Almost Perfect (27 page)

“Thanks, Captain Sensitive.” I marched off. Jack didn’t know how right he was. I’d hurt Sage, but much more deeply than anyone realized.

I thought of a poem from eighth-grade English. I couldn’t remember the title, or the poet, or any of the words. The gist was that everyone wishes they could turn back time, but of course, no one can.

For once, I understood a poem. If I could just turn back time a couple of days, then all my problems would be solved. I could … What? Warn Sage to be careful in the shower stall? Or … go straight to Brian’s room after the party?

It was stupid even to think about. That was all in the past. I didn’t know what my future would hold. I just knew one person who wouldn’t be in it.

I couldn’t avoid talking to Laura forever. Eventually, I’d have to say something. But I tried my damnedest to put that off. Every day that week, either I had track practice or I mowed lawns. I was collecting quite a little bundle of cash. Since I didn’t have a car to pay for, I’d have plenty of spending money for my first year of college.

Sage and I didn’t talk. Tammi never looked in my direction at school (I think I was more afraid of talking to her than to Sage). They were going to let me get away with it. No confrontations, no revenge; I was gone. We were both free to live our own lives.

I knew things weren’t irreparable. The night we’d broken up, Sage had been pretty self-righteous. But she had to know how difficult things were for me. And right now I was sure a sincere apology would win her back. She wasn’t vengeful or cruel by nature, and she’d said several times that I was a lot more understanding than members of her own family. All I had to do was drop her a note asking to meet. Tell her I’d panicked and didn’t want things to end. And we’d go right back to how things were before, until the next crisis came along and I went scampering off again.

Every day I delayed, Sage’s feelings would grow colder. And eventually, I’d no longer be worth the trouble. Back in November, I would have taken Brenda back, even after she’d cheated. But now I knew I deserved better. Sage would ultimately come to the same conclusion.

Thursday afternoon, I was trying to get my lawn mower running. There was water in the gas line, and it didn’t want to start. I didn’t realize I had company until I saw my sister’s shadow fall over me.

“Laura!”
Shit!
“What are you doing here?”

Laura looked grim. I’d never noticed before how much she resembled our mother. That same pinched-mouthed, steely-eyed expression Mom wore when she went off to spend another ten hours pouring coffee and burning her
wrists on hot plates. The fatalistic determination of someone who wished she could avoid something but couldn’t.

“Is Mom here?”

I gave the mower another halfhearted yank. “She’s working.”

“Can we talk?” she asked, gesturing at the trailer.

I tugged the cord again. “Fine.”

“Logan … about what I said on the phone.”

I stood and walked away a few paces. “Do we really have to discuss that?”

“I didn’t want to humiliate you …”

Then why did you?
“What’s done is done, Laura. Sage lied to me, and you made me see that. Do me a favor and let’s not talk about this again.” I was speaking in a monotone, reciting the required lines, bad-mouthing a girl who desperately needed a friend. With that last sentence, I’d closed the door on Sage forever. I’d made her responsible for my lies. I’d placed the blame on a blameless girl, and now she’d never come back.

Laura, of course, couldn’t let things drop. She was a woman, after all, and always wanted to discuss relationships, even other people’s.

“Logan, I know this is hard for you.”

I nearly yanked the cord out of the mower. It violently coughed.

“But I couldn’t not tell you,” she continued.

“Yeah. Look, just go, okay? It’s over. I’ll see you this summer.”

“Logan …” She stopped. Eventually, I turned and faced her. “Logan, something occurred to me the night
after you visited. I thought that maybe … I dunno … maybe I was telling you something you already knew.” She grinned apologetically, but her eyes were questioning.

So Sage had been right. My sister wasn’t going to judge, wasn’t going to ask questions, wasn’t going to mock. All I had to do was say yes. I didn’t even have to do that. All I had to do was nod and the conversation would be over. Forever. Laura would understand that Sage was what I wanted and leave it at that. And by telling Laura the truth, I’d prove to Sage I was as brave as she needed me to be.

But there are some things you can’t do. Some things you can’t admit, not to yourself, and especially not to your family. My next words were hateful, offended.

“How could I have known? You think I would have dated her … him
… it …
if I’d known?” The insults were forceful, yet forced.

