Spy Stuff

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“Oi, Williams!”

Anton jumped violently, nearly dropping his textbook. It was three thirty, the end of the day, and he’d been all set to get out of there and recover from the insanity of a new school.

Then Jude yelled his name, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Anton thought his shirt collar would catch fire from how hot his neck suddenly felt.

“Where d’you live, then, new kid?”

“Um,” Anton fumbled. “Near the tube station.”

“Edgware or Stanmore?”

“Edgware. Glendale Avenue.”

“Cool, s’on our route, you can walk with us f’you want.”

Larimer was hovering—standing still, he apparently could just about manage not to crash into stuff—and Anton swallowed.

“Yeah, okay,” his mouth said before his brain could catch up, and Jude beamed. Anton’s stomach twisted.

Jude and Larimer discussed their German lesson until they passed out of the school gates, giving Anton time to settle his flush and his stomach, before Jude turned to him and out of nowhere said, “So, what football team?”

“Sorry?”

“What football team’s yours?”

“Oh. Spurs,” Anton said without thinking.

“Sweet!” Jude cheered, as Larimer groaned and called them both kikes. “Shut it, Larimer, the guy knows where the good s**t’s at.”

“You mean, you both know how to lose.”

Jude snorted and slung an arm over Anton’s shoulder. Anton tried—and failed—to crush the way his stomach dipped. “Ignore the wanker,” Jude said, his breath hot at Anton’s ear. The hairs on Anton’s arms stood on end. “He’s just jealous that his team are a pile of shit.”

“Better than your lot!”

“Better at bribing refs, maybe.”

“Saturday’s match—”

“—was bent as f**k!” Jude argued. “That was never a red card, he didn’t even touch him—!”

Anton offered an agreement with Jude—even though privately, he thought it had been a bit of a dirty tackle—and tried to keep out of the brewing argument, until Larimer fell off the pavement and nearly got his foot stuck in a drain, and Jude laughed so hard that Anton had to prise himself free before they fell into the road.

“f**k you both,” Larimer swore.

“S’what you get for growing ten inches over Christmas,” Jude jeered. “What about you, Anton? You gonna end up a six footer like this wanker, or stay a midget? What are you, five six?”

“About that,” Anton said. “My dad’s only five four,” he lied.

“Unlucky,” Jude said.

“You can’t talk, your old man’s a right fat git.”

“Hey, f**k you, I could’ve been in the cast for a gladiator movie!” Jude bragged, exaggeratedly flexing an arm. Anton hesitantly smiled as Larimer cracked up—naturally, because it was total crap—and shook his head when Jude looked to him. “Traitor.”

“New don’t mean stupid, Kalinowski,” Larimer snorted, and nearly walked into a lamppost.

“Karma!” Jude yelled. “So, Anton,” he said, hitching his bag a little higher on his shoulder. “Aside from Spurs, what’re you about?”

Anton fidgeted. “Usual,” he said eventually. “You know, films and stuff.”

“Game of Thrones fan?”

“Uh-huh.”

“TV or books?”

“Both,” Anton admitted. “I mean, the books are kinda massive, but they’re cool, too.”

“M’not much of a reader,” Jude admitted, shrugging. “Takes too long to get to the story if you’re reading it, y’know?”

“Mm,” Anton said. He didn’t know, he was too fast a reader for that, but it felt weird to disagree with Jude’s lazy smile. “I like that fantasy stuff though. And historical stuff. The grimy stuff, not like…church reforms and stuff.”

“What, like Rome and Spartacus and s**t?”

“Yeah.”

“My dad would kick me off the telly if I tried any of that,” Jude said, sounding a bit wistful. “If it isn’t football or the wrestling, he’ll put the racing on. And that’s s**t until someone crashes.”

“The Grand Prix,” Larimer said loftily, “is the pinnacle of sporting…amazing…ness.”

“Sporting amazingness—yeah, totally. Twat.”

“Oi! Dickhead.”

Anton tuned out the idle insults as they turned off the main road and into the housing estate. He was only brought back by Jude’s elbow in his ribs, and then he jumped away like he’d been shot. Just in case…just in case Jude felt something, you know?

“Sorry, mate,” Jude said, blinking.

“Um. S’okay. What’d you say?”

“Asked if you’d clocked any of the girls yet.”

“Clocked—sorry?”

Larimer laughed. “Who’re the fit girls in our class?” he translated, and Anton reddened.

“Not my thing,” he blurted out without thinking, and then red became purple as Larimer’s face lit up and he cackled.

“No way!”

“Lay off, Larimer, even a gayboy’d have more luck than you,” Jude retorted casually.

