Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [90]
It was a night to celebrate. The whole team, along with girlfriends, buddies, and various other people with nothing better to do, took off to Boyer’s number one exclusive nightspot: the abandoned quarry.
I’m not sure they’d ever actually excavated rock there. I think they dug it out in 1935, then let it fall apart so four generations of Boyer High School students would have a place to get drunk, shoot off fireworks, and have illicit sex. Just two miles outside of town, the quarry was almost completely isolated. If you didn’t mind risking a broken leg or drowning in a flash flood, you could have a fun time there. Even the meth heads considered the area off-limits, and the police never showed up. Maybe the cops remembered what they’d done in the quarry when they were teens.
There must have been forty people there Friday night, and not all of them were from Boyer. Someone had set up a boom box on a rock, and the crashing music vibrated into the otherwise silent night. We’d attempted to build a bonfire out of damp wood, and a flickering, smoky blaze cut a few feet into the darkness. In the shadows, I could just make out people I knew. Drinking, laughing, dancing, and making out. Everyone was there with a date. Even Jack was having his face chewed on by a cute runner from Higbee.
I sat on the ground, nursed a beer, and tried to pretend I was having a great time. I mean, I was having a good time. Really. My good friends, the tang of victory, a case of Bud … what more could I ask for?
I remembered how Sage had watched me practice. If I hadn’t dumped her, she would have come to the track meet. And afterward, maybe we could have sneaked off to the abandoned gravel pits and run a victory lap.
But it wasn’t the celibacy that was really getting to me. I just wished Sage was with me. I wanted to be near her. Wrap my jacket around her when she got cold. Make fun of the other people together. Share that special closeness without saying anything.
I chugged my beer, trying to drive those thoughts from my head. Laura had all but asked me if I was gay. No matter how understanding she was, I could not let her think that. Even if we never discussed it again, Laura would consider me a secret homosexual for the rest of my life. And aside from Laura, someone else might find out. I couldn’t go through life with that hanging over my head.
But my sister had been right, hadn’t she? Laura had suspected I liked Sage, despite (or because of) her sex. But instead of doing the right thing, I’d shoved Sage right out of my life. The girl who’d helped me get over Brenda. The girl who’d helped make me a man. The girl who’d told me how much she needed my friendship, and how the future wouldn’t be quite so scary with me there. The girl who’d, years ago, once tried to …
Why couldn’t she just be a real girl? Our lives would be great. She was so close to the real thing. But close didn’t count.
Jack staggered toward me, his eyes bleary, lipstick all over his neck. He bent over to grab a drink from the cooler.
“Logan! BHS kicks ass!” His head zoomed from side to side as if he was daring anyone to suggest that we did not, in fact, kick ass.
I grunted.
“Hey,” said Jack, looking at me like he’d just noticed something. “How come you don’t have a date? You should have called that Erin chick you told us about.”
“Yeah.” Once again, I was having imaginary sex.
“You know, Stacey’s here alone. You should go …” His cell phone rang and cut him off.
“Hello? Who? Who? What? Hello? Huh? Who?” He paused, then thrust the phone at me. “It’s for you.”
Me? Probably my mother. I took Jack’s phone and slunk into the darkness so no one could hear me checking in at home.
“This is Logan.”
The female voice on the other end was almost incoherent. It