Almost Perfect (32 page)

“Sir, you need to leave.” His tone left no room for argument.

I didn’t have much time. “Sage, just think about this. Think about what we shared. Tell me that wasn’t wonderful. I fucked it up, but tell me that you didn’t enjoy it!”

Sage buried her face in her lap, sobbing quietly.

“Sir!” snapped the guard, not at all friendly.

“Don’t let a couple of jerks ruin your life.”

The guard grabbed my shoulder, but I pulled away. Big mistake. He had me in a half nelson almost instantly. I was being dragged to the door. Sage didn’t look at me.

“Sage! Just think about it! Please!”

I was through the door. It slammed in my face. The guard let me loose.

I couldn’t bear to stand there and be chastised by Dr. McGregor. I sprinted down the hall. Then, to my humiliation, the door to the lobby wouldn’t open. I had to wait while the guard unlocked it.

Mom looked upset when she saw me bolt through the lobby and out the front door.

“You have to sign out!” the receptionist yelled after me. I jumped into the car. Mom joined me soon after.

“Logan?”

I wanted to tell her I was fine. I wanted to tell her to drive, that it was none of her business, to leave me alone. But I just started crying. I couldn’t stop. Mom held me and stroked my hair, and I bawled harder than I had since elementary school. I cried so hard I felt like I’d puke. I cried until I was exhausted. It was only when I collapsed in a daze against the door that Mom drove off.

I
F
I
KEPT HANGING OUT
in this cemetery, they’d probably talk about having me put away. I wasn’t sure what time it was, though the moon had traveled halfway across the sky. Mom hadn’t said a word as we drove home, but I couldn’t follow her back inside. I felt like I’d suffocate in that trailer. I had to be alone. I leaned against a tree and stared
at Bernal’s tombstone. Was he urging me to seize the day, or was he just pissy about being dead?

So Sage was going to change her sex. Again. Go back to being the boy she once was. The very thought hurt my soul. I couldn’t describe it. I felt like Sage was on death row, like they were strapping her into the electric chair, and only I had the evidence to free her, but I didn’t know what to do.

This was worse than Brenda cheating on me. Worse than when I found out Sage’s secret. Worse than when Laura found out Sage’s secret.

Why did it bother me so much? Maybe it was the thought that in a year, Sage would be a hulking, burly man, and that I’d have to live with the fact that I let a macho guy like that give me pleasure.

No, that wasn’t it. For one thing, Sage would never be macho. She’d turn into a swishy guy, one who’d set off gaydar alarms at fifty feet. Sage couldn’t pull off the man thing. And then there were the hormones. I didn’t know how they worked, but taking estrogen during puberty probably had some lasting effects.

I hated the idea that I’d never see Sage again. She was my buddy, my friend, the first girl to touch me naked. I didn’t want her last mental image to be me screaming as the nuthouse staff dragged me away.

But I’d never expected to talk to Sage again after I dumped her. I’d been willing to pay that price. What had changed my mind?

Dew was forming on my pants. The mosquitoes were torturing me. Still, I could not make myself get up.

I was upset because I thought Sage was making a huge mistake. That’s all there was to it. Sage made such a great girl. She’d told me herself, she was miserable as a boy. But now she felt she had to go back. Had to run away from all she’d accomplished. Because of one bully. One guy who hurt her. Sage, the girl Sage, was going to die. I couldn’t bear the thought.

And there was nothing I could do to make everything right.

That week, I tried to convince myself that things really weren’t black and hopeless. Sage had just suffered the worst week of her life. That’s why she was so determined to give up everything she’d achieved. But people say things all the time they don’t really mean. That was one lesson I learned from Brenda.

I decided not to contact Sage for a week or so. Let her do some thinking, talk things over with her doctor and her family. Then, after she’d had a while to reflect, I’d ask Tammi to tell Sage that I really wanted to see her again. I didn’t think Sage would refuse me, not after everything that happened this semester.

I’d tell her if she didn’t want to be friends, it would be my loss, not hers. But I had to make sure that she wasn’t going to kill off the girl I’d almost allowed myself to love. Sage would see things my way. She had to.

