Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

One

We sat in the stands, equipment bags scattered at our feet, a picture of despair. It had been a miserable practice session, and not even slamming every puck we had as hard as I could into the back of the net – and in one case, through it – had been enough to lift my mood, or the mood of my girls.

“Falling off her bloody bike,” said Tina, for about the fortieth time.

“Okay,” said Amira, hanging up her phone. “My cousins are willing to dress for match days to get us to minimum bench, but they are not going anywhere near the ice. I had to vouch for the strength of the plexiglass five times before they’d even agree to that. Apparently there’s a wedding coming up and they don’t want to risk a tooth or a concussion or something. Babies.”

“So we’re still short a player, even if we run the same starters every single game,” I said. “Thanks, Amira. I really appreciate it.” I smiled, but I was struggling to dredge up an optimistic angle on this. We’d been searching for another player all summer, going in wider and wider circles until we were basically looking at London postcodes before conceding that ice hockey just wasn’t that popular with the 16-18 bracket of girls of England. Our league was, let’s say flexible with the regs, but even they had limits.

“Tina? Any ideas?” I said, more to keep the silence from descending again than from any real hope she’d produce a skilled hockey player from under her hat.

“Hmm?” she was miles away, staring out at the ice.

“I said, do you know anyone who can skate?”

“Sorry, I was just watching – do we know who this is?”

There was a lone girl on the ice – a figure-skater, I guessed, from the skintight all-body leotard and the way she was leaping around in a way that made my ankles wince. She must have come out to practice once we’d finished our pathetic shooting drills and shuttle runs. There hadn’t been anyone on the booking sheet after us, but no-one really cared that much if you grabbed some ice time when the rink was free.

She was tiny, maybe five-six if you included the blades, and built like a breadstick, but she clearly had enough skill and strength to launch herself spinning into the air and land on a single skate with no visible effort before doing it again, and then again without even a pause between leaps.

“What, the pirouette?” I laughed. “I mean, it might distract the other team.”

“No you idiot,” said Tina, affectionately. “Actually watch her.”

And then she landed and, despite having just been through god knows how many dizzying spins, she was off. And I mean she was fast. The rink was too small for her to get up to the speed you could tell she was capable of, but that wasn’t the point, it was the explosive bursts that I was watching and she was racing, turning, switching directions in a split second without slowing down in a way I’d never seen before. God, if she could hold a stick at the same time…

Tina looked at me. “What do you think?”

I thought hard, which I try not to do in public ever since my sister told me it made my face go funny, but she wasn’t here. “It’s possible… I mean, she’d need to learn the plays, and we’d have to see if she could manage those turns in the gear, and she’d obviously have to bulk up a bit…”

“More like a lot,” added Amira, who’d also come over to watch.

“But… shit, maybe.” I thought for a second, turning it over in my head as the girl on the ice dropped into some sort of leg-out crouch-spin thing. I mentally put her in the uniform, the shorts, the pads, the helmet, the gloves, put a stick in her hand. Then I made a command decision. “Look, you guys go home, there’s no sense crowding her. I’ll wait ‘til she’s done then talk to her in the changing rooms, see if she’s up for it. If so, we can take it from there.”

“We’re gonna go see Eilidh at the hospital tomorrow remember? Sign her cast and stuff.”

“I’ll be there,” I said as they began to file out. And maybe I can tell her our season isn’t over before it begins, I thought, watching our potential new recruit bounce what seemed like about six feet in the air and getting some very weird ideas about somersaulting over our opponents’ defensive lines.

***

“Hello! Figure skater girl?” Smooth start, but it could only get better, right? I wasn’t in the habit of hanging around outside the ladies’ changing rooms, but some people – older women, mainly – got really weird around me in changing rooms and public toilets and showers and sometimes just randomly in the supermarket, so I tended not to go in unless there was a whole bunch of us, and in any case I didn’t want to freak this poor girl out. Also the leisure centre got spooky this time of night when there weren’t many people around. “I know you’re probably getting changed but I just wanted to say hi. Hi! You were really good out there and… hello?”

I risked it and stuck my head round the door. There was no-one in the changing rooms at all. The lights weren’t even on, and I couldn’t hear the showers going either. Well, now I felt like an idiot.

“Where the hell did she go?” I huffed out loud. I had a whole speech prepared, a cast-iron, unbeatable pitch to get this girl to join the team and win the league and save the planet and the skinny bitch hadn’t even had the decency to stick around to hear it. Well, not “prepared” exactly, but I definitely had some improvised talking points queued up that would have been perfect once I’d worked out what they were. She couldn’t have gone straight out just in the leotard, surely?

That’s when I heard the fire exit and the end of the hall slam shut and realised she’d gotten around me somehow. Damn it! I hoisted my kit bag back over my shoulder and booked it down the unnecessarily long corridor like I was auditioning to be in Scooby-Doo or something and just about managed to pull up in time to avoid the push bar on the door doing some serious damage to my hips. Then I was outside in the surprisingly brisk August evening air. The sun was still high in the sky, doing its best to make everyone think it was late afternoon and the shops were all open, when in reality it was well past 8pm and you’d already missed dinner.

That’s when I saw her, walking across the near-empty car park. It had to be her – I could tell even from behind and in the bulky jacket and loose jeans she must have thrown on. She had the same height and build, and she still had her hair in the loose ponytail she’d been wearing on the ice.

“Hey! Wait up! Please!” I jogged after her, and either she had earbuds in or she was deliberately ignoring me, because I was running after her at night in a deserted car park, which was just, well, entirely reasonable now that I started to think about it, but I was already catching up with her so she’d just have to deal with it. Just as I was a few feet from her she stopped, turned round and took out her – yup, earbuds and yup, clearly terrified, good job there, me.

“I saw you skating in there,” I panted. “You were really good! I just… I wanted to ask if you’d ever thought about joining the women’s hockey team?”

“Not… really?” he said.

Two

“Again, I’m so, so, so, sorry,” she repeated, and again, I waved my hand, mouth full of burger.

“It’s fine,” I said when I eventually managed to swallow. “You don’t get into figure-skating if you’re too precious about your masculinity.”

It was very difficult to stay mad at a girl – Kay, as she had breathlessly and apologetically introduced herself – who, on your first meeting, mistakes you for a girl, invites you to join a hockey team, and then insists on buying you a meal to make up for it. Especially when that girl is a solid six inches taller than you and built like a particularly sturdy piece of agricultural machinery.

Kay was a presence, and she filled any space she dropped into, and not just physically. We were squeezed into a booth at the leisure centre stroke retail park’s mid-range McDonalds – you could tell it was midrange because of the high percentage of brown décor. Rather, she was squeezed, I was perched. And she was talking. A lot.

“It’s just we were already a man down, well, a player down, obviously, not a man, since we hadn’t managed to recruit anyone new over the summer holidays and then Eilidh – she’s our left forward – well, usually left forward, we switch it up a lot, I don’t know how much you know about ice hockey, but you need a really fluid formation, because you’ve only got five players – six with the goalie, but she doesn’t count, not that the goalie isn’t important, because in many ways she’s the most important but you’ve got to be able to adapt to the opposing team’s plays and it’s not like rugby or American football or even normal football where there’s a lot of breaks in play to regroup, you sometimes have to snap from one play into another without even a chance to talk to your own players so they really have to be able to anticipate each other, anyway, Eilidh, she broke her leg on the way back from our last friendly and okay we’ve got a few weeks because it’s pre-season but she’s not going to be back up for months and you’re supposed to have at least eight players ready to start if not more and we barely have enough for even a starting lineup and there is no-one I mean no-one who even skates in this town let alone plays hockey and sometimes it makes me so frustrated I just want to scream.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“It’s such a shame,” she huffed, putting her elbows on the cheap plastic table and slamming her chin down onto her hands. “I thought if I could convince you to shoot a few practice shots, try on the gear, maybe get you into hockey skates instead of figure skates, you’d, I don’t know, fall in love with the game or something. Or at least try it out long enough for Eilidh to recover and Hannah to get back from the States.”

“Well,” I said. The moment seemed to require something more so I added, “sorry.”

“Urggghhh,” she replied, letting her head slip all the way down to the table. “It’s not your fault. It’s me. You’re not a girl and I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” I reassured her, even though I had no strong evidence to back up that hypothesis. I looked down at the rest of my burger, congealing slightly below the fluorescent lights unsure why I had wanted it in the first place.

“It’s funny though,” she said, jerking her head back up and causing the entire table and everything on it to bounce. “If anything our gear is a lot more masculine than yours. Not that yours isn’t… I mean, just… with the leotard and the ponytail…”

“I have a slightly more formal outfit for competitions. Trousers and everything,” I said, choosing not to mention the sparkles.

“Okay, but the whole team thought you were a girl. It wasn’t just me. So they’re all idiots as well.”

“Mm.” I said, not trusting myself with any other noises.

