There were two large male hands on Cassie’s upper arms, holding her down forcefully against a pillow on a bed. Her face was rippled with fear. Suddenly, she closed her eyes and held her breath. I saw a head of dark brown hair with a bald spot at the center. It closed in on Cassie’s naked breasts. I knew who he was. I had seen him at school.
I saw Cassie turn her head from side to side and open her mouth in a silent scream, a howl that went inward. Her father was moving all over her, mumbling distorted words in a drunken rage. In my ears, it sounded like growls over static. When he was finished, he fell forward on her, breathing hard like a racehorse. Cassie remained unmoving, her eyes still closed, her mouth still open. She was in some sort of state of shock. He raised his head and looked down at her, and then he slapped her, and her eyelids fluttered, just as they were fluttering in front of me right now.
The whole vision had passed in seconds.
“Sage?” Cassie said. She looked at me curiously. Others dancing around us stopped and looked, too. I supposed my face was full of shock and surprise.
“What’s with you?” Mitchell Barton asked me. He and Lilly Thomas stood there staring at me. “You look like you just saw a ghost. What, did you get your period or something?” He laughed, and Lilly slapped him on the shoulder.
Cassie bit down on her lower lip. She looked like she was going to cry. Maybe she was afraid I had changed my mind and was going to desert her or something.
“Nothing’s the matter with me,” I told Mitchell. “But you had better check your pulse to see if your brain’s alive.”
This time, Lilly laughed.
I nodded at Cassie and moved forward toward Peter and Danny, but my heart was pounding. Peter and Danny looked dumbfounded when it was clear we were coming to talk to them.
“Hi,” I said.
Danny put his hand behind his ear. “What?”
“I said hi. How are you guys doing?”
For a moment, neither replied. They looked like they didn’t understand English.
Then Danny smiled. “We’re all going to need cough drops by the time we leave,” he said, practically shouting to be heard over the music.
“They’ve got quite the sound system here,” Peter said. “Did you see the amplifier? It’s real high-end stuff, too powerful for this space. They can’t turn it up completely, or they’ll blow out the walls. I’m surprised they don’t have more feedback, and what about that woofer? I wouldn’t have placed the speakers where they are acoustically,” he continued.
Cassie looked at me to see if I was going to stay there.
“Maybe we should dance,” I said.
“Dance?” Danny looked at me as if this was a foreign idea.
“When in Rome,” I said, and he laughed.
“Yeah, you’re right.” He nodded at Cassie. She looked at me as if asking permission, and I smiled.
“Go on,” I said.
She followed Danny onto the dance floor. She moved tentatively, but Danny was quite aware of how poorly he danced and made fun of himself. I realized Cassie was laughing for the first time since she had arrived.
Peter looked at me helplessly. I could see Ginny and Mia now standing by the piano looking absolutely incredulous. Jason Marks was glaring my way. I took Peter’s hand and pulled him along. Like Danny, he had almost no rhythm, but I wasn’t doing much better. My nerves were still vibrating from the image I had seen and what I felt confident I knew as a result.
It was my third eye, and this time, I had used it to look into the darkness, just as Uncle Wade thought I might.
The question now was, what did I do about what I had seen?
6
When I looked at my watch, I realized it was nearly eleven, and I had spent almost all my time at the party with Cassie, Danny, and Peter. We had eaten together, danced some more, and sat talking comfortably about school, our teachers, and books we had all read outside of what was required in English class. I was happy to see Cassie open up and talk. Her timidity dwindled thanks to the way Peter and Danny listened to her and got her to participate. She became more and more relaxed. It was as if we had created an impenetrable bubble around us. No one bothered with us or tried to get us to talk to them, and none of the other boys asked me to dance.
Ginny was obviously not too happy with me. Whenever she looked my way, she shook her head and smirked. She retreated from everyone, however, as she became more and more involved with Ward Young. The night began winding down, at least for me. It was obvious to me that along with Cassie, I was going to be one of the earliest to leave. She announced that she absolutely had to go at eleven.
“And not a minute later. I know it’s early, but my father wouldn’t have let me come otherwise,” she explained to Danny, Peter, and me.
“I’ll probably be going soon myself,” Danny told her. He had been eyeing some of the cakes and cookies no one else was touching and wasn’t going to leave without having some more.
A few of the others had disappeared, but they hadn’t left the house. Some, I realized, had gone up to Ginny’s bedroom, and another couple had gone to one of the guest bedrooms. More drinks and some drugs were being passed around. The party was becoming more raucous. Nick looked very busy policing the expensive knickknacks and furniture and literally lifted Skip Lowe off a small table he had decided to use as a chair.
I saw how nervous Cassie became as it grew closer to eleven. She was looking at her watch practically every thirty seconds. Just a little after 10:55, she got up quickly and said she had to go out to wait for her father. He’d be coming any minute. Danny took that as an opportunity to attack the desserts again, but before he did, he told Cassie he had enjoyed being with her. He added that he was looking forward to seeing her in school. After he said that, she wasn’t just smiling; she was beaming. I had the feeling that laughter and smiles were rare in her house. I knew how mousy she was around her classmates, always lingering in the background and slinking along through every available shadow.
