Spy Stuff

Chapter 1 “Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself, Anton.” Anton wanted to say, “Are you kidding me?” The entire class stared back blandly. There must have been thirty-five of them, all lounging professionally. A red-haired boy by the window was chewing gum and staring right at him. A girl with long brown curls was texting, the phone just lying on the desk in the open like she didn’t give a damn. A couple of Asian boys in the back row were playing paper football. “Um,” Anton said, glancing at the teacher. “I’d rather not.” The class sniggered, the noise rippling like wind through long grass. The teacher sighed and rapped her knuckles on the desk. “Quiet!” She was short, with black hair in a tight pixie cut, and blue earrings that swung every time she moved. “Well, Anton, you won’t have much of a choice soon. None of you will!” she added loudly when the class sniggered again. “This term’s PSHE project will hopefully get some of you to buck up your ideas about respecting your fellow classmates—” “Respect Kalinowski? Not likely, Miss!” a scrawny boy with a face like a rat shouted from the back. The boy by the window with the red hair casually turned around and threw a book at him. “Oi! Polack!” “Detention, Walsh!” the teacher barked. She jabbed a finger at the redhead. “And not a word, Kalinowski!” Quiet settled again, but an uneasy sort of one. Anton guessed that Miss Name-He-Couldn’t-Remember didn’t have awesome classroom control. “Right, well, for now—class, this is Anton Williams. I want you all to make him feel welcome—and no throwing books at him, Kalinowski!” “What about paper?” “No throwing anything!” Kalinowski pulled a face; Walsh disregarded the order and threw the book back, hitting Kalinowski in the back of the head. “Walsh!” “He started it!” “Kalinowski would start a war if it amused him, I expect you to be grown up enough to ignore him!” she snapped. Anton shifted on his feet uncertainly, unsure if he was supposed to stay where he was or sit down somewhere. A girl at a nearby table shifted her bag off the spare seat and beckoned. “Come on,” she whispered, and he slid into it gratefully. “I’m Emma,” she added in a low voice. “Was it Anthony?” “Anton.” “Oops, sorry,” she said, and smiled. She was very pretty: huge, round eyes that were either black or brown, a chubby face with sweet dimples when she smiled, and long, dark brown hair that curled lightly at the ends. “Don’t worry about them, they’re just bored. It’s PSHE first thing Mondays, and it’s really dull.” “PSHE?” She blinked. “What school did you come from? Personal, social and health education?” “Oh,” Anton said, and flushed. “Um, it was just called form time. We didn’t really call it anything.” “Well, it’s so crap here,” Emma whispered, as the teacher lost her cool and stomped over to Kalinowski to take the book away. “We were doing religions last term, and we totally missed out Hinduism and Sikhism, how exclusive is that, it’s not like—” “Ems!” a voice shouted across the room. “Stop boring the new kid to death, give Miss a chance first!” Emma twisted around in her chair. “Walsh, why don’t you take your ignorant opinion, and shove it up your wrinkled, hairy—” The teacher slammed a book down on a desk deafeningly, and a startled silence shot through the room. “Quiet,” she said in a dangerous tone. Quiet was granted. “Now,” she continued softly, “we have our PSHE lesson for this period, and if we do not finish the lesson in this period, you will all be back here for lunch. And I will continue teaching you in lunchtimes until the PSHE curriculum is complete if you think Monday morning is playtime. Am I clear?” The chorus of ‘yes, Miss’ was disgruntled, but grudgingly accepting. “Brown.” Emma straightened. “You will show Williams around and make sure he gets to all of his lessons until he finds his feet.” The door opened, a boy with scruffy brown hair lurching into the room, and the teacher sighed loudly through her nose. “Just sit down, Larimer, and don’t say a word.” He did. Quiet settled again, albeit a little more tenuously than the first time. “Now, our project for this term is ‘identity.’ We will be looking at how people can identify with different labels and groups, such as race, gender, sexuality, and so on, and at the protected characteristics in law.” A groan went up. “You will be paired up,” she continued, “and work together on a project exploring your own identities. At the end of the project, each of you will present your partner—stop smirking, Larimer, for God’s sake—back to the class. The idea is that, in theory, you will have more respect for each other, something sorely lacking in this year group, and a better understanding of the differences between individuals.” A hand shot up. The scruffy-haired boy, Larimer, nearly fell out of his seat, he put it up so quickly. “What, Larimer?” “Miss,” he said, licking his lips. “Er. What if I don’t want to…present myself…to my partner?” The class sniggered. Anton, figuring it was safe, joined in. “Larimer,” the teacher said dryly, “I have it on