Everyone has that one line they swear they’ll never cross, the one thing they say they’ll never do. Not something serious like I’ll never kill anyone or I’ll never invade Russia in the winter. Usually, it’s something less earth-shattering. I’ll never cheat on her. I’ll never work at a job I hate. I’ll never give up my dreams. We draw the line. Maybe we even believe it. That’s why it’s so hard when we break that promise we make to ourselves. Sage Hendricks was my line.
Before Chapter One—before the narrative proper commences—we have these lines from the narrator. They set the stage for the drama to come. Who is Sage Hendricks? And what makes Sage a line that someone would not cross. Not to mention why not invade Russia in the winter? After all, an invasion carried out by one high school student of no distinction or fame—the element of surprise would be amazing! But, of course, there is this Sage to think about so it is probably just as well Logan decides against testing that hypothesis. For now, at least.
She stormed into the lab as if she’d been coming there every morning. She had masses of curly rust-colored hair. Thousands of freckles dotted her cheeks and forehead. When she smiled, her green eyes scrunched and her wire-covered teeth were fully exposed. She was almost amazingly tall. I was used to looking down at most women, but this girl had to be nearly six feet.
A six-foot-tall redhead with green eyes and freckles. Frankly, there are probably not that many lines that most guys would not eagerly leap across just for the chance to be noticed by any girl filling that description. After all, the number of females matching the description at any given time on the planet can’t be more than five at most. Well, if you exclude Ireland, anyway. Throw in the additional information that the narrator goes on to give of his sighting of Sage—pointy-toe black boots on her feet and a red beret on her head—and some of the questions raised on that page before the beginning becomes abundantly clear. Except for the most important question: what line could possibly be problematic in the pursuit of such a goddess?
“You’ve never met a transgendered person, have you?”
And there’s your answer. Sage may be an Amazon goddess with hair of ginger and eyes like emeralds, but it turns out there is yet another rare aspect to her appearance that just may be the line which Logan is hesitant to cross. After all, shortly after discovering Sage’s secret, Logan hurls a snowball against a tree and fantasizes that the satisfying “splat!” it makes is the sound of her brains spewing forth her head. So, yeah, a girlfriend with a penis is, at least for some time, a bridge too far. Maybe it is time to reconsider that whole taking Russian by surprise gambit, after all. Or wait around for one of those three or four other six-foot-tall, green-eyed redheads to stroll into class one day. Or, of course, there is always the option of Logan just growing the hell up and stop drawing lines in the sand.