In the back of my mind, I thought that perhaps she was afraid someone would talk to her or just look at her and know what had happened to her and what was probably still happening to her. I was confident I knew what that was. Fear had become her sister, her second shadow.
“Should I go thank Ginny?” Cassie asked me. Ginny and Ward were in the den now, practically glued to each other on the sofa.
“I’ll tell her for you later,” I said. I could see how nervous it made her even to contemplate going in there and interrupting the love scene. She couldn’t look long at any of the couples who were kissing or embracing each other passionately. The sight put fear in her face, every tiny muscle straining in anticipation of something dreadful about to happen to her.
I wanted to walk her to the door and see her father pick her up. She stood out front trembling as we watched for any oncoming automobile.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, but I could see her lips trembling. She practically leaped off the front stoop when he drove up.
“Night!” she cried. “Thanks for being my friend tonight,” she added, and ran toward the car. I started toward it, too. She stopped. “Thanks,” she said again, obviously afraid of my getting too close to him.
I paused. I was close enough, and I didn’t like making her any more anxious.
When she opened the door, the inside of the car lit up, and I saw him glaring out, looking past her and directly at me. The flow of dark, negative energy came freely at me and didn’t dissipate until Cassie closed the door, shutting off the light. Silhouetted in the glow of the streetlight, she seemed to shrink in her seat. She turned to wave good-bye to me, but he said something that stopped her, and she turned her head away. He drove off quickly. I watched until the darkness swallowed them up.
Peter and Danny were eating cookies and drinking soda when I returned. I stood there, still a little shaken by that flow of dark energy. Todd and Darlene came up to me.
“You did your good
deed for the night,” Darlene said. “Now, how about coming with all of us and having some real fun? We’re going to the Doll House in about forty minutes. It doesn’t get good until midnight. Jason knows the owner, and we can get in even though we’re underage.”
I looked at them both as though I were really from another country, another culture. How could they stay out so late? Weren’t they worried about their parents finding out where they had gone?
“You know what the Doll House is, right?” Todd asked when I hesitated.
“It’s just a dance club,” Darlene said before I could reply. I had heard about it at school.
“Just the best dance club. Good stuff’s passed around,” Todd added.
“I would have thought you had enough good stuff here,” I said.
His smile withered, his face suddenly becoming a dried-out grape. “Yes, Mommy,” he said, sounding like a little boy. “I guess you’re not interested in having a really good time tonight.”
“I had a really good time here,” I said.
“You had a really good time with losers? C’mon,” he told Darlene. “We’re wasting our time.”
“Sure you won’t come?” Darlene asked. “It will be fun. I promise.”
“I can’t, but thanks.”
“Okay,” she said, and joined the others.
I could see they were all talking about me. They weren’t looking at me now much differently from the way they had looked at Cassie. I wanted to talk to the girls, explain how this was my first real party and how worried my parents were, but they all turned away from me. I felt like an iron curtain had come down between us. It was close to eleven thirty anyway.
“I’ve got to go,” I told Peter and Danny. “I had a good time with you guys.”
Danny beamed, but Peter considered it for a moment the way he might mull a serious math or physics problem and then nodded.
“Yes, it was better than I had expected it would be.” He leaned in to me to whisper. “We got invited only because we do Ginny’s homework,” he revealed.
“You do her homework?”
“We even found a way to help her on tests,” Danny added.
“She can’t take you with her later.”
“Later?” Danny asked. “What later?”
“Life,” I told him.
Peter smiled. “She means we’re carrying her on our backs, but when we swim away to follow our own destinies, she’ll drown.”
He turned and looked at me with obviously more respect. “You’re pretty smart, Sage. I bet you’ll be successful no matter what you do.”
“I don’t know about myself, but I know you will be, Peter.”
He nodded but not with arrogance. Facts supported predictions. I didn’t think I had to be a fortune-teller to read the future for people like him. They were past the point of needing encouragement. They had the requisite self-confidence and, most important, self-respect.
“See you,” I said.
I sauntered over to Ginny to say good night and thank her for inviting me. She looked at the others, took my hand, and walked me to the door.
“Everyone is worried about you, Sage. They think you should get out more and hang out with live people. Unless you’re interning for social work or something. Todd is telling them that being around you is like having a chaperone or something. Why don’t you come with us to the Doll House? You can let your hair down and show them all. We’ll only be there another couple of hours. It’s an exciting place.”
“I bet it is. Look, this is my first time out to a real party. My parents are nervous about it and want me home at eleven thirty. My uncle is picking me up any moment.”
“Eleven thirty? Medieval,” she said. “Too bad.”
I watched her return to the others, shrugging her shoulders, and then I walked out to meet Uncle Wade. He had just driven up. I hurried to his car.
“Surprised none of the boys walked you out,” he said when I got in.
“Most of them will need someone to walk them out,” I told him.
“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.”
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