Sage's Eyes (22 page)

“You all right?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

He raised his hands in defense. “Just an innocent question.”

“Something tells me nothing you say, ask, or do is really innocent,” I replied.

It brought that pleased smile to his face. The harder I resisted, the more he thought he was conquering me, I decided. “Need a ride home?” he asked me.

“No, thank you. My mother picks me up every day.” I immediately regretted mentioning my mother, knowing he had lost his.

“Well, maybe some other time when she's too busy or there's a conflict. I have a car.” He stood up.

“You have a driver's license?”

“A car wouldn't be much good to me without it,” he said, grinning.

“How old are you?” I asked, also standing.

“It's complicated,” he said. “Because of my birthdate, the school I did attend once, before the homeschooling, wouldn't admit me to first grade when I should have been. That put me a year behind, and then, because I was out of the country for a number of years, I didn't get the credits I needed to march along with others about my age.”

“So? How old are you?”

He shook his head at my persistence. “I'm seventeen,” he said. “But keep it a secret.”

“I don't think
anything about you will be a secret too much longer,” I told him, and started out.

He walked alongside me. “What about you?” he asked in the doorway.

“What about me?”

“Are all your secrets known?”

“I don't have any secrets.”

“Oh, you do,” he said. “You do. See you tomorrow, Sage Healy,” he added, with that know-it-all smile blossoming on his face again.

I watched him walk off to catch up with Jason and Ward, who had just turned into the corridor. They patted him on the shoulders, and they continued on like the Three Musketeers. He made friends as easily as changing from one jacket to another, I thought.

When I reached the school exit to the parking lot, I saw my knot of friends waiting for me, looking like they were ready to pounce on me and pull out my hair strand by strand.

“Well?” Ginny asked first.

“Well, what?”

“Did he ask you out or anything?” Mia demanded.

“He asked me if I needed a ride home,” I confessed.

“I just knew it would be you,” Kay said. “I watched him all day. Every chance he got, he looked at you.”

“What else did you find out about him?” Darlene asked.

“Not much. Just that he's traveled a lot. You all know he's going to be the choral accompanist, right?”

“We heard,”
Ginny said, the corners of her mouth dipping. “Serves me right for not practicing do-re-mi.”

“With Sage around, it wouldn't have helped you,” Kay said, her voice dripping with envy.

“I have no idea whether his offering me a ride home means anything. Don't jump to conclusions,” I said. “I'm probably not his type.” I couldn't believe I was trying to make them feel better by putting myself down. How had it come to this so fast?

“Please,” Mia said. “If you're going to play anything in this drama, don't play the innocent one. At least, not with us. He might like that, I guess, but it doesn't work with us.”

“You're making too much of this—and of him,” I said, now feeling some anger. “If you want to learn a lesson from all this, it's don't be so obvious, and don't let any boy know how much you like him too quickly.”

Where those words came from, I did not know, but they all dropped their jaws and widened their eyes.

“Advice to the lovelorn from Miss Perfect,” Kay muttered.

“I'm hardly Miss Perfect. Gotta go. My mother's waiting,” I said. “Talk to you later.”

I hurried out. My mother was there watching for me with the usual look of expectation on her face, anticipating something new, something she feared to learn or had foreseen. I debated whether I should mention Summer Dante so soon, but he settled that question for me when he drove by on his way out of the parking lot.
He beeped his horn and waved, a gleeful smile hoisted like a flag of victory on his face.

My mother turned and watched him go. “Who was that?” she asked immediately when I got into the car.

“A new student. He's a very talented pianist and is going to be the accompanist for our chorus.”

“Was this his first day?”

“Yes.”

She started out of the parking lot. “Do you like him?”

“He's a little annoying,” I said.

“Why?”

“He comes off as arrogant at times, but he is very intelligent.”

“What grade is he in?”

“Ours.”

“And he's driving?”

“It's a long story,” I replied, hoping she would end the interrogation. For some reason, answering questions about him was irritating me now. Perhaps it was because of what I had just gone through with my girlfriends, who were so awash in jealousy they could have torn me apart. In far less civilized times, females probably did tear one another apart over a chosen male. Kay did tell me we were all always in competition. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised.

“ ‘It's a long story?' People always use that expression when they don't want to tell you something,” my mother said.

“I don't know everything about him, Mother. He told me a little. He was denied admission to first grade
because of his birthdate, and then, because of his family traveling and his attending foreign schools and then being homeschooled, our school placed him in our class.”

“Traveling and attending foreign schools? What do his parents do?”

“He has only his father, who's apparently a romance novelist.” I hesitated about saying his nom de plume. Something told me to wait on that, that it would stir up some deeper inquisition and more warnings, and despite how I had reacted to him at the end of the day, I didn't want to be told he was off-limits.

“What happened to his mother? Divorce?”

“I don't know for sure.”

“How old is he?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen in the tenth grade? That's awkward. I feel sorry for him,” she said.

“Believe me, Mother, if there's one thing Summer Dante doesn't need or want, it's anyone's pity.”

“Summer Dante? That's his name?”

“Yes.”

She was thoughtful for most of the ride home, and when we pulled into our driveway, she turned to me and said, “Be careful. He sounds like he's far too sophisticated for you and your girlfriends.”

