“What’s worse?” he asked. “Disobeying that rule or lying to them about it? Lying poisons everything. My father used to say it rusts trust.”
“Not telling her I looked in that cabinet is the only time I’ve ever really lied to my mother.”
“Well, you’ll be able to tell her that. Look, Sage, how can they trust you with things if you don’t trust them with things? Right?”
I nodded, but it didn’t lessen my fear. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I will tell them.”
“Get off the maybe, Sage. Make a decision, and be firm about it. He who hesitates is lost.”
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” I fired back.
He laughed. Then he quickly grew serious again. “This won’t make you a fool.”
“Should I do it now, tonight?”
“We don’t want them to think you’re doing it because I told you to,” he said. “And if that’s your only reason, then you shouldn’t do it. Do it when you feel you want to, when you need to for yourself. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Uncle Wade.”
“Like I said, you’ll be fine.”
We rode on in silence, a silence I tried to penetrate to see if he really believed what he had said or if he had said it to help himself believe it, but just as with my parents, it was still impossible to probe beyond where he wanted me to go. There was that invisible magnetic wall that kept me outside with my questions unanswered.
My mother didn’t lack any questions when we entered the house, however. Both she and my father were waiting for me in the living room.
“Here she is,” Uncle Wade announced, “home safe and sound.”
I saw the way my mother and he looked at each other. Pages could be transcribed from what their eyes said.
“Come in and sit,” my mother told me. “Tell us about your party.”
I sat on the settee. My father was in his favorite easy chair with the thick arms and plush cushions. My mother sat across from me on the matching settee. They had both been drinking their homemade elderberry wine. My father looked relaxed, but my mother looked poised to pounce.
“Well?” she said when I hesitated.
“There were more kids there than I expected,” I began. “Ginny ordered in pizzas and other food from a restaurant. I thought the music was too loud. The house has speakers in every room. You practically had to shout to be heard even if you were standing right next to someone.”
I saw my father’s lips soften into a small smile. He glanced at my mother, but she had her eyes fixed on me as if she could X-ray every word I spoke to see the bones of truth.
“And were there alcoholic drinks?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I didn’t drink any. Not everyone did,” I added. That was true. Neither Peter nor Danny nor Cassie had.
“There were drugs, too, weren’t there?” she followed.
“I didn’t actually see any, but I thought there were some drugs being passed around. Only some of the kids did that.”
“You didn’t do any of it?”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Where were her parents?” my father asked.
“In Boston, visiting Ginny’s aunt.”
“So the party’s still going on?” he asked.
“Yes, but others were leaving soon after me.”
“And the rest?” my mother asked.
“Some were going to a dance club.”
I felt like a spy on my friends. I told the truth, however. Uncle Wade was watching me, and his prediction about lying was still floating in the air between us.
“Did they want you to go, too?”
“Yes.”
“Did you want to go?” she asked. “I know I told you not to, but did you want to?”
I hesitated just a second too long.
“Temptation is the siren that calls you to your downfall.”
“I told them I couldn’t go,” I said.
“That’s not the same as saying you don’t want to go. What kind of dance club permits people your age this late at night anyway? Well?” she demanded.
“It’s called the Doll House. One of the boys is friendly with the owner and could get everyone in.”
She looked at my father with that “I told you so” expression on her face.
“She didn’t go,” he said. “She didn’t make up some lie and cover up her going.”
My mother turned back to me and just stared for a moment until another thought blossomed in her eyes. “Were there any adults at the party during the evening?” she asked.
“No.”
“Did you see anyone outside the house?”
“What?”
“Someone, a man, watching the house?”
“Felicia,” my father said. She looked at him. He had a stern, unyielding look on his face.
She turned back to me again. “You can go to bed,” she said, sitting back.
“Why do you always ask me if I’ve seen someone watching me, following me? Who is supposed to be doing that?”
“Don’t question me,” she snapped, her consonants and vowels so sharp I thought she might have cut her tongue on the words. “We told you. There are perverts out there, stalkers just waiting for someone as innocent and trusting as you.”
“I’m not innocent and trusting.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m not stupid, Mother.”
“You think you know evil when you see it?” she asked, this time with a strange, wry smile. “Are you that familiar with deception, with all the seven deadly sins? Do you think you could survive on your own in the world out there?”
I looked at my uncle, hoping he might say something to support me, but he looked pensive and said nothing.
“No. You’re right, Mother.” I rose slowly. “Good night,” I said. “Thank you again, Uncle Wade. Are you leaving early in the morning?”
He nodded.
“You’ll be gone before I get up, won’t you?” I asked him.
He smiled at my foresight. There was no need to put up a wall to protect himself from something so simple. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
“Okay.”