“Are you sure you won’t try a couple of plays? Just for fun?” She was leaning over the table a bit now and the way her elbows were supporting her made her biceps and her triceps flex all the way up to the point where her arms disappeared into her white t-shirt sleeves.

“I don’t,” something was trying to crawl back up my throat. Probably the half a burger I had managed to get down it earlier. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“I wouldn’t even have to tell them. No, that’s silly. Sorry. I’m being stupid. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said, not even sure what she was apologising for or why I was reassuring her at this point.

“But if you did want to, I mean I’m sure the other girls won’t mind, I mean it’s not like you’re going to be looking at…” she trailed off in a way I was already beginning to recognise was her brain catching up with what her mouth had just said.

“You assumed I was gay, didn’t you?” I said, as gently as I could manage, but still with a bit of a wince. This was a path I had been down – perhaps not exactly in this order, and never this rapidly, but often enough – with more than one girl.

“I’m so, so, sorry,” she said. Again.

“Again, don’t worry about it. But, for the record, yes, tragically heterosexual,” and the little voice in my head – the one that told me how to act like a straight man and keep me from being beaten up any more than absolutely necessary in modern Britain – pointed out that straight men don’t use phrases like “tragically heterosexual.”

“So why figure-skating? I mean, no offence,” none taken, “you’re really good, but how do you even get into something like that?”

“I did dance, for a bit, when I was a, kid. Not seriously, you know, just boys and girls jumping around to pop songs mostly, but I really liked it. And when that finished I looked for a way I could carry on getting that feeling, I suppose. And I tried skating and I tried ice dancing and then I tried a couple of basic routines and,” simplifying massively here, but she didn’t ask for your life story, did she? Already going on for far too long. “It just clicked.”

“It’s great, isn’t it?” I looked up, realising I’d been staring at the table for god knows how long. Eye contact is important for normal people. Hers were sparkling with excitement, which wasn’t something I realised could actually happen. Maybe it was the fluorescent lights. “When you’re on the ice and you forget you’re even wearing skates? And you just know what your body can do and how far you can push?”

I felt myself smiling. And, inevitably, the black cloud behind it. “Yeah,” I said, as non-committally as possible. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it – probably more than,” careful there John. “More than most things, but I’ve got to be realistic. It’s not like there’s a lot of career options.” Also, and I wasn’t going to say this out loud, but professional figure skating? Expensive. Hence why I was practising on second-hand skates that really needed new blades and wearing a unitard that I’m fairly certain used to be part of a Halloween costume and why I had a single, increasingly shabby outfit for competitions. Not that I’d been to any of those recently. Also why I had accepted a free meal from a huge and terrifyingly gregarious stranger.

“You’re not taking it any further? I mean I know it’s hard to go professional, but not even at college or university?

I winced – again – at that, the casual, easy assumption that everyone was going to university next year. But if she noticed, it didn’t slow her down. Maybe I hadn’t made any external facial expressions. After all, I’d gotten pretty good at locking those down.

“I mean I saw you out there on the ice, and okay, I’m not an expert but you were,” she made some motions with her hands that presumably indicated some of the elements she’d seen me do. “Really good!”

I sighed. This girl was a battering ram. Time to roll out the biggest obstacle then. “With figure skating – male figure skating – past a certain level you need a very specific build. And… well,” I indicated my broad shoulders, endomorphic outline and long torso. She looked deeply confused, so I explained further. “You need to be short and narrow.”

“Girl, if you were any narrower you’d be two-dimensional,” she said and then brought her hands to her mouth. “Fuck! I mean boy. I mean man! I mean, fuck!”

“You don’t have a filter, do you?” I asked, and if I was being honest with myself, more than a little jealous of that. Sometimes it felt like I was all filter.

“People tell me that a lot, yeah,” she replied. “Are you going to finish that burger?”

Three

“Shhh!” I said, loudly. “You’re being too loud!”

John silently spread his arms, a bemused expression on his face.

“Kay?” came my mother’s voice from the front room. “That you?”

“Yeah, mum. Sorry. Practice ran late.” I put my finger to my lips, indicating that John needed to stay quiet.

“Alright, baby. Have you eaten?”

“I had a McDonalds on the way home,” I said, not wanting to add any more lies than necessary.

“Kay,” she said sternly. “That’s not a proper dinner. There’s a pasta salad in the fridge, have that.”

“Will do. Thanks mum. Just going to my room for a bit first,” I frantically ushered John upstairs, and any worry I might have had about creaking floorboards were completely unfounded as he twinkle-toed his way up without a sound, while I clumped after him, grabbing his shoulder briefly to direct him the right way.

I had no idea what I was doing. I’d never brought a boy back to my house before, and here I was, sneaking one into my bedroom! Okay, it wasn’t like I was going to do anything, but still, bold! I don’t even know why I had brought him back. I just hadn’t wanted to let him go just yet, and he hadn’t seemed to want to go anywhere either. I felt a bit like a cat coming in through the back door with a bird she’d caught, proud and full of adrenaline, but a bit confused as to what happens next. Huh, that thought had gone to a weird place.

I kicked some laundry under the bed without really thinking but aside from that my room was basically fine. Almost clean, even. John was standing stock still in the middle as if touching anything might turn him to a pillar of salt.

I hooked my bean bag chair with one foot and hoicked it over to the middle of the room before dropping heavily onto my bed, which creaked in protest like it always did. Shut up, bed. John gingerly lowered himself into the bean bag chair with more grace than should have been possible for anything like that. Everything he did was so adorably delicate and considered. I felt like putting him in a cage.

Stop being weird.

“Do you want to watch some TV? My laptop gets American sports channels.” Was that a normal thing to say to a boy?

“Sure,” he said, whispering, and I realised that was the first thing he’d said since we’d got home. We’d been talking for literally hours, and yeah, sure, that had been mostly me, but he’d done a fair bit of talking as well, and it had been nice. More than nice, it had been easy, like we’d known each other for years. He’d made me laugh five times.

I flipped up the laptop screen and oh hey, there was the not-at-all illegal site I used to watch NHL games. I turned up the volume a bit and fullscreened it, rotating the laptop a bit so John could see it. It was just a highlights reel, the one they played when there wasn’t a game or an interview on, but I could see John’s eyes following the action, which made sense, right? He’d been listening to me talk about power plays and penalties and shutouts and all sorts of other stuff all evening so he was matching all that up with what was happening on screen. He had those kind of eyes that weren’t really brown but weren’t green either. Hazel, that was it.

“Hmm?” I said, vaguely aware that he’d asked a question and feeling myself blushing. Smooth work, Kay.

“I said, is there an offside rule?”

“Oh. Umm, yes, but it’s not like football – it’s based on, hang on,” I grabbed my playbook and flipped to the first blank page. “These blue lines? Attacking zone, defending zone, neutral zone,” I said, tapping them out. “You can’t go ahead of the puck into the attacking zone, but you can knock the puck back from an offside position. Actually there’s not a lot that’ll call a stoppage.”

“So what are you?” he asked, looking straight at me, and I felt my brain short-circuiting.

“What am I?” I managed to say without stammering.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m guessing you’re not a goalie or... defence?”

“Oh! Yeah! I mean, no. I mean yes and no. I’m basically a grinder. Technically I’m usually a forward but I mostly end up checking and blocking rather than setting up or scoring goals.”

“That sounds like defence?”

“It sort of is? But it’s an offensive defence,” I explained. He tilted his head and that stupid ponytail did a little bounce like it was trying to form a question mark behind him, and I tried to stifle a laugh and failed.

“Is that a really stupid question?” he asked.

“No, it’s not,” I said, still laughing. “There are offensive defencemen. And, uh, defensive forwards. Hockey – it’s a weird game sometimes. Every team has its own way of playing, but you’ve got to be ready for anything, and for your opponents to switch it up at a moment’s notice. Like, suddenly that brick wall that’s been defending the whole game will bust up one wing while you’re busy locking down the player you thought was their sniper. Or the goalie will come out for a full court press and you have to decide whether to match them or go full defence and you’ve got like a second to call it. It’s a total team effort, you have to be able to react to anything at any time, you need everyone to work together and know exactly what they’re doing. These guys? The real pros? They have over twenty players dressed for the ice and ready to go at like a second’s notice for every match so they can put together, like, a million combinations for any possibility. It’s… well, when it all comes together it’s incredible.” God, he was staring at me with those eyes again. I swallowed, then bounced myself off my poor bed and onto the balls of my feet. “Wait here. Stay quiet.”

“Where are you going?”

“You’ve had half a burger in the last twelve hours. I’m going to get you some pasta salad.”

***

“It’s a tracksuit, stop being such a baby,” I whispered, still giggling.

“It’s a girl’s tracksuit,” he protested, again.

“It’s my tracksuit,” I said, “It’s going to look like a tent on you anyway. No-one’s going to think you’re a girl. They might think you’re a charity shop donation if you sit down, but that’s about it.”

