Sage's Eyes by V.C. Andrews Read Free Book Online

myself again. Still looking in the mirror, I gazed at her standing behind me, waiting for some significant reaction. She looked anxious. What was she expecting me to say? “It fits well,” I offered.
    I couldn’t tell whether she was relieved or disappointed. “Yes, I’m glad it’s the right size. I want you to wear it for the rest of the day, and I want you to tell me if you have any new feelings about yourself,” she said.
    â€œOkay, but how should I feel?”
    â€œYou’ll tell me,” she said.
    â€œI think it’s pretty,” I offered. “It looks nice on me.”
    As if I had said something obvious and simple, she smirked with disappointment. “You would look good in any color, Sage. You are a very attractive young girl. But different colors have different effects on us, and in a way, how we react to them tells us something about ourselves.”
    So that was what she was still doing, I thought, trying to discover who I really was again. I looked at myself.Was there something about this color that would be more revealing? Would I discover that, too?
    She stared for a moment more and then left my room. I continued to study myself in the mirror. Violet was my color, she had said. Choosing colors revealed something about us. Did she mean something more than just complementing my complexion and my eyes?
    I turned on my computer and searched the meanings of colors. Violet was associated with the crown chakra, I read, which linked the individual and the universal. It symbolized magic and mystery and also royalty. The advice was to put some violet in your life when you wanted to use your imagination to its fullest and remove obstacles.
    Surely, then, this gift from my mother was another test of some sort. But really, how did the color make me feel? Did I feel more powerful, with an imagination that knew no boundaries? At first, maybe because I was trying so hard to feel something, anything, I felt nothing. And then, suddenly, I did feel wiser, older, and even stronger. Was this something else I was imagining? As I studied myself, I thought I saw myself mature physically. My breasts looked slightly larger and shapelier, my face seemed to lose all its youthful chubbiness, and my eyes were filled with wisdom beyond my age. It was as if the new sweater had the power to make me fully aware of my developing figure, helping me envision where it would take me. I had been aware of the changes in my body, of course, but I suddenly felt even more mature. My face flushed a little. Should I, could I, dare think of myself as beautiful? I imaginedthe admiration of boys and the envy of other girls as I walked through the school halls wearing this sweater.
    It was as if I had leaped years ahead and a curtain had been opened. I can’t tell my mother this , I thought. Can I?
    But something told me this was just what she wanted to know.
    When she asked me again that day, I shrugged and said, “I think I look nice in it, and it’s comfortable. Thank you, Mother.”
    â€œNothing else?”
    â€œNo,” I told her. “What else should I feel?”
    She looked at my father. He smiled, but she looked at me suspiciously. Did she realize I wasn’t telling the truth? Was there a reason she wasn’t revealing that, or had I grown stronger, better at hiding something from her? Upstairs, I had gotten away with lying about the cabinet drawer, and I didn’t feel as guilty about it as I’d thought I might. After all, there was so much they were hiding from me. That wasn’t fair, was it? Why were they afraid to tell the truth about me? Why did they hide the picture I had drawn of my birth mother? When would I know the reason for all this mystery about myself?
    And when I did finally find out, would it frighten me as much as it seemed to frighten them?

2

    I was always suspicious about my birthdays, even before I had seen my birth certificate and wondered if there