18. We Don’t Take Boys For Fun
2019 November 28
Thursday
The crack of Christine’s spine as she stretches is astonishingly sharp in the near-empty hospital foyer, and she curses under her breath: she shouldn’t have spent the night in that horrible chair! Her arse feels almost bruised where the padding was worn thin, and when she pulls up her sleeves she has marks on her elbows from the bare wooden arms, and — Christ! — her back is killing her. She should have moved, should have decamped to the couch in the corner of the room, but by the time she thought about it, Abby was fast asleep on her shoulder. And now her whole body feels like a knuckle she can’t get to pop, and her top is damp from where Abby dribbled on it.
She rolls her spine again, moans loudly at the pain and ignores the irritated glances from the handful of people dotted around the room, and suddenly she has to stifle a giggle because she’s realised that a bunch of strangers just looked at her and she didn’t care about it in the slightest.
They looked at her and she brushed it off! She used to run, she used to hide, and when she was trying to become a better woman she’d do her best simply to ignore it, suffering through lectures and workshops and visits to the Student Union Bar while hyper-aware of everyone around her. They could all see through her, she thought, to the boy inside, and all it would take would be for her to say the wrong thing or move the wrong way or laugh at the wrong joke and suddenly everyone’s suspicions would be confirmed.
But today: nothing. Now she comes to think about it, she spent the whole night here, and much of the previous day, interacting with doctors and nurses and orderlies and random people in the queue for the vending machines, and not once has she feared discovery. Not once has the possibility even occurred to her!
She’ll have to tell Paige; she’ll be delighted. Ever since that day at the mall with Pippa, the day they got back together, Paige has been working on her. She’s dragged her to clubs, bars, shops and cafés, she’s walked her around the art gallery and the university grounds, she’s provided all the evidence Christine could ask for that she is, as far as anyone else is concerned, simply another ordinary girl. And the fear that someone might somehow intuit her maleness has, in the face of Paige’s patient and loving efforts, simply faded away.
Hell, they kissed on the escalator in the middle of Almsworth Mall and the most anyone did was hiss at their six-year-old — those girls are kissing! — to stop staring.
Just an ordinary girl. Well, damn. Finally, she has the invisibility she once craved. A small, perverse part of her chafes at the idea of being assumed to be just like everyone else, but it’s easily ignored. She can be a weirdo back home, where it’s safe, with all the other weirdos.
Another thing she owes Paige.
The bad sleep starts to catch up with her again and robs her of her balance, punishing her for the moment of introspection, so she leans against the wall, outsourcing the job of keeping herself upright to a hundred thousand tonnes of brick, concrete, and tacky glass frontage. If she makes it to tonight without dropping face-first into a bed, a couch, or a comfy enough brace of cushions, it’ll be a miracle. She pictures the edifice of Dorley Hall rising up in front of her as she staggers the last few metres home and has to stop herself laughing at how completely the place has taken her over.
Dorley Hall: her home. It would have been an incomprehensible thought just two years ago.
“Coffee,” Abby says, announcing her presence and her purchases.
“Coffee,” Christine agrees, jerking away from the wall for long enough to accept a paper cup and then slumping back. She points an accusatory finger. “You dribbled on me.” It’s okay to say it, now that they both have coffee and thus have upgraded themselves from non-functional to pre-functional and able to absorb mild critique.
“It’s not my fault you’re so comfortable.” Abby sits in one of the chairs bolted to the foyer floor in rows. “You don’t have to stand, you know.”
“I do.” Christine winces, and rubs at her back like an octogenarian. “I feel like I have burning insects crawling around in my spine. Why’d they have to kick us out, anyway?”
At oh-six-hundred on the dot they were woken by a nurse who shooed them out of Maria’s room and insisted they go get some air and come back at eight and, stumbling, half-awake, they’d obeyed. They barely spoke in the elevator down, each of them still blowing the cobwebs out of their brains, and on the ground floor Abby immediately left in search of someone or something that would sell her some coffee and Christine just sort of stopped for a few minutes, reactivating every little while like a toy on low batteries to stretch her back and to be grateful that nothing was currently drooling on her.
Abby raises an eyebrow. “They were always going to kick us out. This is a hospital, Chrissy.” Christine would be offended by the patronising tone if she didn’t think, in her current state, that it was probably warranted. “Just be grateful this isn’t the NHS or we would’ve been out on our ears last night, and Maria wouldn’t have had anyone to talk to when she woke up at three.”
“Wait, Maria woke up at three?”
“She thought she was being attacked again.”
“Fuck.”
Grimacing, Abby says, “I’m getting the feeling this might have unearthed some bad stuff she’s been keeping buried. She looked kinda wild. But I talked her down. You helped, actually.”
“I did?”
“It was really sudden: she sat up, far too fast for my comfort, and she looked like she was going to yell out, but then she clapped a hand over her mouth and held her breath. She was all wide-eyed and, honestly, I thought she was terrified, but then you started talking in your sleep.”
“Um. What?”
Abby grins. “I think the disturbance sort of half-woke you. You were talking to Paige, I think, in your dream. And listening to you calmed Maria down enough for me to get through to her. She said to tell you, you’re very cute when you’re asleep.”
“Good,” Christine says, and takes a sarcastic slurp. “Great. Thank you. Message conveyed. I’m cute.”
“Come on,” Abby says, nudging her, “you know Paige loves it.”
“Paige isn’t mean to me,” Christine says, and takes the plastic lid off so she can blow on her coffee, more to punctuate the retort than anything else. “Would they really have kicked us out if this was an NHS hospital?”
“Yes?” Abby says. “Visiting hours are a thing. You’ve never been in an NHS hospital?” When Christine shakes her head, Abby pokes her. “Rich girls!”
“Hey! I was a rich boy, thank you very much. As a girl, I’ve had to take a job down in the boy-torturing mines to make ends meet, just like everyone else.”
“Uh, keep your voice down?”
“What?” Christine says. “Why?” It takes her a moment. “Oh, shit. Sorry. I think I’m too tired to filter.”
“No-one noticed, I think,” Abby says quietly. “Maybe restrict yourself to nods until your brain starts working?”
Christine nods. It’s fortunate for her and Dorley both that their secrets are so ridiculous; the odd slip-up just flies over people’s heads.
* * *
They’re finally allowed back in around half past eight, and by then Christine’s spine is even more sore, but it’s worth it to see Maria sitting up in bed, eating Weetabix and smiling at them.
“When I come home,” Maria says, as Christine and Abby sit down, “I want us to diversify the boys’ breakfasts. Away from Weetabix. And not just to porridge three times a week.” She regards her spoonful, frowns at it, and lays it carefully back in the bowl, contents uneaten. “We should get them something nice. Something that distracts them a bit from what we’re doing to them.”
Abby leans forward. “I don’t think cereal would—”
“Did you ever have those variety packs? They were a treat. Like, when you’d go on holiday with your family and wake up and look out at this whole beautiful new place, and then downstairs the bed and breakfast would have a little buffet out, but you wouldn’t care about toast or eggs or anything because in the middle of every table there’d be a multipack of portion-sized cereal boxes, all cellophaned together.” She smiles, and her eyes wander the room, wincing when they come into contact with the thin shaft of light the closed curtains admit in the centre. “Abby,” she says, “can we get more curtains in here? Is that something we can do? It’s so bright, Abby. It’s so bloody bright. Can we call Elle and tell her they’re not giving me enough curtains? Can we—?”
Abby leans over and pulls the privacy shade around the bed, all the way along to Maria’s feet, blocking out more of the light. Maria sighs and visibly relaxes, lets her torso sink back into the mattress. Christine hadn’t even realised she was so tense; Abby had, clearly. Christine’s reminded once again that while she doesn’t know Maria all that well — except as something of an antagonist during her second year at Dorley, when Maria became more actively involved with Christine’s intake — Abby’s been a part of things for a lot longer and knows a lot more. Including who this Elle person is, probably.
“Thank you, Abigail,” Maria says, smiling wide and appearing to get momentarily distracted by the sensation of her front teeth resting on her lower lip.
“Bea will be here soon,” Abby says, sitting down again. Out of sight of Maria, she reaches out for one of Christine’s hands and squeezes. The gesture is nice and Christine knows the reason behind it, but the more time she’s spent here the less she’s reminded of her mother. For one thing, Maria isn’t dazedly begging for her abuser to come back to her; she’s dazedly reminiscing about cereal.
“When?” Maria asks urgently.
“Soon,” Abby repeats, and Maria nods and settles into the pillow.
“I remember it so clearly; sitting at the table in the bed and breakfast. Red and white squares on the tablecloth, like something off the TV.” Maria giggles. “It was so stupidly perfect. Like when you’d watch a show and wish you could be in it and suddenly I was. I can see myself, breaking open the wrapping, picking out a box of Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes and pouring out the blue-top milk, which I was allowed, because we were on holiday. Mum smiling at me as I eat. Dad assembling a breakfast plate which fit the maximum amount of food without spilling over the edges.” She meets Christine’s eye. “Sorry. I think my mind’s wandering a bit.”
Christine smiles at her. “Yours and mine both,” she says. “At least you have an excuse. I’m just sleepy.”