“Why can’t I wear my hoodie and jeans,” and yes, okay, he was starting to whine a bit now, but it was still adorable.

“Because they’re in the wash,” I said, firmly. I did not say “finally in the wash,” much as I wanted to, because even my sense of smell, battered into submission by a lifetime of being around incredibly sweaty girls, had taken offence at the pile of boy clothes that I had sneakily removed from my bedroom floor while he’d been snoozing away on the camp bed in the early hours, wearing one of my old game jerseys as an oversized (on him) nightshirt. Getting him into the shower had been the next stealth mission, but one that had, eventually, gone without a hitch. He can’t have showered at the leisure centre, and my unexpected ambush had obviously stopped him going home to shower there, and I was not prepared to let him go another day without cleaning up properly. I hadn’t seen him phone home to tell his parents where he was, but presumably his mobile was somewhere in his ratty rucksack, or a side pocket of his skate bag, since I’d checked his clothes pockets before throwing his clothes in the wash and found nothing but old bus tickets and a pack of chewing gum.

Now, washed, scrubbed, long hair lank and wet (I didn’t dare run the hairdryer this early) I had a much more presentable and pleasantly-scented problem – how to get him out of the house without my mum noticing. Getting him in had been nerve-wracking enough, but that had been sneaking him into my room, and I’d been high on… some kind of emotion that had made it seem more exciting than frightening. Now I was sneaking him out of my room. First thing in the morning. And if we got caught there was only one thing that she’d assume we’d been doing and it wasn’t watching hockey videos and talking ‘til we both fell asleep in separate beds.

Huh.

I’d had a boy in my room all night and he hadn’t even hinted at anything… else. Okay, maybe he wasn’t interested in me, but all the boys I knew, which, sure, not many, but, still, all of them made sure to give me a good long going over with their eyes and let me know they were doing it, or at least didn’t try to hide it. But the whole night he’d been here, John had just been, not even “a perfect gentleman” whatever that meant, because it always sounded a bit creepy to me, but just… there. And nice. He said he wasn’t gay, but that would be… what, exactly? Would that be bad? Did I want him to be gay? It would be easier, certainly. Less complicated. But then what did I want?

I looked at him, sitting cross-legged on the fold-out camp bed, quietly staring off into space with those hazel eyes and I decided that what I most wanted was to feed him breakfast.

Four

I’d never been so full. Kay had ordered for both of us and then eaten half of my breakfast after I’d declared myself too stuffed to continue, but I’d still had more for that one meal than I normally ate in an entire day. Teenage eggs at summer camp must have told horror stories around the campfire about the six foot monster who regularly devoured dozens of their unborn siblings in one sitting.

The hole-in-the-wall cafe Kay had taken us to was full of people with real jobs, men in hi-vis jackets, work trousers stained in paint. People who needed to be somewhere early in the morning to actually do something and had to eat something else on the way. Big, loud, confident, laughing, taking up huge amounts of space just by existing. I wondered what it was like to fill the air around you like that without even trying, instead of barely occupying one half of a seat’s moulded plastic bum shape.

She’d insisted on paying, even though I hadn’t offered, and before I’d had much chance to register what was happening we were on the bus back to the leisure centre. I sat there, digesting so hard it was making me overheat, swimming in my borrowed clothes and wedged between the window and Kay, who kept having to pull in her leg to let people get past her in the aisle.

“Won’t it be shut this early?” I whispered, not wanting to draw any attention to myself. Kay was right that the clothes I was wearing – black trackie bottoms, white t-shirt, grey tracksuit top, all a good three sizes too big for me – weren’t really gendered, but I still felt like someone was going to stand up, point at me, bodysnatchers-style, and start screeching.

“I’ve got a key,” said Kay, at her usual speaking volume which I was beginning to realise was a notch or two above what I considered normal for everyone else. Kay herself was dressed much more sensibly for the weather, baggy sports shorts and white close-fitted tanktop with CAPTAIN written in light blue vertical font down the front. “As long as we don’t leave a mess or damage anything, they don’t really care.” She paused, and her thinking face flicked across her features. “Or they don’t know. One or the other. This is us,” she said, as we pulled into the empty grey expanse of the leisure centre car park where we’d first met, rendered less frightening but more washed out in the muggy early morning sun. She swung herself up to standing with an arm hooked around the vertical pole and held out her free hand for me to take.

As I reached for it, I tried to remember if anyone had ever proffered me their hand before, or vice-versa. On balance, probably not, I decided.

The bus jerked to a stop just as I rose from my seat, sending me stumbling forward into Kay. She didn’t let go of my hand. “I’ve got you,” she said into my ear, and I very nearly lost my balance again.

***

“Told you I had a spare pair here!” Kay yelled, emerging triumphant from the changing room with skates held aloft like a particularly buff Salome with the head of John the Baptist. “Might have to double up on socks, though!”

“Can’t I just wear my skates?” I asked, and I began to despair at how often I was having to beg to wear my own clothes.

“Nope!” she grinned, handing me the bulky skates. “We don’t want you spinning like a ballerina, we need you stable like a freight train.”

“Bit sexist,” I said, pulling on the first of the two thick pairs of socks she’d handed me.

She sniffed. “Freight trains can be girls.”

I ceded the point with an indulgent nod.

“We’re not going to put you in the full gear for now, but pop these elbow pads on at least, just in case. Strap down the Velcro so it’s tight but not painful.” I did as I was told, which I was getting really good at.

“Today’s all about fundamentals. Your skating’s obviously good, although we might have to look at your stances, but what we really need to figure out is if you can handle a stick and control a puck at the same time. There’s only so much you can practice off the ice. So,” she tossed me a stick and I grabbed it out of the air, surprising myself only slightly. I hefted it a couple of times and then spun it over my head, tossing it and catching it before slapping the head down on the ice a couple of times.

“Okay,” she said.

That, of course, was the total extent of my abilities. Sticks, rackets, clubs, batons – they were all basically the same when you got down to it, just a question of weight and balance – but I’d never actually used a hockey stick to hit or control a puck and when she started to show me how it was frustrating. I was used to thinking about my body, how it was moving, where my legs and arms and centre of balance were, but skating with a stick and a puck was about pushing all that into the background and letting your body do it automatically while you concentrated on this little bastard round rubber disc that seemed to want to go every way but the way you were going and land on the ice every way but flat.

Once I’d got the hang of that – more or less, or at least enough that Kay’s passes didn’t go straight through my legs more times than they found my stick – we blasted up and down the ice, passing the puck back and forth the whole way. I could tell she was going easy on me, but it was still taking everything I had just to keep up with her, and I was not a slow skater, even in these borrowed blades. The skates behaved differently from mine, which I’d expected, and even though it hadn’t taken me long to get the hang of the different balance line they had, it was still more raw effort to put on speed in them. And just when I was thinking of calling for a break, she made us do it backwards.

She also made me fall over – deliberately – more times than I felt strictly necessary.

“I know how to fall on ice, Kay,” I protested from a sitting position, freezing my backside but refusing to stand up just yet, since it was clearly the only rest I was likely to get. “It’s basically the first thing you learn so you don’t break a leg.”

“You’re not gonna break anything, probably, you’ll be wearing too much padding. I’m guessing if you fall during a routine you’re basically done, right?” In fact it was possible to recover and still score, but I nodded, since she was basically right. I didn’t like that “probably” though. “Falling in hockey is all about getting back up as fast as possible,” she continued, “because play does not stop, even if there’s blood on the ice.”

“Is… there likely to be blood on the ice?”

“If it’s a good game,” she grinned. “But, actually, no, we do have to stop if there’s blood on the ice until it’s all been disinfected. But otherwise! Play doesn’t stop, except for goals and fights! Now get up, I want to show you how to dribble.”

“Way ahead of you,” I said, only slightly hysterically.

***

“You did so good!”

My arms were shaking and it felt like my bones were vibrating inside me.

“You even got the hang of toe pulls! That’s like proper technique!”

Can muscles actually catch fire? Like the inside of a computer? Were they burning away in there like cables that had collected too much dust? Would I start emitting smoke?

“You alright there?” asked Kay.

I nodded. “Just need to sit down for a bit.” I managed, heroically not throwing up.

“Woah, no you don’t! You’ll seize up if you don’t warm down,” Kay said, grabbing my arms. Seizing up sounded nice, but this tank-topped Torquemada forced me to rotate bits of myself for another ten minutes.

I want to stress that it was in this state – mentally, physically exhausted, sweat pouring off me, half leaning on, half being carried by Kay that I allowed myself to – entirely inadvertently – be led into the girls’ changing room. And, for the record, I tried to leave as soon as I realised, even though my legs didn’t really work any more.

“Get in the shower, freight train,” she ordered.

