Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [53]
“No,” I replied bluntly. “I don’t.”
“Sorry, I forgot.”
I idly stacked some empty crates. “Sage, um …” How could I put this delicately?
“Just say it, Logan. Whatever it is.”
“Okay. Why do you have to, um … change?”
“Transition,” she corrected.
“Transition right now? I mean, why didn’t you tough it out for a few more years? Wouldn’t it be easier to do this after you were out of school? When your parents weren’t watching you?”
Sage contemplated her polished nails. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But transitioning is something you can’t put off. The younger you start, the easier it is.” She reached into her purse. “Let me show you something.”
She handed me a color printout of a photograph. I almost laughed before I realized she wasn’t trying to be funny.
It was a picture of a middle-aged guy in a blond wig and a dress. He was wearing makeup and sitting with his legs crossed. Obviously, he was trying to be pretty. There was no way. He was a man in a dress. You could even see his beard stubble.
“Um, Sage, this isn’t how you hope to turn out, is it?”
“Of course not. That’s what I want to avoid. That’s a picture of Sylvia. I know her online. She didn’t transition until she was fifty, and married with kids. If you think my parents didn’t understand, you should hear her talk about her family.”
I handed Sage back the picture.
“The point is, Logan, I don’t want to turn out like that. I’ve been living as a girl for almost five years. I don’t think anyone at school suspects. Next year, I’m going to enter college as a woman. I let myself deny that I was a female for over ten years. That’s ten years wasted. And it’ll probably be another ten years before I can afford the surgery.”
In my entire life, I’d never wondered about how a sex change worked. “So you’re really going to have some doctor cut it off?”
She shook her head. “They won’t actually remove my penis,” lectured Sage. “They’ll slit it laterally to create …”
“O say, can you see? By the dawn’s early light!” I sang at the top of my lungs. “What so proudly we hailed …”
“Sorry,” she snickered. “Too much info there.”
I pulled my fingers out of my ears. “You think?”
“Okay. Yes, I do want to have sexual reassignment surgery, or a sex change, as you’d call it. When they’re done, you could see me naked and still think I was born female.”
My testicles shrank up into my body as if they were in danger. “And it’s really that expensive?”
Sage held her head in her hands. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was staring at her crotch.
“Over thirty thousand dollars. Mom and Dad won’t help, of course. They’ll pay for college but won’t pay for me to become a full woman.”
I wanted to spout some pearls of wisdom. Fat chance. Sage had just told me that being a woman was so important to her that she’d almost killed herself. What do you say to that?
“Sage, it’ll happen someday. And for now, no one knows.” Except me.
She balled her fists and rubbed her eyes. When she spoke again, there was hurt in her voice. “Logan, I know. And every time I go to the bathroom or take a shower … I want you to imagine that instead of a penis, you had some sort of deformed tentacle, or a gaping, oozing sore. That’s how I feel. It’s like I have a terminal disease, and there are doctors all over the place who can cure me, and my parents could help pay for it, and they won’t! I can’t live, I can’t live, until I don’t have to pretend. The only one in the world who even cares is Tammi.”
“I care.” I really did. I didn’t understand, but I didn’t like to see Sage in pain. And it was all the worse because there was nothing I could do to help her. I couldn’t give her the money. I couldn’t make her family accept her. I couldn’t completely accept her myself.
Sage sniffed, then smiled. “I know you care. And that’s important to me.” She wiped her eyes and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
I stood. “Let’s get some air.” We’d been talking about this for about ten minutes, and I’d kind of reached my limit.
“Logan? I printed