“Is that what you have, why you are a successful magician?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I’m not being arrogant, just realistic.”
“Will I become a magician, too?”
He laughed. “No, no. That’s just the way I use my talents. You have many more, I’m sure.”
“What could be more than that?”
“Maybe just more wisdom,” he said. “Everyone takes a different path to his or her own enlightenment. You’ll find your way.”
We turned down the road toward the lake. Two crows suddenly shot out of the darker part of the forest, sailed over the lake close to the water, and then turned sharply and headed deeper into the forest.
“Why did they do that?” Uncle Wade asked me. “Why did they change direction so rapidly?” The tone of his question reminded me of a teacher testing to see whether his student really was paying attention or to see just how smart the student was.
“They saw their own image in the water and were frightened.”
He smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly what you have to avoid, fearing yourself,” he said.
“My mother, more than my father, makes me afraid of myself,” I revealed. Right from childhood, I found I could always be more honest about my feelings with Uncle Wade. He never wore the cloak of tension that my parents wore whenever they were around me.
He didn’t look shocked. “You’re still telling stories about things you imagine or remember, things that make no sense?”
“Not as much, no. I know how much my mother hates that, but she’s constantly asking me now if I tell people things like I used to. I don’t. She doesn’t even want me to give my new friends advice.”
“I thought that was what was troubling you. I sensed it throughout breakfast. She means well. They both do.”
If they meant well, I wanted to ask, why did they keep so much about me and themselves secret?
We followed a path to the edge of the water. The wind paused. The trees were still. The rippling in the surface of the lake diminished. It was the second week of October. More birds had gone south. There were almost no insects. Squirrels and rabbits looked more desperate about finding food. Some of the leaves had taken on more yellow and brown. The tips of winter’s fingers were grazing the surface of the world around us like a blind man feeling his way, exploring to find the best path over which to bring in the colder winds and the flurries of snow.
“What is it they’re really afraid of, Uncle Wade? What do they think I’ll do?” I asked, and immediately held my breath.
Would I finally know?
Did they deliberately send me out here to walk with him so he could tell me something they couldn’t tell me themselves?
“Just what you’ve done, perhaps, sense your power, your abilities, and become arrogant. Arrogant people do bad things to others.”
“My power? What power?”
He paused, lowered his chin, and raised his eyes. “Don’t try to fool a professional,” he said. “You know of what I speak.” He pointed to the center of his forehead. “The third eye.”
“I’ve done nothing to cause them to think I was being arrogant,” I said. “I’m hardly a snob. It’s just the opposite. I practically tiptoe through the house. I rarely ask them any questions anymore.”
“No matter what you might think, they want only the best for you,” he said.
We started around the lake. As we walked, I debated with myself about whether to confess having explored the files in my father’s office. Would he immediately tell my parents and reveal that I had lied to my mother?
“Remember when you were here last time and you put that marble on the kitchen table?” I asked.
“Yes, one of my favorite ways to impress a small audience.”
“You just looked at it, moved your hand, and made it roll off the table.”
“Now, you’re not going to ask me how I did that, are you?”
“No. Maybe I know. Maybe I’ve done it.”
“Oh, really,” he said, stopping and smiling. “In that case, how did I do it?”
“Once I saw that my father had left a file drawer open. I knew he always closed and locked that drawer.”
“And?” he said.
“I . . . was worried he might think I went into his private things, so I wished . . . I pictured the file drawer closed. I concentrated hard on it.”
He was just staring at me coldly now, wearing an expression I had not seen, a face full of just as much worry as my father’s, the face of someone who was waiting to hear terrible news. I was sorry I had even mentioned the drawer, but it was too late.
“And?” he asked again when I still didn’t speak.
“It closed. I kept questioning myself about it, wondering if I had closed it without realizing it when I was finished looking at the contents.”
“So you did go into the drawer, searched the contents?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re sure it was open? You didn’t do anything to open it?”
“No, but like I said, after I pictured it closed, I thought I heard it close. In fact, I thought my parents might have returned, seen it open, and closed it, but when I looked, no one was there. But the drawer was closed.”
“And you think that’s how I moved the marble, by thinking hard about it?”
I nodded. He continued walking.
“Have you ever heard of telekinesis, the movement of objects with the mind?”
“I did read about it,” I said, “after I had this experience, but I didn’t get deeply into it.”
“Some people have the ability to do that more than others, or they learn to do it faster,” he said.
“And you can do that?”
“Don’t make me tell you my secrets,” he said. “Maybe you can do it, and that’s what happened with the file drawer. As I said, there are many people who can do that. It’s not voodoo. You didn’t ask your parents about this?”
“No!” I said emphatically. “And I hope you don’t mention it. I never told them I looked into that drawer. My mother came to my room and asked if I had been snooping in my father’s office. I denied it. Everything about it remains confusing to me, but I know she and my father would be upset.”
