Believing

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “I know. And I’m sorry I said that to them.” Calla sighs. “I know I got carried away. I just . . . I couldn’t help it.”

  To her shock, Jacy reaches over and takes her hand. Giving it a squeeze, he says, “I know how brutal this has to be for you.”

  She nods, not daring to speak . . . or even breathe.

  He doesn’t drop her hand.

  They walk on in silence.

  Holding hands.

  As overwhelmed as Calla is by everything else that’s happened, right here, right now, Jacy Bly is all she can think about.

  Her hand feels so safe in his warm, protective grasp. She wishes there was a longer way home, but all too soon, they’ve reached Odelia’s house.

  Jacy walks her up onto the front porch, and she wishes the stupid porch light weren’t on, because she has a feeling he wants to kiss her goodnight and she seriously doubts he’s going to do it in a spotlight.

  Kiss you goodnight? What are you, crazy? He’s not going to— Or is he?

  A glimmer in his black eyes makes her pulse race as, still holding her hand, he says, “Calla.”

  Then she hears it.

  The squeak of the Taggarts’ front door, a stone’s throw away.

  Evangeline. No!

  Calla wrenches her hand from Jacy’s just in time to see Mason Taggart step out onto the porch across the way. He doesn’t even glance in their direction as he retrieves something from a chair and goes back inside, banging the door behind him.

  But it’s too late to reclaim the moment.

  Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Jacy is already turning away. Sounding shy, or maybe hurt, he says, “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Jacy.”

  “Yeah?”

  Come back.

  Please.

  Kiss me goodnight.

  But, of course, Calla doesn’t say any of those things.

  She says only, “Thanks for going with me.”

  “Yeah. No problem,” he replies, and is swallowed by the darkness.

  Calla turns toward the door, then stops short.

  There, on the clapboard wall beside it, are a pair of shadows.

  Her own, and a disembodied one beside it.

  It’s nearly identical in size, a clearly human form although the outline isn’t as sharply defined as Calla’s own silhouette.

  She turns, knowing before she sees it that the spot beside her will be empty.

  Someone is here beside her, though. Maybe that’s all she’s supposed to know. But is that enough? Can it ever be enough?

  She watches the shadow until it fades away.

  Then she goes into the house, alone once more.

  SEVENTEEN

  Saturday, September 15

  10:10 a.m.

  On Saturday morning, Calla is prepared to tell her grandmother she and Evangeline are going out for a walk. Luckily, Odelia is behind closed doors with a client when she comes downstairs for breakfast, so the cover story isn’t necessary. It wouldn’t have been believable on a day like this. A cold rain is falling as Calla steps out onto the porch.

  She looks up at the sky and finds it in motion as endless masses of purple-gray clouds shift across.

  Should she go back for an umbrella? It doesn’t look like this is going to let up anytime soon.

  “I’ve got one,” Evangline’s voice calls, and she looks up to see her friend descending the steps next door, beneath a huge black umbrella.

  “How’d you know what I was thinking?” Calla asks with a grin as she splashes down the path to join her.

  “I saw you look up at the sky, and I noticed you didn’t have an umbrella. What else would you be thinking? Not that I’m not psychic,” Evangeline adds cheerfully. “Just . . . you don’t have to be, to figure out some things.”

  No. But you might have to be, to figure out others. Like why she’d have dreamed, last night, about Olivia Newton John. The details were fuzzy when she woke up, but Calla knows she was wearing a 1950s-style ponytail and letterman’s sweater. Like she did in the movie Grease.

  As they make their way up Library Street toward the mediums’ league building, she tells Evangeline about it, and about the disembodied voice singing “Hopelessly Devoted to You” in the school auditorium the other day.

  “What do you think it all means?” Calla asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Okay, then, what about this? I’ve seen human silhouettes a few times on the wall next to mine . . . and there’s no one there beside me where someone would have to be standing.”

  “Shadow ghosts.” Evangeline nods.