“I can shower in the boys,”

“No you can’t, because I don’t have a key for the men’s changing room.” I thought about it for a second. There was a logic I was missing, I was sure of it. “Go on,” she said, handing me her washbag. “I’ll keep watch for, I don’t know, rogue early morning cleaners or whatever.”

And, so, for the second time that day – the second time that morning – I found myself showering somewhere I shouldn’t be while a girl stood watch outside. Circumstances aside, that was more than I’d showered in the whole week up to today, longer if you didn’t count my abortive attempt to wash up in a bus depot toilet. The heat and the water pressure felt good though, even more so than at Kay’s house, and I let myself indulge a little, taking off a little more of that essential dead skin layer that provided protection from the elements. I’d probably regret it later but right now I was too exhausted to care.

Kay’s toiletries tended towards the utilitarian, but there was still shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, moisturiser and – ah, yes, razors and tampons. I scrubbed at my hair furiously with the shampoo, briefly considered shaving the near-invisible hairs on my upper lip, realised I’d have to use Kay’s razor to do it, and decided against it. I did use her conditioner though, marvelling at the novelty.

“Do you have a towel in there?” came Kay’s voice from outside, startling me out of my reverie.

“Uh, no,” I yelled back. Shit.

“Okay, I’m throwing one in! I promise not to look!”

It might have been better if she had, since I had to make a quite desperate lunge to stop it flying straight into the running stream of water from the shower. Suitably armed, I turned off the water, gave myself a quick rub down, and wrapped it around me. It must have been a beach towel, because it went round me almost twice and I had to hitch it up almost to my armpits to be able to walk. Or maybe Kay just bought everything three sizes up. God, I hope she hadn’t thrown my clothes – her clothes – in the laundry again.

“All done?” she said, and I had to stifle a genuine laugh because she was sitting in the changing room, one leg either side of the bench that ran its entire length, with her hands theatrically covering her eyes.

“Yes, I’m done, and I’m mostly decent. You can open your eyes.” She did, and then she looked at me, blinked a couple of times, and then she patted the bench in front of her. I found myself sitting, side-saddle, since I didn’t trust the towel to preserve my modesty if I tried to match her racing stance.

“I meant what I said earlier,” she said, gazing at me with an uncomfortable intensity for someone with such an unfair advantage in size and amount of clothing worn. “You should play. You can play. You’re properly good at this, and you’re clever, you’re so clever, John, and you pick up stick handling like no one I’ve ever seen, and,”

fuck not now

“Oh, god, what is it? Are you okay?”

“It’s fine,” I said, wiping my eyes. “It’s fine.”

“What did I say?” she whispered, hands splayed, like she’d hit me or something.

“It wasn’t anything you said,” I reassured her, wiping the last of the tears away and slowly breathing out. “I’ve always been told I’m clever. So fucking clever, and it hasn’t helped. Ever.” It was true. Every adult I’d ever met had told me how clever I was, as if it was simultaneously unexpected and disappointing. You’re really clever, so why are you like this? I had no idea why this was coming out now. Blame the soupy mess of post-exercise endorphins sloshing around my broken brain, I suppose.

“Sit still?” she said. And, like an idiot, I did. “Close your eyes,” she added, and obediently, I did. I felt her hand grip my chin – one hand easily enough to encompass my entire jaw, and suddenly something was being dragged across my eye.

“Sit. Still.” she said again, more firmly, and I felt the words transmitted through her hand on my face and god help me I sat so still as she fiddled with my other eye. “Okay, open,” she said, taking her hand away.

I opened my eyes. She was sitting right in front of me, face not six inches from mine, staring into my eyes with her mouth dropped slightly open in concentration. I had to remind myself to keep one hand on my towel. “Look up,” she said, and I did. Ceiling tiles needed replacing. Something jabbed my eyelids again.

“Not bad,” she said to herself. “Easier to do it on someone else, I guess.”

“Do what?” I managed. Good work, John. Assertive, articulate. In response she pointed at the tall, narrow mirror mounted on the wall across from the bench. Kay’s legs were just about visible in it, but front and centre was a skinny little thing still clutching a towel like it was a lifeline and wearing – “Is that eyeliner? Did you put eyeliner on me?”

I glared back at Kay, who was still sitting in front of me, straddling the bench, holding an eyeliner pencil. She looked at it, then at me. “Sort of?” she said. I blinked.

“I’m so sorry! I just… you looked so… and I had the thing in my hand and all I had to do was just… and you kept so still, that I thought…”

“I kept still because you basically held me down,” I said, getting slightly shrill, and because you told me to, I thought to myself, without saying it out loud, because if I was being honest one of those things had been a much more powerful motivator than the other.

“Sorry,” she said again, more quietly, still looking at me with an odd expression on her face.

“Hey ho, coming in!” said a booming voice. “Nobody be naked! Or do be, I don’t care!”

“Fuck,” said Kay, under her breath, as another girl entered the changing rooms and I froze solid.

“Heyyyyy, Kay, I thought that was you!” she said, leaning down to hug her from behind. “What the hell are you doing here so early?” She was, if anything, bigger than Kay, a couple of inches taller and just even more distractingly solid all over. Where I could imagine Kay dashing across the ice and slamming into an opposing player, this girl would be more like a brick wall for them to break themselves on.

“Uhhhh,” Kay managed, before eventually coughing and saying “hey, uh, Amira,” like a normal human being.

“Who’s this?” she said, looking straight at me, confused, and as I looked back up at her, one hand gripping my towel absurdly across my chest, I realised this was how I was going to die. Beaten to death in the girls’ changing room, just as the prophecy foretold. Then the girl called Amira just grinned, as the confused look on her face was replaced by realisation.

“Oh, hey! Figure skater girl! It’s you!” She looked back at Kay, then back at me. “Did she convince you to play for us yet?”

Kay gave a weird smile. “Still working on it.”

“Okay, well, don’t let her bulldoze you into anything, but you’d be doing us a huge favour. Really big. Even if you just play the first couple of games to keep us in the running it’d be… it’d be really cool. Anyway. Skater girl. Consider it.” She hit me with the double finger guns. “I’ll uh… leave you to it. Kay, text me later, yeah?” she finished, slapping Kay between the shoulder blades.

She left, sweeping out as suddenly as she had blasted in, and as I sat there, dripping, wearing nothing but a towel and some eyeliner, I could hear her singing her way down the corridor.

“She was a skater girl, I said, see you later girl, she wasn’t good enough for heee~er,” until the echoes faded into the general hum of the air-conditioning.

Those aren’t the lyrics, I thought, absently.

Kay grabbed me by the shoulders and stared at me, open-mouthed. “Holy shit!” she hissed. “She had no idea! She was standing right there and you were naked, and she couldn’t tell!”

“Still am,” I said, dazed. “Still am naked.”

“Right,” said Kay. “So you are. Let’s… let’s get you dressed and out of the girls’ changing room.”

“Please,” I said in a thin voice, heart hammering against my ribs.

***

It turned out that Kay had been keeping more than an extra pair of skates stashed in whatever forgotten corner of the locker room she used as her own personal equipment storage. A few spare team uniforms yielded a pair of shorts that almost fit, a clean t-shirt and a jacket that hung down almost to my knees and said DARKANGELO across the shoulders. I ended up tying that around my waist in an attempt to keep everything from sliding down into one big athletic pile on the floor. Shoes were still my battered trainers, unfortunately, which were beginning to be more of a sop to convention than any way of protecting me from England’s poorly-maintained pedestrian surfaces. Thus restored to some form of passable masculinity, I waited firmly outside the changing rooms and greeted Kay again once she had finished up her own shower.

“You hungry?” she asked, hoisting her duffel bag (which, I realised, not only contained her kit, towels, skates, and spare clothes, but also all of my stuff as well) onto one shoulder. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d let those skates out of my sight, let alone let someone else touch them.

I wanted to say that I would likely never be hungry again, that this morning’s breakfast had rendered me gastronomically insensate until the crack of doom, but in fact, I was hungry. It’s not like I was a stranger to exercise, but food had always been, at first, a delicate balancing act between fuel and weight and later, a grim necessity, and more recently – well. But this morning’s brutal gauntlet had been something else entirely, and my body was forcing me to respond well outside any of my normal coping methods.

“Okay,” I said. “But not McDonalds again.”

“’Spoons?”

***

Kay possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of every cafe, high-street chain, aspiring gastropub and restaurant in this town where you could buy the most carbs and protein for the lowest price per calorie possible, including their opening times and special deal periods. Even though I wasn’t paying, I appreciated the efficiency. She’d ordered pasta and baked potatoes with cottage cheese for both of us, despite my insistence that this was at least two separate meals. But I had to admit, I felt a lot less like a squeezed-out mop after I’d finished most of it and the waiter placed the bill on our table.

“There you go, ladies. You can pay at the till when you’re ready.”

