Lily Dale: Awakening (25 page)

Looking up, she sees Blue Slayton beckoning from a table filled with guys.

Hmm. Maybe she’ll stick around. She walks over, tossing her head a little to get her hair out of her face without being obvious.

“How’s it going?” Blue asks when she arrives at his side.

“Great,” she says, noticing that he’s wearing a long-sleeved jersey in a deep indigo shade that matches his eyes—and his name.

He wears that color a lot, she’s noticed, and she’s sure it’s no accident. He has to be aware of the striking impact. And his clothes are expensive. She can tell by the cotton fabric that looks as thick and soft as his light brown hair, which he might wear in a wavy and slightly unkempt style, but she knows that’s no ten-dollar barbershop haircut.

No, everything about Blue Slayton is expertly and deliberately pulled together. The result is effortless good looks that take her breath away a little every time she sees him up close.

“So you haven’t gotten lost yet?” he asks Calla, fork poised above a tray that holds two of everything: two sloppy joe plate lunches, two bottles of juice, two ice cream bars.

“Not yet.” She wonders if he’s going to eat all that himself, or if he’s planning to share with someone else. Willow, maybe?

“The only way to get lost around here is trying to find your way home if a blizzard blows in during the day,” comments the red-haired, freckled guy sitting next to Blue.

“Yeah, but that only happens, like, once a week in the winter, and so far, we’ve lost less than a dozen kids that way,” Blue says dryly, and everyone laughs.

He introduces Calla to the redhead—Jeremy—and to the other four guys, two of whom are named Ryan. They’re all on the school soccer team together.

“Calla’s living over in the Dale with her grandmother,” Blue tells them, and a couple of them ask her politely about where she’s from and how she likes it here.

As she answers their questions, she wishes Blue would invite her to sit down, but he doesn’t.

Well, that’s probably because he’s with all these guys.

Or maybe it’s because he’s no longer interested in you
.

“Hey, Calla,” he says abruptly, “want to go out Friday night?”

Or maybe he is interested.

“Sure,” she hears herself say as her heart trips over itself. “That would be great.”

“Good. I’ll call you.” Blue drains what’s left of his open juice and crushes the plastic bottle in his fist before reaching for the second one.

She takes that as her cue to leave.

But Blue Slayton asking her out again is enough to ease the humiliation, five minutes later, of roaming the room with a full tray, looking for a seat that has empty chairs around it. She doesn’t want to just go and plop herself down next to anyone. That would feel kind of . . . bold.

But none of the open chairs has a buffer zone around it, and she can feel people looking up at her as she passes their tables.

She just has to sit down somewhere. Anywhere.

She looks around and her gaze falls on a striking girl with long black hair, porcelain skin, and a familiar face. Willow York again, and she glances up from a conversation she’s having with the girl next to her. “Oh, hi.”

“Hi.” Calla hesitates, still holding her tray.

“Want to sit with us?” asks the other girl, who is African American, with a short, chic haircut, gorgeous dark eyes, and a mouthful of braces. She points to the empty chair across from her and Willow.

“Definitely.” Calla gratefully puts her tray on the table and slips into the chair without stopping to see if Willow seems to want her there.

“This is Sarita,” Willow says, in a friendly enough tone, “and you and I have already met. A few times, right? But I’m Willow . . . in case you forgot.”

She didn’t forget.

“Do you live in Lily Dale?” Sarita asks.

“Yeah, I’m staying with my grandmother.” Calla decides not to tell her it’s only temporary. Why complicate the conversation? “How about you?”

“I live down the road in Cassadaga.”

Does the fact that Sarita lives outside the Dale mean she can’t see dead people or have psychic visions or premonitions?

What about Willow? She lives in the Dale. Is she a medium?

Even more important: did Willow see Calla talking to Blue a few minutes ago? Probably not. She’s acting pretty friendly.

Or maybe she’s over him.

Nah. Remembering Blue’s piercing eyes—and those broad shoulders beneath the soft cotton jersey—Calla can’t help but think it would take any girl a long time to get over him.

Including you,
she warns herself.
So don’t go letting yourself get hooked on him.

Yeah. One broken heart per year is more than enough.

Hearing a commotion, she looks over to see that someone just tripped and dropped his lunch tray. Her first thought:
Thank God that didn’t happen to me.

Her next:
That poor kid.

He’s enormously obese, with jet black hair, thick glasses, and a line of fuzz on his upper lip.

A few kids are laughing as, flustered, he wipes red sauce off his hands and starts to pick up the mess.

“Oh, no, poor Donald.” Willow is instantly up and out of her seat, hurrying toward him.

“That’s Donald Reamer,” Sarita comments to Calla. “He’s the kind of guy who . . . well, you know. Things are hard for him.”

Calla nods. She does know. There was a Donald Reamer at her school in Florida, too—only it was a girl, and her name was Tangie Alvin.

Surprised at Willow’s compassion, she watches her hand him a pile of napkins before stooping to salvage what’s edible from his dropped lunch. She can see that a group of girls at a table next to them are snickering and rolling their eyes.

After a cafeteria aide has appeared with a mop and bucket and Donald has lumbered on his way, Willow goes over to the table of girls and says something to them. Their smirks vanish and they immediately look uncomfortable.