“I miss my mum,” Maria says. Christine’s never heard her talk about her family — her old family — before. Judging by the look on Abby’s face, neither has she. “I miss her so much. She had the sweetest laugh. I could tell her the stupidest joke, the most page-one-of-the-joke-book crap, and she’d laugh just because it was me telling it. And Dad. He could cook. He’d make soy sauce chicken once a week because I always asked for it, and he’d start a whole thing with me about how he was so tired, he’d worked so hard, and wouldn’t I prefer something quicker, and then he’d laugh and tell me I could have it if and only if I agreed to do all my homework. And I would promise, and get all my books out on the kitchen table, and he’d prepare it in front of me. And we’d eat it together, the three of us.” She sniffs, and winces against the pain. “Always together. Sitting in the front room, eating chicken, watching telly, the sunset streaming through the blinds… How is it possible to miss something so simple so much?”
Abby reaches into her bag and hands tissues to Maria, who doesn’t seem to know what to do with them, so Abby takes them back and dabs gently at Maria’s eyes until she comes back to the present, smiles weakly at Abby, and takes over the task herself. When she’s done she shuffles around in bed, sits up a little higher, rearranges the covers for comfort.
“You okay, Maria?” Abby says.
“Yeah,” she replies, after consideration. “I’m going to close my eyes for a little bit, if that’s okay?”
She does so, and Christine, who doesn’t feel up to checking the Dorley group chat, the private Consensus channels or her personal messages just yet, leans her head on Abby’s shoulder, and catches up on a little sleep of her own. Hopefully she’ll drool.
It’s a little after nine that Aunt Bea arrives, bursting through the door and looking considerably less put together than she usually does, having come straight from some car or train or plane delivering her from wherever she spends her days away from Dorley. She rushes to Maria’s bedside, taking the chair Abby vacates for her. Christine groggily manoeuvres her own chair out of reach, uncomfortable with being too involved in what’s undoubtedly about to happen.
“My Maria,” Bea says, running a finger down Maria’s bare arm.
Maria cracks her eyes open. “Hey, Auntie,” she says.
“How are you feeling?”
Maria opens her hand and lets Bea lock fingers with her. “Oh, I’m thriving. Turns out having a dickhead slam your skull into the floor is incredible for productivity.”
Christine can’t see Bea’s face, but can imagine her reaction to Maria’s flippant description of her assault in the way she flinches. Christine finds the sarcasm reassuring: so much of growing up (again) in Dorley is about looking to the older women who surround you and drawing confidence from their comfort, and to see Maria, the most constant adult presence in Christine’s recent life aside from Indira and Beatrice herself, so vulnerable has been unnerving.
“He’ll be punished,” Aunt Bea says.
“Okay,” Maria says, “but, Auntie? Don’t wash him out. Or his pals. The whole thing was mostly my fault.”
“Don’t say that!” Aunt Bea says.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Abby says, at the same time.
“We push them,” Maria insists, leaning up out of the pillow, “and we change them, all the while denying it. And we expect them to push back.” She locks eyes with Bea. “It’s part of it. It’s how it works. How it has to work, for some of them. I just got careless.” She drops back again, energy spent, and continues, sounding out of breath, “I gave a big speech in the morning about how it was going to be the day the shit hit the fan, and then when nothing happened in the first few hours, I let my guard down. I let people go before their replacements arrived. Yes, they all had good reasons — getting to work, getting to class, blah blah blah — but it’s not procedure. And then—” she closes her eyes for a moment, summoning more energy, “—and then I turned my back. My fault.”
“I don’t accept that,” Bea says.
“We had two cushy years in a row,” Maria says, smiling again, “where the biggest troublemakers were girls like Faye and Jodie and Paige and, well, you.” Christine realises she’s being referred to, and smiles sheepishly back. “You made a fuss, of course you did — how could you not, with what we were doing to you? — but you didn’t attack us.”
“Of course not,” Christine mumbles, looking away, playing with her wrist.
“We got complacent. I—” Maria tabs at her chest with a thumb, “—got complacent. We picked up some guys with histories of violence and then treated them like we did you. After all, the kid gloves mostly worked on Faye, and she was… okay, nothing like Will or the others, but she was a step above you, Christine.” She shakes her head and winces, hand to her temple. “I was stupid.”
“Not at all,” Bea insists.
Maria shrugs. “We can talk about it another time. But no washing out, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Keep them in the cells, though. But do the enrichment programme and—”
“We’re already on it,” Bea says smoothly.
“I was thinking we could run split population for a while. Will and Ollie and Raph on one schedule and Stef and the free range boys on another. It’s more work, but—”
“We’re already on it,” Bea repeats. “And Edith can handle it.”
Maria blinks, apparently caught short by someone having anticipated her ideas. But then she grins. “Actually, she can’t,” she says. “Put Indira on herding duty; the second years are all just one big cuddle pile at this point. I want Edy here. With me. And taking me home when it’s time. So I gave her the week off.”
“The hell you did.”
“The hell I did,” Maria confirms. “Remember when you gave me—” she switches to a sing-song tone, picks up her phone and waves it in time with her voice; it’s open on the timetabling app, “—op-er-a-tion-al con-trol?” Before anyone can reply, she winces, drops the phone, and holds a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes again.
“Maria!” Bea says, leaning in closer.
“I’m okay. It comes and goes.”
Aunt Bea strokes Maria’s cheek. “My poor little angel,” she says. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“I am too, Auntie…”
Their voices drop to whispers. Abby pulls on Christine’s hand, dragging her up from her chair and out of the room. She closes the door quietly behind them, leans on the wall opposite and exhales deeply.
“I think we don’t want to intrude on that,” Abby says.
“Yeah,” Christine says. “They’re… close.”
“Like mother and daughter.”
Christine laughs, without humour. “I feel like everyone misses their mum except me.”
“You really don’t miss her at all?”
“I miss something. But my whole life before the Hall was so fucked up… I’m not the same person I was when she knew me. Even if I wanted to, I feel like—” Christine’s fingers twitch, and she wishes once again for a cigarette, or anything to do with her hands beyond knot her fingers together; she makes a fist and presses it against the wall, “—like I don’t get to miss her. Like I don’t deserve to miss her. The boy who had that right, he’s gone, and they stopped looking for him a long time ago.”
“Christine?” Abby says, and when Christine looks up she’s close, really close, with a gentle hand on her shoulder she hadn’t even noticed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Christine says. “I am, actually.” She points at her forehead. “Some good shit’s been happening in here. Just, you know, some less good shit, too. I’ve been thinking about stuff.”
“Like you were last night?”
“Yeah. Feeling kinda shitty about going to pieces in a crisis.” She shrugs against the weight of Abby’s hand. “Mum stuff. Like I said. Which comes with Dad stuff.”
“Hey,” Abby says, squeezing Christine’s shoulder and letting her go, the better to gesticulate, “Edy wouldn’t have sent you here if she didn’t trust you. And you did everything you needed to do. In fact, you’re so together I can see why the sponsors keep forgetting you still haven’t, technically, graduated. You seem more like them than the other girls in your year.”
“You take that back!” Christine says, but she smiles, in case her tone didn’t make the joke clear. Only kind of a joke, though, she adds silently.
“I’m serious. Vicky graduated, sure, nice and early, like the girly girl she almost definitely would have become at some point without our help, but then she immediately left Dorley, and only comes back for meals or to steal our food and our estradiol — and yes, Christine, I think everyone knows about that by now; she’s not as sneaky as you. Jodie is on a pretty standard trajectory, goth version, and Julia and Yasmin are the deal-by-not-dealing sort. They’ll graduate and leave and I expect we’ll only hear from them when they want to renegotiate their stipends. That leaves you and Paige, and Paige is, for all her gifts, less… temperamentally suited to this stuff.”
“And she’d never do it in a million years.”
“As is her right,” Abby says.
Christine nods, and wonders if Abby, too, feels like a morally compromised monster whenever Paige voices her objections; objections Christine shares, in theory, but which never actually seem to matter when it comes to her day-to-day interactions with the programme.
“You two still doing okay?” Abby asks, and then, observing the inevitable blush that floods Christine’s cheeks and the shy smile she can’t keep down, says, “I’ll take that as a yes.” She pokes Christine, who squeals and wriggles away, batting at Abby’s fingers.
Bloody Abby. Always able to make things better.
Through the narrow glass window in the door, Christine spots Bea sat right up against Maria’s bed, leaning on the mattress and stroking Maria’s forehead with her thumb. They really are close.
“Would it be so bad to let Maria reconnect with her real parents?” Christine says, voicing the thought as soon as it crosses her mind.
“We can’t!” Abby says, suddenly serious, grabbing Christine by the shoulder and firmly dragging her away from the door, out of Maria’s line of sight. “And be careful when you say stuff like that!”
“But surely she, of all people—”
“No, she can’t,” Abby says, and steps closer before she continues. “Because they’re dead. We’re all she has. Beatrice, Edy and the rest of us. All she has.”
Maria in the bed, fingers linked with Aunt Bea. Like mother and daughter.
Shit. No wonder it seems like she’ll never leave. Maria’s one of the last graduates from Grandmother’s time, and while Christine still doesn’t know much about that period, she knows Grandmother didn’t exactly prioritise making sure the girls were socially functional. The survivors have been gradually peeling away from Dorley Hall over the last decade and a half as they acclimate to the world away from Grandmother, establishing lives for themselves elsewhere, but Maria’s never shown the slightest indication she might follow her Sisters, and Christine’s never known exactly why. Her close bond with Aunt Bea has always been her best guess, followed by the assumption that Maria is essentially institutionalised, which is starting to look a little unfair of her.
