Sage's Eyes Read Online Free PDF

thought she might want me to turn right.
    Now here I was with a chance to disobey again, but in a much bigger way. And I was fourteen, so I couldn’t fall back on the excuse that I was too young to know better, not that that excuse ever worked for me. It was as if my parents expected me to be ages older mentally than I was chronologically. When they said, “You should know better,” they meant it, even when I was only five or six.
    I looked back to the front door with trepidationbut also with excitement. If someone came through the entryway and didn’t walk into our living room on the right, he or she would reach my father’s office on the left before turning the corner to get to the dining room and the kitchen. The bottom of the stairway was just between the living room and my father’s office. The office door was rarely open when he was away. This particular Saturday afternoon, it was, and no one but me was home.
    I had glanced in as I was passing, and that’s when I had seen the opened filing cabinet. For a long moment, I just stood there looking with fascination and curiosity at it. I didn’t think this overwhelming attraction to an opened but forbidden file drawer was that unusual. My mother had told me people were born this way. She told me that all we had to do was read about Eve in the Garden of Eden to see it was true. Don’t do this and don’t do that only made you want to do those things more. She said most religious leaders believed that was our fatal flaw and that God put flaws in us so we would have something to overcome, some way to prove to Him that we were good and deserved a place in heaven.
    â€œWhich makes no sense to me,” my father quipped. This conversation occurred during one of those evenings when the three of us were reading in the living room together without the television on. “If God is God, why can’t he know in advance who will be bad and who will be good?”
    â€œMaybe that’s his flaw,” my mother replied.
    My father laughed. “Blasphemy,” he declared. Hepointed at her and playfully twirled his right forefinger in small circles the way Uncle Wade did when he was going to make something move magically.
    â€œStop that,” she demanded. I saw she wasn’t kidding. “I mean it, Mark.”
    His smile fell off his face, and he pulled his hand back quickly. Why was that so terrible? He wasn’t aiming a gun at her. I think I moaned, and the two of them looked at me as if they both just realized I was there. They didn’t look embarrassed so much as suddenly frightened. I quickly returned my eyes to the book I was reading.
    The most intriguing thing in my life at this time was listening to them when they spoke as if I weren’t in the room. Sometimes it seemed they actually did forget I was there or, worse, wanted to ignore me. Maybe that gave them some relief. They were both so nervous and intense about every move I made and every word I said. I knew from listening to my classmates when they talked about their parents that mine were on pins and needles more than most parents. But why? What had I ever done to cause them to treat me this way? Was it simply because I was adopted? Did that really make everything so different from the way it was for my friends? Was this true for most adopted children?
    I had read stories about parents who regretted adopting a child after a while or couples who would never consider it because they didn’t know enough about the child’s family background. Maybe the child had inherited some evil tendencies or something. In a way, it made sense.The adoptive parents might not know enough about a child’s genetics. It was natural for them to be nervous about that, but if all of them were as intense about it as mine were, no one would ever be adopted. Why did my parents decide to adopt me anyway? I wondered more and more.
    Why, why, why echoed in the house. It dangled