Spy Stuff

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4

“You should come to football club.”

“s**t!”

Anton jumped nearly a foot in the air. Jude, he was beginning to realise, had skipped out on the whole ‘make someone aware of your presence before getting within two feet of them’ part of etiquette.

And, because he’d missed out on it, he just laughed.

“d**k,” Anton groused, and closed his locker door. He’d snuck away at the end of PE to change back into his uniform, but Jude had caught up to him anyway, it seemed.

“Yep. So. You should come to football club.”

Anton bit his lip, hefting his bag onto his shoulder. “Uh. I can’t,” he said feebly, and turned away to head for the gates. He half-expected Jude to drop it, but heavy footsteps followed, and then an arm was slung over his shoulders like they were best friends, not…not guys who’d known each other like two days.

“Why not?” Jude asked, way too close to Anton’s ear, and Anton shrugged him off a little awkwardly as they headed outside.

“I just…shouldn’t.” PE was dangerous enough. Football club…

“You’re good, you should!”

“I—”

“And,” Jude continued, like Anton hadn’t opened his mouth, “you don’t actually have to be good. There’s a team, too but you have to come to club to get on the team anyway and there’s loads of guys who come just to have a kick about. You should come, too. And you probably would get on the team, I reckon you’re better than Davies, he’s our main goalie at the minute…”

“It’s not about not being any good,” Anton blurted out.

Jude c****d his head. “S’it about your T-shirt?”

Anton took a shaky breath. “What?”

“Is it about that T-shirt you wear in PE? You got scars or something?”

“Um—”

“‘Cause there’s no kit rules for football club, just wear football boots, and gloves if you’re in goal. You can wear your T-shirt if you want. Nobody’ll see your scars.”

Anton swallowed. He knew the basics of lying—don’t give different people different stories—and yet it still jarred to mumble, “S’my back.”

“Eh?”

“It’s my back. I have…a back problem,” he said.

“Oh,” Jude said, and kicked the curb as they crossed the road. “But you played in PE.”

“I can play, I just have to wear this…brace thing.”

“Oh, right, hence the T-shirt?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jude urged. “Mate, if you’re worried about the other lads taking the piss, I’ll smack ‘em in the gob for you. An’ they won’t anyway. It’s just about what team you play for at club, not whether you’ve got a f****d-up back or whatever.”

Anton chewed on his lip. It was tempting. He liked football—it was one of the only lessons he’d liked in PE at his old school, especially as they got to wear shorts instead of the stupid PE skirt—but shirts rode up, guys hugged each other on the pitch, dirty tackles could show things…and changing rooms, what about the changing rooms?

“I don’t like people seeing the brace,” he said eventually.

“Is that why you disappeared before PE?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Toilets,” Anton mumbled.

“So do that again, if you have to,” Jude said, and slung that arm around Anton’s shoulders again as they reached the corner of Anton’s street. “Look, mate, you’re really good, yeah? Don’t let some pissing back brace keep you out of goal.”

Anton squirmed; Jude tightened his hold until it was a rough sort of…hug-headlock thing, and let go. “I’ll think about it,” Anton compromised.

“Stop thinking and do. You’re like Ems, I reckon, you think too much,” Jude said, then that heart-wrenchingly beautiful grin lit up his face like an explosion. “I’ll talk you round, Williams, you f*****g wait!”

Anton watched him lope away, blinking with the suddenness of the retreat, then yelled after him the most inane question ever. “Where’s Larimer?”

“Told him to sod off, needed to talk to you on your lonesome!” Jude yelled back.

Anton grimaced, heat rushing up his neck and face, and told his stomach—as it did a rough lurch sideways—to cut it out already. Jude was going out with Emma. You didn’t cuddle your mates in the corridor the way he’d cuddled up to Emma that morning.

Still…it didn’t stop the warmth seeping into his blood. Jude wanted Anton to come to football club so much, he’d seen off Larimer and pretty much walked Anton home. Maybe Anton should go. Everyone—Mum, Aunt Kerry, Ellen at the clinic—was always saying how he had to start living as normal a life as possible, living properly in his preferred gender. Right? Maybe going to football club, with Jude on his side about the ‘back brace’ was the way to start?