“What happened to them?” she asks.
“You probably shouldn’t know this,” Abby whispers, “and I know I shouldn’t, but the hierarchy around here keeps shrinking and it seems really keen on gobbling you up, so in the interests of avoiding you putting your foot in your mouth: Maria’s parents were killed by Grandmother.”
“Grandmother—!” Christine claps her hand over her mouth.
“Yes. Or her people. Same difference.”
“Did she kill everyone’s family?” Christine asks, as the bloody history of Grandmother’s regime expands in her mind to include roomsful of children, parents, grandparents, all dead for one woman’s satisfaction.
“No. It was a punishment reserved for the most unruly. And a stupid one, too, because once you’ve done it, you can’t do it again, and the girl now knows you’ve nothing left to hurt her with. But they did it anyway, because Grandmother’s lot were cruel. Cruel for the sake of it. Cruel for fun. Cruel just to see what would happen. Maria fought them, and they killed her parents and showed her the proof.”
“How the fuck did Grandmother get away with shit like that?” Christine hisses.
“She had money and connections,” Abby says, “just like we do. But she also made sure she picked up boys with criminal convictions. Usually something minor. Shoplifting, purse-snatching. Enough to get them in the system. Police won’t look too hard for some missing working class twenty-year-old at the best of times, but if he also has a record? Barely worth them getting out of their seats for. And if the devastated family, years after he vanishes, vanish themselves, or ‘commit suicide’? Well, that’s all very explicable, isn’t it?” She spits it, unable to keep her snarl contained. “Especially if those boys, those families, just happen to be poor and from… backgrounds the authorities feel the country could do without. Practically natural causes.”
“Jesus.”
“In my darker moments,” Abby says, “I’ve told myself that we’re no different to Grandmother, just with a shiny coat of girlboss paint and stupider crockery. But we don’t take boys for fun; we take them because we think they can be saved, and to protect the people around them. And we make sure their families have access to therapists, get money to them if they need it, et cetera.” She sighs. “I have so many justifications.”
“Do they help?” Christine asks.
“Sometimes. At least we have Indira’s pilot programme now, for reconnecting with families.”
“That’s a thing we’re doing? I thought it was just that Dira made a huge pain in the arse of herself until Bea finally gave in?”
“Well, yeah,” Abby says, smiling. “That’s how it started. But we’re watching the situation. If, in five years, it all seems okay, we can start to think about reuniting more people.”
“But never Maria.”
“No.”
“Five years,” Christine says. “That’s a long time.”
“Yeah,” Abby says, after a pause, and leans her head against the wall. “It really is.”
“What about—?”
“Oh, shit; shush!”
Christine, still operating on poor sleep and feeling very slow on the uptake, is about to ask why, when the door to Maria’s room opens and Aunt Bea steps out, damp-cheeked and tired. She looks away while she wipes her face with a wet-wipe; Christine and Abby do her the courtesy of concentrating very hard on the floor.
“Thank you both for staying with her,” Aunt Bea says.
“Any time,” Abby says.
Bea gives her a quick nod and turns to Christine. “Victoria has agreed to pick you up on her way into campus. She’ll find you in the car park in, oh, about ten minutes.”
“Fine,” Christine says. “Um, thank you for arranging that.” She hadn’t given much thought to how she was going to get home.
“Abigail, I’d like you to stay with me a little longer, if you please. Until Edith finishes up.”
Christine pops her head back into the room, but Maria’s asleep again, so she hugs Abby, gives Aunt Bea an embarrassed smile, and finds the ground floor again on her first try. Feeling increasingly fatigued, she wobbles out to the railing in the parking lot to wait for Vicky and her distinctive car. It doesn’t take long for the hatchback with the one blue door to pull up, and for Vicky to leap out of the driver’s side and envelop her in a hug, and when Vicky lets her go, Christine has to fend off Lorna, too.
Lorna’s face is slightly rougher against her cheek than Vicky’s. Maybe they can get her some money for laser or electrolysis or something? Christine can’t get the families out of her mind — years of wreckage left in Dorley’s wake — and it would be nice to do something unambiguously good for a change.
Deposited in the back seat, Christine fills them in on Maria’s condition, and as they pull out of the car park she finally checks to see how the group chat and the Dorley Consensus server are doing.
1,047 new messages.
Okay, then. Maybe she’ll deal with her personal stuff first.
63 new messages.
Fuck it. Christine ignores them all, messages everyone on her internal contact list with a quick update on Maria’s situation and a stern warning that anyone who happens to find her asleep later today — no matter how unusual the position or location — and decides to wake her up will be subscribed on all their accounts to every recipe newsletter, grey-market video game key-selling service and off-brand bulk sex toy website she can find, and switches to the Consensus app.
She scrolls past pages and pages of messages from anxious Dorley women, who are both worried about Maria and indulging in some rather lurid revenge fantasies with Will, Raph and Ollie in starring roles. She stops to read Edy’s pinned post rebuking them, adds a reaction emoji, and continues scrolling. The photo of Maria smiling and showing the V sign is everywhere, and by 3am, after Abby hopped into the channel and posted an update to confirm that Maria is still okay, the few people up late or awake early started to meme on it, pasting Maria into other images and designing the odd mug. Relief makes people giddy; it also makes them bad at Photoshop. Christine saves a few of the better ones and jumps straight to the bottom so she can make a post for anyone not on her contact list.
One of the last messages is from Monica, enquiring about Maria’s hormones, and Christine watches Edy’s reply pop up: she’ll be taking them over when she starts her week’s leave — good for her! — in a few hours.
“Shit,” Christine says, swiping the app closed and dropping the phone back into her bag, “I didn’t bring my pills last night. Vick, I don’t suppose you have any on you?” It takes her a while to process the silence in the car and she looks up to Vicky, in the rear-view, giving her the most intense stare she’s ever— Shit! Lorna’s not supposed to know about that! “I feel terrible if I don’t take my vitamins,” she adds quickly.
Vicky affects exasperation. It probably doesn’t take much effort. “Why would I have vitamin pills in my car, Tina?”
“Uh, I don’t know.” Christine waves a mollifying hand. “Sorry,” she adds. “My brain is completely fried. I slept in a chair last night, and Abby slept on me. I was babbling away in the lobby, too. Just ignore me.”
“Let’s get you home, then,” Vicky says, “and you can eat all the vitamin pills you can find.”
Christine hopes the strange look Lorna’s giving her is harmless and innocent and not, for example, a sign that she’s made a huge mistake, and rather than say anything else and make the situation worse she directs her attention firmly and uninterruptibly out of the window for the rest of the drive, watching the outskirts of town become the long tail of the Royal College of Saint Almsworth campus and, eventually, the parking lot nearest Dorley Hall.
Home.
* * *
It’s Pippa who wakes him, tapping him on the forehead with — he squints, in lieu of focusing his eyes properly, which is a feat that is clearly beyond him this morning — yes, her taser.
“Wake up, sleepyheads,” she says.
“Do you have to wield that thing at me?”
“What thing?” Pippa says, and then finally notices what she’s holding. “Oh. Sorry. We got a lecture about keeping them on hand, after— uh, you know.”
“It’s too early for tasers.”
“It’s way past nine.”
“Still too early for tasers.”
She backs off and gives Stefan room to wriggle around in his sleeping bag, freeing limbs that got trapped in the folds overnight. To his left and right, disgruntled noises suggest the boys are waking up, too, stretching, yawning, and bumping into furniture they pushed out of the way to make room for their impromptu sleepover.
Last night, things became rather less structured than Stefan or the boys have become used to. With the common room full of sponsors — and people like Paige, who are definitely not sponsors but didn’t, she told Stefan in a quiet moment, run away fast enough when Edy was rounding people up — Adam started getting antsy, and it fell to Stefan and Aaron to try to keep him calm and distracted. Stefan tried not to let his heart sink as he imagined how much of his near future was going to involve managing Adam; Aaron’s been enough work on his own!
When it became clear to the assembled Dorley Sisters that none of the four who remained were likely to try anything funny, the room mostly cleared out; a relief, given how many of them had tried to talk to Stefan, or looked at him in ways he found uncomfortable. He suspected that at the first opportunity he was going to quietly go to pieces over how just how fucking seen he’d been, so when Pippa suggested to Edy that the ‘boys’ sleep together in the common area rather than face the night alone, he enthusiastically backed her.
It had been Edy who supplied the spare pillows, roll-out mattresses and so on, with Jane’s help. Jane, Raph’s sponsor, took the opportunity provided by laying everything out to complain to the room about always getting the difficult ones, about having to get up early the next morning to feed ‘a fucking pillock’, which Stefan suspected was only half about letting off steam and half about making a point to the remaining boys: behave.
Edy, meanwhile, took Adam aside and spoke to him quietly. At the end of their conversation, they hugged, and Edy stroked Adam’s hair, clearing it out of his eyes and smoothing it down at the sides. Stefan’s been meaning to ask someone what the hell’s going on with those two.
