Sage's Eyes (29 page)

“There is something I haven't told you about myself,” I said. I hesitated. Would this drive him away from me?

“If you keep me holding my breath, I'll die at your feet.”

“Right. Ever since I can remember, I've had memories and dreams about things they assure me I could not know or have seen.”

“That's it?”

“Isn't it enough?”

He smirked. “Maybe we really are reincarnated, or
maybe you heard something or just glanced at something and it sank into your subconscious. Please. A child's imagination? They found that to be something negative? Sounds to me like they have some serious problems of their own. Listen. If they stifle you, they'll be sorry,” he predicted. “They have to learn to trust you, too. It goes both ways, or it means nothing.”

“I know.” These were exactly my thoughts, especially now that I was older and wanted to enjoy more independence, or at least as much as my girlfriends did.

“You simply have to break loose, Sage. You can't be afraid to bend their rules sometimes. It might be the only way to get them to let you be yourself. Actually, we bring up our parents almost as much as they bring us up.”

“Yes, Mr. Enough.”

He didn't smile. “I mean it. Stop worrying. We'll have a good time,” he promised. “And your parents won't be the worse for it.”

“I'm not worrying about them.”

“Well, you don't have to worry about yourself. You'll be the better for it. You'll see,” he promised. He kissed me quickly, and like always, just before we arrived at the exit, he left me to rush out. Sometimes he went somewhere else in the building to do something he had forgotten. Was it because he didn't want my mother seeing us together since I had told him more about my life at home and how it would be wiser for me to bring him into my parents' lives gradually? Was he trying to protect me or protect himself from losing
the opportunity to be with me? I knew he wanted our night to be special, and I had grown closer to him, but I still was afraid I was falling into a trap. He was so much more sophisticated than I was, or at least he seemed to be. Maybe he would move on to another one of the girls once he was satisfied with having had me. He was still looking at them, smiling, flirting. How I wished I'd had some other experiences before having met him so that I would feel I was on more solid ground and have more confidence.

The moment he left, the girls flocked to my side.

“What's he doing, rushing home to start preparing for tonight?” Kay asked, looking at Summer hurrying out. By now, they all knew I was meeting him at the mall and he was taking me to the party. “Washing his car and buying you a corsage?”

“Buying new clothes,” Darlene said.

“Shining his shoes,” Mia added. “After all, you're his first date here.”

“I'm sure he realizes it's just a house party,” I said, “and not the senior prom.”

“It's not just a house party,” Ginny said. “It's going to be a great house party. Jason has a great house.”

“Four guest bedrooms,” Mia added with a licentious smile.

“And a finished basement with a bar and an old-time jukebox,” Kay added. “Bring your dancing shoes.”

I walked out with them. “Don't let him talk you into going anywhere else instead,” Darlene warned. “You'll miss a terrific time.”

“We can see he's pretty much yours,” Mia said. “Don't worry
about any of us stealing him away. Everyone's already tried that. Right, girls?”

They all agreed and laughed. Ginny and Kay hugged me, and then I watched them walk away in the parking lot. Despite all the friendly words and smiles, those bad vibes were back. As always, it was difficult, if not impossible, to predict my own future, so I didn't know exactly why I had these feelings. I stared after the girls, trying to pierce the swirling dark clouds between us. My mother sounded her horn, shaking me out of it, and I hurried to the car.

“Looks like they've forgiven you for winning the new boy's heart so quickly,” she muttered. “Don't deny that you have, either. He's called you every night this week. Right?”

“I guess,” I said.

“I'm not a fool, Sage. Don't try to make it seem so innocent. I'm sure he's meeting you at the mall and will go to the movie with you,” she said. She looked at me for confirmation before she started driving us away. “Well?”

“Yes.” I didn't see the harm in confessing that much. In fact, I thought it would ease her fears if I was that honest.

“Don't go anywhere else with him,” she warned. “If this little romance continues, your father wants to meet him properly.”

“Okay,” I said. I could feel the trembling in my voice and expected she would sense it, but she didn't or she didn't
want to say anything, which stirred up even greater fear. What if she sensed what I was planning to do and was just waiting for me to do it? What if Summer was right to suggest that she or my father would follow me?

“Give her enough rope, and she'll hang herself,” I could imagine her telling my father.

When we got home, I went up to my room, ostensibly to do my homework so I wouldn't have so much to do over the weekend. What I really wanted was to stay away from both of my parents until I had to leave. I was always afraid they could look at me and read my most secret thoughts.

When I began to dress to go out, I found myself taking more time about my choices, not because I was looking for what might make me more attractive and sexier but actually just the opposite. I wanted to be careful not to overdo it. I knew the moment I stepped off the stairway and turned, my mother would be scrutinizing everything I had put on. To her, every decision I made carried deeper significance, some hidden purpose.

In the end, I decided to wear the violet sweater she had bought me with a pair of jeans. I was hoping what I had read about the color violet was true. I wanted my imagination to be at full strength and any obstacles to that removed. I needed my third eye tonight more than any night, I thought.

I put on my black leather jacket my parents had bought me for the fall and wore both the pentacle necklace and my amber necklace and the matching amber
earrings my father had bought me two weeks after my birthday. I had pinned my hair up and wore just a brush of lipstick.

“You look very nice,” my father said before my mother had a chance to say anything negative or critical, but I did think she was happy about my choice of the sweater. Ever since the day of the pentacle revelation, they were keen on my feeling and doing something spiritual, something with what they called positive energy.

