Sage's Eyes (18 page)

“She looked upset,” I said. “Was she upset?”

They looked at each other.

“No more than usual,” Danny said. “I spent most of lunch hour helping her with the math homework. She said she had forgotten to do it. I couldn't get it all done before she left with the nurse, but I told her I would have it for her before math class.”

I nodded. That was what I had told her father when he wanted a reason for my calling, our math homework. Did he make such a big deal out of it that she had deliberately avoided it? Maybe she thought if she got a bad grade for not having it done, she would make him regret forcing her to hang up on me. I could easily imagine the games she had to play to get him to give her room to breathe.

Just thinking about that brought new disturbing images into my mind. I saw him coming in on her while she was taking a bath and insisting that he wash her back but intending to do more. Every lock on every inside door in her house was inoperable. She had no privacy anywhere, anytime. Some nights, he made her sleep with him naked.

All of this flashed before me as I walked through the hallway, half listening to Peter and Danny argue about the meaning of Coleridge's poem
Kubla Khan.

It didn't occur to me until after I entered my classroom that according to Uncle Wade, I had just used Coleridge's
quill in an attempt to save Cassie Marlowe. Coincidences didn't exist to Uncle Wade's way of thinking and were starting to disappear to my way of thinking, too. Everything was meant to be, had a purpose and a design.

After the flow of those disturbing sexual images I had envisioned, it was difficult for me to concentrate on the lesson in history class. I kept looking at Cassie's empty desk and anticipating her entrance any moment, but it never happened. My curiosity and concern grew stronger. Did she become hysterical when Mrs. Mills asked her about her black-and-blue marks? Did she reveal anything, or was she so terrified of what her father might do that she went into shock? Did they have to take her somewhere else, to a doctor? Could it be that they called the police?

In my heart of hearts, even though I wanted the police to get involved, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her and what she would go through. Of course, I wondered if I had done the right thing. And then I wondered if my letter wasn't magical after all, if somehow my words became more than words. Maybe they became images like they did for me. Maybe they empowered Mrs. Mills so she could picture the horror Cassie was enduring. If that happened and I had succeeded, I wondered if I should ever tell Uncle Wade how his quill lived up to what he had promised. Would he be happy I had that third eye, or would he worry more about me and tell my parents, who would then be enraged that I had kept another secret?

Cassie didn't attend the next class, either. Just
before the last period of the day, Kay hurried up to the rest of us entering the room. She was flushed with excitement and looked like she would burst if she didn't get her words out quickly.

“Cassie Marlowe was taken out of school by a social worker and a policewoman,” she reported. “Something really weird is going on.”

“Something was always really weird about her,” Ginny said. She looked at me. “Right?”

“There have to be reasons for why she is like she is,” I said.

“What reasons?”

The bell rang for us to be in our seats.

“Reasons,” I replied cryptically. She smirked, and we all sat. I was the only one whose mind was a million miles away when we were told to open our textbooks.

Cassie would be saved from her horrific situation at home, I told myself. That was good, but really, how did I do it? Why was I able to do it? Why hadn't her teachers, the nurse, and other administrators been able to see what was happening to her? Why just me? Sometimes I'd thought Uncle Wade was teasing me with all those references to the mystical third eye, but maybe it was true.

How should this make me feel? I wondered. Did I want this power? Did I want to be so different from everyone else? I was already different from every other girl in my class because I was adopted. I honestly didn't believe anyone thought less of me because of that. Once my classmates got over the initial typical questions like whether I knew who my birth parents were,
they never mentioned it again. If there was any complaint about me, it was similar to the complaints I had heard from Ginny after her party. I was too conservative, acting too old for my age. Even Uncle Wade had accused me of that.

That was something I could blame on my adoptive parents. All my life, they had made me so self-conscious about anything I had done that could be thought extraordinary, whether describing some of my visions or asking too many questions. I grew up with my parents expecting me to show signs of misbehavior and my mother especially pouncing on the slightest indication. Why shouldn't I have turned out too conservative for my classmates? How could I overcome that? Go out and do something absolutely forbidden, deliberately get into serious trouble? Would that finally satisfy them?

It wasn't until nearly dinnertime that I learned anything more about Cassie. Someone, perhaps one of the secretaries in the administrative offices, told Kay Linder's mother why Cassie had been removed from school and taken off in a police vehicle. Probably nanoseconds after Kay learned about it from her mother, she was on the phone or texting the other girls. Ginny wanted to be the first to tell me. There was a note of remorse in her voice. Like most everyone else, she had condemned Cassie too quickly, too eagerly, and now felt guilty about it.

“Cassie has been sexually abused by her own father! Did you know about it?” she asked me after she rattled off the headline.

“She didn't tell me, if that's what you mean.”

“Yeah, but you seemed to know more. When I said there was something weird about her, you said there had to be reasons.”

“People can be shy, but Cassie was more than just shy,” I said.

“One of these days, you're going to have to tell me why you're so much wiser than the rest of us. The truth is, everyone thinks there's a lot more mystery to you than you reveal. Did you have different parents before the Healys?”

“Only my biological ones, whom I have never met,” I said.

“Did something really dramatic happen to you at your old school? Is that why your parents transferred you to ours?”

“I'm not a veteran of anything that would give me more insight into someone being sexually abused by her own father, Ginny. Nothing like that happened to me.”