“Come on,” Pippa says, gesturing with a finger, her taser now reassuringly hooked into her wide belt, “up up up! Breakfast in ten.”
“That’s not the enticement you think it is,” Aaron mutters.
There’s a smell Stefan associates with groups of boys who’ve gone too long without a shower — the one time he agreed to sleep over at the house of one of Russ’ other friends, in the rec room with five boys, the room reeked in the morning — but the common area has none of the musky odour he expects. Is that something that changes with estrogen? Or the lack of testosterone? Or is it something else entirely, something to do with their diet, and he’s just looking for reasons to believe it’s the HRT taking effect because it comforts him?
Self-consciously he turns away and presses softly around his nipples: still sensitive; still fleshy; still nothing you could really yet call a boob. Patience, in this place, where he barely has time to adjust to the status quo before it changes under his feet, and where he seems to keep accumulating new responsibilities, feels like an imposition.
It takes them a few minutes to clear up the sleeping bags, and then Pippa’s ushering them into the dining room, ignoring Aaron’s complaints that it would better preserve the sleepover atmosphere if they got to eat in front of the TV and maybe put some cartoons on.
Edy’s sat there, at the head of the table, with Pippa on her left and Indira — Stefan recognises her from the staff files — on her right. Indira catches him looking at her and smirks, raising an eyebrow. Christine’s sponsor, he knows; she’s had only good things to say about her.
“And then there were four…” Indira says, putting on an ominous voice. Edy nudges her and shakes her head, which only broadens Indira’s smile.
“Good morning,” Edy says. “We have some announcements to make; you might want to start on your breakfast.”
“Do we have to?” Aaron gripes, as Stefan drops a couple of Weetabix into a bowl and pushes it and the oat milk in front of the boy, ignoring Indira’s undisguised amusement. Aaron grudgingly pours milk and Stefan fills a bowl for himself.
“Yes,” Martin says. Surprising; he rarely interjects. Rarely says anything much. He’s smiling when Stefan glances over, which is beyond unexpected and firmly in creepy territory. He’s also helping Adam with his bowl, which is the point Stefan decides that the events of yesterday have so upset the balance in the basement that his ability to predict events has dropped to near zero.
“How’s Maria doing?” Stefan asks, before Edy can say anything else. He can guess that she hasn’t taken a downturn, judging by the fact that Indira seems to be having a whale of a time just watching him make sure Aaron eats breakfast, but it’s better to know for certain.
“She’s awake and she’s talking,” Edy says, “and she’s asked that, whatever the vengeful instincts of… certain people, William, Raphael and Oliver are not to be washed out.” She directs that to Adam, who closes his eyes in relief. “She is also going to be taking a leave of absence to recover, and since I will be helping to take care of her in the short term, Indira will be in charge down here. She’ll also be taking over sponsorship of you, Aaron.”
Aaron, clearly painfully aware of the broad, innocent smile on Indira’s face, nearly chokes on his Weetabix. “Hi,” he says, when he recovers.
“Hello, Aaron,” Indira says. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you!”
“Last night’s indulgence will not be repeated,” Edy continues, borrowing Beatrice’s tones, “so expect to sleep in your own beds tonight. Nonetheless, we do recognise that none of the four of you have yet to engage in violence against another resident or any of the sponsors, with the exception of Stef.”
Aaron grabs Stefan by a shoulder and shakes him. “Yeah, killer!” Stefan pushes him off.
“Continued good behaviour comes with privileges. More media on your computers, more varied food, that kind of thing. Obviously, the opposite is true. You won’t be seeing the others for a while. That doesn’t mean we’re doing anything sinister with them,” she adds quickly. “I know you saw Declan. We’re not doing that. Not yet, anyway. But their presence is disruptive, and they need individual attention.” She sighs. “It’s more work, of course.”
“I’m super sorry you kidnapped us and then we gave you a really hard time about it,” Aaron says.
“Thank you!” Indira says. “You’re much more thoughtful than Maria said.”
Aaron blinks, and Stefan wonders if he should be taking notes.
Edy stands and walks around towards Adam, trailing her fingers idly on the table. When she reaches him she places a hand on his shoulder. “Adam,” she says, “I’m going to be away for about a week. Indira will be here to help, and if you need to reach me you can ask her or any of the other sponsors, okay? The rest of the time, Stef will take care of you, right?”
She glances at Stefan, eyes wide. He nods. “Yeah, Adam,” he says. “I’m, uh… Anything I can do. Just ask.” Edy thanks him with a smile.
“I don’t want to be a burden,” Adam says quietly.
“You’re not,” Stefan says.
“Stick with her— him,” Edy says, correcting herself and going momentarily still, controlling her reaction to the error. “Sorry, Stef,” she adds. “Long day, long night.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Teacher’s pet,” Aaron whispers, grinning, as Edy leaves the room and the other two sponsors start talking between themselves.
“Better a teacher’s pet,” Stefan replies, “than stuck in the cells with Will.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, and he realises it a second later, when Adam almost chokes on his Weetabix.
* * *
Before there was the Anthill and the redevelopment by the lake, there was the central quad, the sixties project which transformed a collection of disparate teaching buildings and other facilities — only one of which had properly been part of the Royal College of Saint Almsworth — into a real university. Its crowning feature: a brutalist spike driven into a square of green space and surrounded on all sides by administrative and office spaces and what had once been the main library, now repurposed as a student hangout and study area. The central tower, no longer the jewel of the Royal College and slightly shabby with age, now houses a laundromat, a small supermarket, one of two bookshops, and on top retains its only original feature: Café One, a restaurant which never caught on as the trendy social hub the architects intended, and which now mainly sells sausage sandwiches, baked potatoes, and other cheap, portable food to hungover students for prices which render it only slightly more cost-effective than taking a bus into town and going to a real café.
“If you keep pouring coffee into me I’ll never get any sleep,” Christine says, glaring at her cup and at her abandoned, half-finished sandwich.
“That’s literally the idea,” Lorna says.
“You can go, you know,” Christine says, leaning on her hand, unable to keep her mounting exhaustion under control. “See your friends and stuff. I can just slouch here until they kick me out. Someone’ll eventually take pity on me and drag me to the front steps of the dorm.”
Lorna snorts. “Nope! Vicky’s meeting us here and she’d be kind of annoyed with me if I wandered off, don’t you think? Besides, you are my friend!”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
“It’s true!” Lorna taps Christine on the wrist, almost destabilising her. “You’re even worse than Vicky, Tina. Does everyone at your dorm have massive self-esteem issues, or is it just you two? And Pippa?”
Vicky? Self-esteem issues? Christine wants to ask her if she’s talking about the same bubbly, outgoing girl Christine knows. Instead she says, “Just us. Why do you think we all know each other?”
“I’m guessing, support group for the terminally shy?”
“We meet once a month,” Christine says, and sips her coffee. How many cups so far today? She’s losing count. “With paper bags on our heads. And with the—” still holding her cup, she twirls her little finger in a circle near her eye and almost overbalances, “—shit! Sorry. And with the holes cut out, so we can see.”
Lorna gives Christine the same look she gave in the car, the same one Christine’s sure she could interpret better if she wasn’t so fucking tired. And she needs to do better in front of Lorna: it’s one thing to be confident and undetectable in front of cis people who, by and large, haven’t got a bloody clue about anything, and quite another to be friends with a trans woman. Christine feels a little like she did back at the mall, when Paige and Pippa dragged her out to buy dresses, except that Lorna isn’t likely to be cruel if she clocks her, just confused. Confused in a way that would end in major problems for Vicky and Dorley.
Why’d you have to fall in love with a trans girl, Vick? And why’d she have to be so nice? I can’t even resent her for making me nervous!
Lorna chews on her own sandwich for a while in silence, still giving Christine the look. “Is Vicky… okay?” she asks eventually, and bites her lip.
“Yes?” Christine says. “I think so?” Uncomfortable under Lorna’s scrutiny, she starts fiddling with her remaining sandwich, tearing off hunks of bread and turning them over in her fingers. She considers eating a bit more; if she really does fall asleep as soon as she gets home, this might be the only thing she eats all day. Hopefully Indira’s put the standard email through to her lecturers, or she’ll wake up to the same bullshit in her inbox she remembers from when she was a bad student the first time around.
“Are you lying to me, Christine?” Lorna says, her voice suddenly hard, and Christine’s glad she didn’t yet get around to stuffing any more food in her face because she would have choked, for sure.
“I mean, she hasn’t said anything to me,” Christine says carefully.
“It’s just… All right, so, in the car? You asked her for pills. ‘Vitamin pills’.” Christine watches her air-quote like a rat watches a cat. “The ones you forgot, and thought she had.”
Quality fuckup, Christine. “Uh, yeah?”
“You weren’t asking about vitamin pills, were you?”
The caffeine hasn’t done anything for Christine’s mental acuity, because in her anxious need to fix things she says the first thing that comes to mind, which is, “Why wouldn’t I have been?” which is exactly the kind of thing she’d say if she were trying to be evasive. She puts down her coffee and holds up her hand, asking for a moment. “Yes,” she says, thinking as fast as she can under the circumstances, “you’re right. Not vitamins.”
“Has Vicky been lying to me?” Lorna asks. Quiet and steady. She’d be meeting Christine’s gaze if Christine was at all prepared to meet hers.
