Almost Perfect

  Whatever the reason, it was dumb for me to be here. But this was my only connection with the weird girl who’d put me on a four-month emotional roller coaster. I had to find out how she was doing. I rang the bell.

  “Come in,” Mr. Hendricks growled from inside.

  I almost bolted. It was my desire to see Sage again that forced me to open the door. There were almost no lights on in the house, just a dim glow from the kitchen. Fully expecting a crowbar to the head, I slunk through the dining room.

  Sage’s father sat at the table, a lone fluorescent light reflecting off his bald head. He was leaning on his elbows, his eyes on the table, a mostly full bottle of beer in front of him.

  “Get a soda,” he ordered. I was reminded of those police shows, where the cop offers the suspect a coffee before grilling him. Warily, I grabbed a generic lemon lime soda from the fridge and sat opposite him. He still hadn’t looked up.

  “Sir?”

  Mr. Hendricks held up a palm, and I shut up. After a moment, he spoke.

  “I guess I owe you an apology. Tammi said you drove Sage to the hospital that night. I was angry and overreacted. Sorry.”

  The apology was sincere, but completely lacking. It was like he’d forgotten to feed my cat or had been brusque with me over the phone.

  “It’s okay,” I said, mentally not forgiving him.

  He took a sip of beer, or at least appeared to. The liquid level didn’t really change. “Logan, you didn’t tell me the truth about what was going on with you and Sage. Don’t deny it.” He wasn’t accusing me of anything, just stating something he already knew.

  Every time I’d lied recently, I’d only made things worse. I decided to tell the truth; it wasn’t like Sage’s father could hate me more than he already did.

  “Mr. Hendricks, I wasn’t lying when we talked that time. Sage and I weren’t dating. All I wanted from Sage was friendship.” I was careful to avoid feminine pronouns. “But after a couple of months, we …”

  He held up his palm again. “I’m not interested. So you dated my son. Great. And now look what happens. You know whose fault this is?”

  Ah, this is why he wanted me over. To blame me for Sage’s beating. To have a face he could hate, a name he could curse. I wasn’t about to deny it. Sage’s father couldn’t have a lower opinion of me than I did of myself.

  “I guess I was …”

  Mr. Hendricks banged the table with his fist, and I stopped. He looked up, and I was shocked to see his face. It was like he’d aged from forty to sixty since I’d last seen him. His eyes were bloodshot like he was drunk. Or had been crying.

  “Logan, you didn’t do this. I wish I could say this was all because of you, but it wasn’t.” He took a drink, a real one this time. “Four years ago, Sage told me he wanted to be a girl. I thought he’d gone nuts. We sent him to a psychiatrist. Fat lot of good that did. She kept telling Sage his feelings aren’t wrong and he should go ahead and prance around in dresses if that makes him happy.” His knuckles went white around the bottle’s neck, like he was throttling Sage’s understanding therapist.

  “For the past four years, I’ve had to watch my only son dress like some drag queen. He shares clothes with Tammi, he does her makeup. Fuck, Logan, he takes drugs that made him grow tits. I never expected him to be a football player, but this!” He paused.

  “At any rate, not a day went by that I didn’t tell him what a mistake he was making, what a fool he was being, how ashamed his family was. Though I guess I was the only one who was really embarrassed. His mother and sister sure seem to accept things. I always hoped he’d stop. But when he first told us, when I first realized the problem wasn’t going away, I told him …”

  He suddenly froze and stared at me, like he’d forgotten I was there. He placed his face in one hand and massaged his eyes.

  “I told him … I’d rather see him dead than acting like a girl.”

  If this was a made-for-TV movie, there would have been a loud musical score and a cut to commercial. Sage had never told me that. I knew her father disapproved, but telling her he wished she was dead … I didn’t think that was possible for a parent. How could he look at his crazy, wonderful kid and be that ashamed?

  Mr. Hendricks seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I had a couple of things I wanted to say, but reined in my temper. And I wasn’t going to tell him that what he’d said was understandable, if that’s what he wanted.