He let himself into the house, still thinking it over, and absently petted Molly on the stairs before shedding his coat and shoes and heading to the kitchen, following Rose’s dulcet warbling. She was only just a year old, chubby, and curly-haired, and waved a mush-covered spoon in his direction genially before continuing her singing.

“Hello, darling,” Mum said, ruffling his hair between putting pans away. “How was school?”

“Was okay.”

“PE go alright, then?”

“Yeah,” Anton said. “It was football. I didn’t get picked last either.”

“Good,” Mum said, and offered him a proper smile. She had her hair all pinned up on the top of her head, out of the way of her housework, and although she looked tired, she also looked happy. Which was nice, because Mum hadn’t been looking properly happy for a while. “Did you walk home with…Jules?”

“Jude, yeah,” Anton corrected, rummaging in the fridge for a can of Coke before sitting down at the island worktop. Max regarded him with imperious disdain from the other stool. “He, um. He’s asked me to go to football club, actually.”

“And are you?” Mum asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

Anton frowned at Max. “I don’t know,” he told the cat seriously. “I mean…if they see my brace then…”

“Then lie about it, it’s not like any of them are going to recognise a binder when they see one, darling.”

“But—”

“Get Kerry to sew a little NHS label on it or something, there’s lots of things you can tell them.”

“I told Jude it was a back brace,” Anton admitted.

“Well, there you go.”

“But—”

“No,” Mum said firmly, and abandoned the drying up to slide onto the stool opposite Anton’s. Max turned his huge amber eyes on her and seemed to visibly sneer at her harried appearance. “Anton, you can’t avoid things you like just because they might find out. They’re fifteen-year-olds. How many of them are going to know what a binder looks like?”

Anton turned the can around in his hands hypnotically, feeling a flush creeping up his cheeks.

“You need to get back on the horse, sweetheart. And you’ve always loved football. Go to football club. It’s no more risky than PE will be.”

“I don’t…I don’t want Jude to find out,” Anton admitted eventually.

“Jude? Why Jude?”

“He’s…he’s being really nice,” Anton said, his voice so low he could barely feel it in his throat. “He’s just being nice to me, even though he doesn’t have to, and I…”

He trailed off, but when he looked up, Mum’s face had gone soft. “Oh,” she said meaningfully.

“Shut up,” Anton groused.

“Oh, honey, welcome to not every boy being like those silly little idiots at your last school,” she teased, and ruffled his hair again before leaning over the counter to kiss the crown of his head.

“Mum!”

“Lay off,” she said, and chuckled when Rose caterwauled, presumably for her own kiss. “Oi! Shurrit, noisy. Worse than your mum, you are.”

Anton cracked a smile, propping his chin on his hand to watch Mum wrestle Rose out of her highchair and give the squirmy lump a cuddle. Anton didn’t mind babies that much, but Rose was a squirmy lump. And it was a bit awkward because she looked just like her dad, and Rose’s dad was He Who Shall Not Be Named in this household. A bit like Anton’s, he supposed.

“How’s job-hunting?”

Mum’s face turned severe. “Don’t you start fussing about me,” she said sternly, jabbing a finger at him. Rose wriggled and started blowing bubbles through her lips with wet farting noises. “You focus on settling in at school. And your Jude.”

“He’s not my Jude!”

“Mmm, but he’s being so nice to you.”

“Mum! God, you’re embarrassing.” She laughed. “Anyway, he has a girlfriend.”

“Well, then, daydream,” Mum advised. “All the best ones have girlfriends, darling.”

“I thought it was ‘nice guys finish last.’”

“Then he must not be that nice,” Mum countered, and hefted Rose above her head to pull faces at her. She looked a bit younger with baby Rose, less…less like she’d had a hideous divorce and lost her job to having to move in with her sister and dealing with her daughter becoming her son.

Anton slid down off the stool and wandered around the island to hug her on an impulse.

“Thanks, Mum,” he mumbled into her shoulder, awkwardly hugging around Rose, and felt Mum rest her cheek on the top of his head.

“Get yourself sorted, darling,” she murmured, “and don’t you worry about us, eh?”