  “You’ve heard of them?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve never seen one. Sometimes they’re supposed to just look like mist or a cloud darting around, but sometimes they’re actual human shadows. Kind of creepy.”

  “Ye-ah!” Calla says in a no-kidding tone. “Especially when you’re totally alone, at night. So are they just . . . regular ghosts?”

  Evangeline hesitates. “I don’t know much about that.”

  Yes, you do, Calla thinks. You just don’t want to tell me. Why not?

  “Maybe you should ask Patsy,” Evangeline adds quickly, as if sensing Calla is about to press her on it. “She’s the teacher for this class we’re going to.”

  “Patsy Metcalf, registered medium and spiritual consultant?” Calla recites.

  “You already know her?”

  “Just her sign.”

  “Well, I promise you’ll love her.”

  A minute later, they step into the building. As Evangeline collapses the umbrella just inside the door, Calla looks around.

  The old-fashioned structure seems to consist of one circular room with what appears to be a small kitchen and bathroom off the back. The color scheme is a soothing blue and white, with farmhouse-style beadboard halfway up the wall. There are tall windows all the way around, topped with stained-glass panels in shades of blue.

  In the center, a ring of folding chairs is clustered around a lit candle. A few people—a college-aged man with a beard, a pair of older women, and another girl—are already sitting in them, chatting quietly. Calla recognizes the girl: it’s Lena, whose locker is near hers at school.

  Their eyes meet, and Lena gives her a welcoming, but obviously surprised, smile.

  “Where do you want to sit?” Evangeline asks, leading the way toward the circle of chairs.

  “I’ll just sit over there on the sidelines and watch.” Calla feels self-conscious and is beginning to wish she hadn’t come.

  “You can’t do that. We need your energy here in the circle.”

  She frowns, wondering if Evangeline is just making that up to convince her.

  Before she can respond, the door opens and a petite middle-aged woman blows in with a gust of damp chill.

  “Yuck!” she exclaims, shaking her short brown hair like a wet dog. “It’s miserable out there this morning! Hi, everyone.”

  “Come on,” Evangeline says, dragging Calla toward the teacher. “I’ll introduce you.”

  “I don’t know . . . I think I should just go,” she murmurs, but it’s too late.

  “Patsy, this is my friend Calla,” Evangeline announces. “She’s sitting in on the class today, remember?”

  “I do. You’re Odelia’s granddaughter, right?”

  “Right.” No secrets in this town. Calla is glad she didn’t lie to her grandmother about where she was going this morning. She’d probably have found out anyway.

  Why not just tell her in the first place? she asks herself as Patsy instructs her and Evangeline to sit in the two chairs to her immediate right.

  Because this is complicated, that’s why. It’s not like you’re taking piano lessons or something.

  No, her being here is wrapped up in Mom and Kaitlyn and Erin, and Calla doesn’t feel like sharing any of that with her grandmother just yet.

  Now, though, it looks like she’ll have to. She wonders how long it’ll take for word of her being here to get back
to Odelia.

  As other students arrive and fill the circle, Patsy goes around the room, handing out today’s lesson plan, which centers around something called thought forms.

  After everyone holds hands for a brief prayer—new to Calla, whose family never even went to church—Patsy goes through the lesson plan step-by-step. As she discusses techniques mediums use to tune in to people’s—and spirits’— thought vibrations, Calla finds herself captivated.

  “As mediums, we place ourselves in a subjective state through meditation,” Patsy informs the class. “It’s like anything else. Just about anyone can do this, to some degree—though some are born with a particular talent and an inherent heightened sense of awareness.”

  Calla remembers what Evangeline told her, that Calla herself was born with a caul.

  She’d love to ask Patsy about that, but she’s too shy to raise her hand. Maybe later. Or some other time.

  If you decide to come back.

  “Our skills improve with practice,” Patsy goes on, “just like an athlete’s, or an artist’s, for example. We can learn to flex our psychic muscles in order to receive the energy that makes up thought vibrations, and to interpret it.”

