Almost Perfect (16 page)

“Gee, thanks.”

“Dad’s all talk. He …” Sage suddenly glanced around the yard, gripping her purse, as if fearful she’d be overheard.

“Logan, can we go in your house?”

“No, sorry. Mom would kill me if she knew I had a girl in there when she was gone.”

Sage shot me her full-force wiry smile. I think she was as touched that I’d called her a girl as I was that she’d called my trailer a house.

“Then can we go in there?” She pointed to the shed.

The outbuilding was wooden, and not too cold inside. I sat on an oil drum. Sage perched on my weight bench. She removed her jacket, revealing her bare, freckled arms. I’d never noticed how well defined her biceps were. Did they look like a man’s arms, or the arms of a girl who was in excellent shape? It was the same with the bulges in the front of her tight sweater. They looked real but must have been a padded bra or something.

“Sage, when did you tell your dad that I was ‘in the know’?” Even after our heart-to-heart, I still couldn’t come right out and say
you’re secretly a boy
.

“Right after the basketball game. Rob accidentally let it slip that I’d been out with a guy. Dad was all ready to yank me out of school, so I lied and told him that you knew. That we were just friends.”

“But I didn’t know!” I sniped. “And your dad thinks we were doing more than hanging out.”

Sage glowered, and for a second I thought she was irritated with me. Then she spoke.

“Dad always tries to think the worst about me whenever possible. Tammi spent New Year’s Eve alone with Rob, and that was okay. But I go for a ride with you, and he calls me a …” She didn’t speak for a while. “It’s always been like that. For the past four years, it’s like everything I do is about gender issues. When I first told him—” She suddenly stopped. “Sorry. Let’s talk about something else.”

I could have changed the subject. Told Sage about the time Laura had locked me in this shed when I was eight. Or speculated about what Tim and Dawn had been doing after the comedy show. But that would have been kind of chickenshit of me. Sage wanted to talk about her family problems. Either I could let her know I didn’t want to hear about them, or I could listen.

“No, you can tell me.” I almost sounded totally sincere.

Sage braced her elbows on her knees and placed her chin in her hands. “Seriously? I don’t want to freak you out.”

“Way too late for that.” I shrugged. “Look, you told me earlier that you hoped I’d understand. Well, I’m trying.”

Sage didn’t smile, but she had such a warm look in her eyes, I had to remind myself that she was a boy. How come real girls never looked at me like that?

“You’ve never met a transgendered person, have you?”

“No.” Growing up in Boyer, I’d also never met a homosexual, a Muslim, a Jew, a Communist, or a New Yorker. Up until this year, people like Sage were just perverts who appeared on talk shows. And now I was friends with one, and she wasn’t even as perverted as Jack.

“I guess it started when Tammi was born. I had just turned three. I was so excited about having a little sister. She was so cute. Mom dressed her up like a little baby doll, in these little pink dresses, and bows, and the most adorable—”

“This is thrilling, Sage, but we’re not talking infant fashion here.”

“Right. So it wasn’t long before I started asking Mom and Dad why I couldn’t wear dresses and be pretty. They
thought I was jealous, so they bought me new toys, new clothes. Mostly sports stuff.” She gagged. “But I wasn’t jealous of Tammi. I just wanted to be beautiful like her.” She looked at me. “I didn’t think you’d be so shocked already.”

I realized how surprised I was. “Sorry. I guess I assumed you were a lot older when you decided you wanted to be a girl.”

Sage’s forehead wrinkled. “It wasn’t a decision, Logan. Tammi was what showed me that there was a difference between boys and girls. I realized I was a girl. I told Tammi I was her big sister. Told Mom and Dad that I was going to grow up to be a princess. That didn’t go over well, especially with Dad.”

“I can imagine.” I couldn’t imagine that at all. Mr. Hendricks seemed like the type of guy who’d explode if he caught one of his children smoking or staying out past curfew. Having a son who wanted to be Cinderella? I was surprised he didn’t have a stroke.

“Well, the more I wanted to be a girl, the more he was determined I would be a man’s man. Every day from when I was, like, five, Dad would make me play baseball or basketball with him. Every birthday I’d ask for a doll or an Easy-Bake oven, and I’d get a catcher’s mitt or a T-ball set.” She paused. “By the way, do you know anyone who wants some unused sports equipment?”

