“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.
3
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?”
All four of my friends waited for my reply. It wasn’t the first time I had suggested something for one of them to do, but before this, it was something less interesting for them. Mostly, they were logical suggestions, like what I told Mia Stein two days ago. “Ask Mr. Brizel to change your seat in math class. Becky Potter is cheating off you when we have a test, and she’s going to get you in trouble. He’ll think you’re letting her do it. It’s going to happen.” I didn’t go so far as to tell her that the exact scene had flashed before my eyes recently.
Fortunately, Ginny, Darlene, and Kay Linder agreed with my suggestion. Mia asked Mr. Brizel to change her seat. It was easy to tell that he was already aware of what was happening and had his suspicions. It could have been trouble for her, but in the eyes of my friends, predicting something like that was nothing like this thing with Todd Wells. That was boring classroom stuff. They were all looking at me strangely. Butterflies panicked in my chest. I didn’t want to lose my new friends so soon after I had made them.
“I haven’t spoken to him at all. You’re right,” I said. “But things come to me instinctively sometimes. Don’t they come to you?”
They a
ll continued to stare at me, and I realized that I had to produce a better answer and produce it fast.
“I do see him occasionally,” I continued, “and I noticed that he talks more with girls who have their hair down at least shoulder-length, and whether it’s a coincidence or not, every time I saw him looking like he was interested in a girl, she was wearing something red.”
“You notice that kind of detail about people?” Ginny asked.
“I guess,” I said, shrugging. “Colors have an effect on us, you know. Who would like to have her room painted all black or all red? And we all choose colors we think look the best on us and make us feel the best, right?”
I hadn’t been to anyone’s house yet, but I knew none of them had a completely black or red room. Faces relaxed.
“Maybe she’s right,” Kay said. She was probably the best student of the five of us. Tall and stately, with amber-brown hair and blue-green eyes, she looked and acted older than any of us.
Kay’s family was one of the richest in Dorey, and maybe because of that, she came off as more sophisticated, even a touch arrogant at times. Her family had attended a private event for the governor recently, and she let us all know it. Her father owned ten different auto dealerships, and she had told us he might even run for public office one day. I didn’t need her to tell me. I knew her father would become mayor. The first time I saw him, when he picked her up after school one day, I envisioned him being sworn in. Her older brother, Carey, was already in his second year at Yale.
“I hate orange. I’m indifferent to pink, but I love turquoise,” she said.
“I don’t see how letting her hair down and wearing red will make that big a difference,” Ginny said. “It’s like falling in love with a book because of its cover and not what’s inside. He has to get to know her first, doesn’t he?”
“Love isn’t logical sometimes, most of the time,” I said. Again, they all stared at me. Kay sat forward. She was focusing on me the way my mother did sometimes. I would be a liar if I said it didn’t make me nervous.
“It’s one thing to talk about colors people favor. That’s logical, but as my father’s always asking me, from what well do you draw all this wisdom?” Kay asked me. “Especially when it comes to boys. When you told us about your social life at your old school, you didn’t mention much experience with boys. At first, from the way you talked, I thought you had been at an all-girls school, or maybe,” she added, batting her eyelashes, “you aren’t into boys.”
Someone else might have been so shocked that she would either start crying or look like she would any moment, but I simply shrugged. “Things come to me,” I said again, and smiled at them. “You know, like I said, instinct. Sometimes I’m wrong, and sometimes I’m right. I’m sure the same is true for everyone.”
For a long moment, the staring continued, and then Mia laughed and broke the silence.
“Maybe she has a crystal ball that works,” Darlene said. “She did tell us about her uncle the magician,” she added.
But Kay wasn’t giving up. “Yes, but now that I think about it, you never mention any one boy here you especially like,” she continued. “You’re always giving everyone else advice about boys. What’s your story, Sage? If you’re not gay, are you wearing your hair and dressing especially for anyone in particular and not telling us? Did you have your eyes on Todd Wells for a special reason, perhaps?” she asked, rolling her eyes.
They all looked at me in anticipation. I could feel the tension building.
“No, but I know Darlene fancies him.”
“Fancies him? You talk like someone from another country sometimes,” Kay said. “Well, what boy do you fancy? Haven’t you picked one out yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m still shopping. I don’t believe in buying on impulse.”
That broke the mood and brought more laughter, but Kay still scrutinized me more than the others from that day on. She listened more keenly to my every word and began asking me more questions about my family. Of course, they all knew I was adopted. Just like my parents were up-front about that with everyone, I always was. I thought it was best that I revealed it myself as soon as possible and didn’t make it sound like a big thing, an emotional thing. I was okay with it.