“I—I—”

“Hey, relax, s’cool,” Jude said, shrugging. “Long as you don’t fancy Will Thorne, that’s just f*****g sick, man.”

Anton laughed weakly, his heart beating a rapid tattoo of relief under his ribs. “Not my type,” he said, even though he couldn’t be sure he knew which boy Thorne was.

“Hopefully, not anyone’s type,” Larimer said.

“Tell you what, mind, that Bee Lewis hasn’t got a gaydar,” Jude continued cheerfully, kicking a pebble into the road.

“What?” Anton said.

“She were staring at you all the way through English,” Jude grinned.

“The blonde one,” Larimer added helpfully. “Hides behind her hair all the time. Big glasses.”

“She’s pretty under there, she had to tie it back in food tech last year ‘cause b***h Briscoe did her nut,” Jude continued blithely.

“Um. Well. Not my type either,” Anton mumbled. His face still felt too warm, but Jude and Larimer just laughed and said something about her not having a decent rack anyway. “Um, can you…my last school, it wasn’t…okay.”

“What, gays?”

“Yeah.”

Jude shrugged. “F’you don’t want it known, it won’t be known.”

“Yeah, what d’you reckon we are, girls?”

Anton forced himself to laugh as they reached the corner of Glendale Avenue, and hesitated. “Thanks. Um,” he said. “See you guys tomorrow, I guess.”

“You walk in?” Jude asked. “Larimer usually gets the bus, but I walk to school.”

“Oh, I, um, my aunt drops me off on her way to work,” Anton hedged, and his brain nearly decided to f**k a lift and walk with Jude when Jude just gave him that huge, toothpaste-ad smile and shrugged.

“Okay, man. Laters!”

“Lat—f**k, ow!” Larimer swore, turning and tripping on a rock. Jude cackled. Anton’s stomach fluttered at that noise, too, traitorous thing that it was, and he hurried up the avenue before his brain could do something really stupid like invite Jude over or something equally suicidal and retarded.

Anton lived in a reasonably big house on Glendale Avenue with Mum and Aunt Kerry, and Aunt Kerry’s two little girls. It had once been Nana Lauder’s house, and she’d left it to Aunt Kerry when she’d died. Only since Mum and Dad had split up, Anton and Mum lived there, too.

Aunt Kerry’s car wasn’t in the driveway, but the front door was on the latch, and Max, one of their massive cats, was sitting on the stairs. He offered Anton an unimpressed look, and proceeded to start washing his arse.

“Charming,” Anton said, dropping his keys in the dish on the hall table. “Mum!” he yelled.

“Kitchen, honey!”

He dropped his bag and toed off his shoes before following her voice. Max followed, too, but then Max thought his name was Kitchen, so Anton didn’t pretend it was out of any sense of liking them. Molly, their other cat, was sitting in a sun patch on the kitchen windowsill, though, so he picked her up—all five million pounds of her—and perched on one of the island stools to hug her.

“How did it go, then?” Mum asked, up to her elbows in chicken carcass. Anton wrinkled his nose at the funky smell. “Oh, don’t pull that face. It’ll be good!”

“Is there going to be that garlic and pepper sauce thing again?” Anton asked doubtfully. Molly started to purr loudly, and nuzzled the underside of his jaw hopefully.

“It will be good,” Mum insisted, which meant it was the garlic and pepper thing. She’d tried it the previous week and Lily, Anton’s five-year-old cousin, had thrown a huge tantrum at the funny taste.

“Okay,” Anton said doubtfully, convinced Lily would convey enough disgust for both of them.

“Don’t make me ask again, honey.”

“It went okay,” Anton said. He swallowed. “Nobody guessed.”

Mum’s face softened. “Of course they didn’t guess,” she said gently, and Anton shrugged.

“It’s still…I still can see the…my face is too soft.”

“Oh, honey, that’s because you’re looking in the mirror and you’re expecting to see it. They don’t know any different than what you say to them. Of course they won’t guess.”

There was the crux of it. A new school didn’t make Anton nervous, not really. A school was a school, after all. It was the fear that they would work out that he wasn’t—yet, really—a boy. That under his clothes he wore a binder over his breasts, and his voice was only as low as it was because of the voice exercises. He’d been terrified he’d turn up, and everyone would instantly go, “Anton? Who names a girl Anton?”

“What about PE?” He was dreading PE. His new timetable said it was the following day, and he was terrified. What if the teacher insisted he change into his gym kit in the changing rooms with all the other boys? They’d see his binder. They might even be able to guess he had nothing in his boxers. And what if they did swimming in the summer? Or—

“Anton,” Mum said firmly. “Don’t worry so much, eh? One step at a time.”

