Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(33)

I don’t need that. I don’t need him.

She tucks the card into her backpack and wearily climbs the stairs to start her homework.





ELEVEN

Friday, September 28

7:17 p.m.

For the second time today, Calla walks along Dale Drive toward Lily Dale High . . . only this time, it’s dark, and she’s alone.

Evangeline was planning on coming with her to Blue’s soccer match tonight, but instead, she’s out dress shopping with her aunt.

Russell Lancione finally worked up his nerve to ask her to the homecoming dance, and Evangeline decided to go with him.

“A last-minute date with someone you only like as a friend is better than no date at all, right?” she asked Calla on the way home from school.

“Sure,” she said, remembering her junior prom and Paul “Shorton” Horton.

“You don’t sound very convincing.”

“You’ll have a great time.” Who knows? Maybe she will.

“Not as great a time as you. Everyone’s in love with Blue, and you get to go with him. You’re so lucky.”

Maybe . . . but she’s definitely not in love with him.

She’s barely even seen Blue the last few days. He’s been busy with soccer, and she’s been busy with schoolwork and babysitting and seeing ghosts around every corner and . . .

Owen Henry.

She feels sick every time she thinks of what happened yesterday. She keeps trying to convince herself that he really was a sweet, frail old widower, but . . .

Aren’t sweet, frail old widowers more interested in telling their late wives how much they miss them than in missing stock certificates?

And how do you explain his magically being able to toss the cane aside and pretty much run out the door?

Magical Lily Dale healing?

Ha.

There’s nothing Calla can do about it now, other than put it behind her.

Tonight, she’s vowed that all she’s going to allow herself to think about is Blue, and soccer, and staying warm.

It’s so cold out that she can see her breath, and the wind is gusting off the lake, as usual. She’s shivering even in three layers and a fleece jacket.

A fat harvest moon hangs in the sky, and in the distance, the lights from the athletic field cast a welcoming yellow haze. But it’s dark and lonely here on the deserted country lakeside road.

Lonely . . . but she isn’t alone.

Hearing giggling along the side of the road, she spots two spirit children running along, pushing a wooden hoop with a stick.

They’re harmless . . . still, she’s spooked.

And spooked again when she hears a faint jingling of silvery bells and turns her head just in time to see an old-fashioned sleigh glide past in a swirl of phantom snow, filled with laughing young people in Victorian bonnets and caps.

Okay, it’s cold . . . but not that cold.

A little farther down the road, a man in some sort of military uniform gallops past on horseback.

Either the ghosts are out in full force tonight . . . or her powers of perception are growing stronger, like Odelia said.

Is this how it’s always going to be? Spirits constantly around her, coming and going and hanging around?

She’s read enough to know that it probably is . . . and that she has to learn how to tune them out, or they’re going to drive her crazy.

Not that she would ever get involved with drugs or alcohol, but . . .

Ramona told her that some people here—especially teenagers—aren’t comfortable with their sensitivity.

“It can be a frightening, isolating feeling to discover that you have an awareness of spirit energy,” Ramona said. She told Calla that some people—like Darrin, when he was younger— self-medicate to escape what they can’t accept or control.

I didn’t get it then, but I do now, Calla thinks uneasily, eyeing a little girl in a frilly turn-of-the-century dress and a big, floppy hair bow.

She finds herself picking up her pace, almost as if she can outrun them. All of them.

But she can’t.

They’re everywhere. A couple of teenage boys chugging past in a 1930s car with an ah-ooga horn, a fifties housewife pushing a baby carriage, a fleet-footed Native American brave hunting game with a bow and arrow.

She probably shouldn’t be out tonight. She should be home, in bed, trying to fall asleep so that she can escape the three-ring spirit circus for a little while.

But she told Blue she’d be there, and anyway, she’s found that it’s easier when people are around or she’s busy. She doesn’t notice the ghosts so much when she’s distracted by conversation or schoolwork.

Out here alone at night on the country road, though, there are no distractions.

Too bad her grandmother wasn’t around to give her a ride to the school—or home, at least. But Odelia is conducting a workshop up in Buffalo tonight, on vibrational healing. She won’t be back before midnight.

“Be careful walking over,” was the last thing she said to Calla before heading out the door earlier. “It’s dark, and cars fly through there at night.”

“I’ll be careful,” Calla promised wearily.

Be careful. Be careful.

That’s all anyone ever says to her anymore.

She’s always been careful.

But that doesn’t mean you’re safe.