Believing (Lily Dale #2)(43)

“Hi,” she says. “You’re the new girl, right? From Florida?”

“Right. Calla.”

“I’m Pam.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says politely.

“Are you seeing him?”

“Who?” Calla asks, knowing darn well who.

“Blue Slayton.”

“We’ve gone out,” Calla admits.

“Really? Are you guys going to homecoming together?”

“I don’t know . . . I mean, no. Not that I know of.” Officially feeling like a tongue-tied idiot, she shrugs and wishes Pam would go away.

“Want to come over and sit with us?”

Normally, Calla would welcome the invitation, but she really isn’t in the mood to field curious questions about Blue and homecoming.

Still, maybe it’s better than sitting here alone with Hamlet.

“Sure,” she tells Pam. “Let me just get my stuff together and I’ll come right down. Thanks.”

It can’t hurt to make some new cafeteria friends, she decides as she sticks a straw wrapper into her Shakespeare text as a bookmark. After all, who knows if Willow will want to sit with her after this?

Why wouldn’t she? Because you were talking to Blue? Isn’t that a little extreme?

She wonders if Blue would even have come over if Calla had been sitting with Willow as usual. Probably not, if he’s sending Willow e-mails about homecoming.

It’s being held in October, kicked off with a pep rally after school, then the big varsity football game against the school’s archrivals, the Brocton Bulldogs. Afterward is the formal dance in the gym, with a live band this year instead of the usual DJ.

Calla keeps telling herself it’s no big deal if she doesn’t get to go. After all, she’s new here and it’s not like it’s a prom.

Prom. Hah.

Last spring, Kevin dumped her right before her junior prom. She wound up going—just as friends—with Paul Horton, who’s an inch shorter than her on a regular day. He was a good three inches shorter on prom night because of the heels she’d picked out when she thought she was going with Kevin. She stubbornly decided to keep the shoes since they went perfectly with the dress, and suffer through looking down at the top of her date’s head all night. Maybe deep down, she was thinking that at the last minute, Paul would uninvite her . . . and Kevin would simultaneously reappear in her life.

So much for that.

As for Lily Dale’s homecoming dance, she can’t help dwelling on that e-mail she saw and wondering if Willow is going with Blue despite being broken up and despite Evangeline hearing he’s going to ask Calla.

She wonders, too—even though it’s ridiculous—whether there’s the slightest chance Jacy might ask her to go with him.

If he does—not that he will—what would you do about Evangeline?

It doesn’t matter, she tells herself as she walks over to join Pam and her friends. Because Jacy won’t ask you. Period.





When Calla walks into the house after babysitting at Paula’s, she moodily lets the door slam shut after her.

“Calla? Is that you?”

“Yeah.”

She spent the rest of her lunch period wishing she had stuck to Shakespeare. Pam and her friends were gossipy, and Calla was turned off by mean-spirited comments a few of them made about poor Donald Reamer.

Later, she failed a quiz in Bombeck’s class, and Paula’s kids insisted on playing Candyland for two hours straight. Moving around and around the tedious game board was about as much fun as taking the pop quiz in math. Dylan insisted on an extra game piece for Kelly—who, Calla is starting to believe, might be nothing more than an imaginary friend after all. It’s not as if she herself has sensed a presence lingering around Dylan, or as if Kelly’s game piece moved itself around the board, which might have been a heck of a lot faster. Instead, Dylan did it, taking an extra and painstaking turn each round, so that the game lasted far longer than it should have.

Home at last, Calla heads right for the stairs. She’d love to flop onto her bed and read or listen to music. That’s not going to happen, though. She has a pile of homework to do.

“Come in here,” Odelia calls from the back of the house. “I have something to show you.”

“What is it?” Calla drapes her backpack and jacket over the newel post and heads to the kitchen.

The room is empty . . . or so she thinks.

Then she hears Odelia’s voice again, coming from under the kitchen table.

“Gammy?” Calla bends over to see her grandmother on all fours. “Are you okay? Did you drop something?”

“She jumped off my lap when the door slammed. See her?”

“Who, Miriam?”

“No!” A laugh spills from under the table. “The kitten. I picked her up from Andy’s house this afternoon.”

“Oh!” Calla peers into the dim space beneath the table. “Where is she?”

“Back there, see? Here, kitty kitty kitty,” Odelia says in a high-pitched voice. “It’s okay, you can come out now. This is Calla. She’s nice.”

Calla finally spots a tiny gray ball of fur and a pair of glittering eyes on the far side of the table, cowering between the table leg and one of the chairs. “Oh! Look at her . . . she’s so sweet!”