In my heart of hearts, even though I wanted the police to get involved, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her and what she would go through. Of course, I wondered if I had done the right thing. And then I wondered if my letter wasn’t magical after all, if somehow my words became more than words. Maybe they became images like they did for me. Maybe they empowered Mrs. Mills so she could picture the horror Cassie was enduring. If that happened and I had succeeded, I wondered if I should ever tell Uncle Wade how his quill lived up to what he had promised. Would he be happy I had that third eye, or would he worry more about me and tell my parents, who would then be enraged that I had kept another secret?
Cassie didn’t attend the next class, either. Just before the last period of the day, Kay hurried up to the rest of us entering the room. She was flushed with excitement and looked like she would burst if she didn’t get her words out quickly.
“Cassie Marlowe was taken out of school by a social worker and a policewoman,” she reported. “Something really weird is going on.”
“Something was always really weird about her,” Ginny said. She looked at me. “Right?”
“There have to be reasons for why she is like she is,” I said.
“What reasons?”
The bell rang for us to be in our seats.
“Reasons,” I replied cryptically. She smirked, and we all sat. I was the only one whose mind was a million miles away when we were told to open our textbooks.
Cassie would be saved from her horrific situation at home, I told myself. That was good, but really, how did I do it? Why was I able to do it? Why hadn’t her teachers, the nurse, and other administrators been able to see what was happening to her? Why just me? Sometimes I’d thought Uncle Wade was teasing me with all those references to the mystical third eye, but maybe it was true.
How should this make me feel? I wondered. Did I want this power? Did I want to be so different from everyone else? I was already different from every other girl in my class because I was adopted. I honestly didn’t believe anyone thought less of me because of that. Once my classmates got over the initial typical questions like whether I knew who my birth parents were, they never mentioned it again. If there was any complaint about me, it was similar to the complaints I had heard from Ginny after her party. I was too conservative, acting too old for my age. Even Uncle Wade had accused me of that.
That was something I could blame on my adoptive parents. All my life, they had made me so self-conscious about anything I had done that could be thought extraordinary, whether describing some of my visions or asking too many questions. I grew up with my parents expecting me to show signs of misbehavior and my mother especially pouncing on the slightest indication. Why shouldn’t I have turned out too conservative for my classmates? How could I overcome that? Go out and do something absolutely forbidden, deliberately get into serious trouble? Would that finally satisfy them?
It wasn’t until nearly dinnertime that I learned anything more about Cassie. Someone, perhaps one of the secretaries in the administrative offices, told Kay Linder’s mother why Cassie had been removed from school and taken off in a police vehicle. Probably nanoseconds after Kay learned about it from her mother, she was on the phone or texting the other girls. Ginny wanted to be the first to tell me. There was a note of remorse in her voice. Like most everyone else, she had condemned Cassie too quickly, too eagerly, and now felt guilty about it.
“Cassie has been sexually abused by her own father! Did you know about it?” she asked me after she rattled off the headline.
“She didn’t tell me, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah, but you seemed to know more. When I said there was something weird about her, you said there had to be reasons.”
“People can be shy, but Cassie was more than just shy,” I said.
“One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me why you’re so much wiser than the rest of us. The truth is, everyone thinks there’s a lot more mystery to you than you reveal. Did you have different parents before the Healys?”
“Only my biological ones, whom I have never met,” I said.
“Did something really dramatic happen to you at your old school? Is that why your parents transferred you to ours?”
“I’m not a veteran of anything that would give me more insight into someone being sexually abused by her own father, Ginny. Nothing like that happened to me.”
“Sorry, but we’re trying to find out how Mrs. Mills found out about it. Kay’s mother didn’t know.”
“Maybe she was just doing her job well. If anyone should have the ability to spot something like this, it would be Mrs. Mills, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” she said, but not with much confidence.
“What’s the difference, anyway? Who cares how Mrs. Mills realized it? The main thing is that Cassie’s been saved.”
“As much as anyone can be after all that. She’s going to be in some special therapy. She won’t be at our school anymore. Maybe they’ll find her mother, and her mother will take her back. I wish I would have known. I would have . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Done something. Let’s try to forget about it,” she added quickly. “It gives me the chills. Her father looks like a cross between a frog and a snake. Thinking about him makes me want to vomit up lunch. I hope they . . .”
“Burn him at the stake?”
“What? Yeah. Something like that. Stop talking about him.”
I laughed. “I’m not. You are.”
“Concentrate on the weekend and the party at Jason’s. Start working on your parents. Say we’re all going to a movie and for pizza.”
“What movie?”
“Oh. Wait a minute. Let me look on the Internet,” she said, and after a minute came back. “Ruby, the one about the Cajun girl who’s a twin. I actually want to see that. I have the novel. I’ll give it to you so you’ll know something about the story.” She paused. “You’re not too good at lying about stuff, are you?”
“Terrible.”