“I know. But I don't think he's that sophisticated. I think he is really desperate.”

She turned and actually smiled at me. “Desperate? Why desperate?”

“I think he hasn't
had a chance to have any real friends. He'd hate me for saying it, but I think he's lonely.”

She watched the garage door go up and then nodded. “Even more reason to be careful,” she muttered.

“You'll have me trembling with fear every time I meet someone who's not perfect in your eyes,” I replied with unusual terseness.

She looked at me in annoyance but said nothing. However, I knew the topic would come up as soon as my father came home. When I came down to help with dinner, they were both sitting in the kitchen and looked up quickly.

“Hey, Sage,” he began. “Hear you might be fond of a new boy?”

“I didn't say I was fond of him. I said he was very talented musically and very intelligent.”

“And lonely,” my mother reminded me.

“That's just a feeling about him. Maybe I'm wrong. He just entered our school, Dad.”

“Good-looking? As good-looking as I am?” he asked, smiling.

“Yes,” I said, so quickly and so firmly his smile froze.

“And what does he think about you?”

“He thinks I'm too touchy, too sensitive, too inquisitive, and maybe even spoiled.”

“Sounds like a perfect beginning to a relationship,” he joked, but my mother didn't smile.

“Let's get started on dinner,” she told me.

At dinner, my father talked about Uncle Alexis and Aunt Suzume's arrival on Saturday. “Aunt Suzume is very interested in getting to know you,” he said.

“And I'm anxious to meet her. I haven't met many of your or Mother's relatives,” I added. “I haven't even heard mention of many of them.”

I did not know where I had suddenly gotten this forwardness and courage, but I did feel aggressive and impatient, if not downright intolerant of all this mystery I had been living with my whole life.

“I don't like your tone of voice,” my mother said. My father looked unhappy about it, too.

“I'm sorry. It's just that I'm always hearing the other girls talk about their cousins and relatives, and I have to sit there and listen dumbly. Except, of course, when I can talk about Uncle Wade.”
Thank God for Uncle Wade
, I wanted to add, but I swallowed it back.

“You'll meet the members of our families that we consider worthwhile to meet,” my mother said. “When it's time.”

When it's time?
Was this still part of the everlasting test I was living under? I had to reach another goal, gain some other confidence first? “When will it be time?” I dared to ask.

They looked at each other, my mother nodding with that
See, I'm right about her
look on her face. My father didn't nod, but he didn't look happy.

“Stop with all these questions, and help clear off the table,” she ordered.

I rose petulantly and did what she said. Neither of them spoke to me afterward, so I went up to my room to
finish my homework. Just after eight o'clock, I received a phone call. I expected it to be Ginny or Mia pumping me for more information about Summer, but it was neither.

“Hello,” I said, but not with any excitement. I wasn't interested in talking to them about him.

“You sound down. Anything wrong?” he asked. It was Summer.

Persistence and arrogance obviously were born to complement each other.

But I wasn't as upset about it as I would come to believe I should have been.

“You got my phone number quickly enough. Is there anything about me you don't know yet?” I asked.

He laughed. “For someone who says all her secrets are known, you sure are sensitive about anyone finding out anything about you, even the simplest things like your name, address, and phone number.”

“You're not exactly just anyone,” I replied, still holding on to a little testiness. For some reason, that felt like a life raft at the moment. I couldn't get over the feeling that I was swimming in a whirlpool of danger when I spoke to him. The thing was, I couldn't understand why yet.

“Oh, no? Who am I, then? What do you know about me that no one else does?” he asked, with the first suggestion of any worry in his voice. Was there something dark in his past? Was he afraid I had found out?

“The newest student, just one day old, in fact.”

“Oh. I see. And that necessitates what sort of expectations? Shyness? Insecurity? Timidity?”

“For most normal people, I suppose.”

“Well, now you know something important about me,” he replied.

“Which is?”

“I'm not like most normal people. Is that bad?” he quickly followed.

I felt like I was playing verbal ping-pong over the phone, but I couldn't stop. “Maybe I'm the one who's shy, insecure, and timid.”

“Something tells me you're not like most normal people, either. Actually, most of the boys in school I've spoken to would never accuse you of being shy or timid. If anything, you've got them spinning on their heels. A few are actually afraid of you.”

“Afraid? Why?”

“They think you have devious ways of embarrassing them. Although I haven't seen you in action yet, my guess is you do.”

“First, I don't believe any of them used the word ‘devious.' ”

He laughed. “Free translation,” he said. “You don't want to hear the exact words.”

“No, I don't. Even if I did have ‘devious' ways to embarrass them, I haven't found any of them to be worth the effort, not that it would take all that much effort,” I said. Now I was the one sounding arrogant, but it annoyed me to hear that I was the topic of conversation among those boys and that the conversation was mostly negative, even nasty.

“Maybe they're lucky, then.” He paused and then added, “Don't be so harsh. All of them are not that bad.”

“You can make that sort of judgment after only one day talking to them?”

“They're not that complicated,” he said.

“Now I've learned a second important thing about you.”

“Which is?”

“You're a little snobby. Maybe a lot.”

“And you're not? None of them is even worth taking the time to embarrass them, not that it would take that much?”

I probably should have said good-bye and hung up, but I laughed instead. “Touché,” I replied.