Almost Perfect

by Brian Katcher

  I didn’t want to give Sage a chance to ask to use the bathroom, so I nearly broke my best sprinting time dashing to her car. It was the family sedan this time. I guess her parents didn’t want her taking the cranky truck out of town.

  I’d thrown my bag in the back by the time Sage folded herself into the driver’s seat. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was tied up in a scarf, and she wore sunglasses. I think this was the most conservatively I’d seen her dressed. For a moment, I remembered that there was no padding under her top; it was all Sage. Then I realized I was staring.

  Sage smiled at me. Was she going to bring up what had happened in her bedroom or wait for me to say something? Could we just laugh it off as a mistake, or did we need to have a long, serious talk? And maybe she didn’t even think what we’d done was wrong! For all I knew, she was planning on getting me alone this weekend and showing me just how much of a woman she was.

  This was stupid. I shouldn’t have come. I waited for her to make some mention of what we’d done. How I’d touched her. How I’d almost done more.

  Silence. After a while, she instructed me to pick out a CD for us to listen to. Her window was rolled down. She had one elbow on the door, the other arm casually on the wheel. A few strands of hair tickled her forehead from under her headscarf. She looked like a confident, attractive girl, off to conquer a new town. A girl who was going to arrive at college and own it. And who didn’t even care that she’d reduced her only friend to a miserable pile of jelly.

  I jammed a random CD into the slot and stared out the window.

  Sage drove maddeningly slow. I remembered how she’d mentioned her fear of getting a speeding ticket. The half-hour drive to Columbia was going to take nearly twice that. After fifteen minutes of silence, she finally spoke.

  “We don’t have to do this. I can take you back home if you want.”

  I knew I should say yes, but I kept my mouth shut. When I didn’t answer, she spoke again.

  “Logan, remember the night you met my dad?”

  I snorted. “Vividly.” Why was she bringing that up?

  She removed her sunglasses. With her wide, sad eyes, she looked much less confident. “When we got to my house and he was standing there, I expected you to bolt. I wouldn’t have blamed you at all. But you stayed and let him yell at you, even though you were still uncomfortable around me. That was the nicest, bravest thing anyone has ever done for me.” Judging by her tone alone, you’d think I’d slayed a dragon or two.

  “That night, I promised myself that I’d never do anything to hurt a friendship that special. You don’t know how great it was to finally be able to talk to someone about everything in my life. But the other day, when I saw you checking me out at the pool … I think I let us both down.” She massaged the bridge of her nose, then gripped the steering wheel with both hands.

  “Sage, it’s not like that.”

  “Logan, you’re my best friend. I need that more than anything else. And trying to take advantage of you the other day, I almost ruined it. Can we just forget about that? Are we still cool?” She was breathing hard, and her steering had become slightly erratic.

  “Yeah, we’re cool,” I said bluntly. There. We’d talked and put it behind us. Things could go back to “normal.”

  Only I didn’t want to drop it. My best friend had allowed me to see her bare body and now was apologizing to me. I couldn’t let her sit there feeling ashamed of her beautiful, though highly inappropriate, gesture. But how could I put my feelings into words when I couldn’t even define them? There was only one thing I could say.

  “Sage?”

  “Yes?”

  I waited till she turned and looked at me. Then I winked. “Wow.”

  She rapidly looked back at the windshield, her eyes wide, blushing under her freckles. I rolled down my window and leaned back in my seat.

  Everything was going to be okay. We’d experimented but backed off before we crossed the line. We could now go off to college as friends, instead of whatever horrible, awkward relationship we almost had.

  As I half dozed for the rest of the trip, my thoughts floated back to Sage’s room. She’d never be a real woman to me. But damn, seeing her without her robe … that had been a definite wow moment.

  If parking was bad downtown, it was awful on campus. The lot Laura had directed me to was full, and every other space had ominous warning signs about towing and impounding. Eventually, we parked on the roof of a parking garage about three blocks from Laura’s dorm.

  I grabbed my bag from the backseat. I was going to take Sage’s, but she had already hefted her two suitcases with no effort. We started down the stairs to street level.