“But—”

“The headmaster said he’d let your PE teacher know the situation and proper measures would be taken. Now stop worrying. How did your day go? Are your class nice?”

Anton hugged Molly tightly, and pushed it aside. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s this girl, Emma, she’s really nice. I’m not sure about some of the boys yet. But I walked back with Jude and Larimer—”

“Larimer?”

Anton blinked. “Er. I don’t actually know his name.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know his name?”

“Well…everyone calls everyone by their last name, and nobody’s said his first one yet,” Anton said blankly. He hadn’t even noticed. “Well, um, I walked home with him and Jude, anyway.”

“Sounds like you’re doing just fine.”

“Well, I’m behind in English. They’re doing Hamlet, not Romeo and Juliet.”

“Oh, please, Anton, like you’ll be behind for long,” Mum laughed. She arranged the last of the stuffing and put the chicken in the oven. “You’ll be fine with English. And it’s more important you focus on settling in, if you ask me. Make some friends, join a club or two—”

Anton shrugged awkwardly, and Mum sighed. She started to wash her hands. “I know,” Anton said at the pointed look she gave him. “I know. I know what Ellen says.” Ellen was his psychiatrist, a gender specialist in West London.

“And what does Ellen say?”

“That social transition means living a normal social life in my preferred gender role,” Anton recited. “But it’s hard.”

“Honey, you have already come a long way. Too far for ‘hard’ to be an excuse,” Mum said. She dried off her hands, then came around the worktop to hug him. She was slight, like he was, and if he’d been happy as a girl, Anton figured he’d have been happy to end up looking like Mum. She was pretty, with the same fair hair as him. He had a narrower face, thankfully, but the same brown eyes, too.

Most importantly—and oddly, he supposed, for someone like him—he didn’t look too much like Dad.

The divorce had been…bad. Anton still felt a bit guilty, deep down, no matter how many times Mum and Ellen and Aunt Kerry had told him it wasn’t his fault. But at the end of the day, if he’d been…cisgender (Ellen hated him saying ‘normal’) then he’d have just been Natasha, and Mum and Dad would never have started arguing.

But he wasn’t. He’d freaked out when his periods had started—he’d only been eleven—and Mum had realised it wasn’t a normal level freakout. Dad had been worried then, too, especially as Anton had taken to ripping up any of his sheets or clothes that got blood on them, and had refused point-blank to wear skirts or girly clothes as they felt wrong. He could remember the horror of it, the crying himself to sleep when his periods came, and the inability to pin down exactly why he hated them so much.

When the child psychologist had said it was a perfectly normal part of being a girl, Anton had simply replied, “I’m not a girl, though.” And it had clicked. He hadn’t known the words—hadn’t known transgenderism existed, or that there were others like him—but he’d known the feeling. And finally, he knew at least one sentence that could express it.

Then things had fallen apart. Mum had cried, but then been fine. She’d hugged him and said he was still hers, no matter if he wasn’t Natasha anymore. Dad, though…

Dad thought he was mad. Dad thought he was mentally ill and Mum was encouraging his delusions. They’d argued for months before Mum turned around and said she wasn’t raising ‘our son, Chris!’ in that environment. She had demanded a divorce, and dragged Dad through the courts when he’d tried to stop her. Dragged up everything, the way Dad had refused to take him to his appointments with the gender specialist, the way Dad would throw out any clothes that were ‘too boyish’ and would sometimes just shake Anton and repeat his old name—“Natasha, you’re Natasha!”—at him until Mum would catch him and shout herself hoarse. Everything.

It had been the ugliest divorce ever. In some ways, it still wasn’t over, thanks to the custody visits. And Dad still had some rights, which he tried to hold onto with both hands. He had only signed the paperwork to let Anton change his name after Mum had threatened to apply for full custody and shut Dad out of his life forever. And Dad still—still, years after that visit to the child psychologist’s office—called him a ‘her.’ Still said ‘she’ and ‘Natasha.’ Still accused Mum of blocking access to ‘our daughter.’ All the neighbours had to know about Anton by now, the amount of yelling matches they’d had on the doorstep, and Anton hated it. Sometimes, Anton even hated Dad for what he insisted on doing.

Because it was hard, and maybe it was a little bit crazy, but…

But in the boys’ uniform, with a boy’s name and being referred to as ‘he’ and having the prospect, when he turned sixteen, of being sent to the clinic properly and maybe starting medical transition instead of just talking about it all the time…with all that, Anton was happy. He was happy like that.

And was being happy such a crime?