Yes. Ever since you met her. “No. Not as far as I know.”
“But she’s taking something.”
“Yes.” Two things, actually: progesterone and estradiol. Christine never gave much thought as to how Vicky hides her HRT from Lorna. When does she find the time to dissolve the estradiol under her tongue? Christ, what does she say about the scars on her labia?
“And you know what it is because you take the same thing,” Lorna says, with a sigh in her voice, already almost as tired of this as Christine.
“Yes, but—”
“I know you don’t want to let her down, Christine, or break a promise, or whatever, but… I can’t deal with lies.” Lorna leans forward, so she can speak quietly. “I had a girlfriend, before I transitioned. And she lied to me. She pretended she was fine with what— with who I am, with the changes I was just starting to go through, but she was lying her arse off. She was already seeing another— a guy, but she was too chicken to tell me. Scared of how I might react. And when I eventually found out, she was all—” she holds her arms up in front of her face, protectively, “—like I might attack her for it. Like I might beat her. She cried about how scared she was of my reaction. Like I was some abusive boyfriend, not a trans girl ten times as scared of what she might do than the other way round.”
Shit. “I’m sorry,” Christine says. “I didn’t know.”
Lorna sniffs. “Yeah, well. Now you do. I’m done being lied to, Christine. And I know you and Vick have a bond, some shared experience or something, I see it with you and her and Paige and even Pippa when you’re all together, and I’ve never asked because I know she has shit in her past just like I have in mine. I know what she’s like when she gets scared.” She must notice Christine’s flinch because she reaches forward, takes Christine’s hand, and modifies her tone. Softer; less accusing. “And I’m not asking about that, about whatever happened to all of you. But I need to know about this pill thing. I need the truth.”
There are procedures for this. There’s evidence, ready-made and available in the lockers back home. Scripts to recite. Christine never put much effort into memorising any of it, because she never expected to end up with someone who didn’t know her, past and present, which was obviously a mistake equal in stupidity to all the other mistakes she’s made recently.
Fuck it; improvise.
She covers Lorna’s hand with hers, squeezes, and sits back in her chair, implying discomfort, which gets Lorna to let go. She nods, pretending grudgingly to accept that now is finally the time to tell the truth while she rearranges herself such that she can drop a hand into her bag and hit the button on the side of her phone. Christine made sure she got the brand of phone with the superfluous extra button, which as standard summons a proprietary voice assistant that approximately one percent of this phone’s owners actually use, but which on hers has been set to launch a voice recorder app. A double press, later, will end the recording, zip it up and encrypt it, and bounce it to the security room at Dorley, where someone will pick it up and act on it, if it seems necessary.
Improvise with backup.
“I was really out of it in the car,” she says, looking down at the table, ignoring the guilt constricting her throat, “as you saw. Partly because I was really tired. And partly because I missed my pill last night.” She meets Lorna’s eyes, hopes she can keep her gaze steady. “Venlafaxine. Those are the pills I take. The ones I asked her about. It’s an SNRI. I’ve been taking it for years, and so is Vicky. At least, I thought she was. I don’t actually know if she still does. We took it together, a long time ago. But never talked about it much. My choice. I’m, uh…” Christine rubs the back of her neck. “I’m kind of ashamed of it? Needing the help? And I know I shouldn’t be, I know lots of people take this stuff, I know it’s normal, but I’ve never been able to get over it. And in the car, I was so knackered, I wasn’t thinking straight, and just blurted it out. Vicky wasn’t lying to you, Lorna, when she went along with my story about it being vitamins. Not really. She was just protecting me.”
“Protecting you… from me.”
Christine shrugs. “From myself. Not you. She knows I’m neurotic.” Finally, a spot of truth.
Lorna sits back heavily. “Why wouldn’t she tell me about them? I’m not some ableist piece of shit who’s going to care that her girlfriend takes something that helps her. I’d be a pretty big hypocrite if I did, if you think about it.”
“Yeah,” Christine says, “I guess. And she might not take them any more, anyway. Like I said, we don’t really talk about it.”
Like a switch being flipped, Lorna’s face breaks out into a smile. She reaches across the table and touches Christine’s hand again. “Thank you, Christine. And I’m sorry for pushing. It’s just… you know how it is. The shit in your past never quite lets you go.”
Christine nods. Matches Lorna’s smile. Squeezes Lorna’s fingers. Displays sincerity. And with her other hand she hits the button on her phone twice, sending the audio file back to Dorley where someone will listen to it and shoot Vicky a message through the Dorley build of Consensus, which will manifest on her phone as a notification about a system update and open the messaging app in a floating window that will disappear as soon as she acknowledges receipt. Before she meets back up with them at Café One she’ll have her story straight and ready to tell.
“I get it,” Christine says. “When you’ve been lied to before, it’s hard to trust again.”
* * *
“Hey, baby. Did you miss me?”
“Edy?”
“Hi, Maria.”
“Edy!”
“Hey, don’t sit up so fast! Let me come to you.”
“Where did Bea go? And Abby?”
“Aunt Bea’s taking Abby home so they can get a bit of distance and a bit of rest, respectively. Which means that for the next little while I’ve got you all to myself.”
“Good! That’s… that’s really good. Sorry about that, by the way. I wake up hard at the moment. Takes me a second to get orientated.”
“How do you feel?”
“Honestly? Like complete shit. Even with the curtains shut it’s too bright in here. And these headaches keep coming and going. Not to mention — ouch! — the small matter of the dent in my skull.”
“Don’t touch it!”
“Yeah. Sorry. I haven’t been seriously hurt like this since— fuck, since Grandmother’s time. I’ve lost all my helpful wound care habits.”
“Poor baby.”
“Can you— uh, Edy, can you do me a favour?”
“Anything, Maria.”
“Sit with me? Up here? Maybe hug me a little? Auntie’s been wonderful, obviously, but she’s been treating me like I’m made of glass. I just want—”
“I’ve got you. Come on. Move over.”
“You, uh, might have to help me with that, too.”
“Okay. You just— no, lift your— no. Okay. I’ve got it. Just lie still, Maria. I’m going to pull the sheet, and you with it.”
“That’ll get the sheets all messed up.”
“So?”
“So, someone will have to fix it.”
“Let them! They can bill it.”
“Elle’s money isn’t infinite.”
“It might as well be! Besides, how much can it cost? Item: fitting new sheets after scandalous hospital bed lovemaking episode, ten dollars.”
“Lovemaking, Edy?”
“If you play your cards right. Now, stiffen up; I’m going to pull.”
“Edith, you’ve already pulled. Get it—? Aahh!”
“You had to make the joke, didn’t you, baby? Couldn’t stiffen up like I asked. Had to exercise your smart mouth.”
“It’s the only thing on my smart face that still works.”
“Okay. Lie still. I’m going to join you on— Woah!”
“Edy! Are you okay?”
“Yes. Just spectacularly uncoordinated. Give me a moment?”
“Shall I call someone?”
“No. It’s fine. I’m fine. See?”
“Impressive. Standing on your own two legs.”
“Don’t make fun, Maria.”
“You’re right. And you’re doing better at that than I am, right now. I suppose concussed women in glass hospitals shouldn’t throw, uh, plastic jelly containers?”
“Rules for life. Okay. I’m taking my heels off this time. I learn from my mistakes.”
“You’re so wise.”
“And you’re so mean.”
“It’s how they made me. Seriously. It was a design goal. It required quite a lot of beating.”
“Hey! Maria. Don’t joke about that.”
“Sorry, but I’m going to, always. My dark past, my rules.”
“What if I kiss you? Will that make you stop?”
“Maybe. Let’s try it.”
“Mmmm.”
“Yeah. Yeah, Edy, I think that worked.”
“Shall I keep going?”
“Yeah, just— just gently.”
“Very gently. Very, very gently.”
“Ouch!”
“Sorry!”
“No. It’s okay. I’m okay. But let’s maybe just lie here for a while? Together?”
“Let’s. I have get well cards?”
“Hmm. Who from?”
“Uh, let’s see. One from all the second years — look! Faye drew you something!”
“Okay, that’s actually really sweet.”
“Right? And there’s one from the sponsors, and, uh—”
“What’s that one?”
“It’s from Aaron.”
“How did he get a card in the first place?”
“Indira.”
“Of course. I feel like it’s a good thing I can’t focus well enough to read his scribble. What does it say?”
“‘Life down here just isn’t the same without you judging everything I do. Sorry about your head. Hope you don’t get any weird scars.’”
“Huh. Surprisingly polite.”
“Yeah. Oh, and there’s one from—”
“Edy? Maybe no more cards for a little while?”
“Sure.”
“We could, uh— did you bring your phone?”
“Of course. Why?”
“This is probably the best time for you to sell me on one of those bands you’re always going on about.”
“Really? You’d let me? You wouldn’t run screaming?”
“Can’t.”
“Right. Of course. Yeah, just let me find the right track. Here we go.”
“Oh! Oh. Yeah, this is okay, Edy.”
“You really thought my taste was that bad?”
“Yeah? Kinda. You tried to make me listen to Lit, once.”
“That was the automatic playlist thingy!”
“Lies. Who’s this, then?”
“Placebo. I was so into them when I was, like, thirteen. The singer? He’s so hot. Or he was, back in the nineties. He might not be, any more; I haven’t looked. I really wanted posters of him. Wasn’t allowed.”