“Sorry, but we're trying to find out how Mrs. Mills found out about it. Kay's mother didn't know.”

“Maybe she was just doing her job well. If anyone should have the ability to spot something like this, it would be Mrs. Mills, don't you think?”

“Maybe,” she said, but not with much confidence.

“What's the difference, anyway? Who cares how Mrs. Mills realized it? The main thing is that Cassie's been saved.”

“As much as anyone can be after all that. She's going to be in some special therapy. She won't be at
our school anymore. Maybe they'll find her mother, and her mother will take her back. I wish I would have known. I would have . . .”

“What?”

“I don't know. Done something. Let's try to forget about it,” she added quickly. “It gives me the chills. Her father looks like a cross between a frog and a snake. Thinking about him makes me want to vomit up lunch. I hope they . . .”

“Burn him at the stake?”

“What? Yeah. Something like that. Stop talking about him.”

I laughed. “I'm not. You are.”

“Concentrate on the weekend and the party at Jason's. Start working on your parents. Say we're all going to a movie and for pizza.”

“What movie?”

“Oh. Wait a minute. Let me look on the Internet,” she said, and after a minute came back. “
Ruby
, the one about the Cajun girl who's a twin. I actually want to see that. I have the novel. I'll give it to you so you'll know something about the story.” She paused. “You're not too good at lying about stuff, are you?”

“Terrible.”

“Pretend you're actually going to do it, Sage. Get yourself to believe it, and then it's easier to convince someone else. That's what I do. See you tomorrow. Oh,” she said just as I was going to hang up, “that handsome boy Mia saw today?”

“Yes?”

“He definitely is a new student, and he's in our class.
We already know his name. Get this: Summer Dante. And how's this? Just like Cassie, he has no mother. He's living only with his father. No brothers or sisters. One in, one out, but something tells me
he's
not going to be shy,” she added.

“You're better than CNN,” I said.

She laughed. “And you're better than Dr. Phil.”

The conversation that had begun with heavy news turned into laughter and some intrigue.

Who was Summer Dante, and what had happened to his mother?

Put that aside for now
, I told myself.
Concentrate on the weekend and being as good a liar as Ginny and the others.
It was almost a requirement to be accepted by them. How they could trust each other knowing that they were all capable of being so false amazed me. Perhaps it was just honor among thieves or something.

Or maybe they really believed in their hearts that everyone was dishonest, that everyone lied. I thought about a reference I had just read to Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who helped create the philosophy of cynicism. Supposedly, he went around with a lantern searching for an honest man.

Was it a fruitless search? Would I look just as foolish if I didn't accept the same rules my girlfriends lived by?

Maybe my mother was right after all by anticipating my doing something evil and dishonest. Maybe once I had done so successfully, I would be addicted to it. I would be better at it than Ginny or any of them.

“Once
you take a bite of the apple, it's difficult to avoid eating it all,” my mother would say. “If you do and you stop, you're one kind of person, a special kind of person. If you don't stop, you're like most people, and how far you fall depends entirely on how much of the apple you consume.”

How much would I consume? Maybe she was right. Maybe that would be the final clue to discovering who I really was.

At dinner, when I mentioned going to the movies with my girlfriends and then out to have some pizza, I expected my mother would absolutely refuse to permit it, but apparently, she and my father had discussed my behavior at Ginny's party and how sensible I had been, because she didn't say no before my words were spoken, as she often did. The more my father praised me for how I had handled being at Ginny's party, the guiltier I felt about lying now, even though I had successfully done what Ginny had suggested, rationalized with myself that I might not be lying at all, that this might be all we would do. The party wasn't a sure thing yet. I could lie to myself first and then behave as if that were the truth.

This shouldn't have surprised me. Often it was easier to convince yourself of something than it was to convince others. In the end, everyone believes what he or she wants to believe. Facts and evidence melt away like icicles on the first day of spring under
the heat of what you are determined will be true no matter what.

Anyway, neither of my parents seemed to pick up on my deception, and after the way they had picked up on the filing cabinet, I thought they might. Maybe I was just getting better at it. I had made it all sound so casual and ordinary. All my friends were going. It was just something for us girls to do together. My father was nodding, so I added, “It helps bond us, make us all closer friends.”

“Sure. Why wouldn't girls enjoy just being with each other sometimes?” my father agreed. “Girls' night out. Show the boys you don't need them around all the time. Female independence.” He looked at my mother. “Didn't you want that?”

“Times were different,” she muttered.

“Times are always different,” he replied.

I looked more closely at my mother. She didn't disagree. For a moment or two, she was really lost in her own thoughts, perhaps recalling her youth and regretting not doing enough with her own girlfriends when she had the opportunities. Maybe she wasn't always as serious as she was now, or she was wishing she wasn't. Thinking deeply about that might loosen her up, I hoped. She might want me to have more fun than she did when she was my age. Before he had left, Uncle Wade could very well have lectured them both, mostly her. I could hear the words as if I had been a fly on the wall.

“Stop worrying about her,” he must have said. “Let her be a girl her age. Let her explore and make
her own discoveries. She's wrapped too tightly. That usually results in just the opposite of what you intended for her.”

I was sure he was convincing. Maybe I didn't have to lie as much as I thought I did. Maybe they would have permitted me to go to another house party if I had been honest and told them what our real intentions were, but it was too late.