Believing (Lily Dale #2)(41)

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Walking down the empty hall at school, Calla wishes her science teacher had asked someone else to go up to the media center to pick up some handouts. Still playing catch-up, she was planning to spend the five-minute break the teacher just gave them to go over her notes from last week.

Oh, well. It does feel good to stretch her legs a little. Spending lunch hour outside with Jacy sparked some hint of cabin fever this afternoon.

Her footsteps echoing down the corridor, Calla turns the corner and stops short just outside the auditorium, startled by the sudden, jaunty sound of a piano playing inside.

Someone is singing. A girl’s melodious soprano.

She recognizes the song after a moment: “Hopelessly Devoted to You.” Olivia Newton-John sang it in the movie Grease with John Travolta. Calla watched it with her mother whenever they caught it on television. Mom said it was one of her favorite movies when she was a kid.

Unable to resist a peek, she slips into the back of the auditorium to see who’s singing.

To her shock, the cavernous space is dark. Deserted. Silent.

The piano bench is empty, lid closed.

And the music stopped as suddenly as if someone had turned off a radio. Maybe that’s all it was. Only . . .

There’s no radio that she can see, and it really sounded as if someone were rehearsing live music in here.

Spooked, Calla backs out of the auditorium and hurries toward the media center, wondering if the school might be as haunted as Lily Dale itself.

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It’s been another long day, and Calla is relieved when the last bell rings as Mr. Bombeck is in the midst of working a difficult problem on the board. She has no clue what he’s doing. Her thoughts keep drifting to what happened earlier, in the auditorium.

It’s probably no big deal—just a random haunting—but for some reason, that ghostly music left her with a lingering feeling of, well, doom. As if that makes any sense at all. “Hopelessly Devoted to You” might be a melancholy song, but it’s not a funeral march.

“All right. We’ll save this equation for tomorrow,” Mr. Bombeck announces above the immediately chattering voices and scraping chairs. “Calla? Can you please stay for a minute and see me?”

She sighs inwardly and approaches Mr. Bombeck’s desk as the room clears out and the hall beyond fills with voices and lockers slamming.

“Have a seat.” Mr. Bombeck closes the door and gestures at the chair beside his desk.

She sits. So does he.

He looks intently at her, steepling his fingers beneath his chin as if he’s about to pray. “Were you able to follow today’s lesson, Calla?”

“Pretty much,” she responds, trying to put her other concerns out of her head.

“You seemed a little lost.”

Oh, yeah, that’s just because every time I turn around, I’m seeing and hearing ghosts, she wants to say. Other than that, no problem.

“How about if we take a few minutes to go over what we did today?” he asks, reaching for the chalk. “And I’ll give you some worksheets. You can meet with Willow again tonight or tomorrow, and hopefully, you’ll be getting up to speed by the end of the week.”

She nods, deciding not to mention that Willow has a homecoming committee meeting tonight. She has a feeling Mr. Bombeck won’t consider that a good reason not to meet with her study partner and do homework.

Twenty minutes later, Mr. Bombeck lets her go at last. She hurries through the almost-empty corridors to her locker.

“There you are!” Evangeline calls as Calla walks toward her. “I was just about to leave, but I didn’t want to walk home without you.”

“Sorry . . . I had to stay after for math.”

“I know. I saw Jacy and I know he’s in your last period so I asked him where you were. Any excuse to talk to him, right?” she adds with a wry smile.

Calla smiles back, hoping it doesn’t look too forced. She gathers her things from her locker as her friend changes the subject to homecoming.

“I heard Russell Lancione is going to ask me to go with him,” Evangeline says. “I don’t know if I want him to. I mean, it would be nice to go to the dance, but . . . maybe not with Russell.”

“Why not?” Calla asks, even though she knows the answer will probably have something to do with Jacy.

Evangeline shrugs. “He’s nice and everything, but . . . you know . . . he’s . . .”

Not Jacy, Calla thinks, seeing her friend’s wistful expression. Yeah, I totally hear you.

But Evangeline says only, “He’s just kind of blah.”

Calla grins. “I guess blah isn’t your type, huh?”

“I guess not. What about you?”

“Blah’s not my type, either.”

Evangeline laughs. “No, I mean, what about you and the homecoming dance?”

For a split second, Calla wonders if Evangeline possibly read her mind and knows that she, too, is longing for Jacy to ask her.

“Nobody’s asked you yet, right?”

Oh. Phew.

“No . . . why?” Calla slams her locker door closed and pulls on her jacket.

“I probably shouldn’t say anything, but . . .”

“But what?” Calla prods, as they head toward the exit.