TWELVE

Monday, September 10
12:51 p.m.

Seeing Dad was great, but on Monday morning, Calla is glad to get back to the routine of school.

The old brick building already feels familiar, and she’s getting the hang of the daily rhythm here already. When she saw Willow this morning, she offered to help Calla again with math, tomorrow night. She said she can’t do tonight because she takes a class in the Dale. She didn’t say what kind of class, but Calla figures it’s much more likely to be in metaphysics than, say, gymnastics.

It was Calla’s turn to be team captain in gym, so she picked Kasey first and was rewarded with a smile and an invitation to eat lunch together.

She said she’d try, not sure what to do about Willow and Sarita.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. She finds Jacy waiting for her, leaning against the wall outside the door to the cafeteria. At least, he seems to be waiting for her, because the moment he sees her, he straightens and says, “Come on. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Outside. For a walk.”

She wants to point out that they’re not allowed to leave the school during lunch period. But then, he knows that. He just doesn’t care.

Does she?

Not enough to tell Jacy to go without her.

He leads the way down a flight of back stairs past the janitor’s rooms, then out a door that opens onto the athletic field, behind the bleachers.

The day is breezy, and the golden September sun shines brightly overhead. Calla, dressed in a short-sleeved top and a cute, summery skirt, wishes she had a coat.

“Here,” Jacy says, and shrugs out of his own jean jacket as they cross the grassy meadow alongside the track. He hands it to her.

“Oh, I’m okay.”

“You’re cold. Take it.”

She is cold. She slips it on and is enveloped in the clean, unfamiliar masculine scent of him. This is what it would be like if she were in his arms, she decides. Well, almost.

And she really hopes he doesn’t know what she’s thinking.

They quickly reach the dappled shade of the woods on the far side of the field. A narrow path cuts through the brush, and Jacy follows it so easily she can tell he’s done it dozens of times.

“Is this where you come when you skip lunch?” she asks, her voice hushed because it seems necessary here. Almost as though this is some kind of sacred place.

“Sometimes I come here,” Jacy says with a shrug. “No one else is ever around, so I like it.”

She nods. If he were any other guy, she might think he was trying to get her alone in the woods so he could make a move on her.

Not Jacy. Which is almost too bad, because despite how badly she wants to talk to him, she honestly wouldn’t mind his making a move on her, either.

It’s cooler in the woods, and the air smells of moist, damp earth and decomposing leaves.

For a split second, Calla thinks of poor Erin Shannahan, lying for days in a remote forest, left for dead.

Then she thinks of the nameless, faceless person who did that to her—and how he’s still out there somewhere—and her stomach churns. Dizzy enough to stop walking for a moment, she gulps a deep breath to steady her nerves.

Jacy doesn’t seem to notice. He’s up ahead, stopping and pointing to a massive fallen tree.

“This is a good spot,” he decides as she catches up. “Want to sit?”

“Sure.” She lowers herself onto the moss-covered log after checking only briefly to make sure she’s not about to sit on anything wet or muddy or . . . alive.

“It’s clean,” he says, and she looks up to see him watching her, almost looking amused.

“Oh, I don’t care about that. It’s just . . . I’m used to Florida. There, I’d be worried about poisonous snakes and spiders.”

“We have a few of those here. Poison ivy, too,” Jacy tells her, and she gingerly moves her bare lower legs out of the foliage.

“Which one do you want?” Jacy holds out a couple of brown bags. “One is peanut butter and jelly. The other is peanut butter and honey—we ran out of jelly.”

“It’s okay. I’m not big on jelly.” She takes the bag he offers her, deciding not to tell him she’s not big on honey, either. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He sits beside her, takes out his own sandwich and takes a bite.

Calla unwraps hers, finding it touching—and yeah, kind of romantic—that he actually thought to bring her a lunch. In the bag are a bottle of water, a napkin, and an apple.

She’d probably actually be hungry if she weren’t so caught off guard about being alone here with him—and so expectant about whatever it is he’s going to say.

She takes a small bite and listens to the birds chirp overhead, wishing he would talk.