At first, I was afraid they might not be as friendly, thinking I was different, but because I showed no negativity about it and talked about my adoptive parents the same way they talked about their parents, they didn’t make a big deal about it. Naturally, there were all sorts of questions about my biological parents, but I made it clear that neither of my adoptive parents, and especially not I, knew anything specific.
“I think you’re supposed to be able to find that out someday,” Kay said. “If you want to,” she added.
“Not always. It’s complicated. You always have access to health records so you can know about inherited diseases, problems, but identities are often closely guarded at the request of the natural parent.”
“Do you know if that was true in your case?” Kay asked.
“No.”
“So you might still find out.”
“I might,” I said, but not with much enthusiasm. “I appreciate my parents adopting me and giving me a home. And I guess it bothers me that I had a mother who would give me up. If she was so uninterested in me, why should I be interested at all in her?”
They all nodded in sympathy, but I wondered if I was able to hide just how much I really wanted to know my birth mother. For the time being, at least, that put an end to questions and talk concerning my adoption.
Despite how silly the advice I had given Darlene for pursuing Todd Wells at lunch sounded to the rest of them, she had her hair down and wore a red sweater the following day. Between periods three and four, Todd came up to her in the hallway and started a conversation. We all watched her fall back to talk with him, everyone smiling. Later, at lunch, he was waiting for her in the cafeteria and asked her to sit with him. The four of us sat at our usual table, but all eyes were on Darlene and Todd.
“It’s like he was just waiting for her to look like you advised her to look,” Mia told me, her eyes wide with amazement. “Really, how did you figure that out? You didn’t just observe him accidentally. You knew something, right? You heard he was asking about her or something?”
How could I explain something to them if I couldn’t explain it to myself? I realized that just as it was with my parents, my visionary powers wouldn’t endear me to my new friends. If anything, that could make them suspicious, almost fearful of me, as though I might reveal some great secret one of them possessed. Everyone has something he or she would rather not have revealed. It would drive them away, and I would be just as alone as I had been in my old school.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to make it sound as insignificant as I could. “I guess I did see him looking at her often and sensed he was interested. It was sort of in my subconscious and just came out. She looks better with her hair down, don’t you think?” I asked, trying to change the topic.
“If something like that was all it would take to get Jason Marks coming after me, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Mia said.
The words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop them. “He’s not for you. He’s too full of himself. He’d take you out once or twice and then drop you without so much as a ‘see ya later,’ ” I told her. I envisioned this exact scene with her feeling so bad about it afterward.
Describing Jason as arrogant wasn’t a big stretch. He was on the school’s starting five varsity basketball team, and he was student government president. He strutted like a proud rooster.
“How many other girls has he done that to?” I asked quickly to support my comment. “He thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”
“But how do you know these things?” Kay pursued. “I can see where some of us might have those ideas, but you just started at this school, and I don’t recall us talking that much about him.”
“I guess I’m just a good listen
er when it comes to hearing what’s between the lines,” I said.
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Maybe you should write a psychic love column for the school newspaper,” she said. “What’s in store for me, oh great romance guru?”
I knew what was in store for her. Someday she would start dating her older brother’s best friend, Russell Lowe. I saw that when they came to pick her up after school one day. But that romance wasn’t going to happen for at least another year.
I closed my eyes and pretended to shape a crystal ball in front of me. “Oh, your future is easy to see. Many broken hearts left in your wake,” I said jokingly.
“My wake?”
I opened my eyes. “You know, trailing behind you like car exhaust.”
“That I believe about her,” Ginny said. Laughter returned, but none of them could take her eyes off Darlene and Todd for long.
After lunch, we learned he had asked her out for Friday.
“Don’t stop wearing red,” Mia told her, “or he won’t take you out again.”
She laughed, but I knew she wasn’t going to stop wearing something red, at least for a while.
In a school as small as ours, developing a reputation for something was not difficult, and usually when you had, it was nearly impossible to change it. Mine was shaping up quickly. Occasionally, I overheard one of the others in our knot say something like “She seems older than the rest of us.”
“I don’t mind her giving me advice,” I overheard Ginny whisper to Darlene. “But it just feels funny. It’s like I’m listening to my mother or someone like that.”
“I know,” Darlene replied. “It’s like she can see through stuff or around corners.”
Gypsy Eyes Page 6