remarkably good authority that you are quite happy to present yourself to whosoever is amenable to your doing so at any given moment. Now is not the time to get shy about it.” The sniggering got louder. “In any case, I am not so stupid as to partner you with Walsh or Kalinowski. You will pair up with the person sat next to you—with the exception of you, Anderson and Crabtree. Crabtree, swap seats with Walsh.” There was a general rummaging and shuffling, and the teacher stalked out from around her desk to lean against it, arms folded and staring at the class. She wasn’t quite scowling, but she definitely wasn’t smiling. “Shall we start with the obvious? What’s an identity? Can someone give me an example of an identity?” “Polack!” Walsh shouted. Kalinowski flipped him off without even turning round. “Walsh, if you don’t stop using that disgusting term, I will write to your parents again.” Walsh pulled a face that meant he didn’t much care. “Anyone want to offer an identity that isn’t an ethnic slur?” “Poles aren’t an ethnicity,” Larimer protested. “Polish,” Emma said, rolling her eyes. “Someone can identify as Polish.” “Thank you, Brown. Anyone else?” “British.” “Scottish.” “Black.” “Gay.” “You’re gay, Larimer.” “Bugger off, y’fa—” The teacher cleared her throat loudly. The offending boy shut up quickly. “Yes,” she said tartly, “many of those are good examples of identifiers. Any more? Williams?” Anton flushed. “Er,” he said. There was an obvious one. His one. But…he fumbled it, knowing to sound uncertain pushed it away from yourself, made it not yours. “Trans…gender?” “Yes,” she said. “That’s a good one—though it’s important to remember transgender people can identify as just male or female, not just transgender.” “What, like, both at once?” “Malefemale,” Larimer said. “That’s called bigender, i***t,” Emma said scathingly. “What, like bisexual?” Kalinowski asked. “Yes.” “That would be amazing,” Walsh chipped in. “That’d be like both sets—you could have a p***s and a va—” “Gender, you morons, not s*x,” Emma said, and Larimer and Walsh both started sniggering. “Oh, real mature.” “What do you expect, Brown,” the teacher said in a tired tone, and rapped her knuckles on the desk. “I want no more crass jokes. This is a sensitive subject. Don’t for one minute believe you’re all the same. There’s thirty-six of you in this class, and you will all have very different experiences—even those of you who share some identity labels.” “I don’t want to share no labels with Kalinowski, God knows where he puts ‘em,” Walsh called out. Kalinowski, once again, casually flipped him off. “Hopefully,” the teacher said loudly, “some of you might grow up over the course of this project. Now. In your pairs, I want you to list as many labels as you can think of, and then divide them into groups, such as nationality or sexuality. I will come around and check your progress—and no, Walsh, you may not write any foul terms.” Anton chewed on his lip as Emma tore a page out of her notebook and started making a spider diagram. How awkward could this get? Tell Emma his labels, when he’d switched schools to hide those labels? Not likely. And have her present his labels in front of this lot? Whose shitty idea was this? “This is a shitty idea,” Emma said quietly, and Anton jumped. “This lot are just going to find it all so funny. I really hope there’s nobody in our year who’s closeted or has a hidden disability or anything, these guys can come off so foul…” “Are they always like this?” “Yeah,” Emma said. “They’re harmless really, they don’t mean it, but not everyone gets that, you know?” “I guess,” Anton said awkwardly. “Right, labels!” “Um, well, you seem to know all the…sex ones,” he hedged, feigning ignorance, and Emma rolled her eyes. “Gender,” she corrected. “s*x is between your legs, gender’s in your head.” Anton itched with the urge to tell her he knew that very well, thanks. “I went through a phase,” she admitted, starting to scribble sexualities on her spider diagram. “Not a gender phase, a sexuality phase.” “A phase?” “Uh-huh. Okay, phase is the wrong word, but for a while I was so into girls. Like, I thought I was a lesbian for a bit. Maybe I’m more bisexual though, I came back around to guys.” “And…you’re okay just…saying that?” “Everyone knows,” she said dismissively. “Oh.” She blinked, and c****d her head. “Oh,” she said. “Did you come from a shitty school where I wouldn’t say that?” “Yeah,” Anton said meaningfully, and she winced. “Well, I don’t know about the other years, but this one’s okay. They might sound like a bunch of immature pricks, but they’re generally okay. How do you spell bisexual anyway, is it an ‘i’ or a ‘y’?” Anton let himself relax fractionally, spelling it out as Emma scribbled, and cast a wary glance across the room to where the rat-faced Walsh was flicking paper balls at the redheaded Kalinowski, and scruffy Larimer was sniggering into his sleeve. Emma seemed…confident enough. And Kalinowski had just laughed at the Polack jokes. Maybe she was right— “f**k off, you bender!” “Larimer!” —or maybe not.