He looked at my mother, and then he hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. I turned and hurried up to my room. My heart felt like a balloon bouncing in my chest. I was sure no other girl’s parents would be cross-examining her about the party like mine just had, and even if other girls—or boys, even—were asked some of those questions, I doubted they would be as honest with their answers. Yet even though I was, I could see my mother wasn’t satisfied. Perhaps she still feared that I was being conniving or manipulative. She was always looking for some evil motive in practically anything I did or said. What had I ever done to nurture that fear in her? Once again, I wondered why, if she was so paranoid about an orphan baby, she would have wanted to adopt one.
But tonight I wasn’t going to be able to think about myself even if I wanted to very much.
Almost the moment I closed my eyes and my head settled on my fluffy pillow, that image of Cassie being held down by her father returned, only now, alone in my own darkness, it was even more vivid. The terror in her eyes was sharp. I shuddered and suddenly realized that I wasn’t just visualizing something happening to someone else. It was happening to me! I had slipped into Cassie, taken her place in the event. I felt the pressure on my own wrists, the weight of his body on mine, and then the violation. The graphic experience brought a scream to my lips, but just as I had pictured this scene when I confronted Cassie at the party, I swallowed back that scream. It resonated deep inside me.
The most frightening thing was that I couldn’t break out of it. I struggled, twisted and turned every which way, but I was trapped in my own vision. Never before had something I saw in my mind’s eye, what Uncle Wade called my third eye, shackled me so firmly. I was as completely subdued as Cassie had been, probably many times. It wasn’t until it had ended for her that it ended for me.
The moment it did, I s
at up and turned on my table lamp. I needed the illumination to burn away the remnants of this horrid revelation. I rubbed my arms and legs as if I were washing off the sweaty lust that had smothered my resistance. I was still trembling inside. I had to stand up and walk around my room to calm myself. I paused at my mirror and looked at myself.
Yes, I saw myself as someone else many times, the most recent time being my birthday, when I envisioned myself being given exactly the same amber necklace my parents would give me, but I had been able to shake myself out of the nightmare. This was the first time I’d had a vision that threatened to steal me away, keep me in it.
Had whatever was wrong with me gotten worse, this condition of delusion? Would it get so bad that the time was coming when I really wouldn’t be able to escape one of these visions? I would disappear, literally become someone else, somewhere else, either in the past or now, like someone with a multiple-personality syndrome suddenly trapped forever in one of them.
I had to go into my bathroom and wash my face in cold water. It helped. I felt myself calming down, but then I looked at my wrists in the mirror image and felt like I had stepped off a glacier and slipped into the icy Arctic Ocean. I was freezing from my ankles up, and when it reached the top of my head, I would shatter and fall into shards of myself on the floor of my bathroom.
There, suddenly, on both my wrists were black-and-blue marks resembling those that would come from someone much stronger squeezing me with a fierce, raging pressure as tightly as iron clamps.
I stepped away from the mirror, hoping the sight was just in the glass, but when I looked down, I saw the black-and-blue marks still there. I gasped and put my wrists under the cold running water, hoping that would wash them away. It didn’t.
I was in a panic. I turned toward the door, intending to go out to my parents and my uncle for help, but I stopped. How could I explain this, what I had seen, without my mother accusing me of something even more evil? I had to get hold of myself, calm myself down. I swallowed back my terror and retreated to my bed. For a moment, I was afraid to turn off the lamp. Never before had the darkness frightened me like this. Where were my comforting voices when I needed them? I waited, hoping to hear some soothing whispers, but I heard nothing and felt nothing but the pounding of my own petrified heart.
I snapped off the lamp and looked into the darkness, waiting for my confidence to build enough for me to close my eyes. It was finally emotional exhaustion that shut them. Merciful sleep came rushing in over me like a warm ocean wave washing away the fear.
But I had no doubt that the fear would return.
7
The first thing I did the moment I awoke was look at my wrists. I was thankful to see that the black-and-blue marks were gone. I lay back on my pillow and wondered if I had imagined it all. It was something I could ask Uncle Wade, I thought, but then I suddenly felt his absence like a cold draft seeping through the windows. The warm comfort his presence had brought me was gone, and in its place was only this chilling trepidation. The one thing I didn’t want to do, however, was reveal my feelings to my mother. I was sure she only would return to the questioning with the same policewoman’s intensity with which she had attacked me on my return from the party last night. She might even think my obvious unease had more to do with something I had done at the party or something that had been done to me than it had to do with Cassie Marlowe, no matter what I said.
What could I say about Cassie’s situation anyway? I had spent a good deal of the morning wondering what, if anything, I should do about what I felt certain I had discovered. Uncle Wade’s cautions still echoed in my ears, but my visions were too real to simply be ignored. There had to be a way to help her.
Later, in the afternoon, I decided to call her. Her father answered the phone on the first ring, as if he was on constant duty to intercept anyone trying to reach his daughter. She had told my girlfriends and me that she wasn’t permitted to have her own cell phone or a landline number. She said her father believed that half, if not more, of the problems with young people today came from the time they wasted talking and texting each other about nonsense.
