Sage's Eyes

by V. C. Andrews

  “No,” Mia said quickly, too quickly for Ginny, who nudged her.

  “It was boring,” Ginny said. “We decided to come here to see if you two were still here or something.”

  “Well, we’ve returned. I was going to buy Sage an ice cream. I’d love to buy one for you girls, too.”

  “An ice cream,” Ginny said dryly. “That’s your big night.”

  “We did go for pizza, and then I took Sage to meet my father,” he said.

  I was uncomfortable with the way Ginny was looking at me, but I didn’t reveal anything in my face.

  She shrugged. “Might as well have an ice cream,” she muttered. “Apparently, there’s nothing better to do.”

  We started into the mall.

  “What would you call something better?” Summer asked her. He held my hand, and they walked beside me.

  “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,” she said, and he laughed.

  Of course, I was full of questions I couldn’t ask. What happened when they realized they were all naked? How long did it take to get dressed? What did the other girls do? What did the boys do?

  Summer bought our cones, and we sat at one of the tables in front of the ice cream store. The mall was thinning out. People had already left the last showings of most of the films at the movie complex, and the restaurants, even the pizza place, were nearly empty.

  “Who was at the party?” he asked.

  “The usual suspects,” Ginny replied, and she rattled off the list of boys and the other two girls.

  “Sounds like a small party. Maybe that was why it was boring,” Summer said. “Didn’t Jason have anything to liven it up for you?”

  Neither girl responded. They looked at each other, and then Ginny offered a quick, sharp “No.”

  “Well,” Summer said, looking at me, “I think I’ll be on my way. It’s good the girls are back and can go out of the mall with you when your father arrives. That way, he’ll believe you were all together.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is. Why does she have to hide the fact that she was with you instead?” Mia demanded.

  “She won’t much longer. Everything good takes a little time. You’re not the sort of girl who rushes into things on the first date, are you?” he teased her. I squeezed his hand under the table.

  “At least I have a real first date,” she replied petulantly.

  “I must say I’m really surprised,” Summer said. “Wasn’t there anyone at the party you liked?”

  “They were all immature idiots,” Mia said.

  “Boys will be boys,” Summer replied.

  Mia turned away, and Ginny looked down.

  Summer stood up.

  “Okay, good night, girls. I’ll call you tomorrow, Sage,” he said. He leaned over to kiss me but kept his eyes open to watch Mia’s and Ginny’s faces. Then he smiled and walked off.

  “Did you have a good time with him?” Mia asked immediately.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his father like, then?”

  “He’s charming,” I said.

  “Charming?” She looked at Ginny. “Who calls anyone charming, for God’s sake? Is he sexy, as sexy as Summer?”

  “He’s elegant, mysterious, very handsome, and yes, sexy,” I said. “I would call that charming.”

  She looked disappointed.

  “So why did you two leave the party so early?” I asked, recalling what they had intended to do to me. “Something happen that upset you? Someone get too drunk and throw up, or what?”

  Neither spoke, but they looked more devastated.

  “What?” I pursued.

  “We were drugged,” Ginny said.

  “Drugged?”

  “Jason must have put something in our drinks.”

  “What happened?”

  “If you dare tell anyone . . .”

  “Jason probably will,” Mia said sadly.

  “No, he won’t, or we’ll describe him in centimeters,” Ginny said, making it clear what she meant.

  Mia smiled and nodded.

  “So what was it?” I pursued.

  “All of us went into some hypnotic state or something. When we became conscious again, we were all naked.”

  “Naked?” I was so good at sounding surprised that even I believed it. Summer would surely be proud of me, I thought.

  “We were drugged with something new. All the boys must have been in on it. They must have stripped us and then gotten undressed themselves as a practical joke. They claimed they didn’t and put on this almost convincing reaction of shock and surprise, but how else could it have happened?”

  They looked at me for an answer.

  “Well?” Mia asked. “You seem to know everything else.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “How else could it have happened? I suppose you’re right not to believe their reactions.”

  “You’re damn lucky you weren’t there,” Mia said, but more mournfully than as if she was happy for me. She looked ready to cry. I was sure she had, that they all had.

  But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking about the spiked lemonade they had planned for me to drink. “Yes,” I said. “Damn lucky.”

  17

  When my father drove up to fetch me, Ginny and Mia made me promise them again that I would never tell what had happened to them at the party.

  “Especially don’t tell your parents,” Ginny said. “My parents find out about this, and I’m dead,” she emphasized, her eyes wide with fear but also with a clearly unveiled threat shot in my direction.

  “No one will find out anything from me, Ginny,” I assured her, but then I looked at Mia. “But someone will talk too much,” I added, with the firmness of any prediction I had ever made. She knew and felt it, too. “Night,” I said, and got into my father’s car.

  “How was the movie?” he asked immediately.

  “It’s a great story,” I said, and I repeated it almost word for word the way Summer had related it to me. It took almost the entire trip home.

  “Your mother tells me you probably met this new boy at the mall.”

  “I did,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. I had met him at the mall, only right after my father had dropped me off.