  “So, tell me about your sister, Logan.”

  “Well, she’s a year older than me, though sometimes it seems like twenty.”

  Sage laughed. “C’mon. I talked to her on the phone. She didn’t seem old or boring at all.”

  “It’s not that.” I paused to tie my shoe. “When Dad left … I was about four. Anyway, things were kind of rough. Mom was working double shifts, and then when she was home, she had two little kids to take care of. Not a lot of time to read bedtime stories or play catch.” I stood up, remembering.

  “At any rate, Laura really mothered me. Told me stories, played with me, made sure I did my homework. She helped me stay out of trouble, at least until high school.”

  We’d exited the garage and were trekking across a parking lot. I could tell we were on a college campus just by the bumper stickers: YOU CAN’T HUG YOUR CHILDREN WITH NUCLEAR ARMS. U.S. OUT OF ____. FLIP THE BIRD (a dig at the Kansas University Jayhawks).

  I continued my story. “Things got a little better in the past few years, moneywise. But Laura still ran our household. Trailerhold. She made sure the bills got paid, went grocery shopping, took care of things. When she left … well, here Mom and I are, and we don’t have a lot to say to each other. It’s not that we’re distant, it’s just that … I dunno, we’ve just been living separate lives for so long. And I worry about what she’s going to do with herself when I leave.” Would Mom suffer from empty trailer syndrome? Would she finally start taking time for herself? Would she—I could hardly imagine it—go on dates?

  Sage rumpled my hair. “Believe it or not, I know where you’re coming from. The whole time I was homeschooled, Tammi really stood up for me. When I first started to transition—” She suddenly stopped talking and walking. “Sorry.”

  “Sage, it’s okay to talk about that.” Previously, Sage’s gender issues were the last thing I wanted to discuss. But maybe if she told me about her life as a boy, it would help remind me she wasn’t totally a girl.

  Sage glanced around for eavesdroppers, and then we sat on a bench. “When I finally told everyone that I was a girl inside … there was talk of having me institutionalized.”

  I had been staring at the observatory on top of the physics building, but her comment jolted me back to attention. “Like, the nuthouse?”

  “Yeah. Mom and Dad didn’t know how to deal with me and decided I needed to be sent away for a cure. I’m not sure if they thought that was the best thing for me or if they were just that humiliated. But Tammi threw a fit. I mean, screaming, hollering, kicking the walls. She refused to let them send me away. Eleven years old. She knew what an embarrassment I’d be to the family, but she didn’t care.”

  Sage seemed to be collapsing into herself. Knowing better, I draped an arm around her back. She laid her head on my shoulder. Well, technically, due to our height difference, my head was on her shoulder.

  “So Tammi kept me out of the asylum. I spent four years almost never leaving our house, getting taught by my mother. Mom’s ashamed of what I’m doing, but she tries to make me happy. And you know how Dad feels.

  “Tammi … she looked out for me. Before I was allowed to wear women’s clothes full-time, she’d buy me clothes and hide them in her closet. She’d help me with my makeup and tell me I was pretty. She was the only one who k
new when I started on hormones. Now that I’m a full-time girl, she spies on me. She doesn’t want me to do anything reckless. That’s why she wouldn’t let us be alone at the park that one time.”

  I smiled, remembering. It all made sense now.

  Sage continued. “Tammi never once said I was being weird or strange. Sometimes that was the only reason I knew I could become a real woman. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have probably given up and stayed a guy.”

  Gingerly, I untangled myself from Sage. “You’d have been miserable that way.”

  “I’d be dead.”

  I remembered Sage’s attempt at suicide. We needed to change the subject. I’d brought Sage here to show her how much fun she could have away from home, not to remind her of her difficult life choices.

  Looking down at my watch, I realized I wasn’t wearing it. “I think Laura’s expecting us.”

  Sage led the way even though neither of us really knew where we were going. As we passed a group of male pedestrians, one of them turned to watch her pass. I don’t think it was her height he was noticing.

  chapter twenty-five

  SAGE AND I WANDERED around for about twenty minutes looking for Gillett Hall. Finally, we realized it was actually part of a larger complex, a group of white brick towers that surrounded a central dining hall.