“‘Him’? Aren’t you incredibly gay?”
“He’s my exception.”
“Do I have competition?”
“Absolutely not. You’re hotter.”
“You’re so sweet. What’s this song called?”
“Every You Every Me.”
“I like it.”
“Good.”
“Edy?”
“Yeah?”
“You think the boys will be okay? I mean, this feels like it’s going to be a difficult year, and—”
“The boys will be fine, Maria. I promise. We’ll take care of them.”
“All except Declan, right?”
“He was… beyond us.”
“I hope so. I don’t like that we have to do that.”
“Me neither, baby. But we help the ones we can help.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Maria?”
“Yes?”
“I was so scared.”
“I was, too.”
“We’ll be more careful from now on.”
“We will. I love you, Edy.”
“Love you too, Maria.”
* * *
* * *
“I never thought I’d miss the simmering air of barely controlled rage, but I do. It gave every afternoon a certain structure, like we couldn’t just fall asleep on the couch, digesting our veggie lasagne and trying very hard to ignore the telly, because at any moment Will might jump up and start lecturing us on the evils of incarceration or how ACAB applies even to hot lady kidnappers or how it’s okay actually to beat the shit out of your brother if you’re super homophobic and/or a really big closet case. He may scare the bejesus out of me half the time but at least he has passion. What am I passionate about, Stef? I barely have any strong feelings that aren’t about sex or how much I hate Weetabix, and down here there’s only so much sex I can’t have and so much Weetabix I can throw at Martin and I’m bored! Look at me, Stef! It’s only half past dick in the afternoon and already I’m sitting on the couch like you do.”
“Get down from there.”
“Make me.”
“You’ll hurt yourself if the sofa tips over, which it will, because your centre of gravity’s all wrong.”
“How come it’s okay for you to sit like that, then?”
“I’m taller. Longer legs.”
“Some people have all the luck.”
“Agreed.”
“Stef! I’m so bored!”
“I know.”
“I can’t even be mad about the chest thing any more! I’ve gone through all that and now it’s just, welp, I have erogenous nipples now. I’m kinda used to it. The absolute banality of life down here has utterly overcome my ability to stay angry. Like, I’m still pissed off, don’t get me wrong, but it comes in waves. Just like me.”
“What—? Oh, fuck you.”
“Hah! You laughed!”
“Fuck you.”
“Got you.”
“Yeah, you got me, Aaron. I thought, for a brief second, that you might be expressing an emotion.”
“Idiot.”
“Yeah, yeah. You want to go to my room and watch movies?”
“Sure, but I thought you were supposed to be keeping an eye out for Adam? And thus, by extension, so am I?”
“Yeah, but who knows how long he’s going to be talking to Will? Indira can just knock on my door if she wants me to watch him again.”
“Indira, huh? You know her name already? Suckup.”
“Shut up.”
“Kiss-ass.”
“Shut up.”
“Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! That’s you, kissing sponsor butts.”
“Yeah? Then why did you ask if you could send Maria a get well card?”
“That’s just basic human decency, Stef. And I’m a model citizen.”
“Uh huh.”
“I am! Ask any of the boys who used to beat the shit out of me. They called me a ‘girly little goody-two-shoes’ and I’m pretty sure that qualifies me to go straight into the priesthood without all the hassle of seminary.”
“Aaron, if I ever meet any of the boys who used to beat the shit out of you I won’t be asking them polite questions. I’ll, uh, I don’t know, probably yell a lot?”
“My hero!”
“Get off me!”
“Okay, God, fine.”
“You know I’m sensitive there.”
“And yet still you refuse to try them out.”
“Hah! Shows what you know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Come on, let’s go pick a movie.”
“No, Stef, tell me, what do you mean by that?”
“Nothing, now come on!”
“Tell meeeeee!”
“Nope!”
“Stef, I’m serious: have you, in fact, wanked yourself to completion using only your nipples? Stef? Stef! Come back! I need to know! It’s for science!”
* * *
* * *
“Hey, kids!”
“Um, hey, Indira.”
“I’d love to just drop in for a chat but I actually need your help, Steffie. With Adam. He won’t talk to me, and Edy’s at the hospital with Maria. So it has to be you.”
“What happened?”
“He asked to see Will.”
“Yeah, we saw.”
“I was a fool to let him. I know, I know, I said we would and we have to honour our promises, but it was a bloody idiot move on my part to let them see each other again so soon. Adam was already pretty freaked out, and Will was all steamed up, and Raph and Ollie were there in the other cells contributing the occasional nugget of wisdom, like a pair of bears shitting in the river, so all that happened was they upset each other. So much yelling. I’m almost surprised you didn’t hear it.”
“We were watching Clueless. And there’s quite a lot of concrete between us and them.”
“I said ‘almost surprised’. Look, Steffie, I hate to be a pain, especially as we barely know each other, but I really do need you to talk to him. Urgently.”
“He’s that bad?”
“He’s not talking.”
“Ah. You’ll let me into his room?”
“Of course! Come on. Oh, and Aaron, I’m afraid you’ll need to go back to your room, or the common area. You can’t stay in someone else’s room on your own! Rules.”
“It’s okay, he’ll probably just go jerk off.”
“Hey! I mean, accurate, but, hey!”
* * *
There’s nine. Two on her desk, seven in the drawer. One per month, so nine months. That’s how long it’s been since Christine last opened a report on her old family, her old life. And now here they all are in their black folders, spread out on the bed in front of her like massive, ugly tarot cards. She snorts at the mental image, imagines shuffling them and dealing out a hand, analysing her deliberately abandoned past via the mystical arts.
The last one she opened, ten months ago, was the one that confirmed they’d dropped any pretence of searching for her. Abandoned one last time, first by a father who didn’t give a shit, then by a mother who stood by her abusive husband, and finally by them both, forgetting her/him, consigning their son to a memory.
Abby’s parents, the last Christine heard, are still looking. Still got a private investigator on the case. Christine’s both jealous of the relationship Abby had with her parents, and impressed with Dorley’s obfuscation of her past: after so many years, you’d think they would have had some success. Stef found them, and she’s just an amateur!
Except Stef got lucky, didn’t she? Her surrogate older sister (brother) was taken, and they happened to run into each other. The whole thing is ultimately Abby’s fault, if one were inclined to assign blame, both for taking on Melissa and for letting her off campus: sponsors are supposed to be more wary about locals, both when it comes to picking them up to begin with, and in allowing them out.
Stef got lucky, and if there’s one thing most Dorley girls can be said to lack, it’s luck.
Abby. The poor girl. At least Christine’s curiosity is driven mostly by guilt and nostalgia; Abby wants nothing more than to have her family back.
Fuck it. No more pontificating. She slides a finger through the seal on the most recent folder, delivered only days ago, and drops back onto the bed, open on its first page.
The picture is hard to look at.
Christine’s clearest memory of her father is from the day she took a blow meant for her mother. She’s dreamed dozens of times of the way his face twisted, transitioning from anger through disbelief and into, of all things, shame, as he cradled his son’s injured wrist in his hands. These last couple of years the dreams have all ended the same way, diverging from reality: her father’s apologies die in his spittle-soaked mouth as he realises what his son has become and raises his arm once more.
There’s a carer in the photo, tending to him, captured in the act of feeding him. In Christine’s long absence, the downstairs study’s been converted into a bedroom, and he’s lying in a narrow bed, surrounded by medical equipment. Christine, fresh out of Maria’s hospital room, can almost hear the quiet, insistent beeping. Her mother’s nowhere to be seen.
Turn the page.
There she is: Christine’s mother is weeding, in dungarees and the ugly sun visor she got in Portugal, squinting into the bright morning, fuzzily out of focus but still obviously less than half her former size. Her clothes look comically large on her.
Wasting away, both of them.
Get out! She wants to yell it at the photograph. Leave him! Let him rot! Let him die in the tomb he built around himself, the enormous house that greed and stress and three fucking heart attacks bought.
Her mother’s not even forty-five yet. Twenty-odd years younger than him. She could still have a life. But she won’t, because where would she even go? She’ll potter around the old house doing the same old chores until, one day, the worthless piece of shit she married finally dies and, alone, probably she’ll follow him.
Christine doesn’t realise she’s crying until Abby peeks in through the half-open door and lunges for her, practically collides with her, throws aside all the papers and photographs and unopened folders, and scoops Christine into her arms. Suddenly aware of Abby’s presence and of how desperately she needs her, Christine clings to her sister, buries herself, wants to scream into Abby’s shoulder but keeps it quiet and continuous.
“She’s so fucking stupid, Abs. She always was. She could have left at any time. Could have taken me with her. Could have got us both out. She had money before they met. Not loads, not like him, but enough, definitely enough. I know. I looked. I even, fuck, I even took some for myself, once, when I hated her, when I had to be around her all the time and hear her bullshit excuses. I saw her with bruises still loving that fucker and I hated her, so I took from her. Abs— Abby. How could I do that to her? I gave it back. All of it. I did. But that was all I did. I didn’t help. I didn’t get her out. Just like she didn’t get me out. But I should have! The last time I saw her, not long before— before Dorley, before me, before this, she looked so fucking brittle, like the slightest touch would break her, and I remember thinking that as soon as Dad got home he’d do just that, and I didn’t want to see it, couldn’t see it, so I ran out without even saying goodbye. And now there she is, not even living. Just a fucking automaton, traipsing around that fucking house, doing the same stupid shit she always did, waiting for him to die, and there’s nothing I can even do. I even know what I would do if I could! God, Abs, look at her. Look at her! There’s nothing left of her. Just… just look.”
