Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(58)

“Not yet. I’m still figuring out where to apply.”

“Well, we always said we’d apply to all the same places, remember?”

“I remember. Where have you been applying?”

Lisa rattles off a list. Of course, her top ten schools are all in the Deep South.

“So get your butt in gear, and we can be roommates,” she drawled. “Wouldn’t that be great?”

Of course, Calla agreed that it would, out of habit. But the more she’s been thinking about it, the more she wonders whether she might want to stay here in the Northeast next year.

There’s something pleasant about the change of seasons, and she’s even getting used to the cold, and most of the Ivy League schools are here . . .

And so is Lily Dale.

She just told her father she wants to stay through the end of the school year, but maybe even that won’t be enough time. Whenever she thinks about uprooting herself again, leaving the new life that’s just starting to feel comfortable . . .

Well, it isn’t that she doesn’t want to go to college.

It’s . . .

Who knows what it is?

She has enough going on right now; she doesn’t want to worry about college just yet.

Too bad she has to. Time is running out, according to Dad and the guidance counselor and even Lisa.

“Listen,” her friend says, “you’re still planning on coming down here Friday, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Good.” Lisa hesitates. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but I probably should . . .”

“What?”

“Promise me you’ll come no matter what?”

“No matter what,” Calla says firmly, shoving aside Jacy’s latest warning about Florida. She has to get to her mother’s laptop.

And get away from here.

The thought comes out of nowhere, but she realizes it’s true. She loves Lily Dale, but she needs a break from all of this. Feeling like Darrin is stalking her, and seeing spirits everywhere she looks, and Evangeline still not speaking to her.

“I’m glad you’re coming no matter what,” Lisa says, “because Kevin’s going to be here.”

“What!”

“Yeah. He’ll be home this weekend on a fall break. My mother just told me. I didn’t even know about it till now.”

Calla sighs inwardly. Kevin knew she was going to Florida that weekend, and he didn’t mention any plans to be there, too.

Maybe that’s because he didn’t have any . . . yet.

But why would he want to see her, when he has Annie?

That doesn’t make sense.

Whatever. There’s no way she’s going to let his presence keep her from going to Florida next weekend. She’ll simply pretend he doesn’t exist.

Kind of like he must have pretended she didn’t exist when he first met Annie.

After assuring Lisa she was still coming and hanging up, Calla lugs her heavy backpack upstairs to her room. She closes the door securely behind her, then hesitates for a minute before looking under the bed and in the closet.

No Darrin.

Today, Calla tried hard to convince herself she imagined Darrin ever being here in Lily Dale. She did her best to pretend everything is normal.

Going about her daily routine in school, despite being alienated by Evangeline and avoided by Jacy, definitely helped.

Takeout pizza for dinner was another dose of normal, and so, in a less welcome way, is the pile of homework now waiting in her backpack.

As Calla begins to clear a spot on the desk, she comes across the library book that led her to that spot in Leolyn Woods where the lilies were inexplicably blooming.

“She’s not there. ”

Aiyana’s words keep coming back to her, and she still has no idea what they meant.

She riffles through the pages of the library book, as if the answer might magically appear.

Maybe she really should read it cover to cover. Just in case there might be some other clue to—

Wait a minute.

How can this be?

She’s opened the book to the map . . . but where’s the circled X?

Frowning, Calla holds the page directly beneath the glare of the desk lamp, figuring the mark must be too faint to see in regular light.

No.

It’s still not here.

Various scenarios chase each other through her mind.

Someone could have erased it . . .

Except, who would come into her room and do such a thing?

Darrin?

Anyway, the mark was made in ink—old-fashioned-looking ink, which couldn’t be erasable, could it? And even if someone managed to erase it, there would still be a faint trace, wouldn’t there?

Definitely. So this must be the wrong map page.

Except, it’s identical to the one she saw before.

A thorough page-by-page search reveals that it’s the only map in the book.

So there’s only one explanation.

Spirit placed the mark there for her to see, and Spirit took it away.

Spirit wanted to get her to the woods, to see the flowers and the tombstonelike rock, and to know that “she’s not there.”

Wherever there is.

In the ground, beneath the rock and the lilies?

And she . . . who?

Not Mom.

Aiyana was pretty clear about that.