Connecting (16 page)

“Not in a bad way,” Calla assures her.

“Wait till that kid sees you. He isn’t going to know what hit him,” Ramona declares.

“Who? Russell?” Evangeline’s nose wrinkles even more. “I don’t want him to like me that way.”

“I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think you have a choice. He already does.”

Evangeline flashes a smile at Calla’s comment, though Calla can’t help but notice it isn’t quite as warm as in the past.

She hasn’t exactly been cold-shouldered by her friend today, but it’s been clear that Evangeline isn’t thrilled she’s going to the dance with Jacy.

She made no effort to mask her jealousy during their awkward walk home from Patsy’s class, and she asked a million questions, most of which Calla couldn’t—or wouldn’t— answer.

Evangeline wanted to know exactly how their date had come about. In detail. She wasn’t entirely satisfied with Calla’s explanation: that she had run into him at the soccer field, and after they both witnessed Blue’s accident, Jacy just naturally asked her if he could take her in Blue’s place.

“Jacy never goes to anything but track meets,” Evangeline pointed out. “I never see him at dances, or football games, or soccer. And believe me—I look for him. Everywhere. I guess I’m just surprised that he was around last night, and that he wants to go to homecoming tonight.”

Calla almost told her then that it wasn’t really going to happen, that they aren’t really going to the dance, but in the end, what difference would that make?

She’s still going to be with Jacy later, and it might be even worse if Evangeline realizes that something more compelling than a date for the dance is drawing the two of them together. Not even just the physical attraction, which Calla doesn’t dare acknowledge to her, but the mystery surrounding Darrin Yates.

She doesn’t want to tell Evangeline about that, either.

Better to just leave things the way they are, for now.

And later, after she doesn’t show up at the dance with Jacy . . .

I’ll just make up something else. Another lie.

“All right . . . it’s your turn.” Leslie gestures at Calla. “Ready?”

“Sure.” Trying to muster casual enthusiasm, she puts the magazine aside and follows Leslie to the next room.

There, Calla spots a filmy pair of women whose hair is set on big fat rollers, with a few loose tufts taped to their cheeks. They’re both wearing baby doll negligees and false eyelashes. On the far side of the room, a buff and fabulous—and nearly transparent—young male stylist snips an invisible patron’s hair.

Oblivious to the spirits, Leslie keeps up cheerful small talk as she washes and trims Calla’s hair. The weather, food, Hollywood gossip.

Calla tries to relax and get into it, but she can’t. She’s too distracted by the ghosts and worried about tonight.

“You’re so tense,” Leslie comments. “You must be thinking about the dance. I hear you have a hot date.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Calla asks, knowing full well.

“Evangeline told me. Sounds like she wants to switch dates with you.”

Calla tries to laugh, but it comes out sounding kind of strangled.

“Okay, it’s time to make you fancy. Hair, makeup . . . the works. What kind of dress are you wearing?”

“It’s . . . vintage.”

“Vintage—like Victorian? Or more like the seventies? Not that I was around then,” she adds slyly.

No, but the two women in the fat rollers and false eyelashes probably were, Calla thinks, glancing again in their direction.

“Um, more like the eighties,” she tells Leslie.

“Ooh, I love the eighties!” declares Leslie, who couldn’t have been alive for much of that decade either. “What color is it?”

“Kind of a reddish brown.”

“That’ll be gorgeous with your coloring. Do you know what kind of style you want?”

“I’m not sure. I guess you can just surprise me.”

“Are you kidding? Really?”

“Go for it.”

“Okay. I live for customers saying that . . . not that anyone ever does.”

Calla shrugs. Her heart isn’t in this, and she just can’t pretend.

“I’m spinning you this way, okay?” Leslie twirls the chair so that Calla’s back is to the mirror. “If you’re going to give me free license with this gorgeous face and head of hair, I don’t want you to change your mind halfway through. You can see it when we’re done, and believe me, you’ll love yourself.

” Leslie intently paints her face while holding a makeup kit like it’s a painter’s palette, dabbing on a little of this, a little of that.

“You totally look like a supermodel,” she tells Calla, who cringes a little inside. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to let Leslie do whatever she wants. Calla usually goes for a natural look.

Oh, well. Too late now. As Leslie combs and curls and teases and gels and sprays her way around Calla’s head, Calla goes over, and over, what’s going to happen later.

Jacy is planning to pick her up at Odelia’s and go along with the homecoming dance charade. Odelia said something this morning about checking to see if she has batteries in her camera so she can take pictures of the occasion, which made Calla feel even more nauseous than she has been.

But she has to do this—has to lie—for her mother’s sake. Maybe this hunt for Darrin Yates in Geneseo will wind up to be a wild-goose chase, but on the off-chance that it isn’t . . .

“Okay. You’re done.” Leslie spins the chair back toward the mirror with a ceremonious, “Ta da!”

Calla catches a glimpse of her reflection and sees her jaw drop in the mirror.

“Don’t you love how retro you are? I thought your look should go with the vintage dress. What do you think?” Standing over her, Leslie proudly surveys her handiwork.

Staring into her own eyes, rimmed by a thick layer of shadow, liner, and mascara, and gazing at the carefully upswept pile of hair riding high over her forehead, Calla struggles to find the right words. Or any words.

“I think . . . I think . . .”

“I know!” Leslie gloats. “Quite a transformation. It’s like looking at a stranger, isn’t it?”

No. It isn’t like that at all.

For Calla, it’s eerily like looking at her own mother, the night she wore the copper-colored dress and went to the dance with Darrin Yates.

THIRTEEN

Saturday, September 29
7:10 p.m.