Abby holds her, strokes her back, whispers nothing words to her, lets her get it all out, and as the tears fade from Christine’s vision she can see something else: one of the photos Abby scattered ended up near the head of the bed, right in front of Christine as she leans on Abby’s shoulder, and its glossy paper catches the light, lending the depiction of Christine’s childhood home an ethereal quality, like a place that belongs to the afterlife.
Later, much later, when they’ve tidied up the pictures and put the folders away, when they’ve watched some stupid cartoons out of Edy’s network folder, when Paige has texted to say she’ll be late because she’s gone to the library and to ask if Christine would like her to pick something up for dinner, Christine and Abby sit, shoulders against each other, on the floor of Christine’s room, leaning their heads on the couch behind them, spent but calm.
“You could go see her, you know,” Abby says.
Christine shakes her head. “No. Rules.”
“As if they matter to you.”
“What would I say? She’s not exactly the kind of person who embraces queer people. And I definitely can’t say I was turned into a girl against my will.”
“She thinks her only child is dead. That changes people.”
“Enough?”
“Sometimes.”
“No,” Christine says again.
“Think about it.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Christine says, “Abs, I really don’t want to think about anything right now.”
“Sure,” Abby says. “I won’t push.”
“Thanks, Abs. Love you.”
“Love you.”
Later, after Paige texts to say she’ll be up in ten minutes with curry, Abby pauses the music and repositions, facing Christine and looking very serious.
“Christine,” she says, and takes a deep breath, lets it out, and looks like she doesn’t know how to continue.
“Yes?”
“So. I haven’t been around much. You know that. And I want to tell you why, but I need to do it my way. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“You free Saturday?”
“I can be.”
Abby reaches into her bag and pulls out a page from her notebook with an address written on it: a restaurant in Almsworth, according to her neatly penned note. Not one Christine knows. “I’ll be there one o’clock. Meet me?”
“Um. Okay. What’s this all about, Abby?”
“Pay for the taxi with cash. Don’t use your card. And don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”
“You want me to spoof the tracker on my phone?”
“You can do that? I’ve just been turning mine off.”
“Yeah. I can do that.”
“Good. Yes. Please. Do that.”
“Abby,” Christine says, smiling, “this is beginning to sound dangerously criminal.”
Abby snorts. “Little bit, yeah.”
* * *
It feels wrong to shut Aaron out again, but Stefan needs everything to stop for a while. No more questions, no more worried eyes, entreating him for answers he can’t give. It was bad enough when it was just Aaron; Adam, lost without Will, upset by his friend’s rejection of his concerns, fearing for Will’s life, begged Stefan for reassurance. And Stefan gave the only reassurance he had: bullshit.
Endless, endless bullshit.
He puts on some white noise, closes his eyes, and drifts.
The first time he knew there was something wrong with Mark was shortly after their shared birthdays, on Stefan’s thirteenth year and Mark’s seventeenth. Their birthdays fell on a weekend that year, which was serendipitous: weekday birthdays suck, even for the lucky ones whose birthdays don’t fall inside the school year. On Stefan’s birthday, the first of the two, Mark had been his usual quiet but considerate self, and he’d even brought a friend, a girl called Shahida, who he’d talked about on and off for years. It was lovely finally to meet her, and Stefan put on his best behaviour, wanting to impress this woman who might or might not have been Mark’s girlfriend, while Russell made fun of his exaggerated politeness. She was kind, and laughed with him, not Russell, and took Mark away on some errand.
She looked forward to seeing him again.
But on Sunday she wasn’t there. Mark’s birthday came and went without her, and when Stefan asked after her, Mark just said that sometimes things change, sometimes relationships don’t work out, and maybe it’s for the best. They weren’t right for each other, he said. They were both going to move on, he said. He hadn’t said it like he believed it; he said it like he thought it might be the last thing he ever said.
That was the start of it, as far as Stefan saw. Probably it really started years before, but childish eyes see only the obvious. Whatever eventually brought Mark to Dorley Hall, it was a long time in the making.
There’s pictures of Melissa on the network, and Stefan pages through them on his phone. She seems happy in most of them, even the earlier ones, the ones where she looks more like Stefan remembers her, a blur of her past and future selves, the girl-still-learning he met in the supermarket that day.
God, he hopes she’s happy.
She doesn’t know he’s here. Abby always said it’d be a bad idea to tell her, and she’s Melissa’s only link to Dorley, more or less. When she left, she left. Stefan can’t decide if it’s good or bad that she doesn’t know, but after half the population of the building got a close look at him yesterday he’s happy that at least someone doesn’t get to see what years of fear and denial made of him.
She’ll see him when he’s worth fucking seeing.
He rolls over onto his back, glares at the ceiling, tries to imagine the white noise becoming a physical presence, overlaid on the concrete like static on an old-style television.
There’s something about Adam that reminds him of how Mark was in that last year. Maybe it’s just the obvious loneliness. Loneliness as habit. Loneliness as defence. Loneliness that, briefly, Will kept at bay.
People pair off down here, that’s what Pippa said. Him and Aaron, unlikely as that would have seemed a few weeks ago. Christine and Paige. Abby and Melissa. Adam and Will. But Will shouted at Adam. Called him a collaborator. A broken man. A weakling. And several words out of the vocabulary that Will had, up to that moment, seemed to have abandoned. A cornered animal reaching for all its weapons, no matter how grotesque. Adam left in tears.
There wasn’t much of a conversation to be had. Yes, Will’s a piece of shit. Yes, he’ll be okay if he learns how to cooperate. No, Stefan doesn’t know if he’ll ever actually do so.
No, Stefan doesn’t know what’s happening down here. No, he doesn’t think they’re all going to die eventually. Yes, he really does think they’ll all be released when their sponsors think they’re ready.
No, Stefan isn’t going to leave him. No, Stefan isn’t stupid enough to assault a sponsor. Yes, we can say your prayer together.
Stefan was surprised by the wording: Your grace is your most precious gift. Please, Lord, make me worthy of it. Not one he encountered back at the church he avoided attending.
Yes, we can watch movies. Adam likes these cheesy TV-movie rom-coms, painfully straight and filled with Christmases and horrible sweaters, and Dorley has a whole folder full of them.
As they watched, Adam told Stefan where he came from. It came out in fragments, whenever something or someone in the movie reminded him of something. Stefan put the fragments together like a puzzle, and quite lost the thread of the movie.
Adam’s the first son of a founding family, and thus the church — and where Adam says church Stefan hears cult — laid expectations on him from birth. Colossal ones. And in his younger days he bucked them, but not out of arrogance or confidence; Adam’s kind, and there’s only so many times you can force a kind boy to tell strangers they’re going to hell before you break him.
Stefan’s parents got religion back when he was in primary school. It was the quiet, local kind, and Stefan never found it particularly restrictive until he caught a sermon, on one of the Sundays he lost the stay-home-and-watch-cartoons argument, about the sins of homosexuality. It was difficult after that, as his self-realisation grew, not to feel like the enemy lived in his own home. Whatever he was, whoever he eventually became, he realised, he would no longer be welcome.
He turns the phone over and over in his hands, watches as the pictures of Melissa he’s not even really looking at any more play catch-up with the screen, bouncing from portrait to landscape and back.
Stefan is exhausted. Hard even to be upset any more. Like Aaron said, you can’t stay angry forever. Even if he turned it into a joke, he was right.
Can’t stay angry forever. Can’t stay guilty forever. Can’t even be dysphoric forever; after a while, the hands holding his phone, the knuckles he hates the shape of, the bony wrists, become almost geometric. Abstract. Repetition dulls the sharpest edge.
His phone buzzes. He almost drops it.
Pippa Green: You okay, Stef?
Stef: not really
Pippa Green: I came by and knocked but you couldn’t hear me with those headphones on.
Stef: kinda the point
Pippa Green: I know. I thought I’d give you your privacy.
Pippa Green: But I wanted to update you, all the same.
Pippa Green: Indira’s with Adam. He’s talking to her now. Thanks to you.
Stef: I’m glad
Stef: why is he even here?
Stef: yeah I get that he’s probably said a bunch of phobic stuff because his church slash cult is evil as shit and filled his mind with garbage
Stef: but you just get someone like that away from their abusers and help them adjust
Stef: you don’t turn them into a girl
Pippa Green: I actually don’t know why he’s here.
Pippa Green: Edy brought him in. And she’ll have had Maria’s approval. And Aunt Bea’s.
Stef: I can’t help feeling you lot are getting too casual with the whole forced feminisation thing
Pippa Green: Maybe. This is my first time on the supply side of feminisation and I’m not exactly happy about it.
Stef: pippa
Stef: I want to stop lying
Stef: I hate it
Stef: I feel like it’s killing me
Stef: it’s worse than the dysphoria, at least that’s just hurting me and no one else
Stef: now adam’s starting to trust me and I’m lying to his face
Stef: I even prayed with him!