He nodded. “I see how frightened you are of what they think of you, Sage. Is that what troubles you the most these days?”
“It’s not just these days,” I said. “There have always been too many secrets in our home,” I said.
“About what?”
“About me. And about them. They don’t tell me stories about their youth like the parents of other girls and boys my age do. It’s almost as if . . .”
“Almost as if what?”
“Almost as if they were just here,” I said, and he stopped. I thought he was going to talk about what I had said, but instead, he looked out across the lake as if he saw something. His eyes grew dark, the muscles in his face tightening. I looked in the same direction.
“Do you come out here yourself a lot?” he asked, still concentrating on a portion of the woods. He seemed very worried suddenly.
“I used to, but not lately, no. Why? Do you see something out there?”
“No.” He looked around. “My brother found a very isolated place to live. Just be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Of everyone and everything. The world looks hopeful and promising to you now, as it should, but let your third eye look into the darkness, too.” He shivered as if he suddenly had a bad chill.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes, fine. Let’s go back. I should spend more time with them. I don’t see them that often,” he added. He turned toward the house.
I looked again in the direction that had captured his attention. The shadows moved, but the wind had started again.
It’s just tree branches swinging, I told myself.
But I knew there was something more, something I didn’t want to see. I turned and quickly caught up wi
th him. He looked so troubled now. Had I said all the wrong things? Was I wrong to admit lying to my mother and snooping in my father’s drawer? Did he think much less of me because of that? He spoke before I could ask.
“You’re adopted,” he said as we walked. “Your past is a mystery, and with a mystery there are secrets. Right?”
No, I thought. It’s not that simple anymore, not with what I do know.
“If I tell you something, Uncle Wade, will you keep it a secret, or will you tell them?”
“I thought you didn’t like secrets.”
“I don’t, but I’m not ready to reveal this one to my parents.”
“Okay,” he said. “When you’re ready to reveal it, you will, or you will tell me to.”
I reached for his arm. He turned to me, and I looked into his eyes. I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t tell them. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to help himself. “Forget it,” I said. “It was silly anyway.” I started to walk away quickly.
“Hey,” he said, coming up beside me. “I told you I wouldn’t tell them. Look,” he added when I didn’t stop walking, “if I do, you’ll know it, I’m sure, and you won’t tell me anything again. You’ll lose faith in me, and I don’t want that to happen.”
I could see he was sincere. I didn’t quite understand it myself, but I feared that even if he didn’t tell them, they would know once it had traveled through his ears and taken up residence in his memory. Nevertheless, I realized now that I had to show him that I trusted him, or he would never trust me.
“I think my parents know who my birth mother is. I’m not sure, but I suspect they even know who my biological father is,” I said.
From the look on his face, I knew I had penetrated deeply into his mind, maybe even into his soul. He nodded. “You saw something to that effect in that opened file drawer, didn’t you?” he asked. “That’s why you wanted it to be closed so much. That’s why you could do it.”
I didn’t answer.
“Are you absolutely sure they don’t know you were in that drawer?”
I shook my head. “Why? Did they say something about it to you, Uncle Wade?” I held my breath.
“No. Look, I’m not going to tell them. I swear. But for now, I wouldn’t push it, Sage. Whatever you saw and whatever they know, they will eventually tell you when they think you’re ready to know. Just try to trust them. Okay?”
I nodded, and we walked on, neither of us speaking, but inside I was trembling.
My parents looked up when we entered the room. I saw how they were studying Uncle Wade’s face. It was uncanny, like the three of them had a different way of communicating. Their thoughts didn’t need to be expressed in words. They traveled in magnetic waves among them, punctuated by a glint in their eyes, a blink, a slight movement in their lips. I felt hearing-impaired. All I could discern was static.
“Your friend Ginny called,” my mother said. “She sounded troubled.”
Oh, no, I thought. Was she canceling her party? I was so looking forward to it. I went up to my room to call her back.
“Hi,” Ginny said. My mother was right. I could sense unhappiness just in that one syllable. Was Uncle Wade right about me, too? I did have the third eye?
“What’s happening?”
“Bummer,” she said, moaning. “My mother is making me invite Cassie Marlowe.”
I stopped holding my breath. Why were all the girls my age so much more dramatic than I was? What was I missing? Practically everything that upset them was a major tragedy.
Darlene Cork sounded like she would commit suicide because she had to travel to her paternal grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving this year. “It will be sooooo boring. And it’s three days!”
Mia Stein had unknowingly gained four pounds and was going to fast for a week, hiding it from her parents by spitting her food into a napkin when they weren’t looking. If she didn’t lose the weight, she said, “I’ll cut school and walk until the weight is off, even if I walk to China!”
Kay Linder’s smartphone went dead, and neither her father nor her mother wanted to spend the time immediately to replace it. She swore she would end up in the loony bin. “It’s like being in Communist Russia!”
I asked Ginny now, “Why is your mother making you invite her?”