I threw up my hands while Kay laughed into her sleeve, shoulders rolling up and down. “It’s not funny!” I said, a half-grin creeping onto my face from god-knows-where. “This never used to happen to me!”

“To be fair, you are still wearing eyeliner,” she said, and I felt the grin drop off my face.

“What,” I said, breathing fast.

“It’s fine. Literally no-one thinks it’s… oh, no,” she protested as I began rubbing at my eyes.

“What is wrong with you, Kay?”

“No-one even noticed! And if they did they won’t care.”

“They will! You don’t get it!” I hissed, trying not to lose control in the middle of this mid-range middle-class middle England restaurant.

“I’m sorry, but you’re right, I don’t get it,” she reached across the table and I flinched backwards out of her grasp, and the look of dismay on her face made me feel like I’d slapped her.

“I’m going to pay, then we can get out of here,” she said. I wiped the last of the eyeliner onto my already stained hands. Maybe I could crawl into the stupid giant exposed air vents and live there forever.

***

“So I’m guessing it’s a no on joining the team,” she said, after an uncomfortably long period of bus silence. I didn’t respond.

“You can’t… I can’t be doing stuff like that, Kay. It’s not safe. It’s not safe for me. I can’t be walking around in eyeliner, I can’t be,” I looked around the almost empty bus, “going into girls’ spaces,” I said, through my hand.

“Trust me, freight train, if people see the two of us anywhere… female-coded, you’re not the one they’re gonna focus on. You think people don’t stare at me when I go to the bathroom?”

“It’s not the same. And it’s not just that. People are going to notice a boy joining a girl’s team,” I held up my hand to forestall the battering ram and was mildly surprised when it actually worked. “They are, Kay. Someone will, eventually.”

“Oh. Yeah. People are red-hot on that right now, huh.” She huffed. “Which makes no sense, I mean,” she waved at me, “you’d have to put on about twenty kilos to equal any other girl on the ice – any actual girl on the ice I mean,” she stammered. “I just meant you don’t have,” she did double quotation marks “‘a natural biological advantage’ or anything. I could literally deadlift you right now.”

This would be where I should object, reassert my masculinity. But I was going to have to move that mental image out of the way first, and quite frankly it was a big one.

“Fuck,” she said eventually. “I got carried away, again, didn’t I? Stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. And today was fun. Mostly. The hockey bits, anyway.”

“Even the falls?”

“Let’s not get carried away.”

“This is us,” she said, reaching across me to hit the bell.

***

Kay’s sofa was big, and soft, and more comfortable than the camp bed – which was itself more comfortable than most beds I’d slept in. I was drifting in and out of the movie she’d put on, which was more a testament to my own emotional exhaustion than the quality of the filmmaker’s art.

“You can sleep, if you want,” said Kay, surprising me. She’d sat at the far end of the sofa, giving me as much space as possible, but I’d still felt her sneaking glances at me when she thought I was asleep or not paying attention. Checking I wasn’t about to explode again, or burst into tears. “Unless you need to go?”

I should go. A normal person would leave. A normal person would get out, and leave her alone so she could get on with her normal life. A normal person would have somewhere else to go.

Suddenly wide awake, I whispered, “I’m okay staying here, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Yes! I mean, no, it’s no trouble at all. I’d love that. I thought I’d… I really thought I’d messed up.”

“No,” I said, gripping my ankles. “It was me, I’m sorry.”

“Wait,” she said. I waited. “You stayed here last night too.”

“I remember,” I said, like treading through a minefield.

“Don’t you have to… go home at some point? Or phone your parents?” There we go.

“I don’t have… a phone.” I looked down at my battered shoes, where I’d kicked them onto the floor, wondering how far I was from the town centre by foot. My leg started to jiggle and a grabbed it with both arms. “First off, I’m not homeless.” Good start. That’s a thing that normal people say. “I do, technically have a place to go, and a bed, and even some things there and, if I’m gone for long enough then someone will definitely,” probably, “notice and call someone. Or lodge a report with the council or something.” Not this council, mind. Sometimes you can turn “Someone Else’s Problem” into a surprisingly effective cloaking device. I risked a look at Kay, bracing myself to see The Face. Except she didn’t have it. It was more expectant, like she was waiting for me to get to the point.

“I’m in Care,” I said. “The System. Looked-After. Whatever.”

I gave her the short version, although not quite the same short version I gave to care workers. It might have been easier if I’d had an easily-summarised tragic backstory. But my route through care was utterly mundane. In a capital-H Home a few times, fostered a couple of times, fell through for bullshit reasons. Standard parade of institutional abuse that didn’t count as abuse because it was all for your own good.

Most people think foster parents are a kindly older couple who fall in love with you and raise you like their own child, the Disneyfied version. But they’re just another face of the system, just another set of adults with mostly good intentions and only big, clumsy bloodstained tools to implement them. I defaulted to my usual explanation which I’d gotten down to a formula at this point. “If you’re being fostered at fourteen you’re basically flipping between desperately trying to please your fosters and shutting down so you don’t get crushed when they put you back in care. If you’re sixteen and being fostered then all they really want is for you to keep showing up at school. If you’re seventeen,” and I indicated myself, “then you’re likely not being fostered at all and all they really want is to stop you getting arrested until you age out and become someone else’s problem. That’s when they put you in a holding pattern and just sort of wait for you to turn eighteen so they can give your room to the next kid.”

It was “intermediate care” or “real life experience” or “partially assisted independence preparation” or – well, they change what it’s called every couple of years. But it’s a room in a shared house where someone’s technically available to help you but in reality are always overworked and always dealing with the real problem kids. Some of them try their best and some of them don’t but none of them can actually give you what you need. The overwhelming memory of the last two years of my life is of someone metaphorically standing over your shoulder, watching what you read, how you dress, what you eat, what you say.

“Okay,” she said, as if still waiting for the point. “So do you want to stay here?”

“Haven’t you been listening?”

“Sure. But I don’t get why you can’t live somewhere else if you want to.”

“You can’t – that’s not how it works?”

“Why not? We’ll figure something out. I’ll speak to my mum when she gets back. Explain everything, Get you a spare key.”

“You can’t!” I repeated. “What if I steal everything? Or turn your house into a crack den?”

“Why would you turn it into a crack den?”

“Maybe I really like crack! You don’t know! You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.” I was getting slightly hysterical at this point. I could feel the panic rising up in me, wrapping around my brain, strangling conscious thought and leaving only poorly-adapted lizard brain survival methods.

“I know you need somewhere to sleep tonight,” said Kay, edging closer on the sofa. “I know you need to eat, and somewhere to clean up, and could probably use some more clothes of your own. And, okay, maybe sleeping in my room’s not a long-term solution, but... even if I can’t fix everything overnight, I can do those things, at least, right? What… what’s the alternative?”

Throw me out, my brain was screaming. That would be the normal thing to do. Pick me up and dump me on the street.

I don’t know how long I sat there, waiting for her to say something, do something. I didn’t dare speak and I didn’t dare look. So it took me by surprise when she spoke, and she was sitting right next to me, and had been for who knows how long.

“Can I show you something?” She held out her hand and I reached out to take it, feeling myself lifted off the sofa and onto my toes. “It’s upstairs,” she said, not letting go. We padded up the stairs and to one of the doors that wasn’t her room or the bathroom.

“This is Monika’s. She’s my big sister,” said Kay, opening the door to reveal a small, tastefully-decorated girl’s bedroom. It was a little bit old-fashioned, in fact, no laptop sitting on the desk, no phone charging on the bedside table, an actual stereo radio on top of the chest of drawers. I looked down at my hand, still held in Kay’s, because she was shaking.

“She was in her first year at uni, and she was going to come home that March, when it all happened, but, she got sick, and then she couldn’t travel, and maybe she already had it, or maybe she caught it in hospital, and they wouldn’t let us see her, but they said she was young, and otherwise healthy and she’d probably pull through, but she, she just didn’t and, um, then they still wouldn’t let us see her, and Mum had to do everything and I was old enough to know what was going on but not understand, not really.”

She raised her head, crying, yes, but also smiling. She sat on the bed, dropping her phone to smooth down the sheets next to her.

“It’s not like it’s a shrine or anything. Mum comes in her every month to hoover and change the sheets and air it out and I’m in here all the time to borrow clothes or books or, hey, remember these? CDs!” she held one up that had been sitting on the bedside table. “They should bring these back.”

“Kay,” I whispered, though I had no idea what I was supposed to say after that.

“I mean, it’s been five years. That’s such a long time. I was twelve. Mum has been doing so well,”

“I can’t,” I managed.

“It’s just a room, you know? Just an empty room. There are so many empty rooms.”

My turn to take her hand now, but instead of me lifting her up she pulled me down and I just sat there, awkwardly holding her. What else could I do?

Kay’s phone buzzed a few times, and I watched the messages flash up, one after another.

