Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [12]
I found the dog-eared photo that I used to keep in my wallet. It was bent and faded from the months under my butt, but I could still see the figures clearly. It was right after a track meet the year before. Brenda’s father had taken it.
I was sprawled, exhausted, on the bleachers, all block-headed, ham-fisted, and sweaty. Next to me sat Brenda: lithe, graceful, and beautiful. She was smiling, but not at the camera. At me. She always smiled at me. Looking at her grin, you’d think she was the luckiest girl in the world.
I turned the snapshot over and read the inscription.
All my love, Logan
XXX
Brenda
I ripped the picture to shreds. All my love. Nothing but words. Nothing but bullshit.
It was funny. Tonight I had been prepared to let that all go. To start dating again. And I hadn’t expected to get anywhere with Sage. So why did her rejection hurt almost as badly as Brenda’s?
chapter six
ONE OF THE FEW ADVANTAGEs of small-town schools is they’re easy to get into. No gates, no metal detectors, no ID badges. That’s why I was free to use the track on weekends when there was no football game.
After stretching, I began to run. Normally, I didn’t do cross-country, but there’s a kind of Zen to running. Round and round and round, back to exactly where I started, day after day. There’s a metaphor for ya.
The problem with running is it’s a solitary sport. After ten minutes, your internal voices start bringing up the questions you try not to think about.
Could I find happiness away at college?
Were Brenda and I just not meant to be, or did I drive her off?
Why did Dad leave?
Am I really abnormally small, or was that spam e-mail just exaggerating?
Why did Sage get so upset when I tried to kiss her?
She just ran out on me. Why did that bother me so much? One bad date. Most guys had dozens. Jack could write a book. But every time I thought about Sage, I felt like I owed her an apology. Or she owed me an apology. Somehow, one of us had gotten the wrong impression.
And suddenly, like a root beer stand in the desert, there she was. Sage sat on a bench on the other side of the track, decked out in a fake-fur coat, fake-fur hat, and fake-leather boots. Her face was expressionless, but then, she was an eighth of a mile away.
I did not speed up. I did not slow down. I just kept running in her direction, expecting her to vanish like a bag of Doritos near Tim. But she was real.
I leaned on my knees in front of her, trying not to wheeze.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
She didn’t smile. A light breeze picked up, blowing hair in her face. I wanted to reach out and brush it away.
“What makes you think I’m here to see you?”
Instantly, I felt like an ass. She must have been out for a walk.
Sage cracked a tiny smile. “Tim said you usually came here on weekends. I took a chance.”
She removed her hat, letting her hair blow wild and tangled in the rough November wind.
I placed my hands on my hips and leaned back. I was trying to act impatient, like I was doing Sage a favor by talking to her but I really wanted to get back to the track. Let her know how it felt to have someone run away from you.
Sage got up and started to walk toward the parking lot. For a horrible second, I thought my plan had actually worked and she really was leaving. But Sage turned and gave me a brief yet kind smile. I followed her.
We didn’t speak until we’d reached the crumbling cement basketball courts we shared with the middle school. As we walked, I wished I had a chance to duck into the locker room and grab my deodorant. I knew I smelled like sweat, and I didn’t want Sage to get a whiff of my lumberjack odor.
Someone had left one of the underinflated PE basketballs on the court. Sage stooped to pick it up, bounced it a couple of times, and tossed it at the basket. She missed it entirely. Either she was terribly uncoordinated, or she was just trying not to enforce stereotypes about tall people.
I retrieved the ball, steadied myself, and shot. Nothing but net. I waited for the applause, but Sage was removing her coat. She was wearing