For a moment, I thought my mother was going to come along to the mall with us to watch me meet up with my girlfriends and be sure everything I had told her was true. She followed us to the doorway but then stopped. I didn't want to look back and show her how nervous I now was, but she seized my right arm to turn me toward herself. She looked intently at me. Did she finally realize the truth? Was she going to accuse me right now and stop me from going out? I tried desperately not to look guilty.

“Every decision you make in your life is another link in the chain that connects you with the spiritual good in the universe, Sage,” she began. “And remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”

I nodded. She looked at my father.

“Don't worry. She's a good girl,” he said.

“Famous last words,” she muttered, and turned away from us. We left.

“Why is she so suspicious of everything I do?” I protested after my father and I got into the car. “Did something terrible happen in her life, something she caused?”
I guessed I was learning the bad habits from my girlfriends—put your parents on the defensive every chance you had.

“No. Of course not. She's only looking after your best interests, Sage. She really cares about you, as do I.”

I was silent. Those were basically the same words Uncle Wade had used to explain her. Maybe it was true. Maybe Summer was wrong. Maybe I should have trusted them with the truth and not deceived them.

“Uncle Alexis and Aunt Suzume will arrive at about ten tomorrow,” my father told me as we drove to the mall. “Your mother is going to prepare a very nice lunch.”

“Are they staying for dinner?”

“No. They're visiting with some friends they haven't seen in quite a while.”

Of course, I wondered why they weren't staying with us after all these years without seeing my parents, but I didn't ask. He talked a little more about Uncle Alexis but was still very vague with the answers to more of my questions about his family and his growing up. The suspicions that Summer had put in my mind seemed to be justified more and more. There was something in their past, something about which they were both ashamed.

“Have a good time. I'll be right here at midnight,” my father said when we'd pulled up to the mall's main entrance. He gave me a quick kiss. I looked quickly to see if Summer was standing outside, maybe loitering in a shadow, but he wasn't in sight. I wouldn't have thought he would be waiting with the girls for me. Where was he?
What if he had changed his mind or for some reason couldn't come at the last minute? Should I go on to the party with the girls?

“Okay. Thanks, Dad,” I said, and got out. I started toward the mall as he pulled away. Before I reached the door, I heard the car horn sound behind me and saw that Summer had pulled to the curb.

He was leaning out of the passenger-side window and beckoning. “No need to go in there!” he shouted.

I looked to see if the girls were gathered just inside waiting for us, but I didn't see them. My father's car was gone, so I started for Summer's. He got out and opened the door for me. He saw the way I continued to look around, searching the parking lot and the entrances to the mall before I got in.

I didn't see my father's car, but I had a strong feeling of being watched. There was a shadowy silhouette of a man to my right, just past the corner of the mall, but I was confident that wasn't my father. Whoever it was resembled a statue, unmoving.

“Hey, c'mon. What? Do you think your father circled around to see if you were going off with me or something?” he asked.

“It crossed my mind.”

“He didn't,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just am. Trust me,” he said, and we started away from the mall. The silhouetted man I had seen was gone.

“Trust you? How can you be so certain?”

“I don't know. What I do know is when I put my mind to it,
I can sense things other people can't,” he said. We pulled out of the mall parking lot. My father's car was nowhere in sight. Summer paused at the first stop sign and smiled at me. “And so can you,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“I sensed it,” he said, smiling. “I'm right, right?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted.

How much more about my secret self should I reveal? I wondered. I glanced at him. He looked so content with himself. If he had that third eye, too, how was he so comfortable about it? What did he know that I didn't? I was caught between wanting to know his secrets and being afraid to reveal my own. There was no way one would come without the other, I realized. Perhaps I could do it in baby steps.

“Speaking of sensing things, I've had some bad feelings about my girlfriends and Jason's house party,” I confessed, and waited anxiously for his reaction.

He stared ahead, his eyes so fixed on the traffic I wondered if he had heard what I said. “Tell me about it,” he said, still holding his gaze on the street ahead.

“There's nothing specific. Whenever they talked about the party, I felt . . .”

“Danger?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Girls can be wildcats. Let's see what they have in mind for you.”

“Oh, that's nice. Really makes me want to go to the party.”

He laughed. “Don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you,” he said confidently. He reached for my hand,
pressed his fingers softly over mine, and drove on, as if he had lived here as long as I had, meandering through side streets confidently and arriving at Jason's home so quickly that I wondered if the girls were there yet.

I asked him. “Maybe we should wait for them. We left the mall so quickly.”

“No need. They came directly here,” he said. “They didn't go to the mall first.”

“What? How come?”

“The only reason they were meeting in the mall was to give you a cover story.”

“When did you know this?”

“Ginny told me yesterday. She claimed she wanted to confirm that I was bringing you to the party.”

“Well, why didn't you tell me?”

“I saw how spooked you were as it was and didn't want to make you any more nervous. What's the difference? You don't need them now. You have me,” he said, and shut off the engine. “Well? Let's see why this is such a great party.”

He stepped out. I hesitated, and he came around and opened my door.

“Madame,” he said with a Shakespearean bow. He reached for my hand, and I stepped out.

I looked at the very large two-story colonial house. It was in a very upscale residential section of Dorey, with each home having a good acre or more of property. There were custom homes on the street, some Victorian and one or two more modern ranch-style, all with elegantly manicured lawns and hedges, double and
even triple garages, and, like Jason's parents' home, with elaborate stonework and sidewalks. We could hear the music seeping out of the house but dissipating enough so as not to alarm or annoy the nearest neighbors.

Summer took my hand, but I didn't move.

“What's wrong?” he asked, seeing how intensely I was looking at the house.

How could I tell him that I saw a very dark shadow sweep in and settle on it? Would he think I was insane? Would he find it amusing and annoy me with ridicule?