  Eventually, Sage’s father started talking again. Rapidly, like we didn’t have much time.

  “Logan, I didn’t mean what I said. I swear to God, I didn’t mean that. I just thought that if I showed Sage how much I hated what he was doing, he’d stop. Fathers have to do that sometimes. Be the bad guy to keep their kids in line. You know what that’s like.”

  “I don’t have a father.”

  Mr. Hendricks looked at me, and for the first time I think he saw something other than the kid who was corrupting his child. But the moment passed, and he continued his story.

  “Sage wouldn’t stop acting like a girl. It was like he had to spite me. Throw his lifestyle in my face. Show me that nothing would stop him. I’ll tell you something, Logan. The day I said that horrible thing to Sage, he stopped loving me. But I never took it back. Never said I was sorry.”

  Maybe he was looking for absolution, maybe he was just finally admitting to himself that he hadn’t done right. I wanted to rub his nose in it. Yell at him, lecture him on how if he’d just been more understanding, Sage wouldn’t have tried to hurt herself and wouldn’t have been so confused and scared. But I’d had enough of the blame game recently. I certainly wasn’t the guy to point fingers.

  “Sir? You feel guilty, Tammi feels guilty, I sure as hell feel guilty, and Sage probably does too. But we all know the SOB who beat Sage up is the real bad guy here, and I doubt we’ll ever know who that was.” Numbly, Mr. Hendricks nodded. I continued.

  “I guess neither of us really knew how to handle someone like Sage. But she’s the one who’s hurting”—the she slipped out before I could stop myself—“and we need to worry about Sage.”

  “Yeah.” He took another fake sip of his drink and was silent.

  “So how is Sage doing?”

  “Broken nose, a couple of cracked ribs.”

  Ribs? Shit, what did that bastard do to her? “Could I visit Sage tomorrow?”

  Mr. Hendricks wouldn’t look at me. He wasn’t telling me something.

  “Sir?”

  “Sage … is no longer at University Hospital, Logan,” he answered evasively.

  I didn’t want to ask the next question. “Where is she, then?”

  “A private clinic,” he mumbled into his hand.

  I felt my stomach acid boil. Sage had told me her family had once discussed having her institutionalized.

  “You mean a nuthouse? A psycho hospital?”

  Mr. Hendricks nodded.

  “She gets her ass kicked, and you have her put away! Just stick your family’s embarrassing little secret in the loony bin! That’s how you deal with this?” I wanted to grab my soda and throw it at him, but I wasn’t feeling quite that brave. He didn’t say anything.

  “Answer me!”

  Sage’s father looked right at me, and I calmed down. His expression wasn’t exactly friendly, but there was less hate there than before.

  “Logan, after the attack, Sage said he was going to kill himself. He’s tried to before. More than once.”

  “Jesus.” I didn’t know Sage had attempted suicide more than the one time she’d told me about.

  “We can’t bring him back home like that. We’d have to watch him every second, not let him go out. He wouldn’t even be able to go to the bathroom by himself. His mother and I thought maybe the doctors could help him. Help us all. Deal with this so he won’t feel that way.”

  I must have looked angry.

  “I meant feel suicidal, Logan. I know the other thing won’t change.” He sounded defeated.

  I sta
red at my can of soda, which still wasn’t open. “Could I visit her?” The her wasn’t an accident this time.

  Mr. Hendricks handed me an envelope. “Directions, visiting hours. You could go tomorrow, if you like.”

  I stood up. We didn’t shake hands, and I turned to go. As I opened the front door, Sage’s father called to me from the kitchen.

  “Tell her I’m sorry, Logan!” he shouted almost desperately. “Tell her I didn’t mean it! Please … tell her I didn’t mean it.”

  I barked some sort of affirmative and rode off on my bike. I pedaled blindly. Luckily, there’s no traffic in Boyer, so I didn’t wind up returning to the hospital as a patient.