- Hey, visiting hours are just finishing up

- Not sure where you got to

- E gets out tomorrow so we’re gonna go round to hers in the morning

- it would be cool if you could show up

- Text me when you get this

Five

I sat back from my computer, hands locked behind my head, listening to my chair creak.

Huh.

So.

All doable. All reversible, pretty much, or at least, not too drastic. There was even a “standard protocol.” All, in many ways, normal, or at least “covered by the rules,” more or less. And let’s face it, unspoken first rule of hockey – the rules really only mattered if people made a fuss about them.

John was still sleeping, but I was wide awake, buzzing and had been for hours. It was amazing how much the combination of a good cry and a good sleep could really clear your head.

I grabbed the little notepad next to my desk, copied out the relevant items as neatly as I could, then picked up my phone.

- Fish. Need a favour. Huge favour. Can you get me everything on this list? Will pay, obvs, plus your usual.

[PHOTO ATTACHMENT]

She responded almost instantly, even though it was – bloody hell, 4:33am.

- you know nothing on here is actually illegal

- yeah but dot dot dot

- dwai. i don’t have any of this but i know someone who does. Tonite?

- srs? wow. Yeah. You’re the best

And that was that, I thought, as I ripped the top page from the pad, crumpled it up in my hand and went downstairs to make another coffee. I’d talk it through with him later. Lay out the pros and cons. Let him make the final decision. I’d make dinner, put on some relaxing music – low pressure, low stakes, no obligation. Perfect.

He was still asleep when I came back up with the coffee, so I just lowered myself into the computer chair as carefully and quietly as possible – shut up chair – and just held my mug between two hands, letting it slowly cool.

He slept on his side, legs drawn up almost to his chin, fists balled up in front of his face, as if he was trying to take up as little space as possible. Little baby bird. I drank my coffee, and then I drank his coffee, since it was going cold.

If I woke him up I’d talk to him and if I talked to him I wouldn’t want to leave, so I wrote a note.

I have to go see Eilidh and I’m going to meet up with the other girls first, but I’ll be back later.

Mum won’t be back until Monday so you’ve got the whole house to yourself and I’ll text you on this phone when I’m on my way back. Just, chill here for today.

PS You’re safe here.

PPS This is my old phone, it’s basically fine, just the battery life started to drop, so I got a new one, but it’s fine and there’s a charger in every drawer in this house anyway.

PPPS almost forgot, I got you a sim card There’s 10 gig of data on here but the phone should still be connected to the wifi so you won’t need it as long as you’re in the house, and I think it’s also logged into the leisure centre wifi although the speed sucks there and it blocks a lot of really basic sites so I usually end up using mobile data anyway.

PPPPS There’s food in the fridge. Obviously there’s food in the fridge, that’s where it lives.

Maybe I should have woken him up.

***

Eilidh’s mum let us in, looking thoroughly exhausted, which made me feel even more guilty because of course she did, she’d been at the hospital for two nights and I couldn’t even stick my head round the door once to say hi to my friend? But she still fussed over us and told us not to tire Eilidh out and left us alone once we’d all confirmed that we were good for tea and biscuits, thanks. Mums are great.

“I can’t believe they didn’t give you a proper cast,” said Tina, waving at the weird giant moon boot Eilidh was resting on a giant foam pillow. “I was going to draw a dick on it.”

“My loss, I guess,” said Eilidh. She looked well, although I could tell she was already pissed off at having to lie in bed for two days. She was going to be going crazy after a week or two.

My brain was still kind of soaking in a big bath of guilt and half-formed plans, so I just let the conversation wash over me. The girls spoke about practice and how shit it had been without Eilidh, and inevitably the conversation turned to John. Not that they called him that, of course.

“So? Is she any good?” asked Eilidh. “This ballerina you’re replacing me with?”

“She’s not a ballerina!” I protested, mentally re-adjusting my image of him to match what they’d all seen that night on the ice so I didn’t say anything stupid. “And we’re not replacing you! She’ll just be keeping your uniform warm.”

“Gross,” she laughed.

“And, yeah, she actually is pretty good,” That’s it, play it cool, Kay. “I mean, I wouldn’t put her into a game right now, but she,” and wow that pronoun was getting easier every time, “She’s already a good skater and she’s picking stuff up fast.”

“Where are you going to put her?”

“She hasn’t said yes, yet.”

“Come on,” said Eilidh, rolling her eyes. Nice that someone had faith in my powers of persuasion, even if she didn’t know I was using them for evil.

“Well, she’s fast, like a freight train,” I grinned as I remembered how she’d blushed when I called her that, “even on hockey skates, and she’s picking up stick handling like” I snapped my fingers “that. So I’m thinking if Amira drops back into defence and Tina moves across we can slot her into a couple of holding plays, probably on the left wing? Although, if she can manage it, maybe we can get her roaming. That speed would be wasted in static defence, and she doesn’t need to check, just harry any breakaways until I can get there, and that doesn’t require a lot of tactical knowledge straight out the gate.”

“Wait, you’ve had her out on the ice already? When did this happen?” asked Tina.

“Yesterday,” answered Amira for me. “They were out there at like, 6am. I caught them doing each other’s makeup afterwards.”

Shit, I thought, blushing. That sort of had been what we were doing, hadn’t it? I’d been so concerned about how people would see John, that I hadn’t really stopped to consider how people would see him and me, together. And that was weird, right? To meet someone for the first time and spend the next 36 hours glued to their hip? It hadn’t felt weird at the time.

“Wait, yesterday morning?” asked Tina. “We only saw her the night before that. What did you do, kidnap her?”

“No! We just… got talking, and… got dinner, and lost track of time…” I trailed off as I realised what it sounded like.

“Oh my god,” said Amira, grinning ear to ear.

“It’s not like that,” I insisted. “She’s… she’s really funny, and sweet, and so smart, like scary clever.”

“Not beating the allegations,” said Amira.

“Shut up,” I mumbled, sinking down into my chair.

***

We hugged Eilidh goodbye, as gently as possible, so as not to jostle her leg.

“You sure we can’t come round here tonight? Keep you company?” I asked.

“God no, you lot? All sober, all evening? That sounds like hell!” said Eilidh. “I’m still popping cocodamol like they’re skittles anyway, I’ll be zonked out by 5. Go on, you kids have fun.”

“Thank you for having us Mrs McConnell,” said Tina, and we all sheepishly echoed her as we filed past Eilidh’s indulgent mum. “Get well soon!” I yelled, just as the door closed, leaving the three of us standing on the porch.

“Are we still on for yours tonight, Kay?” asked Amira, as we trudged towards the bus stop. “I know we arranged it last week, but you’ve been a bit flaky recently, no offence.”

“Shit, what day is it?”

“Friday, but, it is summer holidays so maybe-”

“No,” I said impulsively. “No, we’re still on. Fish is already coming round, I can’t cancel,” my mind was spinning inside my skull like a puppy who needed a walk. Why had I done that? Amira had given me an out, and of course I could cancel on Fish! She wouldn’t have minded! But now I had to work out what to do about -

“So is the new girl going to be there?” asked Tina.

“Or will she have chewed through her restraints by then?” asked Amira.

“I didn’t kidnap her!” I protested, on the brink of a full-blown panic attack because oh my god I kidnapped her, I found a homeless g- boy and I literally kidnapped him. He is IN MY HOUSE and I TOLD HIM not to leave.

“Oh, by the way, what’s her name?” asked Tina.

Her name? Her name? “Her name?”

“Yeah,” said Amira. “This girl that you’ve been hanging out with for like three days solid and won’t shut up about. The ballerina. The figure skater girl. Your freight train. What’s her actual, real name?”

Six

My new – old – phone buzzed, startling me as badly as if I’d been caught shoplifting. I’d been poking through Kay’s book collection, which wasn’t huge and, unless she was still a big fan of colouring-in ponies, probably hadn’t been substantially added to since she was little. There were a few GCSE textbooks, a couple of paperbacks that I recognised as perennial set texts, including good old Frankenstein, and some slightly more chunky, newer-looking schoolbooks that must have been for her A-levels.

Even though I hadn’t really been snooping, exactly, it was still disconcerting when the person whose house I’d sort of been staying in and whose room I was currently in, and who had, let’s face it, had also been making sure I was getting cleaned and fed, texts on the phone they got for me, even if logically they’re the only person who could or would use it.

Whatever the text had been, it had disappeared by the time I got to the phone, so I fumbled with the lock screen for a second and awkwardly opened the messaging app, which wasn’t one I’d ever seen before.

The message was, of course, from Kay, the only person in my contacts list, but it was just a grey block. there was a weird sort of stopwatch next to it, which I pressed with my thumb, and the message appeared.

- Your name is Freya

I stared at it for exactly 30 seconds, and then it was gone, and then I stared at the empty message app until the screen turned itself off. Then I sat there for a bit longer, staring at my face in the glassy black reflection on the dead screen.

