Now that can’t be right.

It’s ten thirty at night and I’m standing half-naked in the bathroom. Staring at my chest. Trying to figure out what's changed, because all of a sudden it looks different, wrong. I’ve been here for half an hour now—originally to brush my teeth, though the brush and the dollop of paste atop it have been forgotten on the side—and I know my sister’s going to be furious with me.

I know that because, for the last fifteen minutes, she’s been periodically knocking on the door. “Jerk off in your bedroom, Harry. Some of us have to pee.” Beth’s voice gets really shrill when she’s annoyed. Usually I’d finish my business especially slowly, just to wind her up a bit more. Sue me. That’s what little brothers do. Except today, I’m not winding Beth up. Well, not intentionally, anyway.

I just can’t bring myself to turn away from the bathroom mirror.

She knocks again, louder this time. “I swear to God, Harry, if you aren’t out of there in the next ten seconds I will break this door off its hinges, and I don’t give a shit if you’re mid-wank.”

Breaking away from the mirror is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s accompanied by a wave of melancholy, my heart playing a dirge for something I just can’t touch. I unlock the door, pull it open, smile sheepishly at my sister. She doesn’t return the smile. “What the fuck took you so long?”

All my life, Beth has towered over me. A consequence of her being three years my elder—but she stopped growing a while ago, and bit by bit I’ve caught her up in height. The glares that I used to find intimidating when she was six inches taller than me don’t have nearly the same effect when we’re the same height. She tries one—but I don’t respond, and the glare breaks.

“Look at me,” I say to her, soft as snow.

Beth shakes her head. “I don’t want to look at you. You’re hideous.”

It’s nothing more than the usual playful sibling banter, but tonight it rings true. Hearing the confirmation from Beth just makes my heart hang heavy. That’s why I was so long looking in the mirror—I was trying to work out what had changed. Why I suddenly felt hideous. “You see it too, then? I’m hideous.”

That draws an odd look from Beth. “Harry, are you alright?”

I nod. “As much as can be expected, when you look at me.”

“You know I’m just saying things, right? I’m your sister. I’m supposed to tease you—it’s my job.” She reaches out a hand and places it on my shoulder. “To tell the truth, you don’t look any worse than any other boy your age. Least, the parts of you I’ve seen.”

“No, you’re right, Beth. Something’s changed. Puberty’s gone wrong, or something. Look, I’m sorry I took so long. Good night.”

She frowns, her mouth opening and closing like a fish—but no words come out, and I walk past her. As I’m shutting the bathroom door behind me, I hear her call out a goodnight of her own. And then the door shuts, and my thoughts consume me.

As soon as I'm safely in my bedroom, I close my door behind me and beeline for the wardrobe. I know it's in here somewhere... yes, here it is. My old pyjamas, dark grey shorts and a blue t-shirt with a football emblazoned on the front. I haven't worn them in years, not since I was twelve, but I've never been able to part with them. They're a throwback to an earlier iteration of Harry—the last days of the young boy who hadn't yet felt the need to start growing up and becoming a man. I abandoned them on the day I turned thirteen. Men sleep naked, after all, and at thirteen it was high time I started figuring out how to be a man. I've grown since then, and the pyjamas are a tight fit, but they're better than the alternative. I don't want to sleep with a bare chest tonight. Otherwise I might accidentally catch a glimpse of it in the morning—and tomorrow's the first day of school; I'm in for a hard enough day without making it even worse by subjecting my eyes to an image of my hideous body.

The light goes off and I tuck myself tightly under the covers, eyes screwed shut. But I don't go to sleep.

Instead, I think back to my thirteenth birthday.

*

Sleep must have come for me eventually, because one minute I'm remembering the moment the wind caught on the flame from one of the candles on my birthday cake and singed Nana's hair, and the next I'm lying on my back with dappled sunlight falling over me. My alarm hasn't gone off. I could turn my head to see how much sleep-time I have left, but I don't see the point. The sun's already up. At most I've got maybe ten minutes. So instead I just lie there, thinking.

Beth always says I think too much. I disagree. Thinking's all there is to do when you inhabit a shell that doesn't fit you properly. She's as girly as her body dictates—and it's easy to go with the flow, to just exist, when things line up. But I've always been a poor excuse for a man. Even two years spent going out of my way to be as manly as possible haven't actually made things right. I was on the periphery of society when I was twelve, with a still-piping voice and an aversion to all things masculine. I'm still on the periphery now. The only difference is that now I have a beard.

Well, beard is probably pushing it. Wispy bit of chin-hair is more accurate. Mum says I should really start shaving, but shaving means standing in front of the mirror every morning and looking at my hideous face, and that I just won't do. And besides, isn't facial hair so superbly manly? I'll make it yet. You'll see.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP! BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

There we go. There's my alarm, right on time to interrupt my thoughts, bleeping away at such an absurd volume that I briefly wonder whether Spinal Tap finally invested in an amp that goes up to 12 and hooked it up to my alarm clock in the night. Ten minutes was clearly optimistic. I got two at most. I lift a lead-heavy arm and smash it down on the alarm, shutting it up, then—groaning—sit myself upright.

Come on, Harry. Time to face the day.

