Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [26]
“Yeah.” I felt like I was standing on a stage somewhere and it was my turn to speak but I’d totally forgotten what to say.
“Logan, I …” Sage’s jaw was frozen open, like she’d been paused. She stood there, immobile, for close to a minute. There was something frightening about her posture. It was almost like she was fearful of some impending disaster. She looked as if something horrible was happening. There was no reason for it; I was the only person nearby.
“Sage?”
She spun on her heels and silently walked away.
chapter ten
THE FEW STORES in Boyer put up their Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. The town council erected the faded Nativity in Vets park, political correctness be damned. The first week of December, I made nearly three hundred dollars shoveling walks when we got a foot of snow. I turned half of it over to Mom and saved the rest for gift shopping.
The football season ended with a surprising victory over Higbee, leaving Boyer with a 2–8 record. Tim and Dawn continued to be seen together.
December marked the time when I shucked my self-destructive obsession with Brenda for a self-destructive obsession with Sage. I still spent every morning hanging out in the lobby, but now Sage joined me, snacking on vending machine food and making fun of the other students. We’d walk to bio together and spend the whole hour giggling and poking each other under the table. Mr. Elmer threatened to separate us more than once, but he never did.
Sage had a different lunch hour, but we’d run into each other between classes. I’d find little notes in my locker, pink stationery covered with smiley face stickers, wishing me a good day. After school, Sage would walk me to the track, or the gym, or my bike, often under the scowling gaze of Tammi. But that was where it ended. Once we left the high school grounds, Sage vanished. No walking me home. No heading out for a bite to eat. No going over to Jack’s to watch monster movies on Friday night. It was like we were in a long-distance relationship, even though we lived less than five miles apart.
It’s not like Sage forgot about me after school. Two or three times a week, she’d call me at home, asking forced questions about biology and trying to get a rise out of me by saying she was phoning from the shower. Mom never commented on her frequent calls, though she would gaze at me slyly over the top of her Soap Opera Digest. It was obvious Mom thought I’d landed a new girlfriend. But when I invited Sage over for an innocent study date, she’d always change the subject.
I should have been happy, or at least resigned. Sage was a good friend. I enjoyed hanging out with her. If that was all there was, then that was all there was.
But that was not all there was. Because sometimes she’d let me hold her hand, provided her sister wasn’t around. She’d place her hand on my knee and leave it there for most of first hour. She pinched my butt on more than one occasion. But when I tried to put my arm around her or give her a little kiss, she’d jerk away.
Sage’s other maddening habit was her absolute refusal to talk about her home, her past, or why she was treated so differently from her sister. Tammi already had a boyfriend, was in the French club, and had found a group of friends. But Sage couldn’t date, didn’t participate in any after-school programs, and hung out only with me. It was like I was dating a woman in prison. I could visit her, but she lived under someone else’s strict rules. It didn’t matter how much I cared for her; she feared the warden more than she liked me.
Why wouldn’t Sage talk to me about anything serious? Was she waiting to see if I could be trusted, or was something else going on? There was no one I could talk to about this. Asking my mother for dating advice was a tad too Norman Bates for my liking. Tim would accuse me of being too chickenshit to put the moves on Sage. Jack had already decided that Sage and I were secretly doing it; he’d given me a graphic description of the problems we’d encounter due to our height difference.