I’d been having quite a nice day. Once I’d got over the weirdness of being alone in someone else’s house, I’d spent most of it appreciating the novelty of a world in which things belonged to people and to which people belonged. Nothing here was donated, or falling apart, or shared. It was used and it was loved and sometimes it was shabby but it was owned and it lived here. It didn’t have to tidy up after itself so that it wouldn’t leave any trace of itself in case it had to clear out the next day. There were personalised mugs. One of them said “Monika”.

That had sent me back upstairs the relative familiarity of Kay’s room which, despite being in so many ways a far more transitory place than anywhere I’d lived before, felt… felt what exactly? “Home” didn’t mean anything to me. Even familiar was stretching it, seeing that I had spent exactly two nights there. I would have settled on something like “safe”. Until that text.

I should leave. I didn’t have anywhere to go, but that hadn’t stopped me last week, had it? I could do it. I was wearing my old clothes, on the brink of falling apart still, but freshly laundered. My skates were still under the bed, along with my rucksack and all its pathetic contents. All I’d have taken from Kay was a few meals.

Before I knew it I was standing in the downstairs hall. Just had to open the front door, straight out, turn left, never look back. And then I heard the key in the lock, and I just had time to throw my rucksack into the pile of outdoor shoes before the door opened and Kay, breathless, was standing in my path again.

“Okay, they’re on their way, we don’t have long,” said Kay, showing no sign of noticing that I had been on the brink of fleeing, or even surprise that I was standing in her house, at the front door, apparently waiting on her to come home, like a lovesick puppy.

“Hi, Kay,” I said, pointedly, waiting for an explanation.

“Hi,” she said, which, as explanations go, left something to be desired. “Have you showered?”

“Yeah?” I said. “Yesterday? You were there,” I added, in case she had forgotten the most terrifying incident of my life.

“Ew. Gross. Go. Shower. And shave your legs.”

I opened my mouth to object. “No, there’s no time, do it,” Kay said. And then she shoved me. Not hard, not really, but Kay was considerably more firmly planted in the “irresistible force” category than I was in the “immovable object” one, and it was enough to make me stagger, and knock the rest of my train of thought off its rails.

By the time I’d managed to get it back on track, I was in the bathroom, angrily pulling off my clothes.

“Hey, Kay, what the fuck does this text mean? That’s what I should have said,” I muttered, once again lathering up in someone else’s shower. But no, apparently I was the sort of person who, if told to shave their legs, shaves their legs. The sort of person who does a damn good job of it as well because why the fuck not.

***

“Kay, about this text,” I said, not as forcefully as I’d intended, since I was, now, once again, dressed only in a towel and Kay was tearing around her bedroom like a Tasmanian devil.

“Oh, yeah, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get home in time, and I had to warn you, in case one of them showed up early! They’re always doing that.”

“You had to warn me that you’d changed my name?” I said, and I think I deserved credit for my restraint.

“I didn’t change it, you just have to use it for tonight! Just in front of… Just try it out!”

I was calm. I was resolute. I was in control. “Right. You do see how texting me ‘your name is now Freya’ could have come across differently, yes? Like an instruction? Or an order?”

She looked like someone had just told her Father Christmas wasn’t real. “I’m sorry! I… I didn’t… I was in a hurry, and… we’re always looking at each other’s phones so I just thought a quick one-time message would be the safest way to... and I needed to get to the shops and… argh!”

Terrain warning. Pull up. “Why did you need to go to the shops?” I said, hoping a change of subject would pull her out of the tailspin.

“To get you clothes! You can’t wear my clothes tonight, they’ll notice that.” I felt like this conversation was dragging me along by the ankles, skipping multiple steps while still managing to bounce the back of my head off every one.

“Who will notice?”

“My friends! The girls, the team!”

“They’re coming here?”

“Yes! Any minute now!”

“And why do I need to wear your clothes?”

“That’s what I’m saying, you can’t wear my clothes. That’s why I got you these,” she said, upending the bag and dumping its contents onto the bed.

There was not a lot there. Some of it sparkled.

“Is this a bra?”

“It’s an athletic harness. Footballers wear them.”

“Kay, it has padding.”

“Fine, yes, okay it’s a sports bra, just put it on, please. Just put all of it on.”

Well, as long as she asked nicely. “Can I at least have the room to myself?”

She blushed bright red. “Oh my god of course! I wasn’t going to… I didn’t expect…” I crossed my arms, inadvertently reminding both of us that I was still standing there in a towel.

***

Soon I was – and I use this term incredibly loosely – dressed. Leggings, cute socks, a skirt, and that infuriating off-the-shoulder top that if I really used my imagination, almost made it all the way down to my waist. And, under it all, those too-tight boyshorts and sports bra.

Aside from the skirt and the slight padding in the bra it wasn’t even as if it was an outrageously feminine outfit. I’d been far more exposed in my practice skating clothes, and as Kay had – repeatedly – pointed out, everyone had thought I was a girl then. But that had been accidental. Inadvertent. Same with Amira in the changing room and the waiter in the restaurant. Their mistake, not mine.

This would be deliberate, something I was doing myself. And if I got it wrong – if I was wrong, then it would be my fault.

You could blame Kay, said a dark little voice from somewhere deep inside. It’d be so easy. But where would that lead? I countered. So I screwed up my fists and put that little voice away and opened the door. “Kay? You can come in.”

“Great! She said brightly. They’ll be here any m-” and then she just stopped in the doorframe, staring.

“Shit,” I said, looking down. “What have I missed?” like I’d left a big label on the skirt that read “hey, get a load of this faggot” in 72-point font.

“You look perfect,” whispered Kay. “I knew you’d be alright, but… wow.”

A few more seconds passed. “Uh,” I said.

“Oh, right, yes, um… can… can I do your makeup quickly?” Ooh. Explicit consent. That was a novelty.

“Sure,” I replied. What else was I going to say?

I shifted the top so that it covered my exposed shoulder, and it promptly fell off and exposed the other shoulder. “Is this deliberate?” I asked, lifting one arm after another in a vain attempt to make it sit on both shoulders at once. “Is it some sort of metaphor?”

“It’s a top,” said Kay, holding my head still again as she prepared to paint my face. “Now stop wriggling.”

***

A touch of concealer, a couple of strokes of eyeliner and – after some heated negotiations – a dab of lip gloss. That was all I needed, apparently. There had been a boy I knew once who complained to me the only thing separating him from, and I quote, a “gigachad,” was half a millimetre of bone in a few key areas of skull. I couldn’t help thinking of that as I looked in the mirror and saw a face that I’d carried with me for as long as I remember utterly transformed by less pigment than would fill a thimble.

I was still smacking my lips when the doorbell rang. If god was planning on answering prayers he was taking his own sweet time.

“Okay,” said Kay, gripping my shoulders. “That’s them.”

“Okay?” I echoed, unsure how to respond.

“Do – do you want to go down and meet them?”

“I have a choice?” I scoffed.

“I mean, do you want to meet them down there or up here?”

“I was thinking of doing the whole Norma Desmond thing.”

The doorbell rang again. “Coming!” yelled Kay. “Whatever it is, just – oh god,” she hugged me, then ran downstairs to answer the door.

“No-one ever gets my best jokes.” I said, to myself, slowly following her. By the time I’d made it to the top of the stairs, I could hear people talking in the hall below. I took a deep breath, let it out, centred myself, and slid down the bannister.

“Woo!” I gasped, sticking the landing pretty well for someone wearingsocks on a well-polished hardwood floor. Judges’ scores, 8, 8, 7. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw it. Hi!” I said, sticking out my hand to Amira and the other girl I’d never seen before. “I’m Freya.”

***

That had gone remarkably well. Tina had introduced herself, Amira had re-introduced herself now that she knew me by my (sort of) name rather than “skater girl” and once Kay had composed herself we’d grabbed crisps and dips and been bundled upstairs to her room. Completely normal. No one had screamed at all, unless you counted me, internally.

“Anyone home?” someone yelled from downstairs.

“Up here!” Kay shouted back.

Kay, Tina and Amira had bounced up the stairs like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, causing the whole house to shake, but the new arrival came up almost silently, sliding in through the open door without a sound.

“Fish!” said Kay.

“Fish! Fish! Fish! Fish!” the other girls chanted along, rattling the windows. I’d never been in a room with three large girls all chanting “Fish” before but it was the closest I’d come to a spiritual experience.

The new girl, who I assume was called Fish (Fish?) bowed slightly, arms outstretched, like the pope acknowledging worshippers at the Vatican, except I’d never seen the pope holding a carrier bag full of Stella Artois cans in each hand. But then I wasn’t a Catholic.

“I come bearing tins and weed,” she said, expansively.

“Thank fuck,” said Amira, reaching for one of the bags.

“Woah,” said Fish. “That one’s for Kay. Here,” she said, handing it to Kay and giving Amira, who was making little grabby lobster claw motions with her hands, the remaining one.

