Sage's Eyes (9 page)

“Do human beings have instinct, too?” she asked, looking directly at me when she did.

“We say any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based on prior experience. It's a product of innate biological factors. I've given you examples of this with animals and insects. We talk about humans having a maternal instinct or a survival instinct. But these examples don't fit our scientific definition, a pattern of behavior that must exist in every member of the species and cannot be overcome willfully. So I'd say no.”

When he paused, I looked at Kay. She was smiling at me as if she had been validated. I looked away quickly.

Most everyone else in the class wasn't very interested in Kay's question. Mia looked thoughtful for a moment but then went back to her doodling. After class, on the way to math, Kay stepped up beside me.

“I guess it's like you say, you're just a lucky guesser,” she said. “Maybe you should play poker or something.”

“Maybe,” I replied, trying to make light of it all. “My uncle Wade the magician is a great poker player. He makes more money playing poker than he does performing. At least, that's what he told me.”

“You should be tested by the CIA,” she added, but then laughed. She looked relieved that my claim of having good instincts didn't hold water with our science teacher.

“I'll let you know when they call me,” I said.

She laughed again and sped up to catch Ginny.

I suddenly saw myself drifting away from my new friends before I had really gotten to do much with them—or, rather, them pulling away from me. It wasn't going to happen today or tomorrow, but it was going to happen, and what I saw for myself was a new darkness, a new loneliness unlike any I had previously felt. There was something else out there, however, something coming that might make all the difference.

When Ginny invited me to a party at her house the following weekend, I hoped my vision was wrong this time and I wouldn't lose my friends.

“Darlene and Todd will be coming together,” she said, “and Jason Marks will be there, too. Mia insisted I invite him despite what you said about him and what we all know he's like. Anyone yet you'd like me to invite?” she asked in a teasing tone. “I know there are boys interested in you. Darlene says Todd told her Rickie Blaine has been watching you and asking about you. You know who he is, right?”

How could I tell her that I was always aware of anyone who looked at me more than others did? It was as if I had some sort of radar that picked up on an intense gaze, a whisper about me, or a smile sent in my direction even before I turned and saw it. “Yes. He's
good friends with Jason, but as they say, if you lie down with dogs, you'll come up with fleas.”

“What?” She smiled. “Who says that?”

“I heard my uncle say it,” I replied quickly. I hadn't. I had no idea where I had heard it, but like so many other quotes I could pull out of some dark pocket in my mind, it was just there on the tip of my tongue.

“At least they're not boring boys,” Ginny said. “You're not afraid, are you?”

“No, but I don't like wasting my time. Invite whom you want, Ginny. I'll be fine,” I said.

“Probably of all of us, you will be,” she replied, which I hoped was prophetic even though I knew that wasn't her sole reason for saying it. The sarcasm dripped from her lips. Still, I thought, maybe everyone had psychic powers and some just had more.

I laughed to myself. What if every high school in America had a fortune-teller in a booth in the lobby? After all, who needed a fortune-teller more than teenagers, people with limited experience, especially when it came to relationships? Teenagers were supposedly more impulsive and more indifferent about the future, believing and acting as though they were invulnerable, if not immortal. They took more risks with drugs and driving. They smoked without worrying about lung cancer and were more apt to drink too much alcohol, and they generally enjoyed disobeying rules and regulations.

Maybe because of how I was being brought up, I really was less of a teenager than my new friends were.
Maybe that was why they thought I acted older, even accusing me of being like a mother. Being aware of consequences made you more cautious. It was worse for me. I not only had more awareness of consequences, but I envisioned them so vividly they made my head spin and my heart race.

We had just finished reading and discussing the play
Our Town
by Thornton Wilder in English class. In the third act, Emily Webb, who has died in childbirth, comes back but at an earlier time, and what's tragic and sad about that, why she was warned not to go back, is that she can see everyone's future and knows what sadness awaits, how old they will become, and who else will die early. It's too much for her to bear.

The whole time we were reading it, I kept thinking of myself and looking at my friends in the class. I had the terrible thought that maybe someone like me shouldn't have any friends and shouldn't invest emotions and trust in anyone. I'd become too attached, and I'd eventually know something sad and tragic about them. I'd be like Emily Webb.

All my life so far, I had seen things others didn't see, I had known things I couldn't explain knowing, and I had heard voices whispering warnings. I had hoped that if I worked harder at making friends and being more of a normal teenage girl, I could put all that behind me. Maybe it would stop; maybe my parents wouldn't be so worried about me; but mostly, maybe I wouldn't be so worried about myself.

When my mother was there to pick me up after school, I told her about Ginny's party.

“Lynch,” she said. “Why do I know that name so well?”

“Her father is president of the Dorey First Trust bank.”

“Oh, right. Well, what sort of a party is it?”

“Just a party. Not a birthday or anything.”

“We'll see,” she said.

My heart sank. Wasn't this the sort of thing she wanted for me, making friends and socializing? Were things going to be the same for me in this school as they were in my old school? Did more birthdays for me mean nothing?

“Oh,” she added quickly, “your uncle Wade is coming this weekend.”

“I'll still see him during the day. The party's at night, Mother.”

“We'll see,” she said again.

I didn't argue about it, but as soon as my father came home, she told him. I was in the living room doing some reading for history class.

“That's good,” I heard him say.

“I'm not so sure.”

“Why not? If we want her to be normal, we've got to treat her like she is,” he said.