Laura backed up a step but didn’t blink. “It’s just that if you already did know, and didn’t have a problem with it …”

“Shut up!” I hadn’t physically fought with Laura since I was six, but I considered holding her mouth shut with my hand just to get her to stop talking.

“Logan, if you wanted to keep dating Sage, I’d understand. I wouldn’t tell anyone.” She spoke rapidly, like she was afraid of losing her nerve.

I screamed so loud it came out as a squeak. “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?”

Laura was crying as she rushed back to her car. I grabbed the lawn mower by its body, and with an enraged scream, hurled it six feet across the yard.

T
HE NEXT
F
RIDAY
, we had our last track meet of the year. We kicked ass. Those douches from Higbee didn’t know what hit them. We won nearly every event. I finished first in three races and broke the school record for the 200-meter dash. Jack tied his personal best for the hurdles. Coach Garrison’s praise still echoed in my ears: “Good job, men.”

It was a night to celebrate. The whole team, along with girlfriends, buddies, and various other people with nothing better to do, took off to Boyer’s number one exclusive nightspot: the abandoned quarry.

I’m not sure they’d ever actually excavated rock there. I think they dug it out in 1935, then let it fall apart so four generations of Boyer High School students would have a place to get drunk, shoot off fireworks, and have illicit sex. Just two miles outside of town, the quarry was almost completely isolated. If you didn’t mind risking a broken leg or
drowning in a flash flood, you could have a fun time there. Even the meth heads considered the area off-limits, and the police never showed up. Maybe the cops remembered what they’d done in the quarry when they were teens.

There must have been forty people there Friday night, and not all of them were from Boyer. Someone had set up a boom box on a rock, and the crashing music vibrated into the otherwise silent night. We’d attempted to build a bonfire out of damp wood, and a flickering, smoky blaze cut a few feet into the darkness. In the shadows, I could just make out people I knew. Drinking, laughing, dancing, and making out. Everyone was there with a date. Even Jack was having his face chewed on by a cute runner from Higbee.

I sat on the ground, nursed a beer, and tried to pretend I was having a great time. I mean, I was having a good time. Really. My good friends, the tang of victory, a case of Bud … what more could I ask for?

I remembered how Sage had watched me practice. If I hadn’t dumped her, she would have come to the track meet. And afterward, maybe we could have sneaked off to the abandoned gravel pits and run a victory lap.

But it wasn’t the celibacy that was really getting to me. I just wished Sage was with me. I wanted to be near her. Wrap my jacket around her when she got cold. Make fun of the other people together. Share that special closeness without saying anything.

I chugged my beer, trying to drive those thoughts from my head. Laura had all but asked me if I was gay. No matter how understanding she was, I could not let her think
that. Even if we never discussed it again, Laura would consider me a secret homosexual for the rest of my life. And aside from Laura, someone else might find out. I couldn’t go through life with that hanging over my head.

But my sister had been right, hadn’t she? Laura had suspected I liked Sage, despite (or because of) her sex. But instead of doing the right thing, I’d shoved Sage right out of my life. The girl who’d helped me get over Brenda. The girl who’d helped make me a man. The girl who’d told me how much she needed my friendship, and how the future wouldn’t be quite so scary with me there. The girl who’d, years ago, once tried to …

Why couldn’t she just be a real girl? Our lives would be great. She was so close to the real thing. But close didn’t count.

Jack staggered toward me, his eyes bleary, lipstick all over his neck. He bent over to grab a drink from the cooler.

“Logan! BHS kicks ass!” His head zoomed from side to side as if he was daring anyone to suggest that we did not, in fact, kick ass.

I grunted.

“Hey,” said Jack, looking at me like he’d just noticed something. “How come you don’t have a date? You should have called that Erin chick you told us about.”

“Yeah.” Once again, I was having imaginary sex.

“You know, Stacey’s here alone. You should go …” His cell phone rang and cut him off.

“Hello? Who? Who? What? Hello? Huh? Who?” He paused, then thrust the phone at me. “It’s for you.”

Me? Probably my mother
. I took Jack’s phone and slunk
into the darkness so no one could hear me checking in at home.