  We all hated ourselves. Me, Mr. Hendricks, Tammi, and, I was sure, Sage. The perverse thing was, none of us had really been all that greedy or self-absorbed. Sage’s father, cruel as he was, only wanted his son back. Tammi just wanted a sister. I wanted a “normal” girlfriend. And Sage—all she wanted was to be herself.

  I must have been doing fifteen miles an hour. I didn’t bother to notice where I was or where I was headed.

  Sage just wanted to be herself. To be something that half the people on the planet become when they’re born. She just wanted a little acceptance, a little understanding. And because she had the gall to look in a mirror and say I am a woman, she’d been rejected by her father, denied a normal childhood, abandoned by a boy she thought cared for her, and had her bones broken and face smashed.

  But now Sage had me. Not the wimpy what will the neighbors think? Logan. I was through worrying. Sage needed an ally. That was me. She needed a protector. I could do that. She no longer had to be alone. Starting the next day, I’d stand by her, no matter what happened, no matter who found out her secret. And if that painted me queer in the eyes of the world, then fuck the world. It had never done much for me, anyway.

  When I visited Sage the next day, she’d see a man who would never let her down again. Someone who deserved to be called her friend.

  chapter thirty-five

  I’D NEVER SEEN a mental hospital in real life and didn’t know what to expect. Some sort of grim stone fortress, where patients gibbered and drooled from behind bars? Or maybe an ultramodern facility with gleaming chrome fixtures and a plastic-faced staff who passed out pills to keep the inmates in a drugged stupor?

  “Logan? Are you sure you can’t talk to me about this?” Mom was driving me. I had asked to borrow the car, and she insisted on knowing where I was going. When she found out that I had to visit Sage in a mental facility, she didn’t ask any questions. But she forced me to let her drive.

  I continued to look out the window at the billboards along the highway as we approached Columbia. “I can’t, Mom. I’m sorry.”

  While we drove in silence, I contemplated what I was going to say to Sage. I’d felt so brave the previous day, but as I got closer and closer to my actual meeting, my courage abandoned me. Why would Sage even want to see me again? I wasn’t sure what the hospital rules were, but I assumed she had the right to refuse to see a visitor. And if she did want to talk to me, what would I say? How could I prove to her that my friendship was worth anything?

  When Sage had first told me about her past, she needed me to be understanding. I was hateful. When she needed a friend, I turned into a lover. And when she needed a lover, I wanted nothing to do with her. How many times could I apologize? I sounded like one of those alcoholics who keep swearing that this time, they’re really going to stay sober.

  One thing was certain, though. I wasn’t my father. Things were rough, but I was going to stick around. Maybe it would be months before Sage would forgive me. Maybe years. But we’d be going to the same college. I had lots of time to help her get her life back on track.

  “Logan? We’re here.”

  The clinic was a compact brick building of four stories. It had that healthy, generic look of most medical facilities. Looking at it from the outside, you’d believe that it was filled with proctologists’ offices and blood labs. Only the security fence around the perimeter showed otherwise.

  “Mom, could you wait in the car?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going in with you. But I’ll wait in the lobby, and you can take as long as you need.”

  I didn’t have to take Mom with me. I could have borrowed Jack’s car or had Laura bring me. But I don’t think I could have handled it. Visiting a friend in a mental facility … it was too adult. It’s not something you did in high school. I wanted my mom to be with me, for moral support, if nothing else.

  The lobby was tiny and almost completely undecorated. I’d half expected to see guys in white coats dragging googly-eyed men in straitjackets through the door, but this was as bland as my dentist’s office. I leaned through the receptionist’s window.

  “I’d like to visit”—I couldn’t bring myself to say a patient—“someone.”

  She smiled. “Who would you like to see?”

  “Sage Hendricks.”

  I had to fill out several forms. Mom flipped through a magazine and tried not to ask any questions. I’d never signed a no hostage waiver before; I wondered just what I was getting into.

  “Mr. Witherspoon?” A tall, skinny guy with an enormous Adam’s apple was standing in the doorway. He was dressed in scrubs. I shot a thin smile at Mom.