  She goes on to say that a body is simply a house for the soul to inhabit while on the earth plane. When the physical body dies, the brain dies with it. But not the mind. The mind is a part of the soul, and that is immortal.

  Thinking of her mother, Calla is comforted by that . . . but only to a certain extent.

  I really do believe you’re still alive, Mom, on some other plane. But I wish you were still on this one, with me.

  All too soon, the class has drawn to an end.

  “Next week, we’ll be doing a hands-on exercise called reading billets,” Patsy announces after the closing prayer. “It’s something spiritualists used to do in order to prove their abilities to skeptics. Calla, will you be with us again?”

  “I’m . . . not sure. Maybe.”

  “Well, you’re more than welcome to join the class,” Patsy says so easily that Calla is seized by an impulse to pull her aside and ask her about the Grease dream and shadow ghosts and cauls, among other things.

  But now isn’t the time. There’s already a mini-lineup of students clustered nearby, all waiting for their chance to talk to the instructor.

  “Do you want to wait?” Evangeline asks as she and Calla pull on their jackets.

  “No, that’s okay. Maybe I’ll come back next week.”

  “You should. Talk to Odelia about it. I’m sure she’ll want you to do this, if you talk to her.”

  “I know, it’s just . . . I’ve got so much going on today. Maybe later.”

  “Oh—you’re going out with Blue tonight!” Evangeline remembers. As if that’s all Calla’s got on her mind. “Did you figure out what you’re going to wear yet?”

  “Not yet. Want to come over and help me decide?”

  “Definitely. I bet he asks you to homecoming tonight.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Calla tells her.

  An odd sense of expectation has hung over Calla all afternoon.

  She’s got an inexplicable, growing feeling something’s going to happen tonight.

  She just wishes she could be certain it’s going to be something pleasant.

  The vague, nagging anxiety seems to grow more and more pronounced as she puts on makeup, fixes her hair, and gets dressed up in a cute blue skirt and top she and Evangeline settled on earlier.

  She keeps assuring herself that it’s just normal predate nerves, not some kind of warning about impending danger. After all, it’s not like Aiyana has popped up lately.

  Still . . .

  “Make sure you lock the door and take your key with you tonight,” Odelia says when she sticks her head into Calla’s room to say she’s leaving for her Saturday night circle.

  Calla feels another twinge of uneasiness.

  “Why are we locking the door all of a sudden, Gammy?”

  Her grandmother just shrugs.

  Did Odelia have some kind of premonition? Did Dylan?

  And what about Jacy? He said when they were walking home from the Yateses’ that he’s worried about her.

  Right . . . she almost forgot about that.

  She sits on the edge of the bed and puts on a pair of gold earrings, feeling her grandmother’s eyes on her.

  “You look beautiful,” Odelia says with approval as Gert purrs and rubs herself against Calla’s ankles.

  “Thanks, Gammy.”

  “I hope you have a good time. What time do you think you’ll be home?”

  Mom would have told me exactly when to be home, and warned me not to be late, Calla thinks with a pang of grief-tainted irony.

  “I’m not sure. Late, I guess. He said we’d get something to eat after the concert.”

  “I probably won’t be back until after midnight myself. Just be careful.”

  “I will.” Calla smiles at her grandmother, wishing she didn’t look so . . . worried.

  Maybe it’s because Calla’s driving all the way to Buffalo with Blue in his fancy BMW. Or maybe because she doesn’t approve of Blue’s father’s high-profile lifestyle.

  Yeah, or maybe she thinks a raccoon-eyed killer is going to come after me.

  Left alone with the kitten in the empty house, Calla realizes she still has fifteen minutes before Blue picks her up. She spends a few minutes pacing around, jumping at every slight creak, before realizing this is silly. She should just wait outside.

  “Sorry,” she tells Gert as she steps out onto the porch, using her foot to gently keep the kitten inside as she pulls the door shut. She locks it, then turns the handle to try it.