“Pretend you’re actually going to do it, Sage. Get yourself to believe it, and then it’s easier to convince someone else. That’s what I do. See you tomorrow. Oh,” she said just as I was going to hang up, “that handsome boy Mia saw today?”
“Yes?”
“He definitely is a new student, and he’s in our class. We already know his name. Get this: Summer Dante. And how’s this? Just like Cassie, he has no mother. He’s living only with his father. No brothers or sisters. One in, one out, but something tells me he’s not going to be shy,” she added.
“You’re better than CNN,” I said.
She laughed. “And you’re better than Dr. Phil.”
The conversation that had begun with heavy news turned into laughter and some intrigue.
Who was Summer Dante, and what had happened to his mother?
Put that aside for now, I told myself. Concentrate on the weekend and being as good a liar as Ginny and the others. It was almost a requirement to be accepted by them. How they could trust each other knowing that they were all capable of being so false amazed me. Perhaps it was just honor among thieves or something.
Or maybe they really believed in their hearts that everyone was dishonest, that everyone lied. I thought about a reference I had just read to Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who helped create the philosophy of cynicism. Supposedly, he went around with a lantern searching for an honest man.
Was it a fruitless search? Would I look just as foolish if I didn’t accept the same rules my girlfriends lived by?
Maybe my mother was right after all by anticipating my doing something evil and dishonest. Maybe once I had done so successfully, I would be addicted to it. I would be better at it than Ginny or any of them.
“Once you take a bite of the apple, it’s difficult to avoid eating it all,” my mother would say. “If you do and you stop, you’re one kind of person, a special kind of person. If you don’t stop, you’re like most
people, and how far you fall depends entirely on how much of the apple you consume.”
How much would I consume? Maybe she was right. Maybe that would be the final clue to discovering who I really was.
9
At dinner, when I mentioned going to the movies with my girlfriends and then out to have some pizza, I expected my mother would absolutely refuse to permit it, but apparently, she and my father had discussed my behavior at Ginny’s party and how sensible I had been, because she didn’t say no before my words were spoken, as she often did. The more my father praised me for how I had handled being at Ginny’s party, the guiltier I felt about lying now, even though I had successfully done what Ginny had suggested, rationalized with myself that I might not be lying at all, that this might be all we would do. The party wasn’t a sure thing yet. I could lie to myself first and then behave as if that were the truth.
This shouldn’t have surprised me. Often it was easier to convince yourself of something than it was to convince others. In the end, everyone believes what he or she wants to believe. Facts and evidence melt away like icicles on the first day of spring under the heat of what you are determined will be true no matter what.
Anyway, neither of my parents seemed to pick up on my deception, and after the way they had picked up on the filing cabinet, I thought they might. Maybe I was just getting better at it. I had made it all sound so casual and ordinary. All my friends were going. It was just something for us girls to do together. My father was nodding, so I added, “It helps bond us, make us all closer friends.”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t girls enjoy just being with each other sometimes?” my father agreed. “Girls’ night out. Show the boys you don’t need them around all the time. Female independence.” He looked at my mother. “Didn’t you want that?”
“Times were different,” she muttered.
“Times are always different,” he replied.
I looked more closely at my mother. She didn’t disagree. For a moment or two, she was really lost in her own thoughts, perhaps recalling her youth and regretting not doing enough with her own girlfriends when she had the opportunities. Maybe she wasn’t always as serious as she was now, or she was wishing she wasn’t. Thinking deeply about that might loosen her up, I hoped. She might want me to have more fun than she did when she was my age. Before he had left, Uncle Wade could very well have lectured them both, mostly her. I could hear the words as if I had been a fly on the wall.
“Stop worrying about her,” he must have said. “Let her be a girl her age. Let her explore and make her own discoveries. She’s wrapped too tightly. That usually results in just the opposite of what you intended for her.”
I was sure he was convincing. Maybe I didn’t have to lie as much as I thought I did. Maybe they would have permitted me to go to another house party if I had been honest and told them what our real intentions were, but it was too late.
“Can I stay out at least until midnight this time?” I asked. “It’s embarrassing having to be the first one to go home, especially when everyone else can stay out that late.”
My mother looked at me in that intense way she often did, her eyes smaller, darker, her lips tightened with disapproval, and shook her head before she took on that all-too-familiar cold, cynical smile. “You know people don’t give the devil his due. He’s no fool. He’s clever.”
“Stop it, Felicia,” my father said under his breath.
“How cleverly he uses logic to worm his way into our souls,” she continued, ignoring him.
“What does this have to do with the devil? I’m just going out with my new girlfriends, doing what girls my age do. Nobody trusts someone who’s so restricted. They think she’ll get them into trouble by complaining to her own parents, who will then go to theirs,” I added, using the argument the others had used against befriending Cassie.
My mother sighed and sat back, now looking like she was the one overwhelmed. “It’s up to you,” she told my father.
