Sage's Eyes (7 page)

She grimaced and turned to my father.

“Your mother means, do you feel any older, wiser? Has something about you changed? Do you see the world any differently?”

What parents asked questions like that on their children's birthdays? None of my friends ever described their parents asking such questions.

“I guess I do,” I said. “I'd better. I'm in the tenth grade now. The work's going to be harder, and I'm around older kids more often, so I think I'll act older.”

Neither looked satisfied with my response. What did they want to hear?

“Are you going to tell us about another birthday you remember?” my mother asked with a sour look.

“I don't remember any right now, except, of course, Lucy Fein's birthday last year. That was a big party. I was surprised she invited me. We had hardly talked in school before she sent out her invitations.”

“You know I don't mean that sort of birthday, Sage,” she said. “No dreams, no illusions, no inexplicable memories to plague us with?”

“No,” I replied. “I haven't had any thoughts like that.”

She looked happy and satisfied about that. The truth was that a few days ago, I did dream about being at a birthday party I could not explain. I supposed it would fit the definition of a nightmare more than just another strange dream.

It took place in a small house. The room was lit by many candles because there wasn't any electricity. There were at least a dozen adults and two other children. All the adults were dressed in black. I could feel them all watching me as a woman who was my mother brought out my birthday gift on a dish. It was an amber necklace. Before I was given it, she lifted it out of the dish and began to recite something in what sounded like gibberish to me. Everyone around the table joined in, but the chant was hard to understand.
When that ended, she turned and brought the necklace to me to put it around my neck. She was behind me, and the necklace was not as long as it had looked. It seemed to be shrinking, tightening around my throat until I gagged and woke up.

That was a dream I was definitely not going to tell them about tonight.

My father cut the roast and served me some. I took some string beans and passed the plate to him. I could see how my mother was watching every little thing I did, anticipating something or waiting for me to say something strange. My attention was centered on the gift package they had brought me. I wouldn't be able to open it until after we had eaten dinner and my birthday cake was brought out. I'd had a glimpse of the cake when I opened the refrigerator earlier. At least it was my favorite, a vanilla cake with an apricot icing.

As we ate, they continued to ask me questions about my new school. I had been there only a week, but they wanted to know if I had met any girls or boys I would like to have as friends.

“Yes, there are a few girls I think I could be friends with,” I said.

Nothing terribly dramatic had occurred yet, and the other girls were feeling me out the way girls did anywhere. What kind of music did I like? What did I watch on television? What were my experiences with boys? Stuff like that. I tried to give them answers they liked, but of course, I was vague about the boys I had known. I didn't want to reveal that I had no romantic
experiences while they were unwinding spools of dates, parties, and sexual explorations that honestly made me tingle, especially the way they freely described their orgasms, trying to outdo one another.

Now my mother was silent for a moment. She glanced at my father and then asked me a strange question. “When you came out of school today, did you see anyone watching from across the way before you saw me waiting for you? A man?”

“Watching? Watching what, Mother?”

“You, of course.”

“No. I don't remember seeing anyone watching me. Who would be watching me?”

“No one, but if you ever do see anyone doing that, you tell us right away. Do you understand?”

“No. Why would anyone be watching me? How do you mean?”

“There are sexual predators,” my father said. “They focus on someone, and it's better if you're aware of that sort of thing now, Sage. You're a mature young girl. Clear?”

“Yes,” I said.

Why were they suddenly concerned about this now? Why not when I was at my old school? I was sure I wasn't less attractive six months ago. The school I was at now was on a side street, that was true, but there was still lots of pedestrian traffic.

My mother rose, went to the kitchen, and brought out my cake, but there were no candles on it. She saw the disappointment on my face.

“You're too old for candles on a cake,” she said.
“We don't have to sing ‘Happy Birthday.' You know that's what we're saying with this dinner, this cake, and your gift.”

I know
, I thought,
but who likes to feel their birthday is just something ordinary?

My father gave me my gift after my mother cut the cake and put the piece in front of me. I looked at the package and then up at them.

“What?” my mother asked.

“Nothing,” I said, but I already knew what was in the package. I had envisioned it. I was afraid to tell them I had done that, so I opened it carefully and took out the amber necklace.

“You don't look happy about it. Don't you think it's pretty?” my mother asked immediately.

I couldn't help my reaction. It was as if I had drifted into my frightening dream. “Oh, yes. It is very pretty.”

“Here,” she said. “I'll put it on you.”

She rose to come around behind me. I looked at my father. I was sure he saw the panic in my face.

“What is it, Sage? You look very nervous, even frightened.”

“No. I'm all right,” I said. “It's just so beautiful and looks so expensive. I was surprised.”

He looked up at my mother. Neither accepted my answer.

She plucked the necklace out of the box and undid the clasp. I closed my eyes. My heart was pounding. Would I choke to death? The necklace settled just
below my throat. I reached up to touch it. Then I turned to look at myself in the wall mirror. When I was younger and I looked at the mirror, I sometimes saw other people sitting at the table, people who weren't there. I had stopped mentioning that years ago. I was thankful they weren't here now and hadn't been for some time.

“Like it, then?” my father asked.

“Yes, very much, Dad.”

“Good. You know what it is?”

“It's amber,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” he said.