I shook my head.

“So I decided to be a girl in secret. Tammi helped me. She let me wear her clothes, though they were always too small. She’d help me borrow Mom’s things, and we’d play
house. I’d always be the mommy. I thought that if I tried hard enough, I’d grow up to be a woman. It wasn’t until I was a lot older that I realized how impossible things would be.”

Sage sat, spinning the empty weight bar on the bench, lost in thought. “One day, my dad caught me wearing Mom’s bikini.” She laughed with the voice of someone remembering something that wasn’t funny. “He signed me up for Little League. Jesus, I hated that. I told him so, but he forced me to play. He thought it was good for me. He would have enrolled me in kickboxing if he could have. It took me two years to convince him to let me quit. When I was ten, I was already really tall, and he tried to get me to try out for peewee football.”

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. She glared at me.

“Thank you for laughing at my emotional baggage, Logan.”

“Sorry. Just the thought of you playing football …”

She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, it went on like this until sixth grade. Remember those stupid human development films we had to watch?”

I thought back. “No. Jack and I got kicked out for making rude comments.”

“Shocking. Well, it was then that I realized I was going to grow up to be a man, no matter what. So that night, I locked myself in the bathroom and took out Dad’s razors.”

“Christ, Sage, you didn’t try to cut off your wang, did you?” She’d just crossed the line into uncomfortable territory. But what she said next floored me.

“No, Logan. I tried to slash my wrists.”

The shed suddenly became ice cold. I almost touched Sage on the shoulder, but I stopped myself. I knew being a girl was important to her, but suicide? Jesus.

Sage wouldn’t look at me. “It wasn’t as bad as you think, Logan. I freaked out as soon as there was blood, and I started bawling. Dad had to force open the bathroom door. It was a real mess. Luckily, I’d only scratched myself.

“My parents made me go to a psychiatrist after that. And even then it took me a month to get up the courage to tell my parents why I’d tried to kill myself. But there was no going back. I told them I was going to be a girl, or I didn’t want to live. I think they were afraid I’d slit my wrists for real if they didn’t let me.

“So they pulled me out of school right before eighth grade. Who knows, it was probably the right thing. And I’ve been living as a female ever since. Now please say something!”

I stood up and began to pace nervously in the narrow confines of the storage building. I pictured an effeminate junior high boy who needed to be a girl so badly that he wanted to die if he couldn’t. “Sorry, sorry. I just didn’t know how serious you were about this.”

She cocked a disbelieving eyebrow.

“Okay, I guess I did realize it. This is just weird. I’m sorry, but it is.”

She didn’t look offended. “At least you’re willing to listen, Logan. I wish my parents would just let me try to explain things. Especially my dad.”

The fact that they let Sage be a girl showed they were
more open-minded than a lot of people. “How are they taking it?”

“Mom’s resigned. I think she’s terrified that I’ll do something crazy, or run away if she tried to stop me. But she wishes I wouldn’t do this. Dad …” Sage rapidly turned to the wall and didn’t say anything for about two minutes.

“Dad,” she continued hoarsely. “He’s disgusted by me. We never talk. He works constantly. I’m not allowed to visit my grandparents. I know he didn’t want to transfer out here, but I think he liked the idea that no one he knew would realize his son was now a girl.” A sob racked her body, but she got control of herself. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your father so ashamed of you, Logan?”

“No,” I replied bluntly. “I don’t.”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

I idly stacked some empty crates. “Sage, um …” How could I put this delicately?

“Just say it, Logan. Whatever it is.”

“Okay. Why do you have to, um … change?”

“Transition,” she corrected.

“Transition right now? I mean, why didn’t you tough it out for a few more years? Wouldn’t it be easier to do this after you were out of school? When your parents weren’t watching you?”

Sage contemplated her polished nails. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But transitioning is something you can’t put off. The younger you start, the easier it is.” She reached into her purse. “Let me show you something.”

She handed me a color printout of a photograph. I almost laughed before I realized she wasn’t trying to be funny.

It was a picture of a middle-aged guy in a blond wig and a dress. He was wearing makeup and sitting with his legs crossed. Obviously, he was trying to be pretty. There was no way. He was a man in a dress. You could even see his beard stubble.