The bathroom is empty when I emerge onto the landing, and I dash in before Mum or Beth can get there. I never mind waiting til last to have a shower, but I really need a piss, and after last night I can't imagine Beth is likely to rush her own ablutions on my account. So I'm glad to get there first. Following my usual routine, I turn the shower on then sit on the loo to piss. That's twenty seconds for the actual act of pissing, and then four minutes of contemplating standing up. Then, I run my arm under the showerhead, and then dry my arm with a towel, before turning the shower off.

In fifteen years on this Earth I have mastered the art of making Mum think I shower every day without ever actually needing to get my body wet.

As soon as that's done I brush my teeth—the toothpaste from last night has gone hard on the brush, but I persevere. Beth will probably be knocking on the door soon, wanting to get in to shower and wash her hair. I don't plan to keep her waiting this morning. My teeth are cleaned in record time, and I literally throw the toothbrush into the holder, hoping it doesn't land bristles-down.

Oddly, Beth isn't waiting outside for me to come out.

Hmm. Perhaps she's sleeping in. I don't worry about it too much. She's off to university this month, and clearly she's picked the biggest doss uni in the country because her freshers' week doesn't start until something stupid like the 29th, so it's not like she has anywhere to be. And honestly, I know exactly how much she will rub my face in it every single morning I have to go to school while she gets to lounge around the house, so I'm kind of glad she's chosen to have a lie-in today.

I hate my school uniform. That's not a new discovery—I've hated it since the day I started at school—but I still get in a bad mood every time I have to put it on. What fool decided that boys should wear a tie and blazer every day? A sadist, I'm sure. I intend to find a job in literally any field that doesn't require absurdities such as ties from its staff, and I plan to burn my tie the moment I get home from my final exam at the end of the year. As always, I deliberately take my time getting dressed, and trudge miserably downstairs to breakfast.

Mum, because she's Mum, is already there with three bowls of cereal. "Mornin', Mum," I grumble, entering the kitchen. She smiles at me and musses my hair.

"Look at you. Ready to face Year 11?"

I shrug. "I preferred summer holidays, to be honest."

"Don't blame you, kiddo," she says. "I wasn't sure what you wanted for breakfast so I made you some Shreddies. But there's bread in the bread-bin if you want toast."

"Shreddies will be fine," I tell her. In truth, pretty well any common breakfast food will be fine. I don't tend to taste it. Breakfast is just calories to stop my tummy growling until lunchtime. I mean, what sort of person is sufficiently wide awake to actually taste their breakfast? It's like a universal thing that the whole world just groggily goes about the first meal of the day because it's routine, and saves waking up for later on. We eat in silence, her and I, and Beth hasn't arrived to take her own bowl. I can't even hear the shower running upstairs. I'm actually about to comment on it when I hear a key in the door.

But it's like 7.45 in the morning. Who would be coming in at this hour? Nana has a key, but she exclusively uses it when we go away and she needs to come and feed the cat.

Beth.

It's Beth.

She wasn't having a lie-in at all. She was having the opposite of a lie-in. What sort of clinically insane individual gets up early enough that they can be returning home at 7.45 AM? Clearly my sister's been replaced by an alien.

As she skips into the kitchen it's clear that she's not tired at all—or if she is, it's well hidden behind her make-up. "Good morning, Harry," she says, as she passes me. "Morning, Mum."

"Morning, dear." Mum, to her credit, looks as bemused as me to see Beth entering the house this early. "Did you go for a morning stroll?"

Beth shakes her head, already seated and tucking into Shreddies. "I had to grab something from the shop," she says, through a mouthful of wheat grilles.

"This early?"

Beth gives Mum a sweet smile. "I woke up early. And since I was awake, I thought I might as well."

That seems to satisfy Mum, who returns to her own breakfast, but I'm still suspicious. Beth's never made it a habit to get up any earlier than she has to. In fact, I remember that more often than not it was her who Mum had to drag kicking and screaming out of bed because she was going to be late for school, while I—however begrudgingly—did always get up with my alarm.

When our breakfasts are done, Mum takes the dirty bowls and totters off to load up the dishwasher, and I head into the hall to put on my shoes. I hate my shoes. If anything they're worse than a tie. Great heavy clodhoppers, they are, but we're not allowed to wear the lighter canvas shoes to school so they're the best option the shop had. And believe me: I looked. For five hours, in fact, and even then I only settled for these because the shop was closing and the poor saleswoman was begging me to please pick something so that she could lock up and go home.

As I'm tying my laces, Beth appears in the hall. She sits down on the stairs beside me.

"What do you want?"

Beth looks at me. She smiles—a gentle smile, not the malevolent grin she always has when she's playing a joke. "Last night... it reminded me of a conversation we had a long time ago. I'm not even sure if you remember it. You were... what, five? Six? Anyway, I went out early and got you this." She holds out a small package, hastily wrapped in brown paper. I eye it suspiciously, but take it. When I start to unwrap it, Beth stops me. "Not yet," she says. "Not until you've left for school."

"What is it?"

"Here's the deal," she tells me. "Open it up before you come home today. If I'm wrong, you can throw it away, and we'll pretend I never gave you anything. I won't mention it. I'll act like it never happened. But if I'm right, and I really think I am, then you come to my room after school today and we're going to talk. Deal?"

I shrug. What the hell. "Deal."

Five minutes later, shoes on and tied, I'm out the front door and walking to the gate. Beth's little present is in my blazer pocket. As I start down the road, I pull it out, and begin to unravel the brown paper. When it's all pulled away there's not much inside.

Just a brand-new tube of lipstick.