  Laura lived on the first floor. As soon as we left the lobby, the low thunk, thunk of someone’s stereo assaulted us from an upper story. The corridor was empty, but each door gave a glimpse of the residents inside: film posters, more anti-Kansas bumper stickers, fliers for peace marches, little whiteboards for leaving messages.

  I knew more about these strangers than I did about some of my neighbors in Boyer. I’d be moving into a dorm in the fall. What would I hang on my door?

  Sage strutted down the hall, showing her usual self-assuredness. She’d lived in a big town before, but I felt like I’d just come from the farm. The students here would have me pegged as a hick right from the start. When two girls carrying tennis rackets passed us and smiled, it was like I was wearing a rope belt and no shoes. Could I really fit in at Mizzou?

  I’d visited Laura here a couple of times, but always with Mom, and we always met downtown. I located my sister’s room. The only decoration was a photocopied poster for an unfamiliar band. It might have been her roommate’s.

  The door flew open at my knock. Laura stood there grinning at me for a moment. Once again, I was struck by what a woman she’d become. When she’d left home, she’d been a tomboyish teenager. A girl who used to beat me at basketball and had broken Mark Jefferson’s nose when he tried to feel her up. Now Laura was almost twenty and looked like someone you’d see working at a bank or modeling formal clothes. If I hadn’t known her, I would have guessed her to be twenty-two or-three, a business major or pre-law, the sort of person who’d work a sixty-hour week and then shut down the bars every Saturday night. Had college done this to her, or was it simply being away from Boyer that had allowed her to grow up?

  “Logan!” She embraced me. “I’m so glad you’re here. We’re going to have so much fun this weekend.”

  “Laura, this is Sage.”

  They shook hands, and Laura directed Sage where to put her bags. As Sage was unloading, Laura turned and gave me a conspiratorial wink. Great. Well, at least my sister didn’t suspect Sage’s secret.

  The dorm room was obsessively neat, much more orderly than Laura’s bedroom at home. I wondered what would inspire people to clean when they didn’t have to. Must be a girl thing.

  “Sage, you can take my roommate’s bed,” said Laura.

  “Are you sure?” asked Sage. “Won’t she mind?”

  “Ebony’s out of town for the weekend. She said it was okay.”

  I glanced at a family photo on Ebony’s desk. Laura’s roommate had very dark skin, very white teeth, and a very pretty face. I’d have to visit again when she was there and Sage wasn’t.

  Sage asked if she could go freshen up, and Laura directed her to the public bathroom down the hall. As soon as the door closed, Laura socked me in the arm.

  “So this is the girl you like! She’s cute, Logan.”

  I rubbed my shoulder, cursing myself for telling Laura about Sage at Thanksgiving. “We’re not dating,” I said, hoping Sage wouldn’t return before I could try to explain things.

  I could tell Laura wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh. Well, if you and your ‘friend’ want to be alone tonight, I can sleep somewhere else.” She was grinning, proud to help her little brother do something naughty.

  Time to nip this in the bud. I’d learned that saying I didn’t like Sage only made people want to know why. I chose my next words carefully.

  “Laura, you were right. Sage has some real problems at home. We’re not going to get together. I brought her here because she needed to get away from her house for a while. Now, where am I sleeping tonight?”

  For a moment, Laura looked disappointed and a little concerned. “I just assumed you’d crash here on the floor. I have a sleeping bag.”

  Nope. Even with Laura in the room, I wasn’t about to spend the night with Sage.

  “I thought you said I could stay with your friends.”

  Laura opened her mouth to ask a question, but stopped. “Well, a couple of guys invited you to bunk with them, but I didn’t know if you’d be comfortable.”

  Was I that obviously ill at ease? It’s not like I was ten, spending the night away from home for the first time. Laura didn’t need to protect me.

  “I’ll stay with them. That way you won’t have to see me scratching myself.”

