Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [65]
“Sage, how did you … um … develop like that?”
Sage played with her brush. Then she pulled a small pill bottle out of a drawer of her makeup table and set it on the desk next to me. “I take synthetic estrogen. Hormones, Logan.” There was shame in her voice, like she was admitting to having some kind of fungus.
I flopped backward on the bed. This was too much. “Like medicine? You actually grew those things?”
Sage sat down next to me. “I started when I was fourteen. It took a few years, but I’m happy with the results. But why are you so surprised? You had to have noticed before.” She was leaning back, and I could see the ghost of her curves against her robe.
“I always thought you just wore a padded bra or something.” Men didn’t have breasts, not in my experience.
“You never wondered why I don’t have a beard? You never noticed how soft my skin is?” She held her arm out to me as if she wanted me to feel her softness. I jumped up off the bed and began to pace.
“Of course I noticed, but I just thought you were girly. I guess I never knew you could change someone’s body like that.” I thought back to the pool. Pills could turn a guy into a chick?
Sage’s oversized robe had slipped slightly, revealing her bare shoulder. “Only if you start before puberty’s over. That’s another reason I transitioned early. If you started taking hormones now, you wouldn’t get nearly the results. Your breasts would stay small and pointy, and you wouldn’t lose your facial hair. Your, ah, other parts wouldn’t wither up as much, either.”
I got a full-on case of the shudders. I certainly didn’t like thinking about what hormones could do to me! Especially that last bit.
I picked up the pill bottle but didn’t look too closely. “So you just go up to the pharmacy and order this stuff?”
“Ha! I wish. It’s a catch-twenty-two situation for trans-gendered people. Hormones have to be prescribed by a psychiatrist, and most therapists won’t let you start until you’re in your midtwenties. By then they won’t do you nearly as much good.” Sage crossed her legs, revealing her bare, hairless calves.
I tried to read the label on the bottle, but it made no sense. “So how did you get these?”
“I order them from Mexico. My grandfather left me a few thousand dollars, and my parents were foolish enough to put it in an account with my name on it. It was supposed to go toward a car for me, but instead … Every month I have to buy an international money order, spend a bunch more on postage, and worry like hell that it won’t go through.”
“Your parents let you do this?” I figured Sage’s father would cut off the medicine the second he found out.
“They don’t know.”
I stared at her skeptically, and she frowned.
“They know. But they won’t talk about it. They don’t want to deal with it. Mom knows I’m never going to go back to being a guy, and my dad … he’d never bring it up. He still tells me I’ll end up going back to being a boy. I’m not sure if he’s trying to be cruel or he’s just deluding himself.” She snatched the bottle of hormones and put it back in her vanity.
That night in the garage, when her father was yelling at me … all he had talked about was how Sage made him feel and how ashamed he was of her. Did it ever occur to him that Sage might be feeling ashamed? That she needed her dad to be proud of her, just like any other teenage girl? I wanted to tell Sage that her father was wrong. But not right then. I was still sorting out my own emotions.
“Sage, you’re full of surprises. I’m sorry I wigged out at the pool.” I got up to leave. “I just never realized that under your clothes, you were so …”
She stood, looking at me intently. “So what?”
“Um …” Ah, hell, there was no denying it. “So womanly.” I said it with a grin, letting her know there was nothing sexual about my comment. I turned and placed my hand on the knob.
“Logan?”
I looked back. Sage was standing near her bed. The bottom of her bathrobe had fallen open, revealing that she was wearing a thick pair of gym shorts. Slowly, her hand crept