He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry, though. Nor does he seem to mind the silence.

She wonders if he did, after all, bring her here to talk. Maybe not. Maybe he just thought it would be nice to have a picnic.

“I think you’re right.”

She looks up, startled. And confused. Did she miss something?

“Right about what?” she asks.

“Your mother.”

At those words, the hunk of sandwich turns to paste in her mouth and she has to gulp water to get it down.

“What do you mean?” she asks Jacy, her heart beating so loudly she’s sure he must hear it.

“I think that something happened to your mother. And I’m sure Darrin’s visit had something to do with it.”

She nods slowly. “What about Aiyana?”

“She’s your guide,” Jacy says simply.

“My spirit guide? How do you know?”

“I meditated on it. I asked my own guides. And that’s the answer I got,” he says, as though that’s an everyday thing. “Have you seen her lately?”

“At Evangeline’s the other night—I caught a glimpse of her.”

“What was going on? When she appeared, I mean.”

“Oh, nothing, really. Evangeline was making her brother get off the computer so I could use it. Aiyana popped up out of nowhere, but only for a few seconds.”

“And that was it? That was the only time you’ve seen her, aside from what you told me the other day?”

Remembering the disembodied hug by the lake on Saturday morning, she hesitates. Then she says, “Yes. That was it.”

After all, she has no idea if it was Aiyana who hugged her, or her mother, or . . .

Well, for all she knows, it could have been some other spirit.

What Jacy asked is whether she’s seen Aiyana any other time, and the answer to that is definitely no.

“If you think Aiyana is trying to tell me something about my mom’s death, what am I supposed to do about it?” Calla asks Jacy, feeling helpless. “I mean, I can’t go to the police in Tampa and tell them a spirit is telling me they need to look into what happened to her. I don’t have any proof.”

“No. You don’t.”

She thinks of the idea she had the other night and wonders if her mother might, indeed, have left some proof after all. But there’s no way of knowing that yet.

It’s a good idea to keep that on the back burner for now.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asks Jacy, deciding not to mention that to him, either.

“Start by finding out where Darrin is now.”

“How?”

“His parents still live in Lily Dale.”

“And you want me to . . . what? Knock on their door and ask them where their son is?”

“It’s a start.”

“I can’t do that,” Calla protests.

“Sure, you can.” He pauses. “I’ll go with you.”

“You will?” She considers that. “When?”

He shrugs. “Whenever you want.”

She nods slowly. “Okay. I’ll think about it. But . . . I have to figure out if I’m ready to do that.”

“I know.”

She smiles faintly. “You know an awful lot about me.”

Jacy tilts his head, and his expression is serious.

“Yeah,” is all he says, and she gets the impression he knows more about her, in some ways, than she knows about herself.

————

Walking down the empty hall at school, Calla wishes her science teacher had asked someone else to go up to the media center to pick up some handouts. Still playing catch-up, she was planning to spend the five-minute break the teacher just gave them to go over her notes from last week.

Oh, well. It does feel good to stretch her legs a little. Spending lunch hour outside with Jacy sparked some hint of cabin fever this afternoon.

Her footsteps echoing down the corridor, Calla turns the corner and stops short just outside the auditorium, startled by the sudden, jaunty sound of a piano playing inside.

Someone is singing. A girl’s melodious soprano.

She recognizes the song after a moment: “Hopelessly Devoted to You.” Olivia Newton-John sang it in the movie Grease with John Travolta. Calla watched it with her mother whenever they caught it on television. Mom said it was one of her favorite movies when she was a kid.

Unable to resist a peek, she slips into the back of the auditorium to see who’s singing.

To her shock, the cavernous space is dark. Deserted. Silent.

The piano bench is empty, lid closed.

And the music stopped as suddenly as if someone had turned off a radio. Maybe that’s all it was. Only . . .

There’s no radio that she can see, and it really sounded as if someone were rehearsing live music in here.

Spooked, Calla backs out of the auditorium and hurries toward the media center, wondering if the school might be as haunted as Lily Dale itself.