  Laura laughed. “That would be a nice change of pace. Their names are Brian and Paul, room one-oh-five. Just knock; they’ll know who you are.”

  I marched down the corridor, determined not to embarrass myself in front of Laura’s friends. I hoped they wouldn’t ask me about drinking or women. I didn’t exactly have an amazing track record with either.

  Apparently this was a coed floor. Door #105 was slathered with heavy metal stickers and video game ads, along with a cryptic, hand-lettered sign: THERE’S NO PROB WITH “BOB.” I could hear what sounded like machine-gun fire within. I knocked.

  “C’mon in!”

  The only light in the dorm came from a TV tuned to the Cartoon Network and from a computer screen. The shades were drawn and I couldn’t make out anything. A damp, musty odor emanated from within. I was reminded of Devil’s Icebox, a local cave.

  “Hello?”

  “Dude, you Logan?” As my eyes adjusted, I could see someone seated at the computer. The light from the computer game made his face look unhealthy, pallid. His hair was longish, and he was unshaven. He didn’t have enough facial hair to grow a full beard, so odd tufts of whiskers sprouted randomly on his cheeks.

  “That’s me.”

  He paused the game but didn’t get up. “I’m Brian. That’s Paul.” He gestured to a bed. What I had assumed was a pile of laundry was actually a man, asleep on his side. He was either black or Middle Eastern; I couldn’t tell in the dark.

  “Just throw your bag anywhere,” instructed Brian. I stepped inside, disconcerted by the crunching noises that accompanied my every step. This room was possibly the filthiest place I’d ever been. Clothes, empty food containers, books, and computer equipment littered everything. I realized, to my horror, I’d be sleeping on the floor. So this was why Laura had tried to get me to stay with her. And now I couldn’t back out. Maybe I’d just sleep in the lobby.

  I balanced my bag on top of a big box fan, the only bare surface I could find. “I’m going back to see Laura. I’m not sure what time I’ll be in tonight.”

  Brian had already gone back to his game. “Don’t worry. I’ll be up late.”

  “Yeah, but if you go out, give Laura a call.”

  “We won’t go out.”

  As I returned to my sister’s room, I decided that, just possibly, I would not be the most socially inept person on campus.

  When I enter
ed the dorm, Sage was trying on one of Laura’s jackets. It was far too small.

  Sage handed it back to Laura. “It’s hard to find clothes in my size.”

  “We should go to the Wardrobe tomorrow, Sage,” said my sister. “It’s a used clothing store, I bet you could find some neat stuff there.”

  “Oh, I’d like that!”

  “And maybe after we could sit and watch paint dry!” I countered. I didn’t like the idea of Sage changing in a public dressing room. I also didn’t like the idea of spending Sunday shopping for women’s clothes.

  Laura waved at me dismissively. “There’s a bunch of music stores and stuff downtown. You won’t be bored.”

  Eventually, I convinced the girls to grab some supper. Laura took us to the dorm’s dining hall, which offered a wider menu than any establishment in Boyer. As we ate, Laura filled Sage in on the best clothing stores, stylists, and coffee shops in town. Laura had grown up in Boyer, but she was as cool as any girl from St. Louis.

  It was obvious Sage was making friends with my sister. When she enrolled next semester, they’d probably get together. They’d become close. Laura could introduce her to people, and the three of us could hang out. Laura would probably keep hoping Sage and I would hook up, but she’d stop when I started dating someone else. My sister, I realized, had the potential to be a better friend to Sage than I was. Sage needed another girl to talk shop with.

  Laura was talking about the various dorms on campus. “So have you got your housing assignment yet?” she asked me.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Jack and I are going to be at Graham Hall.”

  My sister grimaced. “I have a friend who lives there. Vintage forties steam heat. How about you, Sage? Do you know who you’ll room with?”

  “No,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll probably just pay extra for a single.”

  “Don’t do that!” objected Laura. “That’s, like, a thousand dollars extra a semester.”

  Sage winced. “That much?”

  “Having a roommate isn’t as bad as you think, Sage. Ebony’s like a sister to me. I know some girls who will need a roommate next year. I can help you find someone nice.”