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Sam was some sort of perfect. She was Agatha’s sort of perfect. The sort of perfect that Agatha would ball up beneath the blankets some nights, fighting envious tears over. Sam was tall for her age, and coltish in neck and limb. Not exactly beefy, but certainly defined, and flat as wave washed sand across her front. Her freckled face was softer than her body, her eyes almost doll-like in size, but her face was just barely plain. Plain enough that a casual observer might not be able to say with certainty, that she was not a young boy.
For sure, Sammy did not look like a man. Perhaps, that was what made Agatha’s belly boil. In clinging clothes, with her face painted, Sam could easily make herself what many would call a “pretty girl”. But Sam had chosen otherwise, and without much effort, had settled into a state of comfortable androgyny, that all the scrubbing and wrapping in the world would never grant Agatha. Sam did not have that masculinity that Agatha had long disregarded as unreachable, but she was easily boyish, and easily handsome. And with nothing more than a free, sunny smile, she was perfect. The sort of perfect Agatha could have been, had she been born Sam, and not Agatha.
Agatha had put on weight, again. She had been changing her clothes, when she noticed the angry, red stretch marks inside her thighs, peaking out from under the protruding swell of her stomach. That stomach that jiggled beneath her shirt, along side her breasts, that had begun to sag as they fattened up with rest of her. Her lips curled back as she looked down at herself. She bared her teeth at her body, as if she could frighten it away. Her bandages lay, heaped at the foot of the bed, and her face grew hot as she looked at them. Her femininity could never be made invisible, but it could be bundled up and suffocated, it’s protests muffled beneath layers of baggy clothing. Today though, Agatha felt her whole body, core to skin, was ringing. The thought of those strips sinking into her, like cheese wire, made her want to cry. If she could get through today without welling up with little girl tears, that would at least be something.
So, she descended the stairs, unbound. Regret hit, as soon as she pushed through the beads into the store. She suddenly felt her buzzing flesh was bulging against the seams of her shape swallowing shirt. Christie was standing at the counter. Lovely Christie, a contented girl. Long haired, green polish on her bitten nails, and releasing a rare, but unabashedly bird-like twitter for Sam. Perfect, handsome Sam. Agatha’s head grew loud and heavy, every passage within beginning to burn. It looked like she might have to let herself down, after all.
“Aggs!” Sammy yipped, startling her and hurting her head. “That a new bandana?”
Agatha swallowed thickly, and remembered the fresh, black strip wound about her head.
“Mmhm.” She managed. Sam grinned at her, radiant, free and affectionate.
“Lookin’ tough, Babe.”
Agatha tossed a lock back from her face, to show the bandana off more. Her protrusions still brushed the fabric of her shirt, but seemed now to have shrunk, enough for her to straighten up a little. Enough for her to answer Sam’s smile with a tight one of her own.
“Thanks, Sammy.”
When someone perfect, like Sam looked at Agatha like that. As though she were that same sort of perfect. It is a little difficult not to feel like she really was.