I lasted six days before I broke down and called the hospital. To my surprise, whoever answered the phone informed me that Sage was no longer a patient there.

This was great news! She’d been released early! That
must mean her mental condition had improved. Maybe she’d even come back to school. I eagerly dialed her home number. Tammi answered.

“Tammi? The hospital said Sage isn’t there anymore. Did she come home?”

The long pause told me I’d been too optimistic. “Logan, I need to talk to you in person. Can I come see you?”

I immediately went back to depressed mode. People never want to tell you news face to face unless it’s bad. “Yeah, come on over.”

Mom was in her bedroom. I knocked.

“Hey, Mom, feel like going for a drive?”

She smiled. We hadn’t discussed things since the day at the hospital. Maybe she thought I was going to open up to her.

“Okay. Should we pack a snack?”

“Oh, um. I mean,
do you
feel like a drive? Sage’s sister is coming over.”

Mom opened her mouth, then paused. She hadn’t asked me why Sage was in the hospital or what had gone on between us. Lord, did she ever want to. She never suspected the truth was worse than anything she’d imagined.

“Okay, Logan.”

Mom grabbed her jacket and left the trailer. When I heard her car start, I went running out the door and leaned in through the car window. I had forgotten to tell her something.

“Mom, thanks. Thanks for everything. Thanks for working so hard. Thanks for believing in me. Thanks … just thanks.” I was babbling.

Mom smiled, and I think she blinked away a tear. “I love you too, Logan.” She drove off.

Half an hour later, Tammi rode up on a bike. Wordlessly, I led her into my home.

“This is a nice place, Logan.” She sat down. “Are those your track trophies?”

“Tammi, c’mon.” No small talk, not now.

She sighed. “Right. You want to know where Sage is.”

“She’s not at your house?”

Tammi looked at me with pity. “Logan, my family discussed things. And we all agreed that it would be best for Sage if she didn’t live around here anymore.”

Why couldn’t Tammi just come out and answer me? “What do you mean?”

“Mom and Sage have moved to another city. Dad and I will join them when the school year’s over.”

I suddenly felt very alone. “Back to Joplin?”

“No, out of state. Dad worked out a transfer.”

“Another state? Where she doesn’t know anyone?”

Tammi shrugged. “She doesn’t really know anyone here, except you.”

I looked at Tammi in horror. “So she’s leaving to get away from me?”

Sage’s sister looked at me with surprising anger. “Logan, for once in your life, think about someone else. There’s a psychopath in Columbia who tried to kill her. That’s twenty minutes from here. Do you think she wants to risk seeing him again?”

I tore at my hair. In my mind, Sage’s attacker was a faceless slasher movie monster. I hadn’t really considered
he was a real-life guy who Sage might run into again and again. I might have even seen him at that party, maybe even talked to him.

Tammi patted my knee. “Sage needs a fresh start. Mom’s rented an apartment, but we’ll buy a house as soon as we can sell our old one. …”

We were getting off topic. “Tammi, Sage told me … she didn’t want to live as a woman anymore.”

Tammi didn’t answer for a long while, then nodded.

“She’s not still going to do that, is she?”

“It’s her decision. Sage thinks she’ll be better off as a man.”

For the first time in my life, I understood what a panic attack was. “You’ll try to talk her out of it, won’t you? You told her she’s making a huge mistake, right?”

Tammi shook her head. “Sage has to do what she thinks is best.”

I jumped up. “Listen to yourself! Sage tried to commit suicide because she thought she couldn’t live as a woman.”

Her sister didn’t blink. “And someone tried to beat her to death because she did live as a woman.”

“That won’t happen again!”

Tammi folded her arms. “You don’t know that. Look, Sage’s life is her own—not mine, not yours. The best thing anyone can do is let her figure this out for herself. The rest of us have our own reasons for wanting Sage to be a girl or a boy. Especially you.”

I was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Can I call her? Or write to her? Where did she move?”

Tammi stood. “She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you. If Sage wants to hear from you, she has your address.”

“She has a lot more than that.” I lay facedown on the couch feeling utterly alone.