“He’s here!” Odelia calls up the stairs to Calla.

That’s funny. She didn’t hear the doorbell ring. Dressed and ready, she’s been listening for it, but— Oh.

There’s the doorbell now.

Calla wonders whether Odelia glimpsed Jacy coming up the porch steps or simply “felt” him approaching.

Does it really matter? That sort of thing happens all the time around here.

Yes.Tonight, it matters.

It would be nice to think that Odelia’s having an off night, as far as her psychic abilities and premonitions go.

That way, Calla wouldn’t be wondering if there’s any significance behind her grandmother’s earlier warning to be extra-careful tonight.

“Just make sure you keep your wits about you,” Odelia said as Calla nibbled on the sandwich her grandmother insisted on making her.

“Not that I don’t always do that anyway . . . but why?” Calla asked.

“Because you’re going out alone at night in a car with a boy, even though the dance is almost just around the corner.”

Calla pushed aside a familiar nagging guilt, along with the fear that her grandmother’s warning might stem from something more ominous than pure maternal concern.

Now, that it’s time to go, her misgivings are back full force.

What if something terrible happens to her tonight?

What if she backs out of the whole thing because she’s scared?

What if she never finds out what really happened to Mom?

I have to do this. It’s that simple.

She slips the framed photo of her mother and Darrin into the beaded evening bag Odelia unearthed from the bottom of a cedar chest. It was the same bag, she told Calla, that Mom carried when she wore this dress to her high school prom. On Calla’s wrist is a familiar emerald bracelet. It doesn’t match the dress, but who cares? It was Mom’s . . . and a reminder that anything is possible. After all, it miraculously came back to Calla here in Lily Dale after dropping into Mom’s grave that rainy July day in Florida.

Passing Miriam, who gives her an admiring glance, Calla heads for the stairs, her feet trying to get used to walking in a pair of high-heeled satin pumps that also turned up in the cedar chest. They’re probably a size too small, but Calla chose to wear them anyway. They match the dress perfectly, and they were Mom’s.

The mirror, every time she’s glimpsed her reflection tonight, is like a window into the past.

Thanks to Leslie, who couldn’t have known, Calla looks exactly like her mother does in the picture with Darrin.

Odelia was bowled over when she first saw her earlier.

“You could
be
her, Calla,” she said tearfully, and hugged her hard. “I can’t believe it.”

Calla can’t, either.

Because there are no coincidences.

So, what does it all mean?

It means I probably shouldn’t be doing this, that’s what it means.

Increasingly unsettled about what might lie ahead, Calla reminds herself that nothing bad is going to happen to her with Jacy around.

Something about him just makes me feel safe.

But when she reaches the top of the stairs to see Jacy standing below in the front hall, “safe” is pretty much the last word that comes to mind.

“Dangerous” is more like it.

Wearing a dark suit and tie, white dress shirt, and polished dress shoes, he looks about five years older—and so handsome she stops dead in her tracks.

Wow
.

Calla reaches for the bannister and descends the first few steps. Her feet wobble in the heels, and she remembers her mother on the steps back home, walking, falling . . .

No. Not tonight. Don’t think of that tonight. Not now, anyway.

She reaches the foot of the stairs and Odelia is there, too, fluttering around, obviously thrilled to think that “romance might be blossoming,” which is how she cringe-inducingly phrased it earlier, between Calla and Jacy.

“Peter got ahold of Jacy and bought him a new suit,” she announces. “Doesn’t he look great, Calla?”

“He does . . . you do.” At last she finds her voice. Daring to look him in the eye, she sees a gleam that makes her heart beat even faster.

“You look good, too,” he says simply, and holds out a florist’s box. “This is for you.”

“Thank you.” She hopes he can’t see how badly her hands are shaking as she takes it.

This isn’t supposed to be happening.

Tonight is . . . well, it’s kind of like a business appointment.

Oh, who are you kidding? You’re into Jacy, no matter what else
you’ve got going on, and you know he’s into you.

Maybe when this is all over, and things are back to normal, the two of them can actually go out on a real date.

“Aren’t you going to open the box?” Odelia prods.

Calla lifts the lid and the distinct floral scent hits her immediately.

Lily of the valley.

She looks up at Jacy, surprised and touched.

Looking over Calla’s shoulder, Odelia says, “What an exquisite corsage—white roses and lily of the valley? Those were your mother’s favorite flower, Calla.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“I know, Gammy.” And so does Jacy. She told him all about it.

“Did Peter pick out the corsage, too?” Odelia asks, and Jacy shakes his head.

“Walt, then?”

“No. I did.”

“Really? I’m impressed. I think that’s a sweet coincidence.”

“What is?” Jacy asks, as Calla slides the elastic band of the corsage over her wrist.

“That you happened to pick out a corsage with flowers— out of season, too!—that happened to be my daughter’s favorite. Every time I smell lilies, I think of Stephanie.” Odelia exhales shakily, then waves a limp hand in front of her face, as if to stave off tears.

“Gammy, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Hearing a car door slam outside, Calla looks out the window to see Russell Lancione arriving at the Taggarts’ house. He’s wearing a dark suit like Jacy’s—though looking nowhere near as grown-up and handsome—and carrying a florist’s box.

He hesitates at the curb beside his car, obviously nervous. Then he looks at his watch, visibly takes a deep breath, and heads up the walk.

Calla wonders how Evangeline is doing. Ordinarily, the two of them would have had a couple of phone conversations while they were getting ready for the dance. But Calla didn’t feel right calling Evangeline under the circumstances, and the phone didn’t ring here.