“She met her with her father in the grocery store and thinks it was terrible that her mother deserted them and now Cassie has to be the homemaker. My mother said she looked so lost. Why do I have to be the one to help her find herself? Why doesn’t she just go to the lost-and-found? Damn. And just when I’m having this great party.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“It’s not okay. Cassie is soooo depressing. No one likes being with her for ten seconds. She walks around in a constant state of gloom and doom. She can wipe a smile off your face in a second. I think she sleeps in a coffin.”
“Maybe your mother is right. She just needs friends,” I said, thinking of how it was for me at my old school.
“I’m not having a party for charity.”
“Don’t worry about her. I’ll keep her busy.”
“That’s not fair to you, especially with how many boys asked me if you were coming.”
“What do you mean? How many boys?”
“All of them, practically,” she said. “I told my mother, and she said maybe we need to do what they used to do in olden times, have dance cards. The boys put their names on them and dance with you in the order they’re listed.”
“Really?”
“Just kidding. We’re not going to do that. Girls should be able to choose who they want to dance with. If anyone you don’t like asks you, just tell him to bug off and ask Cassie.” She laughed. “See you later,” she said.
The girl she was talking about had crossed my radar, but, like everyone else, I had avoided her. Now I asked myself why.
“Use your third eye,” I whispered to my image in the mirror. “If you dare.”
Later I learned that Uncle Wade had volunteered to take me to the party and pick me up at the chipped-in-cement curfew I was given, eleven thirty. I spent a good part of the afternoon deciding what to wear. I was so good at giving other girls advice about what would make them look attractive. Why was it so hard for me to decide for myself? I was reminded of what I’d told my therapist about the fortune-teller. Fortune-tellers could only predict for others, never for themselves.
Did that make the world more dangerous for them and for me?
There were obviously some things the third eye could not see.
And those things were out there waiting for me, maybe more than they waited for anyone else.
5
“Wow!” Uncle Wade said when I came down the stairs ready to go to Ginny’s party. “I pity the poor innocent young men about to be devastated by this beauty.”
I turned quickly to see what my mother thought. Ginny and Mia had spent a lot of time showing me how they used makeup. My mother never wanted me to wear any, not even lipstick. Frightened of her reaction, I just used a little of the lip gloss Ginny had given me. For now, I thought my clothing captured her attention the most.
I was wearing a short and silky black dress under an oversize sleeveless denim jacket, my amber necklace and my new ring, of course, and my highest-heeled black shoes. The dress was something I had chosen and my mother had reluctantly agreed to buy.
“Where did you get that denim thing?” she asked with a severe twist in her lips.
“Ginny loaned it to me. She was wearing it one day, and I admired it, and she just took it off and said, ‘Here. You wear it for a while.’ All the girls are like that, exchanging clothes and stuff. I thought it looked nice with my dress.”
“What stuff?”
“Jewelry, hair clips, things like that.” I didn’t mention makeup.
“Why do you think what you’re wearing is nice? It looks like you just threw some odds and ends together,” she said.
“That’s the style for young people these days, Felicia,�
� Uncle Wade said. “They’re dressing like that in Europe, too.” He looked to my father for support.
“I suppose so,” my father said. “Fashion changes with every new generation. You remember how people dressed in the nineteen-twenties.”
My mother shot him a sharp, angry look.
“I mean, you can see it in movies and pictures from that time,” he added.
“At least she didn’t choose to wear all black, with that black lipstick, nail polish, and eyeliner, and put rings in her nose,” Uncle Wade said. “What do they call them, Goths?”
My mother nodded, looking a little more relaxed.
She was always upset when I chose to buy something to wear that was black. All she would say was “You look better in colors.” She herself never wore anything all black.
“If I ever catch her piercing herself or getting a tattoo . . .” she threatened.
“She won’t, but you have to let her breathe,” my father said softly.
She turned away.
“You look very nice, Sage. Have a good time,” my father said.
Uncle Wade smiled and held out his arm to escort me out the door. “M’lady.”
I took his arm, and we started out.
“Behave yourself,” my mother called after us.
“Not to the point of being boring,” my uncle whispered. When we stepped out of the house, he paused and looked up. “Look at this clear sky, and it’s a bit warmer than usual for this time of the year. Good night for a party. Makes me wish I was seventeen again.”
We continued to his car. He opened the passenger door for me.
“Your pumpkin, Cinderella,” he said, standing back.
No one could make me feel as light and happy as Uncle Wade could. How I wished he were here more often, even lived here, I thought, and got in.
He hurried around like an obedient chauffeur. “Give me directions,” he said, and I rattled them off.
As we drove away, I looked back and was sure I saw my mother gazing after us from the living-room window. She looked framed in the white curtains, a study of worry and concern as deep as that of a mother watching her child go off to war. I made a mental note to ask my girlfriends if their parents reacted like this when they went to their first real party. However, I hated revealing that this was my first unchaperoned party.
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