My mother sat.

“It has protective powers,” I told them.

My father smiled a little but didn't speak.

“How do you know that?” my mother asked. I could see she was preparing herself to hear another one of my inexplicable memories.

“I read about it somewhere, maybe in a novel.”

“Then wear it as much as you can,” my father said. He sat back. “Unless you find it uncomfortable.”

“Oh, no. Why would I?”

He didn't reply. They were both staring at me so hard that I did feel a little uncomfortable. I began to eat my cake, and they began to eat theirs.

“I'll make you a cake for your birthday, Mother,” I said.

“What would you make me?”

“What you like the best, angel food with raspberry jelly in the center.”

She nodded. Whenever she liked something I said or did, she would smile, but it always looked like half her face was trying not to.

Later, when I was preparing for bed, I started to take off the necklace, but it was as if there was someone standing behind me grasping my fingers to stop me. I stared at myself in the mirror. I was totally naked except for the necklace. Although it wasn't tight, it felt very warm against my skin.

I heard my voices telling me to leave it on, but then, for the first time, I heard another voice, a different-sounding voice, deeper, darker. It was coming from the far right corner of the room, where there was a shadow that shouldn't be there because it was so lit up.

“Take it off,” the voice whispered. “You'll never know the truth about yourself if you let them control you. Take it off.”

There was something hypnotic about the voice.

“Take it off. Don't wear it all the time.”

I started to reach back and stopped. And then, as if a spotlight had hit it, the shadow evaporated, and the room was silent.

I went to bed with the necklace on, but I couldn't help but wonder if the voice in the shadows was the one I should have obeyed.

I was happier in my new school than I had been in my previous one for many reasons, but the main one was that my classes were smaller, which gave me more opportunity to become friends with others my age. I didn't want to make a big deal of it at my birthday dinner and sound too optimistic. I hadn't been at the school that long, but pretty quickly, there were five of us who were drawn to be with one another. I could sense their positive energy toward me. What I feared was that my parents would prevent me from doing things with them, as they had done with the girls in my old school, and these budding friendships would die on the vine just as quickly.

The five of us girls quickly became like a knot moving along the corridors, eating lunch at the same table in the cafeteria, sharing food, and always sharing homework. By the end of the second week of school, we were already commenting about one another's
clothes and talking about our hair, lipstick, and nail polish, and of course talking incessantly about boys, all older than us. Of course, they all knew more about these boys than they thought I could, but once one of them was pointed out to me, it was as if I had known him all my life.

I actually felt a little sorry for the boys in our class, even though I thought a number of them were quite nice. From the way my new friends and others talked about them, dating one couldn't be further from their minds. It was almost as if it would be an immature thing to do. For one thing, none of them could drive or had a car of his own, and few, if any, reeked of the worldly experience that made older boys more dangerous and, therefore, more attractive.

Actually, the more I listened to my four new friends, the more the world outside of my very confined home life came into focus. I didn't want to tell them that I had yet to go to a real party or be with any special boy, even if just to meet at a mall and go to a movie. I was sure they'd be shocked to learn that I had never stayed over at a friend's house, either.

The closer I became with my four friends, the more my mind swirled with visions about them. I tried to keep most of that to myself. Occasionally, I slipped up and said something that amazed them because it was about something they hadn't told anyone else, like when Ginny Lynch found her father's contraceptives in a bedroom drawer and thought they were some balloon toy.

“I bet you were surprised when you learned about birth control,” I
blurted when we were having a conversation about our sexual experiences.

She blanched the color of a fresh red apple. “What do you mean?”

“What you found in your parents' bedroom drawer.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I thought I heard you mention it,” I said, so confidently that she blinked and wondered whether she had. “Weren't you shocked when you learned the truth about them?”

She laughed and then described to the others her discovery and how her parents had reacted. “My mother took me aside and gave me my first sex talk. I was only seven!” she added.

The others all claimed it was the first time she had mentioned such a thing to any of them.

“Who did you hear her telling that to?” Mia Stein asked me, making it sound like I had uncovered a betrayal. How dare she tell anyone else but them? Everyone waited for my answer.

I shook my head. “I don't remember,” I said, but covered it up by quickly describing my own first sexual discovery. I hadn't actually seen it, but I had envisioned a girl in my seventh-grade class masturbating in the girls' room at my old school. I described how I had discovered her. That got everyone else back to talking about their experiences, and the incident passed.

But one particular day, I was more aggressive and far more specific about one of my visions because
I wanted my friend Darlene Cork to be happy. I thought that if I could help her, she would become an even closer friend.

“If you really want Todd Wells to pay attention to you, Darlene,” I told her as casually as I could at lunch, “then let your hair down. Stop pinning it up so severely, and wear something red all the time, even if it's just a ribbon in your hair.”

She froze, a forkful of mashed potato hovering in her wide-open mouth.

“What?” Ginny Lynch said, sitting back with a smile of amazement rumbling through her pretty face. Her almond-shaped, stunning hazel-green eyes brightened. “Wear something red all the time in order to catch Todd Wells's attention? How do you know he likes that color? What do you really know about Todd Wells, Sage? He's in the eleventh grade. When do you even speak to him? You just entered this school. And what does wearing red have to do with any of it anyway?”