Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [108]
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.