” Jacy shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m worried.”

  “About them?”

  “No. About . . . ,” he trails off.

  “About me?” Calla asks, and he nods.

  Immediately, her heart picks up a little. Out of fear, because of Dylan’s warning and now Jacy’s . . . and, maybe, just a little, because Jacy cares enough about her to worry about her.

  “Why?” she asks, trying to sound far more casual than she feels.

  “I don’t know. Just be careful, okay?”

  “Okay.” She pauses. “I’m going to a class with Evangeline over the weekend. Beginning mediumship. I thought that might help.”

  “That’s good. Really good.”

  “Have you taken any classes?”

  “No. Not because I don’t think they’re worth it, but just because . . . I don’t know. Classes aren’t my thing.”

  Yeah. She can sense that, whenever she sees him in school. He always has a restless air about him. He’s much more relaxed when he’s outside. Like now.

  They start walking again.

  “Do you believe what they said?” she asks after a while. “That my mom’s the one who did something to make Darrin disappear? Because Ramona said he was on drugs. Maybe they didn’t know about that.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Maybe I should tell them.”

  “Their son is missing. Their hearts are broken. They aren’t going to be very open to some stranger who shows up and basically accuses him of being a druggie and a murderer.”