One of the reasons Cassie was not popular with other girls was the severe restrictions with which her father had shackled her. It was as if other girls thought that hanging around with her might infect them with the same chains and constrict their activities and ruin their young lives. Their parents might get similar ideas and employ keys and locks where they had never used them. Mia Stein said she thought Cassie might be just the one to get the rest of us in trouble because she was so envious of our freedom and fun. Jealousy, after all, came with the territory teenagers inhabited. Celebrating someone losing an advantage or a privilege was practically a team sport. I knew that was the main reason Ginny was upset that she had to invite Cassie to the party. Ginny feared that Cassie was just the sort who might get her grounded once she had witnessed what went on.
“Who is this?” Cassie’s father demanded. I could see him holding the phone the way a Neanderthal would hold a club, readying himself to pound my voice against the wall.
“Sage Healy, Mr. Marlowe. I wanted to talk to Cassie about our math homework, please.”
He grunted. “Just a moment.”
It took so long for her to come to the phone that I suspected he wasn’t going to tell her I was calling and let me wait until I gave up, but she finally said hello in a tiny voice. I could almost feel her trembling through the phone. Was he standing right beside her?
“I thought we had a good time last night,” I began. “I hope you enjoyed it.”
“Oh, yes, I did.”
“Maybe you and I can do something together next weekend. My father would drive us to the movies or—”
“I thought this was about math,” I heard her father say. He had been listening in on another phone. My heart sank.
“I was just about to talk about math, sir,” I said.
“You can talk about it in school,” he replied. “Hang up, Cassie. Now!”
I heard the phone click. He remained on the other phone listening for me to hang up. I could hear him breathing. I decided to wait him out, and finally, he hung up, too. I held the receiver for a few moments, my ear buzzing and the heat in my face making me feel sunburnt. After I hung up, I sat there fuming.
He was destroying her, destroying his own daughter. The man was sick and cruel. I had to do something about this. For the rest of the weekend, I mulled over possible things I could do. Uncle Wade had been right. Without any tangible evidence and Cassie coming forward herself, what could I really do? But I wouldn’t just give up. Twice my mother asked me why I was in such deep thought. Suspicions came out of her eyes, ears, and mouth like black bubbles.
And then she finally asked what I had expected she might.
“Did you tell us everything you should about that party?” she demanded. “Did you hold something back, something you did that we might find out? Are we going to find out from someone else? Well?”
“What else could I tell you? We danced, we ate, and we talked,” I replied. “I told you some were drinking alcohol, and some passed around one of those drugs to make you high and wild, but no one was building bombs. Can’t you stop making me feel like a terrorist every time I set foot out of this house?”
The words came out before I could stop them. I was trying to hide my deeper worry about Cassie with the tone of frustration and defiance in my voice. It set her back for a moment and sent her looking for my father. He returned with her, and they both simply stood looking at me as if they saw the early evidence of some Third World disease, a rash, spots, pimples on my face.
“What?” I finally had to ask.
“Your mother tells me you were snippy with her,” my father said.
“I’m sorry if I sounded that way, but I don’t know why she’s still asking me all these questions about the first real party I’ve ever gone to with others my age. How am I supposed to make any friends anywhere if I can’t go anyplace
they go or do anything they do? And then I have to rat on them like a narcotics agent or something.”
“Rat on them?” my father said. I didn’t think what I had said was so terrible, but they both looked like I had admitted to a murder.
“I can’t help it that some of the kids do bad things, but I haven’t done anything to give either of you reason to think I’m some kind of juvenile delinquent,” I protested, the tears building under my lids.
They both continued to look at me as if I had bloodstains on my clothes and hands and was caught standing over a corpse. Neither spoke, so I continued.
“I don’t go anywhere you don’t want me to go. I don’t get into trouble in school. My grades are very good. I never cheat or steal. I’ve never been disrespectful to my teachers, and yet I’m so restricted compared with anyone else in my class,” I added, not mentioning Cassie, who was obviously chained down more.
“Satan was an angel before he fell,” my mother said.
“What’s that mean? You think I could be Satan or a fallen angel?”
“When you were little, you were always disrespectful, embarrassing us with those tall tales even though I forbade you to do it,” she reminded me. “We had to send you to a therapist, remember?”
“But I’m not doing that now.” I looked to my father for some relief, but he seemed unsure of what to say. He continued to study me. “I said I was sorry if I sounded snippy. I didn’t do anything bad last night, but it seems I still have to deny it. I’ll probably have to deny it for weeks.”
I couldn’t imagine any of my girlfriends being reprimanded for exhibiting just a little frustration and sarcasm in their voices when their parents spoke to them. In fact, the parents of most of my new friends probably would be grateful to know that was all the misbehavior they exhibited. Most, if not all, of those parents were unaware of how often their daughters smoked pot, took some Ecstasy or something similar, drank alcohol, were sexually active with boys, smoked in the girls’ room, and generally lied about most places they went and things they did. Maybe my mother was right. I was so angelic that I had to fall sometime.
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