  “When are you bringing him around to meet us?”

  “Soon,” I said.

  “Remember, tomorrow your great-uncle and great-aunt arrive.”

  “I have it marked down on my right palm, and I won’t wash tonight,” I said.

  I thought it was funny, but he gave me a nasty look. “Sarcasm doesn’t look good on you, Sage.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly.

  “I know it’s in fashion with you kids today, but I think it’s a clear way to show disrespect. Some parents ignore it. We won’t.”

  “Okay, Dad,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  I had never heard him sound so furious. Something was changing. He was nervous about something. I could sense it. He was quiet the rest of the way, and so was I.

  My mother was waiting for me with her questions just as she always was when I returned from somewhere. Tonight it was where did we eat? When did we go to the movies? Who was there? What did we do after the movies? And most important of all, did I notice anyone in particular watching us, watching me? The more she asked, the angrier I could feel myself getting. Summer and his father were right. My parents, especially my mother, were obsessive and unfair. Look at how much trouble the other girls had gotten into, and yet look at how much freedom they had.

  “I don’t know why you’re continuing to treat me this way. You’re making me feel like some sort of criminal. I didn’t go out stealing. I just met friends. I want to have friends, and I want to have a good time, too!” I cried. “Why do I have to be treated like I’m on parole or something? What have I done to deserve it?”

  Hot tears burned under my eyelids. I could feel the heat in my face. It was as if a bomb had gone off. The silence that followed was shattering. I thought even the window
s had rattled.

  My parents didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Neither of them had ever seen me this way. I was surprised at my outburst myself, but I didn’t feel bad about it. I had almost used Roman Dante’s analogy and talked to them about holding the sword too tightly and crushing the bird, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to start my mother questioning where I had gotten that idea. I had never taken fencing lessons, so she would go on about another one of my inexplicable memories and tell me I hadn’t improved at all.

  “Too many parents don’t take enough interest in their children’s activities,” my mother said very calmly, but it sounded like a weak argument. I could see she knew it, too.

  My father finally interceded, telling her that I should get to sleep. “Alexis will be here late in the morning,” he reminded her, but he made it sound like all her fears and concerns would be alleviated once my great-uncle Alexis and Aunt Suzume arrived.

  She relented, nodded, and sat, still looking a little stunned. I said good night and hurried up the stairs. The moment I closed the door, I felt a great sense of relief but also the weight of my emotional roller-coaster ride from the moment I had met Summer to just now, when I’d finally escaped my mother’s third degree. I was exhausted. It took me only minutes to get into bed, but I didn’t fall asleep quickly as I had expected. Instead, my mind began to play back images like a slide show on the closed lids of my eyes.

  Once again, I saw the dumb, stunned looks on the faces of the girls and boys at Jason’s house after they had swallowed Summer’s pills. It was truly as if their brains had been shut off. Their eyes were as glassy as the eyes of the dead, stone-cold still, blind to everything in front of them. After he had whispered in each one’s ear, I once again saw the way they began to undress, slowly at first, moving robotically, and then suddenly in a frenzy to beat everyone else to nudity. When I had looked back from the doorway, the girls were already totally naked, and the boys were catching up and turning to face them. No one was touching anyone else. It was as if they had been turned into statues.

  The silhouetted man I had seen in the dim light began to haunt me, too. He floated in and out, and then, in what was more like a nightmare vision, he was sitting right beside me in the pizza restaurant. I opened my eyes, and for a moment, in the glow of light seeping through my curtains, he seemed to be there in my room, standing just inside my door, looking at me. He had no face. I leaned over to flick on my side table lamp, and the image evaporated.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I heard my voices whisper. “Sleep is your escape.”

  I shut off my lamp and lay back. Think of something pleasant, I told myself. Summer’s long kiss came to mind, but I shook it off. I wasn’t aroused the way any other girl surely would be. I wasn’t preparing to fantasize about making love to him. I was hurrying to go through the darkness of sleep to find another place, a comfortable, safe place in which I could curl up and forget. I heard another voice, soothing, loving. It came from a woman shrouded in a memory so old and thin that it was difficult to imagine her face. Her voice was enough. In moments, I was warm and comfortable and asleep.

  In the morning after breakfast, I helped my mother prepare what would be a much bigger lunch than we usually had on weekends. Usually, we had a big breakfast, but today we had a small one. It was more like a day for a holiday luncheon. She had bought a turkey to roast. We made homemade cranberry sauce, creamed spinach, and sweet potatoes. My mother was a good pie maker. She always prepared her own crust and had a secret recipe for her mincemeat pie, something I knew was traditionally served during the Christmas season in England. My father once let slip that her recipe went back to the thirteenth century, handed down by her ancestors, but then she would answer no questions about her ancestors.

  The first time I remembered eating it, I thought I had eaten it many times. My parents swore that wasn’t possible. My mother made it only on very special occasions, and my father said he could count on the fingers of one hand when they were. But it was like any of my other inexplicable memories, still true to me despite what he or my mother said.