————

It’s been another long day, and Calla is relieved when the last bell rings as Mr. Bombeck is in the midst of working a difficult problem on the board. She has no clue what he’s doing. Her thoughts keep drifting to what happened earlier, in the auditorium.

It’s probably no big deal—just a random haunting—but for some reason, that ghostly music left her with a lingering feeling of, well, doom. As if that makes any sense at all. “Hopelessly Devoted to You” might be a melancholy song, but it’s not a funeral march.

“All right. We’ll save this equation for tomorrow,” Mr. Bombeck announces above the immediately chattering voices and scraping chairs. “Calla? Can you please stay for a minute and see me?”

She sighs inwardly and approaches Mr. Bombeck’s desk as the room clears out and the hall beyond fills with voices and lockers slamming.

“Have a seat.” Mr. Bombeck closes the door and gestures at the chair beside his desk.

She sits. So does he.

He looks intently at her, steepling his fingers beneath his chin as if he’s about to pray. “Were you able to follow today’s lesson, Calla?”

“Pretty much,” she responds, trying to put her other concerns out of her head.

“You seemed a little lost.”

Oh, yeah, that’s just because every time I turn around, I’m seeing and hearing ghosts, she wants to say. Other than that, no problem.

“How about if we take a few minutes to go over what we did today?” he asks, reaching for the chalk. “And I’ll give you some worksheets. You can meet with Willow again tonight or tomorrow, and hopefully, you’ll be getting up to speed by the end of the week.”

She nods, deciding not to mention that Willow has a homecoming committee meeting tonight. She has a feeling Mr. Bombeck won’t consider that a good reason not to meet with her study partner and do homework.

Twenty minutes later, Mr. Bombeck lets her go at last. She hurries through the almost-empty corridors to her locker.

“There you are!” Evangeline calls as Calla walks toward her. “I was just about to leave, but I didn’t want to walk home without you.”

“Sorry . . . I had to stay after for math.”

“I know. I saw Jacy and I know he’s in your last period so I asked him where you were. Any excuse to talk to him, right?” she adds with a wry smile.

Calla smiles back, hoping it doesn’t look too forced. She gathers her things from her locker as her friend changes the subject to homecoming.

“I heard Russell Lancione is going to ask me to go with him,” Evangeline says. “I don’t know if I want him to. I mean, it would be nice to go to the dance, but . . . maybe not with Russell.”

“Why not?” Calla asks, even though she knows the answer will probably have something to do with Jacy.

Evangeline shrugs. “He’s nice and everything, but . . . you know . . . he’s . . .”

Not Jacy, Calla thinks, seeing her friend’s wistful expression. Yeah, I totally hear you.

But Evangeline says only, “He’s just kind of blah.”

Calla grins. “I guess blah isn’t your type, huh?”

“I guess not. What about you?”

“Blah’s not my type, either.”

Evangeline laughs. “No, I mean, what about you and the homecoming dance?”

For a split second, Calla wonders if Evangeline possibly read her mind and knows that she, too, is longing for Jacy to ask her.

“Nobody’s asked you yet, right?”

Oh. Phew.

“No . . . why?” Calla slams her locker door closed and pulls on her jacket.

“I probably shouldn’t say anything, but . . .”

“But what?” Calla prods, as they head toward the exit.

“I heard Blue’s going to ask you to homecoming.”

Calla’s jaw drops. “Who said that?”

“Linda Samuels, this girl who goes out with Ryan Kruger, told me. She said Blue’s thinking about it.”

“Really?” Then why is he sending e-mails to Willow York about the homecoming dance? Is he planning to ask her first, and I’m just the backup in case she says no?

“Don’t tell him I said that, though,” Evangeline says.

“Oh, please. As if.” Calla laughs and shakes her head.

No way is she going to get her hopes up that Blue will ask her.

Still, as she and Evangeline head toward home, despite everything she’s been through, Calla finds her heart a little lighter for the first time all day. Thinking about a school dance—even if part of it is worrying about who may or may not ask her—feels welcome and normal compared to dwelling on ghosts and death, as she has been.