“All right. I’ll drop you off at the mall and pick you up at midnight where I dropped you off and no later. I don’t want to have to go looking for you. This is a bigger test, Sage. We’re interested in how you handle yourself when you’re on your own. You know what’s right and what’s wrong. You’re a very bright young woman. You know there are others who will try to get you to do bad things. Sometimes kids your age do them just to be accepted. It’s not worth it if that’s the only way you’d be accepted.”
“I know.”
For a moment, as the reality set in, the two of them looked absolutely terrified, and for the first time it occurred to me that if they failed with me as they had with the first two children they had taken in, they would have to suffer something very unpleasant, that maybe they were looking out both for themselves and for me. Perhaps they were being tested somehow, and it wasn’t only me.
I always wondered why they sounded like they had an obligation to someone else. I thought it might even be a deeper sense of responsibility to my birth mother, that they really had spent more time with her than they had suggested and made promises that would make them feel guilty and terrible if they failed to keep them. I thought about what Uncle Wade had told me. Perhaps they hadn’t met the mothers of the previous orphans and weren’t as emotionally involved with them as they were with me.
How sad for them. They never mentioned them to me because they must have been so devastated. Suddenly, I was now thinking I was the one who owed the responsibility to them. I could fail them, and that would mean more. This was really unfair, I thought. What girl my age had so much pressure on her to do well, to behave like an angel? It deprived me of the carefree innocence and joy that were so much a part of being young. Yet I shouldn’t be so surprised about it, I thought. All my life, they were telling me I was old enough to know better. Simply put, they never wanted me to go through puberty and adolescence. They wanted me to be an adult almost as soon as I could walk and talk.
I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for them. Raising children was like running through a war zone, worrying about minefields and holding your breath whenever your children did anything on their own. News of accidents befalling them and others their age, possibilities of misbehavior, the influence of their peers, exploration of drugs and alcohol to keep up with the crowd, speeding in cars, or being the victims of random violence like what was streamed into homes through television and radio news, newspapers, and telephone calls—it got to the point where parents trembled when they opened their doors and when they permitted any unsupervised activities.
But then again, I thought, what other girl in my group would worry so much about this? If I were even to mention such things, they would shriek at me like angry wildcats. I would be making them all feel guilty, preaching at them.
“Become a nun,” Kay or Ginny might say.
And I would be devoured by their total indifference to my very existence. Nothing more was said about the upcoming weekend. This morning, my father drove me to school and surprised me with the news that an uncle and an aunt of his were going to pay us a visit very soon. He had never mentioned either of them. I asked him why he hadn’t. I really wanted to ask why neither he nor my mother talked very much about any of their family, why asking questions about them was harder than pulling teeth.
“Uncle Alexis is what is normally called the black sheep of the family. He had little to do with our family after he left home on his eighteenth birthday. My grandfather and he were like oil and water. He and my father got along a little better, but my father usually sided with my grandfather.”
“What did they fight about?”
“Uncle Alexis always wanted to have a career in the military. My grandfather wanted him to go into business or some profession like law, but Uncle Alexis went off and enlisted as soon as he was old enough. Even though he rose in rank and became an officer, my grandfather never forgave him. My father got along with him, but he didn’t get in the middle of it. Most of the time, Uncle Alexis was statione
d somewhere out of the country. I saw him only a half dozen times, if that. No one went to his wedding when he married Aunt Suzume.”
“Suzume?”
“She’s Japanese. Her name means ‘sparrow,’ and she’s like a sparrow, small, graceful, and very beautiful. She has a face that belongs on a cameo. They met in Japan when he was stationed there for a while. They have no children,” he added quickly before I could ask. “With Uncle Alexis’s lifestyle, they decided against it.”
“Do they know about me?”
“Absolutely. I always liked Uncle Alexis and kept in touch with him as much as I could. He’s a typical army general, but once you get past his snip-snap, as I like to call it, you find a decent chap.”
“I look forward to meeting him.”
“We’ll practice saluting,” he said, smiling.
“Really?”
“Just kidding, although I always felt like I should whenever I did see him.”
He smiled at me, and for the first time in a long time, I felt sincere father-daughter warmth between us. It should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. It made me feel worse, because I was going to deceive him this weekend. I was sure no one else felt so bad about betraying a parent’s trust.
Almost as soon as I got to school, I sensed the excitement in the air. All of it was coming from my knot of friends intertwined in one another’s laughter and smiles at Ginny’s hall locker. I hurried up to them, and they all turned, all with one gleeful face.
“What?”
“Summer Dante made a big point to say good morning to each and every one of us, as if he knew us all our lives or something,” Mia said, her breasts rising and falling as she gasped between her words. “He’s in our class. He’s a sophomore. I thought he was older, at least a junior. He’s absolutely . . .” She looked at a loss for words. “Absolute!”
I perused all their faces. How could any boy be so handsome and charming that he struck such a note in the hearts of all of them so quickly? They were behaving as if he was a rock star.
Gypsy Eyes Page 14