They spoke too low for me to hear the rest of it, but a few minutes later, they both came into the living room. I put my book aside and looked up.

“This will be your first party as a teenager,” my mother began. I smiled. They were going to let me go. “We're not going to give you all the warnings your friends get from their parents, I'm sure. We trust you
not to do stupid things. There is one rule you must obey, however,” she added. “You don't leave the party with anyone. You don't go anywhere else. We'll come for you at eleven thirty. That's more than adequate time.”

“Besides,” my father said, smiling, “if we wait until twelve, my car will turn into a pumpkin.”

I thought that was it. My father turned to go up to shower and change for dinner.

“Is there a particular boy you are going to be with?” my mother asked.

“No.”

She nodded, looking satisfied, but then looked at me more intently. “Have you told any of your girlfriends things about themselves that no one else would know? Are you still doing that sort of thing?”

She asked the question so fast that I held my breath for a moment. My father heard her ask it, too, and stopped in the doorway. So they knew about what I had done in my old school with Sidney Urban after all, and here I had done something like that again. She would surely be angry about it. There was no sense hiding it. She could find out just the way she had before.

“I gave one girl advice on how to win the attention of a boy she liked.”

“What sort of advice?”

“How to wear her hair, a color he liked, stuff like that.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Why?”

“Do you like the boy? Did you do it to keep the boy from liking her more?”

“Felicia!” my father said.

“Let her answer, Mark.”

“No. I did it to help her. I don't want the boy for a boyfriend,” I said. Even though it was the first time she had accused me of such a thing, it brought tears to my eyes. “She's my friend. I don't want to hurt her.”

“And? Did it help her?”

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at my father. He wasn't smiling, but he looked happy about my replies.

“How did you know what to tell her?”

“Just a feeling, an idea I had when I watched him with other girls. Lucky guess, I suppose, or maybe it was bound to happen anyway, and nothing I said or didn't say would have made any difference.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Take my advice. Don't do that again, Sage.”

“Do what?”

“Tell anyone how to get what he or she wants, especially new boyfriends.”

“C'mon, Felicia,” my father said. She looked at him. “Teenagers giving each other advice is just them being teenagers.”

“Never mind what other teenagers do. You be careful. You especially don't start talking about those visions you used to have, understand? Do you?” she demanded, her eyes big, her pupils floating in some unimaginable fear.

I nodded quickly. “Yes, Mother.”

“Good. You know how it frightened the parents of other girls at your old school when you warned them
about certain things they did, how something could bring them great harm.” Then, to drive it home, she added, “That was why you never had any real friends. They didn't want to hear such things.”

“That wasn't why,” I countered. Rarely did I ever do that. “You wouldn't let me do anything with them.”

She stared at me a moment, her eyes darker.

“She's partly right,” my father quickly interjected.

“Maybe, but she still frightened their parents,” she insisted. “She'd better not do anything like that in this school.”

He didn't disagree. In fact, he nodded.

She finally turned to leave.

Don't tell anyone how to get what he or she wants? Don't reveal any visions even if it might help someone? Parents would keep their children from being my friends again? Soon I'd be too terrified to open my mouth or offer an opinion about anything, even homework.

What parent anywhere in this city, I wondered, would tell her child such a thing? And look so terrified about something so harmless?

Or wasn't it harmless?

The cloak of mystery that had surrounded me in my house all my life wasn't opening as I grew older. Secrets weren't being revealed.

If anything, they were multiplying like rabbits.

The moment I awoke Saturday morning, I knew Uncle Wade was in the house. From as far back as I could remember, as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, I could sense the current mood in my home. If something was troubling either my father or my mother, I would feel the tension in the air, no matter how bright the morning was. My senses went beyond the music of singing birds or the richness of a soft blue, cloudless sky. It was as if heavy waves of troubled thoughts flowed under my door and into my room, whirling around my bed.

Most of the time, my parents would not tell me about anything that brought worry or unhappiness to them. The tree of secrets grew more leaves. I could see them in the way they looked at each other, and I could hear them in the deep silences that fell between their words to me and to each other. I was always afraid to ask what was wrong. If I did, my mother's eyes would widen with panic, and I would feel like I had done
something to add to their problems just by sensing they were there and that they thought they could hide them.

Perhaps they could—from others, but never from me.

I had never known a time when Uncle Wade's arrival had brought any cold winds or dark clouds. It was always just the opposite. When he appeared, it was as if all the air in our house had been replaced with a fresh new atmosphere in which smiles and infectious laughter could float through rooms with ease. There was a new lightness in my parents' voices, and whatever fears or worries they had about me or anything else could be put away on shelves or stuffed into drawers for the time being.

I always had a new injection of energy when he arrived, too, and that was especially true this morning. I hadn't seen Uncle Wade in months and months, and besides looking forward to seeing him, I anticipated his bringing me some sort of unique gift from somewhere he had performed.

As quickly as I could, I washed my face and brushed my hair. I chose something bright to wear, a sea-blue top with one of my newer pairs of skinny jeans. Lately, I had been wearing my hair down. It had grown to about two inches below my shoulders. Until now, my mother had insisted on having it cut shorter. Every day, I expected her to demand that I do just that, but she had yet to make an issue of it. I put on my amber necklace, slipped sockless into a pair of black and blue Skechers, and practically bounced down the stairs. They were all in the kitchen nook.