Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(35)

“Because of what you’ve seen. Because you think I’m in danger.”

“That . . . and everything else.”

“You mean, you don’t want to get involved with me.”

“I don’t want to get involved with anyone,” he says bluntly.

She doesn’t blame him, after all he’s been through, but it’s not easy to hear.

“So what now?” she asks him.

He shrugs. “How about if you just tell me what’s been going on?”

“You mean, with Blue?”

Long pause.

Uh-oh. Oops.

“I meant, with everything else,” Jacy says gently. “You said you weren’t okay . . . I didn’t think that had anything to do with Blue.”

No, it had a lot to do with you.

Sighing inwardly—will she ever get it right with him?— she fills him in on all that’s happened since they last spoke: the ghosts, the billets, the bear fountain and Darrin Yates, the book and Leolyn Woods, Aiyana.

Jacy is quiet for a long time, thinking it over. Then he asks, “You said the fountain is in Geneseo?”

“I think so. Have you ever been there?”

“No, but I know where it is. We should go check it out.”

Her heart skips a beat. “You’d go with me?”

“You can’t go alone.”

No, she can’t. For starters, she has no way of getting there.

“Do you have a car?” she asks. “Because I don’t want to tell my grandmother about it and ask to borrow hers. There’s no way she’d let me go.”

“Walt and Peter lend me their car on weekends sometimes.

I’ll ask them.”

“You can’t tell them where we’re going, though. They’re friends with my grandmother. It’ll get back to her.”

“I won’t tell them. We’ll make something up. Want to go tomorrow?”

“Yes!” she exclaims, then, “No. I can’t. It’s homecoming.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Sunday for sure, though. Okay?”

“Can’t. Track meet.”

“Oh. They won’t let you borrow the car during the week?”

He shakes his head. “That’s one of their rules. They don’t have many, but . . . I guess it’ll have to wait until next weekend.” “I’m going away,” she tells him. “To Florida. I already have my plane ticket.”

Hearing another siren in the distance, they look at each other, then toward the school. “Something must have happened there,” Calla says anxiously.

“Sounds that way.”

“I hate sirens. They remind me of . . .” She closes her eyes, trying to shut out the horror of that awful day. But the memories come anyway: walking into the house to find Mom’s body, running screaming into the street, one of the elderly neighbors dialing 911, the sirens.

“I know. I don’t like them either.” Jacy squeezes her hand, and she remembers that he’s had his own share of sorrow.

“So . . . I guess Geneseo will have to wait,” she says reluctantly.

“Yeah. But for now, I think I should tell you . . .” He hesitates. “What?”

“About what I’ve been seeing. With you. You know . . .”

“The visions?”

“Yeah. Just so you know, because you’re going to Florida, and . . . well, it’s about water.”

Her heart stops. “Water?”

“Don’t go in the water in Florida, Calla. Promise me.”

Dread creeps over her as she remembers Odelia’s cryptic warnings about not going into the lake here. “Why not?”

“When I see you . . . you’re in the water. Struggling.”

“You mean . . . drowning?”

“I’m not sure. But I don’t feel like it’s an accident.”





TWELVE

Saturday, September 29

9:32 a.m.

“Calla, you’ll never believe this . . . Did you hear what happened last night?” Evangeline asks breathlessly in her ear.

“Yeah. I heard.” Calla sinks onto the couch, clutching the phone, her hand trembling.

“I can’t believe it. You must be so upset!”

“Yeah. Poor Blue.” Renewed guilt threads its way into her brain as she thinks of him, laid up at Brooks Memorial Hospital down in Dunkirk, his left foot fractured.

The ambulance that had raced past Jacy and her was real, all right. And it was going to rescue Blue. He’d collided with a beefy player from the opposing team on the wet soccer field, and had gone down hard with the other guy on top of him. It was a freak accident, according to everyone who witnessed it.

Such a freak accident that if Calla didn’t know better, she might think she had somehow willed it.

Or maybe she doesn’t know better. What if she—or Jacy—did have something to do with it?

No. Blue had already been injured before they even discussed going to Geneseo. It was a freak accident, and nothing more.

Not like Mom’s death.

“Poor Blue,” Evangeline is echoing, “and poor you. It’s so unfair that this had to happen now, before the dance. I can’t believe you don’t get to go.”