Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [49]
Mr. Hendricks raised the blade and stared at it with a critical eye. “Sage isn’t allowed to date.”
“This wasn’t a date!” I babbled. “We just went out for some food, that’s all.”
“Sounds like a date to me.” I didn’t dare argue. He was still armed.
“Logan, Sage tells me he let you in on a very private secret. He told you something you have no right to know.”
Oh, crap. Sage had left out this little detail! Why the hell had she told her father? What if he knew how I’d threatened her?
“Mr. Hendricks …” That was as far as I got. Good thing, since I had no clue what I was going to say next.
“Logan.” His voice was louder, angry. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to see my own son going to school in a goddamn dress?”
“No, sir.” Probably as hard as finding out the girl you were hot for is actually someone’s son.
Mr. Hendricks stood and began to pace. “He acts like this is the only way he can be happy. Says he wants to be a girl. That he wants … to have one of those operations.”
He picked up a wrench and began toying with it. I think now he was just talking to talk. “Every day I hope he’ll stop. Every day I pray he’ll go back to being my son. And every day that I see him prancing around in a skirt and giving Tammi advice about boys, I feel like I failed. Like I’m a bad father.”
He violently threw the tool down on the bench. He stood there gripping the table, facing the wall.
“Sir?”
Sage’s father turned and glowered at me, as if Sage’s lifestyle was my fault. “Sage says you two are just friends. Just a couple of buddies. Is that true?” Obviously, he didn’t buy it.
“Mr. Hendricks, I know what this looks like, but …”
“That’s not answering my question.”
“I’m not interested in Sage like that, I swear.” I said this as forcefully as I dared. I wasn’t sure if I was more worried about Sage getting in trouble or her father thinking we were more than friends.
Mr. Hendricks looked at me for a long time. Perhaps he was deciding if he should just yell at me or beat me unconscious.
“Logan, when Sage started acting like this, we pulled him out of school. He wouldn’t have lasted a day. He didn’t argue. But now he’s insisting on taking his last semester at your school. I didn’t want to let him, but it was important to him. But the rules were that he couldn’t date and he couldn’t tell anyone he’s really a boy. Sage promised, and now he’s broken that promise. I should pull him out of school for that.”
That would break Sage’s heart. “Sir, I don’t think—”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion. Logan, do you know what happens to guys who go to school dressed like girls? Do you know what happens when people think the guy’s really a woman and then they find out the truth?”
I shook my head. The year before, I didn’t think people like that really existed.
“They get killed, Logan. I’m not kidding. I’ve done my research. This happens more often than you think.”
“Mr. Hendricks, no one is going to find out. She only has a few more months.”
He hocked up a wad of phlegm, thought for a moment, and then spit it on the floor instead of in my face.
“I know he only has a couple of months. But Sage told you his secret. How do I know I can trust you?”
“I swear, I won’t tell.”
Mr. Hendricks’s hostile face softened for a moment. “I know you think you won’t tell anyone, but that’s not good enough. You have to swear to me, if you care about Sage, you won’t let anyone know. Someone might hurt him. Would you want that, Logan? See someone take a baseball bat to Sage’s head?”
I’d never really thought about the serious trouble Sage could get into. I remembered how I’d flown off the handle. Someone else might have really hit her. Or done something much worse.
“I won’t tell,” I repeated.
He towered over me. I only came up to his neck. “Not even if you fight. Not even if you get mad. The second I doubt you, Logan, Sage is gone from school.”
“Yes, sir.”
We didn’t shake hands. He just hit the