  “Take as long as you need,” she reminded me. I followed the aide.

  In a tiny antechamber, he waved a metal detector over me and made me empty my pockets. He then lectured me that I was not to give anything to the patient, that I would be under observation during my entire visit, and that I could be asked to leave at any time.

  I felt depressed. What sort of rules was Sage living under?

  The aide gave me a visitor name tag. He punched in some numbers on a keypad, and we passed into the main building. It resembled a generic hospital. I couldn’t see any of the patients, which is probably just as well. I would have stared.

  This wasn’t right. This was an asylum for insane people. I wanted to shout that Sage wasn’t crazy, that her family had stuck her here, that all she needed was for people to be understanding. I kept my mouth shut. The time for me to be understanding had come and gone.

  I was led to a door labeled CONFERENCE ROOM A, a bare room with a table, chairs, and a whiteboard. Inside, a plain woman of about fifty sat at a table reading a file. As I entered, she smiled and removed her reading glasses.

  “Please, leave us.” The aide shut the door behind him.

  “I’m Dr. McGregor,” she said, gesturing to an empty seat. “You can call me Sally, if you like.”

  I nodded and sat down. “Doctor.”

  She looked at me with such a friendly smile, I almost forgot she was holding Sage prisoner. I had to remind myself not to let my guard down.

  “Logan—may I call you Logan?—I’m Sage’s therapist. I’ve been working with her for the past few months.”

  “Months?”

  “Yes. I’m helping her work through her gender identity issues. I’m not affiliated with this hospital.”

  I felt a little less hostile. Mr. Hendricks had said Sage’s therapist was understanding.

  “Sage doesn’t belong here, Doctor.” Someone had to say it.

  Dr. McGregor frowned. “They’re not planning on keeping her here. But she said she wanted to kill herself. We can’t ignore that. When people say something like that, especially at Sage’s age, they usually mean it.”

  I thought back to my freshman year when some burnout senior had hanged himself in an abandoned barn. I wondered if he’d tried to warn anyone.

  “Can I see her?”

  “In a moment. I just wanted to talk with you for a few minutes.”

  My defenses went up again. Was she going to try to get me to talk about Sage? Reveal things she’d told me in private? Or … talk about what Sage and I had done?

  “So talk.”

  The doctor toyed with her glasses. “Sage has told me a lot about you. She talks about you at every therap
y session.”

  “What does she say?” I asked, eager for information and a little flattered that Sage discussed me with her therapist.

  The doctor flipped through a file on the table. “I’m afraid that’s confidential. Though she thinks highly of you. She still does. And that may be a problem.”

  I suddenly felt trapped. I’d heard how these psychiatrists can twist your words, make you say things you didn’t mean, reveal things you didn’t want to admit. She continued.

  “Logan, when people visit here, they usually feel guilty. They think of a thousand things they did wrong, ways they feel they might have hurt the patient. They’re often desperate to make things right.”

  I remembered telling Sage I couldn’t see her again, then later driving her to the hospital, her face a bloody mess. I would have done a lot to undo that.

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, please be careful what you say. When you see her, you’ll be ready to promise the world, to say anything to make her happy. But don’t. This”—she gestured to the empty walls—“isn’t the real world. Things that happen in here aren’t the same as on the outside. I guess what I’m trying to say is, be careful what you tell her. Don’t make her any promises that you might not be able to keep. You’ll end up hurting her.”

  The doctor was clearly warning me against trying to get back together with Sage. I’d been mulling over the same thing. I’d even considered asking her to take me back, hoping it would help her out of her depression. Or help me.

  “What business is that of yours?” I asked, trying to remind the doctor that I wasn’t her patient and didn’t have to do what she said.

  “It’s my business because I care about her. Just like you do. Sage is hurting right now. Just go in there and listen. She needs an understanding friend right now more than anything.”

  I wouldn’t admit it, but the doctor was right. I would have promised Sage whatever she asked to make her happy again, but when she left the hospital, nothing would be different.