Stef: and I know exactly what’s going to happen to him and I pretended I don’t
Pippa Green: I’m sorry.
Stef: don’t be sorry just fix it
Pippa Green: Okay.
Pippa Green: I have an idea.
Pippa Green: Give me a bit. I have to go see Aunt Bea.
Pippa Green: And then can I come tell you about it in person? I hate talking by text. It makes my thumb hurt.
Stef: okay
He puts on a show, something random off Netflix, and doesn’t watch it. When she knocks — and of course she does, even though he gave her permission to come in, because she was serious when she said she didn’t want to be like a sponsor any more, even before the truth came out, and that means never taking her presence in his space lightly — she does so with her customary identifier: three knocks, a pause, two knocks, a pause, two knocks. Her sweet insistence on using a special knock so he knows it’s her makes him laugh despite his mood.
“Come in, Pippa!” he shouts, sitting up in bed and belatedly pushing the covers back.
She enters, smiling broadly, and sits in the free space at the end of the mattress, drawing her feet up under her so she can face him. “She said yes!” she says.
“Yes to what?”
“Oh. Whoops. I thought I told you. Bea says we can do disclosure soon. Tomorrow or the day after, maybe, but in the next few days for sure.”
“Is that what I think it sounds like?”
“Yeah,” Pippa says. “We come clean.”
“Just like that?”
Pippa holds out her hands, like the assistant on a cheesy game show. “Just like that!”
“Wow.”
“We were planning on doing it in the next month or so, anyway,” she says. “Now that things are, uh, starting to develop, that starts a clock, you know? We’ve ended up bringing everything forward a little.”
“So, how does it go? You line us all up and say, ‘Sorry, lads, you’re going to be girls’?”
Pippa laughs. “Yeah. That’s basically how it was with my year. More words, same gist.”
“How did you take it?”
Now she looks away, some of her enthusiasm sapped. “We rioted.”
“Oh.”
“But that’s not going to happen,” she says, looking back at Stefan, trying to regain her former good mood, “because we’re running split pop now, and all the guys who are likely to cause serious trouble are already in the cells.”
Stefan leans back, thinking. “Adam and Aaron might not cause trouble,” he says slowly, “but will they be okay? Isn’t, uh, suicide a risk at this point?”
She nods. “We watch very carefully. Two in the security room at all times watching the cameras. Except yours, obviously.”
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.”
She watches him for a moment, and then shuffles closer. “You okay, Stef?”
“Yeah,” he says quickly, surprised. “I’m actually— shit, Pip, I’m actually really relieved. I think I’m just tired.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Yeah. How’s Maria?”
“See for yourself,” Pippa says, and hands him his phone. Within the confines of his room, he can get at the same network resources as he can on the computer; a location-sensitive upgrade Christine put quite a lot of time into, apparently. He must remember to thank her. “Just hop on Consensus. There’s a new picture pinned.”
He does so, and brings up a photo of Maria and Edy, lying next to each other on Maria’s hospital bed, holding hands and grinning at the camera. It’s not clear who took the picture until he swipes onto the next one and finds a selfie of Abby, sticking her tongue out and holding a multipack of Jaffa Cakes just out of Maria’s reach. There’s another, of the three of them — Abby in a chair, Maria and Edy still on the bed together — and Beatrice on the other side, watching what looks like The Lord of the Rings on a laptop. It’s taken from Abby’s perspective again, and Beatrice is very reluctantly v-signing with the rest of them.
“Cute,” he says.
“Right? Oh, I have something for you.” Pippa reaches into her bag and pulls out a wad of tissue paper, which she drops into his lap.
“Thanks?”
“Unwrap it, doofus.”
“Oh. Right.”
The tissue paper eventually gives way to something that makes his heart leap when finally, in the dim light of the bedroom, he recognises it: a little rubber elephant, in faded blue, with tiny heart imprints under its feet and a keyring and chain embedded in its mouth like a giant piercing. There’s another lump of tissue, separately wrapped, and while he knows what it’s going to be, he’s still delighted when the green frog with the keyring through its belly drops out.
His frog and elephant. The first gifts his sister ever got him, when she was old enough to have pocket money, but not old enough to have much pocket money. A year before Stefan left for Saints they went to Colchester Zoo together, one of the few family trips outside Almsworth that wasn’t paid for by the school, and Petra persuaded their mum and dad to let him escort her. She came alive, the way she always did when away from parental supervision, and skipped through the zoo, identifying animals by sight without having to look at the plaques or the videos. She was a Wikipedia animal section veteran, explaining to him as they went what each animal was, the foods they liked, their lifespans, and whether or not they took kindly to humans.
She tarried longest around the elephants.
He learned later — three months later, on his birthday — that she managed to get away from him at some point, sneaked into the gift shop, and bought with almost all her money a pair of keychains, the elephant to represent her and the frog to represent him. When he opened the gifts on his birthday morning he planted his sloppiest big-brother kiss on the top of her head and asked, “Why the frog, though?”
“You seem like someone who likes frogs,” she said.
Carefully Stefan rolls the little rubber animals around on his palm, remembering. He doesn’t have many genuinely good memories, but that one’s near the top. And the keychains have always been an anchor, a reminder that, despite everything, there were bright spots.
“Thank you,” he says.
“I told you I’d keep them,” Pippa says.
Stefan laughs. “Yeah. You said, ‘For now…’ like a real sponsor.”
“Don’t remind me,” Pippa giggles. “I remember typing that and feeling just so pompous.”
“I’m glad you sucked at being a sponsor.”
“Yeah. Me too. I’d hate to be good at something like that.”
“I don’t know,” Stefan says. “Indira seems nice.”
“True. So—” and Pippa drops her bag on the floor by the bed and pushes up to the wall, closer again to Stefan, “—what are you watching?”
Stefan frowns. “I, uh, don’t remember.”
“You want to find something else to watch?”
“I think I’m bored of Netflix.”
“You want to listen to some music instead?”
“Sure.”
“Any thoughts on what?”
“Anything but Taylor Swift.”
“You’d be surprised how many of my playlists you just dismissed.”
“I really wouldn’t.”
“Okay, then. I have something. Edy’s been all over the group chat, going on about finally getting Maria to listen to her music, and I meant to give it a try. You game?”
“Yeah,” Stefan says, “why not?”
Pippa fiddles with her phone for a second, trying to hook it remotely to the speakers, but gives up and just starts it on her phone speakers instead, turning them up until they distort and then backing off one notch. It’s not too loud. It’s fine.
Synths, a guitar, and a reedy voice fill the room. Stefan reaches around her and pulls the covers over them both, and Pippa leans on his shoulder, dropping the phone between them.
“I kinda like this,” Pippa says.
Stefan just nods, smiling, and rests his head on Pippa’s. For the first time in a very long time, he’s almost content.
No more lies.
“Why the frog, though?”
“You seem like someone who likes frogs,” she said.
Petra knew Stef was queer from day one
this chapter is magnificent and I have so many feelings. Poor Maria's family, Aaron being a loveable little shit, god poor Stef and all she has had to deal with, poor Pippa, poor ADAM. Adam hits me like a truck...too close to my own past so I just want to give the poor kid a hug and tell him it is gonna be alright.
Oh wow, this chapter was absolutely amazing! All the plot developments are exciting, and it's sobering to see just how much trauma Dorley inflicted even on the "well-adjusted" alumnae...
“Hey! I was a rich boy, thank you very much. As a girl, I’ve had to take a job down in the boy-torturing mines to make ends meet, just like everyone else.”
😅😂🤣 Every chapter there's that one line that makes me laugh so loudly I scare the cats. Love it!
“I’m super sorry you kidnapped us and then we gave you a really hard time about it,” Aaron says.
“Thank you!” Indira says. “You’re much more thoughtful than Maria said.”
Okay, I'm really looking forward to seeing more interactions between these two
Christ, what does she say about the scars on her labia?
This was literally my first thought when Vicky and Lorna were introduced, and it has been bugging me for months at this point (those are some pretty distinctive scars!) I'm so happy that you not only addressed it but that it's an actual Plot Point!
Christine really needs sleep. She knows so much and is newer to the secrets. When impaired, she’s a big glaring flaw in their opsec. She’s good at the tech side of it, but I think she underestimates the human side.
I’m worried about Vicky and Lorna. They are wonderful together, but the Dorley secrets are septic for them.
Indira in charge is going to be interesting. And Aaron continues to be a goofball brat.
Pippa with Stef is nice and I can feel the cuddly vibe. And I’m glad for Stef that the big secret will be revealed. There will still be some secrets left, but those only affect her, not the others.
Petra with Stef was absolutely cute to imagine.
Thank you for another chapter!
Oof, just oof. Well, in the long run being 'cis' feels like something bout Vicky and Christine kinda regret, so getting this out there may work better, but this is going to be *rough*.
Meanwhile, Gemma is in the corner badly pretending to be human...
Oh no, I'm all caught up after binging.
Now to binge Glow Worm while I wait.
Love your writing. I haven't been this invested in a web serial since Pith.
I love Stef and Aaron's interactions so much. I'm scared for Aaron though...
Damn what a chapter, setting up so much personal drama. The stage is set and I dread and can't wait for what is coming
Poor Lorna...
this one is beautiful