Willow returns to the table and reclaims her chair without comment. Sarita seems to be taking the whole thing in stride, saying only, “I hope they give him another lunch without charging him.”

“Me, too. So . . . what’d you think of Kiley?” Willow asks Calla conversationally, and bites into an apple. Calla notices her tray contains only that, a small container of yogurt, and a bottle of water. Sarita’s holds the same.

“Kiley?” For a second, she’s blank. Then, “Oh! You mean the health teacher? She seemed nice.”

Willow and Sarita exchange a look.

“Yeah, she puts up a good front . . . on the first day. They all do. Just wait. Have you had math yet?”

“It’s last period.”

“Then you probably have Bombeck, with Willow. He’s famous for being hard-core,” Sarita says. “My sister was straight A’s until she landed in his class. She still talks about him, and she graduated four years ago. My mom even had him and said he was really hard even back then. He’s been here forever.”

“Well, hopefully I’ll be okay.” Calla picks up her fork, trying not to wonder whether her own mom might have had Bombeck, and whether she went to school with Sarita’s mom.

“I usually do pretty well in math.”

Straight A’s, actually. She’s been an honor-roll student all the way through high school, but she doesn’t mention that. She doesn’t want to sound like she’s bragging.

“Math is my strongest subject,” Willow tells her. “And even I’m worried. You don’t know Bombeck.”

“I’m so glad I didn’t get him for math,” Sarita says contentedly.

“So you have Davidson, right? And who do you have for English?” Willow asks.

As Sarita pulls her schedule out of her backpack to compare it to Willow’s, Calla toys with her fork. She’s reluctant to dig into her steaming, hearty sloppy joe lunch in front of the other girls. She should have gotten fruit, yogurt, and water, like they did. She wants to fit in.

Then again . . .

Mom was always telling her not to follow the crowd.
Who cares what the other girls are eating?
her mother’s voice asks in her head.
Who cares what they think of you?

I kind of do, Mom. Just this once.
Calla closes her eyes, barely aware of Sarita and Willow, who are chatting about a mutual friend.
I can’t help it, Mom. I want to fit in here because . . . well, I don’t fit in anywhere else anymore
.

Don’t worry, you will,
her mother’s voice says, and she can hear it so clearly in her head that she wonders if her mother is actually here.

Focus. Maybe if you really focus, you’ll be able to see her.

She tunes out all the background noise, thinking about her mother. About how desperately she misses her.

Please. Please, Mom. If you’re here, let me see you. Please.

Gradually, Calla becomes aware of a strong presence. Someone is watching her. She can feel it.

She braces herself, opens her eyes, and looks up, expecting to see a shadow or even her mother’s ghost. Or . . . Kaitlyn’s.

Please let it be Mom this time. Please . . .

WENDY CORSI STAUB
grew up in New York, just a few miles from the real town of Lily Dale. As a teenager, she and her friends visited the mediums there, hoping to find out whom they would marry. One medium told Wendy that her future husband’s name would begin with the letters M-A. She wrote down the medium’s prediction and forgot about it until years later, when she found her notes from that reading. By then she was married to her husband, Mark.

Wendy has published more than sixty books for adults and teenagers and is a
New York Times
bestselling author of several suspense novels. She lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband and their two sons.

Visit her Web sites at
www.wendycorsistaub.com
www.myspace.com/lilydalebooks
www.myspace.com/wendytheauthor

BOOKS BY WENDY CORSI STAUB

THE LILY DALE SERIES:

AWAKENING

BELIEVING

CONNECTING

DISCOVERING

Praise for
LILY DALE
AWAKENING

A
Teenreads.com
Best Book

“Readers will find this novel difficult to put down and will look forward to the second installment.” —
Teenreads.com

“This is a real page turner.” —
Bookdivas.com

“Characters are sharply drawn, and kids who like stories with psychic underpinnings will certainly appreciate the otherworldly goings-on and Calla’s reactions to them.” —
Booklist

“Deft characterization couples with a compelling plot in a somewhat unique setting to create appeal particularly to young teens seeking meaning and agency in the face of life’s difficulties.” —
VOYA

“If you love suspense, you’ll love this book.”
—Raven Gill,
VOYA
teen reviewer

Copyright © 2007 by Wendy Corsi Staub

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

While Lily Dale, New York, is a real place, all the characters in this novel are fictional, having been created solely by the author and not based on real people, living or dead.

First published in the United States of America in September 2007 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc. E-book edition published in December 2010
www.bloomsburyteens.com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Staub, Wendy Corsi.
Lily Dale : awakening / Wendy Corsi Staub.
p. cm.
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Calla's mother suddenly dies, she goes to stay with her psychic grandmother in Lily Dale, a spiritualist community in western New York, where she discovers some disconcerting secrets about her practical, down-to-earth mother, and realizes that she herself may also have some psychic abilities.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-9654-7 • ISBN-10: 0-8027-9654-0 (hardcover)
[1. Psychics—Fiction. 2. Psychic ability—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction. 4. Mothers—Fiction. 5. New York (State)—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.]
I. Title.
PZ7.S804Li 2007       [Fic]—dc22      2007002370
IBSN 978-0-8027-8462-9 (e-book)