“This is Logan.”

The female voice on the other end was almost incoherent. It wasn’t my mother. Reception was nearly nonexistent in the quarry, and I had to shout to make myself understood.

“I can’t understand you! Slow down! Who is this?”

There was a gasp on the other end. “Is this Logan? Your mom gave me this number. I need your help.”

It was Tammi. She sounded almost hysterical.

“Tammi? What’s wrong?”

“Sage just came home. She locked herself in the bathroom.” Her words came out in a rapid, almost gibbering stream. “She won’t answer, and I can’t open the door. I think something bad happened to her tonight. I … I’m scared. My parents went to the movies and turned off their cell phones. Rob’s out of town, and I didn’t know who else to call.”

Tammi didn’t say it, and I didn’t mention it. Sage had tried to kill herself once before. Why wouldn’t she come out of the bathroom? Did this have anything to do with our breakup?

“I’ll be right there.”

After sprinting all day, I wasn’t exactly in any condition to bike all the way across Boyer, but I made it to Sage’s house in less than ten minutes. Something wasn’t right. The truck Sage drove was parked half in her yard, half in the street. And the headlights were on. I remembered from
New Year’s how quickly the battery drained. Sage wouldn’t have forgotten about that unless she was really upset.

Dumping my bike in the lawn, I pounded on the door. Tammi, hyperventilating and in tears, answered.

“She’s been in there for an hour. I can’t open the door!”

My hands got clammy. “She just locked herself in the bathroom?”

Tammi shook her head. “She snuck out earlier. I … I think she went to meet some guy. I thought you two might be making up, so I didn’t try to stop her. But about an hour ago she came running in. I was in my room. When I came out, she bolted the bathroom door. And look!”

Tammi pointed to the linoleum by the front door. Little brown spots of blood dotted the floor.

Shit
. I rushed to the bathroom.

“Sage! Sage, it’s Logan! What’s going on?”

There was no answer. Tammi began to cry again. I motioned her back, and with a solid kick, broke open the door.

Tammi screamed when she saw her sister, and for a horrible moment I thought Sage had slit her throat. She was hunched over the toilet, blood dripping from her face.

I rushed over to her to inspect the damage. The half-clotted blood covered her mouth and nose. She hadn’t done this to herself.

“Tammi!” I ordered. “Go get an ice pack and some clean towels. Go!” She ran off in tears.

Sage hardly seemed conscious as I inspected the damage. Her nose was obviously broken. Her lip was split, and her right eye was swelling shut. Inside her mouth, I could
see the stump of a broken tooth, the remains of her braces digging into her gums.

I nearly joined her at the toilet when I realized this couldn’t have been an accident. Someone had worked her over.

“Sage? Who did this to you?” She moaned and shook her head. Blood splattered on my clothes.

Tammi stood in the doorway clutching a pile of towels, her freckles standing out darkly against her pale skin.

“Help me with her, Tammi. She needs to see a doctor.” That was one thing I could do for her.

Sage didn’t resist as we helped her to her feet.

“What happened to her, Logan?” asked Tammi. “A car accident?”

I wished I could hide the unpleasant truth. “Someone beat her up.”

Tammi let out a yelp and almost stumbled, but she didn’t let her sister fall. We helped her into the truck. I drove, and Tammi sat on the other side of Sage.

“Moberly Medical Center’s about ten miles from here,” I said as I pulled out of the subdivision.

Sage had been leaning back in the seat, pressing the ice pack to her nose. For the first time, she seemed aware of what was going on.

“No!” Her voice was nasal, yet even with her injuries, she made herself sound feminine.

“You’re hurt, Sage. You need to see a doctor.”

She shook her head. “Not Moberly.”

“It’s not that bad of a hospital.”

“Logan.”

I looked over at Tammi, and she was shaking her head at me. Of course. Moberly was a tiny hospital not far from Boyer. Sage couldn’t hide her gender from the staff, and you never knew who might overhear.

“We’ll go to Columbia, then,” I said as we pulled onto the highway.

We drove in silence for a bit until Sage leaned over and spit blood onto the floorboard.

“Who did this to you?” asked Tammi.

Sage shrugged. “A guy.”