  Uncle Alexis and Aunt Suzume arrived a little before eleven. The first thing I thought was that a great-uncle should look much older than he did. Aunt Suzume looked only a little older than my mother, if that. My father treated them both with great deference. Someone would think that members of a great royal family had come visiting. I could see the adoration and respect in my father’s face when he greeted them. They weren’t embarrassed by it. In fact, they looked like they had expected the adulation and reverence.

  Uncle Alexis was a little taller than my father and did have a stately and imposing posture, offering his hand with the august manner of someone imperial, almost pompous. Aunt Suzume was barely five feet tall, with exquisite facial features and a pearl-like sheen to her complexion. It was a face that looked lifted off a delicate, flawless cameo pin, and yet, despite her diminutive size, she, too, seemed to have been brought here in a royal horse-drawn carriage.

  Of course, I understood that older relatives were supposed to enjoy some veneration and honor because of their age or wisdom or successful lives of which the family could be proud. Unlike most of my classmates, I had no grandparents who could visit and leave behind some pearls of wisdom that would help guide me to a more successful life. That was the way it should be. Sometimes I had the sense that it once was true for me. It was simply another inexplicable memory of things past, a memory better kept to myself.

  “Well, now,” Uncle Alexis said when I was introduced to him, “so this is the wonder girl who has captured everyone’s attention.”

  I looked at my father. Wonder girl? Captured everyone’s attention? Except for Uncle Wade, whose attention did I capture? My parents weren’t treating me like some wonder girl. What was I missing?

  “She’s very, very beautiful,” Aunt Suzume said, smiling at me. “No one exaggerated about her.”

  Again, I was surprised. When were all these wonderful things said about me, and by whom?

  My father took their coats and led everyone into the living room. Uncle Alexis was wearing a dark blue suit and a light blue tie. Aunt Suzume was in a navy-blue sleeveless lace sheath dress. Although there were strands of gray in it, Uncle Alexis had a full, thick head of hair, brushed back but not as trimmed as I would imagine someone of his age should have his hair. Aunt Suzume’s ebony-black hair was pinned in a French knot. She wore the most interesting gold teardrop earrings. They seemed to pick up a bluish tint when she crossed the room. She wore a gold watch and a white gold wedding ring with diamond specks that looked like they were baked into it.

  They sat together on the settee, not an inch apart. Mother brought them each a glass of her homemade elderberry wine and set a bowl of mixed nuts on the table. Dad sat in his favorite chair, and I sat on the matching settee facing my great-uncle and great-aunt. For a moment, no one spoke. They were studying me so intensely that I shifted uncomfortably and looked at my father.

  I was expecting to hear them talk about old relatives and family memories, but it was as if they had seen each other frequently and not years and years ago the way my father had described. It was quickly apparent to me that they were not interested in my parents and what they had done since they had seen them. All their attention was focused on me. Why?

  “You’re in the school chorus, we understand,” Uncle Alexis began, after taking a sip of his wine.

  “Yes.”

  “What instruments do you play?” Aunt Suzume asked.

  “I don’t play any,” I said.

  They didn’t look like they believed me. They glanced at my parents for confirmation. I looked at them as well.

  “She doesn’t play the piano?” Aunt Suzume asked my mother.

  “No. Not yet,” she said.

  Not yet? Years ago, when I was only six, we had dinner at the Blacks’ house. There was a piano in the den, and while everyone was talking in the living room, I wandered in, sat at it, and began to play. Moments later, e
veryone was in the den watching and listening to me. It was a while before I realized they were all standing behind me, but as soon as I did, I stopped. Then Samuel and Cissy Black applauded, but my parents didn’t.

  “How long has she been taking lessons?” Mrs. Black asked.

  “She hasn’t,” my father said. “Ever.”

  “Well, she has a natural ear for it. I’ve heard of that,” Mr. Black said. “You should think about having her study with someone. You might have a musical genius on your hands.”

  My mother indicated that I should get up quickly and come to her. We went to the dining room, and nothing more was said about it until we got home, and my mother seized me by the shoulders in the entryway and told me never to do that again. I was not to play anyone’s piano. If they wanted me to study piano, they would arrange for it when I was older, but they never did, and I never sat at one and played again.

  “The piano?” Uncle Alexis asked my father now. He shook his head. “That was a little bit too much caution, don’t you think?”

  “We had reason, if you’ll recall,” my mother said.

  Caution? About what?

  Uncle Alexis nodded, sipped some more wine, and turned back to me. “Tell us more about yourself, Sage. What are your favorite subjects in school?”

  “I suppose English, history. I do enjoy being in the chorus. Actually, I like math and science very much, too.”

  He smiled. “Your thirst for knowledge knows no bounds,” he said. He looked at Aunt Suzume, and she smiled.

  “Do you still have dreams about people and places you’ve never seen?” she asked.

  I looked at my mother and then at my father. I couldn’t help it. I felt as if I had somehow been betrayed. Ever since I had been sent to a therapist, those things were never discussed, certainly never with anyone outside of our small circle, which only included Uncle Wade.

  “Tell them the truth,” my father said sternly. For the first time, I wondered if they were really who my parents told me they were.