Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(53)

She feels even more guilty now, though, seeing Jacy walk into the cafeteria just as she sits down at her table without bothering to go through the lunch line.

“Where’s your food?” Sarita asks, and Calla sighs inwardly, turning her attention to her friends.

“Oh . . . I’m not hungry today.” Yeah, there’s something about being stalked by your mother’s murderer that really kills the appetite.

“I thought we might see you at homecoming Saturday,” Willow says, uncapping her water bottle.

“Yeah, where were you, Calla?”

“You guys went?”

“Yeah, with a couple of other girls from the committee,” Willow tells her. “It was fun. We danced a lot.”

“Who needs guys?” Sarita flashes a metal grin and starts cutting into her apple. “Not that it wouldn’t have been nice to go with a date. Weren’t you supposed to go, Calla?”

“I was supposed to go with Blue, but then he got hurt, and—”

“I know,” Sarita interrupts, “but I thought you were going with Jacy Bly.”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“A couple of people mentioned it,” Willow says, looking over Calla’s shoulder. “And speak of the devil . . .”

“Hey, Calla,” a male voice says, and she glances up to see Jacy standing there. He looks like his old self again in tattered jeans, sneakers, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and a baseball cap.

“Where were you guys Saturday night?” Sarita asks pointedly.

Ignoring her, Jacy tells Calla, “I need to talk to you.”

Well aware of her friends’ curiosity, Calla nods and pushes back her chair. “Sure. I’ll, um, see you guys later.”

“Later,” Willow says with a knowing smile.

Jacy leads her toward the door. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

She looks around to make sure Evangeline isn’t in the vicinity to see them together, even though she doesn’t share their lunch period. It might be too late to protect her, but that doesn’t mean Calla wants her to see the two of them together.

Good. The coast is clear. And she really does need to talk to Jacy.

“Okay,” she tells him. “Where do you want to go?”

“Out,” he says simply, grabbing her hand and heading toward the back exit on the ground floor, near the wood-shop classroom.

It’s against school rules to leave the grounds during lunch period, but that never bothers Jacy. Today it doesn’t bother Calla, either.

The feeling of his hand, warm and protective around her own, reminds her of the one thing that’s finally right in her world: her relationship with Jacy.

Out in the cold wind beneath a sodden gray sky, she shoves her hand—the one he’s not holding—into the pocket of her jeans for warmth, wishing she’d stopped at her locker for a jacket. As they head toward the seclusion of a wooded area at the back of the school property, she keeps a furtive eye on the shrubs and trees.

This time, she’s on the lookout not for Evangeline, but for Darrin.

Do you really think he’s going to jump out and attack you or something?

No. But she really thinks he might be lurking around here.

Sure, there’s a good chance she dreamed that he was in her room Saturday night and merely imagined that he was in the woods yesterday.

But there’s also a chance that after seeing her and mistaking her for Mom, he really did come back to Lily Dale looking for Stephanie, or Stephanie’s ghost.

There’s no sign of him today, though.

In the woods, Jacy sits on a fallen log and makes room for her. “So, how are you doing?”

“I’m . . . not so hot,” she admits, sitting beside him, staring into the trees, looking for faces.

“You don’t look so hot,” he says without the slightest bit of irony.

“Gee, thanks.”

Jacy’s dark eyebrows furrow. “I just mean that you have circles under your eyes, and you look . . . you know, exhausted.”

She is. But despite everything, she did try to cover up the circles this morning, taking some extra time to pull herself together for school—mostly for Jacy’s benefit.

“I couldn’t sleep at all Saturday night,” she admits, “and I didn’t sleep much last night, either.”

“I didn’t sleep much Saturday, either. That was pretty intense, with Darrin.”

“Tom. Not Darrin. Tom Leolyn. Did you catch that?”

“Yeah, I caught it.”

“What do you think it means?”

“That he’s using a fake name?”

“That he’s been using that fake name.”

“I think it means he couldn’t let go of Lily Dale. Or your mother, for that matter.”

“I know. I wanted to get on the computer yesterday and check the name to see what I could find out about him, but . . .”

“But?”

But the only computer I have access to is over at Evangeline’s, and she’s not speaking to me because she’s in love with you.

She’s definitely not going to bring that up now. Or ever, most likely.

Anyway, there are other, more pressing things to discuss with him, that’s for sure.