Tammi might have said something. I ignored her, and she left. When Mom returned, I pretended to be asleep.

I had absolutely failed Sage. I could have made her happy. She was so close. Close to being my best friend. Close to being my girlfriend. Close to being a girl.

But close didn’t count.

T
HE SCHOOL YEAR SPUTTERED
to a close like the dying gasps of a car with no gas. We’d all been so excited about graduation, we didn’t really stop to think what would happen next. For the first time in our lives, we wouldn’t have to listen to teachers. For those of us going to college or the military, we wouldn’t have to listen to our parents. The thought was terrifying.

I used to have this cat that would spend all day pounding against the screen door, desperately trying to escape. And whenever he did get out, he’d freeze on the porch, too terrified to move, until I came and got him. That was how I felt as the big day approached.

Sage was really and truly gone. Tammi never talked to me anymore. Sage had done it. Moved away. Forgotten about me.

I tried to be angry and cynical, tried to push her out of my mind forever. It was her life, her body, her mistakes to
make. I had my own problems. But I had become disgustingly sentimental. Every time the phone rang, I dove for it. Every time I came home from school or mowing lawns, I half expected to find her sitting on the porch waiting for me. When the mail came, I always hoped for a letter from her. Just a little note, saying goodbye. We never had a goodbye. There were things I wanted to tell Sage. Things I wanted to hear her say.

I started a couple of letters to her, hoping that Tammi would forward them. I tore them up. What would have been the point?

In two weeks, I’d graduate. High school would be a memory. And what would I remember? Ten years from now, what would I think about when I thought of the past four years? Not my friends. Not running track. Not my love for Brenda or my hatred for Brenda. I’d think of Sage. It would always be about Sage. I wanted to see her again.

But Sage was either dying or dead, and a strange man would take her place forever.

It was a gray spring day, and the forecasters were calling for rain. Still, a couple hundred spectators braved the elements to sit in the football bleachers and watch the spectacle. A stage had been set up on the fifty-yard line, decked out with bunting in blue and white, the school colors. Principal Bloch, bursting out of his moth-eaten graduation gown, lurked at the back, ready to shove diplomas at us. The graduates, all forty-eight of us, sat shivering on folding chairs.

Gretchen Patrick, the valedictorian, was grinning at us
from the podium, talking to us as if we were athletes at the Special Olympics.

“In conclusion, Boyer graduates, remember that we have our whole lives ahead of us. Take a stand. Make a difference.”
Spout a cliché
.

Mr. Bloch approached the podium and raised the microphone a foot or so. Even on a happy occasion like this, he looked like he was about to tell us we all had detention.

“Ladies and …” Whatever remarks he was about to make were cut off by a blaring recording of “Pomp and Circumstance.” It was the best the music director could manage; half the marching band was graduating. The first row of students slouched toward the stage. I’d seen more excitement in the lunch line on pizza day.

“Benjy Anderson,” announced Mrs. Day, the vice principal. Bloch thrust a diploma at him and shook his hand while a photographer snapped a picture.

So this was the end. Thirteen years of complaining about public school, and now it was over. It somehow didn’t seem real. I felt like after the summer, I’d report for another year at BHS, along with Tim and Jack and my other friends. Maybe it would sink in later.

“Brenda Martin.” She glided onto the stage, her cheap white nylon robe billowing behind her like a ball gown. It was kind of funny; the previous semester, this was the girl who’d made me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration and rage. Now she was just someone I knew. A pretty girl, no different from a hundred other pretty girls. Like some actress or model I’d once had a crush on.

“Jack Seversen.” Jack came tearing across the stage
like Batman in a rented blue robe and white socks. He snatched his diploma (actually, it was an empty folder; we’d get the real ones in the mail) and waved at his family in the audience. Mr. Bloch had to yank him back by the shoulder so he could get his picture taken.

“Timothy Tokugowa.” Tim lumbered onto the stage, to the cheers of his family and Dawn. If I wasn’t mistaken, he’d lost some weight recently. There’d even been rumors that he and Dawn had been spotted in Rock Bridge State Park in Columbia,
hiking
.