Sage's Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

you that enables you to say, ‘Now you see it; now you don’t.’ And people are hooked, amazed, and fascinated. That’s how I earn a living. You wouldn’t want to hurt my doing that, right?”
    His eyes twinkled when he said it. Of course, I wanted to ask why I had to be like everyone else. Wasn’t I a little special? I could keep secrets so locked up that they’d gather dust in my head. We didn’t have a blood relationship, but I was his niece. I should be trusted.
    When I muttered something about this to my parents, my mother said, “Even we don’t know all that much about Wade. He wants it that way, and you should respect his wishes. Don’t go poking that nose full of curiosity into everything and everyone you meet. Some people want their privacy respected.” Her words were sharp and hard.
    I didn’t argue with her. I never would. I certainly didn’t want to do anything to upset Uncle Wade. I just wanted him to like me, to love me at least like any uncle loved a niece. I thought he could. He didn’t seem as uptight about everything I said and did. There was always an amused twinkle in his eyes when he was with me. Shorter than my father and just a little stouter, he had light brown hair and vividly electric blue eyes. He never visited us without amazing mewith the way he could make things disappear, move them from one place to another just by staring at them, or change colors and shapes and make things float by moving his hands a certain way.
    Supposedly, he was also a great hypnotist, but he could never hypnotize me. I loved the soft sound of his voice, and I did see twirling snowballs and multicolored drops fall out of a rainbow, but I never lost awareness. He laughed at his failure, claiming I had too strong a mind, but I did notice that when he looked at my parents afterward, they would all seem to nod and agree about something—something else they would never tell me, of course. That list of secrets seemed to grow as I did. If it continued, I was sure I’d be covered in mysteries as thick as tar.
    So because of this and so many other things, I sensed that we weren’t alone in the house, that living alongside us were gobs of secrets caught like flies in a spider’s web, struggling to break free to reveal themselves. I dreamed of sleepwalking through them, shattering them, and releasing them all. The secrets fluttered about me, whispering the answers to one mystery after another in my ears until I knew everything I should know about myself and my parents.
    I suppose that was why I was so excited, one afternoon when I was fourteen, to discover the dark gray filing cabinet in my father’s office slightly opened, a cabinet that I had never seen unlocked. Like everything else that was locked, it was surely full of answers. But I was forbidden ever to enter his office without him present and especially warnednot to touch anything, move any papers, or look in any drawers. When I was little, my mother had convinced me that if I did try to open a forbidden drawer anywhere in the house, the handle would burn my fingers.
    Sometimes I would tempt myself. When neither of them was looking, I would bring my fingers inches from a forbidden drawer handle. Almost always, I felt some heat and pulled my fingers back quickly. What would I do if I did burn my fingers and my mother saw it? She would know I had disobeyed a very strict order. It wouldn’t be pleasant. She could lose her temper over lesser things and go into a small rant if I decided to wear something other than what she had put out for me, pummeling me with questions. Why had I chosen that? Why did I want to wear that color today? What made me decide? Did I look into a mirror and see something unusual? Before I could answer, she would rattle off, “What? What?” Even if I swore there was nothing, she would look at me suspiciously. It got so I was nervous about turning left when I