  Gert shoots her an accusing look through the glass, then trots back toward the kitchen.

  The rain has stopped, leaving Lily Dale glistening and misty as twilight falls.

  Sitting on the porch, Calla wishes the Taggarts would show up on theirs, but the house is dark and the driveway empty. Evangeline said Ramona was taking her and Mason out to eat tonight.

  Spotting a figure sprinting down Cottage Row toward her, she realizes it’s Jacy. He’s wearing gray sweats and sneakers, obviously taking his nightly run.

  She doesn’t know whether to call out to him or hope he doesn’t spot her. She hasn’t seen him since he left her at the door after almost kissing her . . . or so it seemed.

  Watching him look up toward Odelia’s house, she realizes he almost seems to be looking for . . . something? Someone? Her?

  When he sees her, he hesitates only briefly before waving. She watches as he slows his pace and jogs toward her.

  “How’s it going?” he calls from the street.

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  She sees his dark eyes checking her out from head to toe. Is he going to ask her why she’s all dressed up? Ask her where she’s going? And with whom?

  Nope.

  Maybe he already knows, she realizes. Just like everyone around here seems to know everything.

  “Got to keep my heart rate up,” he announces. “So, see ya.”

  “See ya,” she calls back, disappointed, and watches him literally run away from her.

  That’s just because he’s training for track, she tells herself.

  But she isn’t so sure.

  So far, Calla’s date with Blue has been as close to perfect as any date she’s ever had. Including with Kevin.

  No, Blue isn’t Kevin. And she isn’t in love with him.

  He isn’t Jacy, either.

  But Blue is fun and funny and cool—not to mention hot. Plus, he’s so at ease in any situation that Calla finds herself instinctively relaxing whenever she’s around him.

  At the concert—where they had great seats, comp tickets someone gave to Blue’s dad—Calla discovered she really likes jazz, and told him so. Afterward, he asked her if she likes wings, too.

  “You mean Buffalo wings?” she asked, hoping “wings” isn’t some style of music
she never heard of. She gets the impression that well-traveled, worldly, wealthy Blue is far more sophisticated than she could ever hope to be.

  He laughed. But not because she was ignorant about music.

  No, just about chicken, apparently.

  “We don’t call them that around here,” he said with a grin.

  “What?”

  “Buffalo wings. That’s a dead giveaway that you’re a tourist. In western New York, they’re just wings. And you’ve never had them until you’ve had them at the Anchor Bar. Those are the real deal.”

  The Anchor Bar turned out to be a jam-packed, no-frills restaurant right downtown, not far from the concert hall. And Blue was right. She’s never had wings like this.

  Sitting at a cozy table in the big, brick-walled dining room, they polished off a gigantic bucketful of wings so hot they’re listed on the menu as “suicidal,” and a pitcher of Pepsi to cool the flames. They also split a sandwich, another local delicacy, called “beef on weck.”

  Calla was stuffed by the time it arrived, but Blue made her taste it. She bit into a heap of thinly sliced rare roast beef, served with au jus and horseradish on a “kimmelweck”—a big roll sprinkled with crunchy pretzel salt and caraway seeds.

  It was awesome.

  The whole date was awesome.

  How can anything bad happen now?

  It can’t, Calla decides, riding home beside Blue in the darkness of his car, with an old John Mayer song playing on the radio. It just can’t.

  She wonders what to do when they reach her grandmother’s house.

  Odelia won’t be home yet.

  Back when Calla was dating Kevin, an empty house meant a rare opportunity to be alone together.

  But Blue isn’t Kevin, and this is barely their third date.

  Still . . . he’s incredibly good-looking, and she’s just as attracted to him—tonight, anyway—as she ever was to Kevin.

  Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be alone with him, she tells herself firmly.

  Okay. So she won’t ask him to come in when they get to Odelia’s.

  She’ll just kiss him goodnight here in the car, and that will be that.

  Ha. Easier said than done.