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

like it if their parents treated them that way.They would say things like, “Your parents are just obsessed with worrying about you. They should have had more children. My parents even forgot to ask me how I did on my recent report card. Tell them to get real!”
    There was no question I was always on a tighter leash than the other girls in my class. Almost all of them had slept over at other girls’ homes. It was no major thing to meet somewhere and go to a movie or just hang out at the shopping mall. Whenever one of them was there to do actual clothes shopping, a group would be accompanying her.
    But not me.
    I never went shopping without my mother, who made all the decisions about styles and colors for me, and even though I was invited a few times to join some of my classmates at the mall on weekends, my mother and father didn’t approve of it.
    â€œYou’re too young yet to be in places like that without adult supervision,” my mother said, right through my fourteenth year.
    Maybe my parents would grow out of their intense concern and worry about me as I grew older and became more of an adult, I hoped. When I crossed over that line into what everyone would consider adulthood, having to take more responsibility for myself, they would ease off, relax, and we’d be able to enjoy ourselves and each other more. Was that just a wish, a dream?
    Meanwhile, there was a limit to how many times I would be invited and not accept. Before the end of my ninth-grade year,the girls stopped inviting me not only to join them at the mall and for movies but also to their parties. To be sure, not all of them were very upset about it. Some of the girls in my class never liked me or simply didn’t want me around, especially when they were trying to attract the attention of a boy. One of the girls, Patricia Lucas, told me they were jealous of me.
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œYou already have a body,” she said. “You’re too much competition.”
    â€œExcuse me? We all have a body.”
    â€œNot like yours. You have a mature figure, and you have beautiful hair and eyes, not to mention an unreal perfect complexion. I never saw you have a pimple. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how the older boys drool over you.”
    I didn’t say it, but of course I had noticed. Besides the fact that many of them approached me in school, either in the hallways or in the cafeteria, I could actually feel their eyes on me, and I could hear them whispering behind my back. Some of the things they said made me blush, and later, when one of those older boys, Shelly Roman, approached me, I drove him off the way you might swat a fly. It was easy to do. Whenever he said anything, I asked him why he had said it, which began to annoy him, and then I told him I knew something about what had really happened between him and a girl named Sidney Urban. I said I could never trust him because of that.
    â€œWhat did I do?” he demanded.
    â€œYou lied to herwhen you told her the drink you gave her at a party recently had nothing alcoholic in it. You didn’t know she had a serious alcohol intolerance and it would affect her.”
    â€œShe had something else wrong with her, some other allergy,” he whined in self-defense.
    â€œNo. You didn’t believe her. You thought she was just afraid of drinking. You hoped she would get drunk so you could take advantage of her.”
    â€œDid Sidney tell you that?”
    â€œNo, she doesn’t know me,” I said.
    â€œSo who told you that?”
    â€œNo one,” I said. “I just know.”
    He squinted at me and stepped back. “What are you, the school psychologist or something? Get a life,” he said, and walked off quickly. After that, every time he saw me, in a hallway or outside the building, he avoided me like the plague.
    I didn’t lie to him, although I didn’t know exactly how I knew. I just knew. I had looked