“Um, Sage, this isn’t how you hope to turn out, is it?”

“Of course not. That’s what I want to avoid. That’s a picture of Sylvia. I know her online. She didn’t transition until she was fifty, and married with kids. If you think my parents didn’t understand, you should hear her talk about her family.”

I handed Sage back the picture.

“The point is, Logan, I don’t want to turn out like that. I’ve been living as a girl for almost five years. I don’t think anyone at school suspects. Next year, I’m going to enter college as a woman. I let myself deny that I was a female for over ten years. That’s ten years wasted. And it’ll probably be another ten years before I can afford the surgery.”

In my entire life, I’d never wondered about how a sex change worked. “So you’re really going to have some doctor cut it off?”

She shook her head. “They won’t actually remove my penis,” lectured Sage. “They’ll slit it laterally to create …”

“O say, can you see? By the dawn’s early light!”
I sang at the top of my lungs.
“What so proudly we hailed …”

“Sorry,” she snickered. “Too much info there.”

I pulled my fingers out of my ears. “You think?”

“Okay. Yes, I do want to have sexual reassignment surgery, or a sex change, as you’d call it. When they’re done, you could see me naked and still think I was born female.”

My testicles shrank up into my body as if they were in danger. “And it’s really that expensive?”

Sage held her head in her hands. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was staring at her crotch.

“Over thirty thousand dollars. Mom and Dad won’t help, of course. They’ll pay for college but won’t pay for me to become a full woman.”

I wanted to spout some pearls of wisdom. Fat chance. Sage had just told me that being a woman was so important to her that she’d almost killed herself. What do you say to that?

“Sage, it’ll happen someday. And for now, no one knows.” Except me.

She balled her fists and rubbed her eyes. When she spoke again, there was hurt in her voice. “Logan,
I
know. And every time I go to the bathroom or take a shower … I want you to imagine that instead of a penis, you had some sort of deformed tentacle, or a gaping, oozing sore. That’s how I feel. It’s like I have a terminal disease, and there are doctors all over the place who can cure me, and my parents could help pay for it, and they won’t! I can’t live,
I can’t live
, until I don’t have to pretend. The only one in the world who even cares is Tammi.”

“I care.” I really did. I didn’t understand, but I didn’t like to see Sage in pain. And it was all the worse because there was nothing I could do to help her. I couldn’t give her
the money. I couldn’t make her family accept her. I couldn’t completely accept her myself.

Sage sniffed, then smiled. “I know you care. And that’s important to me.” She wiped her eyes and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

I stood. “Let’s get some air.” We’d been talking about this for about ten minutes, and I’d kind of reached my limit.

“Logan? I printed out some information about trans-gendered people. Would you like to read it? Maybe it could help explain things better than I can.” She patted her enormous purse.

I shook my head. “No, Sage. It’s not that I don’t want to understand, but … look. I still think of you as a girl. It’s hard not to. And maybe we should just not talk about the other side of things for now.”

Sage stood. I think she was slouching so I wouldn’t seem so short. “I’d like that, Logan.” She moved to hug me, then pulled back quickly. She held out her hand for me to shake.

What the hell. I gave her a quick squeeze.

There was one more thing I had to say. “Sage, listen. If you ever get desperate like before, just remember, you do have a friend in me. If you ever think about, um, hurting yourself, you’d talk to me or Tammi, right?”

I thought Sage was going to break down. “Logan, I’ve got a real friend. I haven’t had that since elementary school. That makes all the difference in the world.”

“I think I heard Rob pull up,” I said, a little uncomfortable. We were almost having a moment.

Sage and I walked to the front yard. It wasn’t Rob who’d arrived. It was my mom. Still dressed in her waitress uniform, she was walking to the house, exhausted from her early shift. Her tired face broke into a grin when she saw me walking with Sage.

“Why, hello there.”

I felt like I did years ago, when I had first shyly introduced Brenda to my mom. I’d been so awkward, so terrified that Mom would flat-out ask if we were dating. I felt so nervous and proud, proving to my mother that her son was becoming a man. So why was I feeling that now? I was no more interested in Sage than I was in Tim.