“Why’s this one for me?” asked Kay.

“It’s got your stuff in it,” replied Fish.

Kay blinked. “Already? Seriously? Wow.”

“Like I said, knew someone who had it.”

“You are the best, Fish. Thank you.”

“You getting secret top shelf drugs, Kay? Is it ket?” asked Amira.

“It’s not ket,” she said, pulling the cans of lager out of the carrier bag and shoving the rest of it – whatever it was – into the top of her wardrobe.

“Is it…” Tina paused. “I can’t think of any other drugs. Opium.”

“Yes, Tina, it’s opium,” said Fish. “We’re restarting the opium wars, don’t tell anyone.”

“Laudanum,” said Amira, cracking open her can and taking a swig.

“That’s just opium mixed with alcohol,” said Fish.

“Sounds great, let’s do that. Kay, share your opium with me. It’ll be like a lager top.”

Fish settled herself into the computer chair and began dumping out the contents of her pockets, assembling what I quickly realised was a small one-woman workshop for constructing joints. She wasn’t quite as big as Kay or Amira, but she was still pretty stocky, bigger than me at least, which was quickly and depressingly becoming my new normal, and – I guess relaxed would be the best word for her. Her movements were slow, deliberate, and strangely efficient, like she knew exactly how much effort the world required from her, and was happy to stroll up to that level and no further.

“You must be Freya,” she said, looking up from her work directly at me. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said. “Uh, I mean, yes, that’s me.”

“How you getting on?” she asked, licking closed one completed rollie and moving onto the next.

I rotated the question inside my head. “Good, I think? It’s been a weird couple of days,” I said, and instantly regretted it. It had been a weird couple of days, but why would I say something that invited further questions? Fish, however, didn’t seem bothered.

“It has been a weird couple of days,” she agreed. “We’re on the cusp of a full reversal of the earth’s magnetic field. South will be north, up will down, all that is old will be new again.”

Okay then.

“Fish is our goalie,” said Kay, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

“How about some tunes?” she said, handing the first of her completed joints to Kay.

***

I see a stream of girls that’ll put me on the floor,

The game is nearly over, the hounds are at the door

“What even is this, Fish?”

“Japanese bluegrass,” said Fish, with an appreciative nod. “Best banjo pickers in the world.”

“It’s so fast,” said Amira, with her head in her hands.

“I think we might need something with more of a chill vibe,” said Tina, gently.

Fish rolled her eyes and tapped her phone a few times. I’m sure I was just imagining that the playlist she selected was titled “basic bitches <3”

Amira whooped as the first bars of a Chappell Roan song began playing. I smiled because I was having fun, which might sound trite, but I was sitting there in a skirt and leggings and this damnable top and makeup and it was fine, and it was easy and these girls were so stupidly laid back. Amira had two little sisters who were the bane of and/or the love of her life, she was studying English and history and French and wanted to go to Vietnam for reasons that I suspect even she was unclear on. Tina, when she could be coaxed into speaking, turned out to be an only child with a vicious streak of humour and wanted to be a nurse. Fish played bass in a skankabilly band, which term I refused to dignify with any further queries.

I had found out more about these girls in two hours than I had learned about almost anyone else in my life, including most of my foster parents.

It hadn’t been hard to talk back, either. Freya was an astonishingly easy person to be. She laughed at people’s jokes. She asked people questions and listened to the answers. Basic stuff, but no-one had wanted or really expected John to do those things, and I had no idea how much of that was being a boy or being in care, or if it was some sort of unholy mix of the two.

I hadn’t even had to lie, which helped. They asked me where I went to school, and I said I was in sixth-form college, which was true, doing a technical design course, which was also true. This had been a source of endless fascination, since the idea of a) doing a vocational course, and b) doing it at a college instead of at the same school where you’d spent the last 5 years developing a significant degree of combination institutional trauma and Stockholm Syndrome was fully alien to them. I described my teachers and classmates and their foibles with enough colour to convince even myself that my time there wasn’t a quotidian box-ticking exercise by the care system, and their interactions with me pared down to the bare minimum necessary.

God, was this how normal people felt all the time?

***

“I hate this thing,” I said, suddenly, tossing the copy of Frankenstein back onto the bed, unsure why I’d even picked it up in the first place.

“Me tooooo,” wailed Amira. “I have to write, like, two thousand words on it. That’s so many words.”

“No, I mean I hate this thing,” I insisted. “The 1831 edition. They always say ‘oh she wrote this when she was seventeen’ and she didn’t, she wrote the 1818 edition when she was seventeen. And she wrote it in, like, one week, holed up in this weird fucked-up villa on the shores of Lake Geneva while the worst storm in a century is blasting outside and her fuckass husband and his fuckass poet friends are getting drunk and wasted on weird Victorian drugs-”

“Opium!” shouted Tina.

“Right, and this…” I waved the battered paperback, even though it was the wrong edition, “thing, comes out of her, and it’s a mix of inspiration and nightmares and sheer talent and the feeling that the world’s about to explode in revolution, and when it’s published it’s a phenomenon, right, it’s like, people are obsessed. There’s pirate copies, unlicensed translations, fanfiction, there’s a totally unauthorised play up and running within a year, people want to fuck Victor, they want to fuck the creature, they want to know who the mysterious anonymous author is – and she realises she’s created a monster.”

“And she writes other books, sure, she’s a political philosopher, but nothing she’s ever done compares to this book she created out of a fever-dream when she was seventeen years old, so she goes back, ‘makes it better,’ polishes it, smooths out its rough edges, takes out anything that could be ambiguous or morally objectionable, or, I don’t know, monstrous, and sends it back out into the world again, fixed and castrated.” I threw the book across the room, caught up in the moment. “And that’s the version they teach in schools.”

Shit. Everyone was looking at me. I’d never gotten this far before. People turned off when I started speaking, or told me to shut up, or I just lost confidence and stuttered to a halt on my first sentence.

“Damn,” said Tina.

“I need to write this down,” said Amira, flailing for what I can only assume was a pen and a notebook that she imagined were nearby.

“Don’t bother,” said Fish.

“But my A-levels!” she wailed.

“Nothing you write down stoned will be half as good in the morning.”

“That’s deep,” said Tina.

“No it isn’t.” said Fish.

“Do you think Frankenstein’s monster had a penis?” asked Tina, after a pause.

“It’d have to, right?” said Amira. “He’s not gonna leave it like a Ken doll down there.”

“Did he find one really good one, or did he build one from… all the best bits?”

“I bet he did that bit blindfold, so it wouldn’t be gay,” I said, deadpan. “Total horrorshow down there. Upside-down and back to front. No wonder he was so angry.”

***

Kay’s kitchen had big glass doors that opened out onto what I would have called a patio but everyone else insisted on calling “the deck.” They’d been propped open all evening and we’d ebbed and flowed, in and out, groups of ones and twos and occasionally all five of us, but now it was just me and Fish sitting in plastic chairs under the slowly setting summer sun.

“Why do they call you Fish?” I asked, having finally achieved enough of a buzz to overcome most of the stress about my voice, and some of the stress of talking to anyone who wasn’t Kay.

“Because women fear me and fish want me,” said Fish, to a blank look of incomprehension from me.

“I’m like if Troy McClure was a lesbian,” she tried, to similar results. “Oh, you’re fully offline, huh?” she laughed, a short, throaty bark. “Okay, when I first started secondary school, some little toerag who thought she was the 12-year-old Regina George tried to start a rumour that I had had sex with a fish. Now I had been informed by well-meaning adults that the best way to deal with a slur was to reclaim it, so I embraced it, shortened the nickname she’d given me, and started the school’s first unofficial piscosexual pride society.” She took a long toke. “Total membership, me and one boy that I had to sadly let down when he found out “piscosex” didn’t mean what he thought it did. Anyway, by the time I realised the fish sex rumour girl had gotten bored and moved on, I’d bought a bunch of hats and t-shirts with fish on them and the whole thing kinda stuck.” Listening to Fish talk was insanely relaxing. She spoke slow and deep, like a tiger purring.

“That’s beautiful,” I said, giggling. Actual fucking giggles, what was going on with me tonight?

“So,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Freya.”

“Hmm,” I replied, feeling the need to repeat the word, feel it in my mouth. “Freya. Yes.”

“Are you cool?”

“I am incredibly cool,” I said, coolly.

“Are you doing – or being made to do – anything you don’t want to do?”

I thought about this for a second. I was being made to eat a lot of food, which was different, but not exactly unwelcome. Kay had dressed me up as a girl an indeterminate number of times, which was unusual and frightening but becoming less so with the addition of time and chill girls and good weed.

She’d renamed me with a text message.

“Well, as you know, consent under a totalising system like capitalism is always provisional,” I heard myself saying.

“Sure,” replied Fish.

“But with that caveat? Yeah. I think I am cool.”

“Cool,” said Fish, handing me the joint.