“Oh?” He looked at the house and then started to drive away. “Didn’t you have a good time?”
“Yes.”
“But?”
I didn’t answer.
“Something’s troubling you. What is it?” Uncle Wade could read me just as well as my parents could, I thought.
“What if you knew something terrible was happening to someone in your class, something she wouldn’t admit to you or anyone else?”
“How would I come to know it? Someone else told me? I saw it?”
“Yes, you saw it. In a way.”
“What way? How can you see something in a way?”
I sensed what he was after, but I wasn’t going to start talking about my visions. I was sure my parents were waiting to hear him report something like that. I tried to skate around it. “Sometimes you can just realize something, like when someone is very upset but tries to hide it.”
“I’d be careful about what I did if that’s all I had to go on, Sage. One thing I wouldn’t want to do is accuse someone of something without real proof. It would only come back on me. It’s something someone also might do to hurt that person, hurt his or her reputation. Would you deliberately do that? Do you want to hurt someone?”
“No,” I said. “Unless he or she deserved it,” I added.
He looked at me suspiciously. “Who decides who deserves it and who doesn’t?”
“No one would disagree in this case, I’m sure.”
“Was it something that involved those boys who were carrying on when I dropped you off?”
“No,” I said. “Forget it. You’re right. I shouldn’t even talk about it.”
“I hope you will always feel that you can talk to me, Sage. I know I’m not here that often, but you can always call me on my cell phone, and if I don’t answer, I’ll get back to you. I mean it,” he said.
“I know you do. Thank you, Uncle Wade.”
“Well, tell me, then,” he said, smiling to change the mood. “Were you more like fifteen or fifty at the party?”
“Depends on whom you talk to,” I said. “But doesn’t it always?” I asked.
He laughed. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’re going to be just fine.”
Was I?
It wasn’t only what I believed was happening to Cassie and the way I discovered it that made me feel different from everyone else tonight. While they were all enjoying a carefree time and forbidden things, I was in deep, serious thought. No wonder I was comfortable with Peter and Danny. There was no risk being with them, nothing to distract me from dark thoughts and mature concerns. However, I knew that behaving like I did I was risking new friendships. As Ginny had told me, they would think of me as like a chaperone at a dance or something. I understood why and couldn’t blame them.
Girls and boys my age who were doing illegal things or things their parents would disapprove of wouldn’t want someone like me around. I wondered if I would ever be invited to another party or even just to hang out with them now. It didn’t take a fortune-teller to see that they would be afraid I would betray their secrets and get them into trouble. Promising that I wouldn’t do that still wouldn’t be enough for them to trust me.
“I have to leave tomorrow,” Uncle Wade said, shaking me out of my thoughts.
“So soon?”
“My agent called. I have to go to California and then Hawaii. Poor me, right?” he said, smiling.
“I wish I could go with you.”
“Maybe you will someday. What do you think?” he asked, as if I could either confirm or deny the future right then and there.
“I don’t know,” I said. It would always be a mystery to me why my parents and my uncle were immune to my third eye. They were protected in ways most people weren’t. Was it simply because I was too close to them, or was it something else? I felt like I had been brought up in a dark maze and was still trying to figure out a way to the light.
I decided to press on to see what else I could learn from Uncle Wade.
“There was one other thing I found in that file drawer, Uncle Wade. It was a strip of leather, like a bookmark.”
“Oh?”
“There was a word on it, engraved in black. Belladonna,” I said.
For a long moment, he was silent, and then he nodded and smiled. “Belladonna was the name of the estate my family owned in Hungary a very long time ago. That strip of leather is probably hundreds of years old. Precious,” he added. “It has the family crest on it, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it. Something handed down from our grandfathers, most likely.”
“I wonder,” I said, after hearing his explanation, “when my parents will ever tell me . . .”
“Ever tell you what?” he asked.
“Who they are,” I said. “They dole out tidbits about themselves and their families as if every word was solid gold, and if I ask too many questions, which is one or two, my mother takes my head off.” I would never let myself sound so upset about it with anyone else but him.
“Look, Sage, I was thinking about all this, all that you told me you found in that drawer and how you’ve kept it to yourself all this time. I promise, I didn’t say anything to my brother or Felicia,” he added quickly, “but I think you should. I think when they find out someday, maybe because you’ll come out and tell them, they will be disappointed that you didn’t tell them or ask them anything back when you looked in that drawer.”
“I was afraid to say anything about it, Uncle Wade. My mother especially often makes me feel like I’m on the verge of doing something terrible. If I told her I snooped in my father’s things . . .”
“You said the drawer was open, right? You didn’t jimmy it open or something, did you? You’re not lying about that, right?”
“No, it was open.”
“So you were curious and looked inside. It’s understandable.”
“They told me not to go into my father’s office and look at his things. My mother gets very upset when I forget to do something she had told me to do or accidentally do something she didn’t want me to do.”
“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 sat 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, wha
t 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.
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