Alexandrina

Hello everyone! Sorry about last time—some scenes are necessary for the story but that doesn't make them easy to read. It'll be lighter today, though I'd still check the content warnings. This chapter, and to a lesser extent Wednesday's chapter, are more introspective and contain a lot of Hannah's internal monologue, leading up to her girls' weekend which will be released this coming Friday and Sunday!

Beth finds me in my bedroom shortly after midnight, still dressed. I haven't even taken off my shoes. I sit in the darkness, my eyes and face red from now-dried tears; I've been here since we got back from the restaurant.

I don't want to leave ever again.

"Hey," Beth whispers, creeping into my bedroom and shutting the door behind her. It scrapes lightly on the carpet. When I don't reply, she sits on the bed beside me. It's nice to feel her near. "Hannah," she says. "Talk to me."

"Why?"

"Because you're my sister. I want to help you."

"How can you?" I snap, bitterly. "I'm a waste of a person. You heard Mum. Heard what she said. I'm just a delusional man who wants to play at being a woman. I'll never be loved by my own mother."

Beth sighs. "Hannah, it's not your fault that you happen to have been brought into this world by a bigoted, hateful bitch."

"Stop calling me Hannah. It's not my name, I don't deserve it. My name is—"

"Your name is Hannah," Beth says firmly. "And you are a girl. A woman. My sister. You're not delusional, you're not wrong, you're not unlovable--you are you. And Mum being a wanker can't ever change that. Look at me," she says, pushing my hair out of my face with a finger. "Hannah, you're beautiful. And Mum is going to have to realise that, if she wants to still have you in her life. She has to realise that she has two beautiful daughters. Because if she won't get her head around that, she'll have no daughters."

"I can't tell her," I say. How can I tell her? Mum will hate me the moment she learns the truth. Worse, she'll think me insane. I remember the look in her eyes when she talked about her co-worker Rebecca—a look of pure disgust. I can't bear the thought of that look being turned on me.

"You have to," says Beth. "I can see the way it eats you up, this body you hate. You need to change it. Make it right for you. And sooner or later that means telling Mum."

How can Beth understand? How can I make her understand? It's alright for her. She's already got one foot out of here; she can make a stand. I can't. I have three years left before university, three years under Mum's roof, reliant on her.

Three years of pretending to be a boy.

I've done it for fifteen. I can survive three more.

*

I wake up way too early the next day. It's not even 6am yet: I can sleep for another hour still. But I just lie there in the morning half-light.

In my dreams, Mum despises me. Better to be awake. At least in the waking world, Mum despising me is still in the future. Today she'll fix me Shreddies and have love in her eyes for me.

In the horror of last night I never thought to check Facebook. I do this morning, and see that Olivia has accepted my friend request. I fire off a quick message: "Heya, can I tell you something?" Then I hop in the shower. It might only be 5.45 but if I'm not getting any more sleep I might just as well be clean. And besides, it's dark enough that I won't have to see the hateful parts of my body.

I regret it straight away.

In the near-darkness, my mind turns the crashing of water on porcelain into the angry ravings of my mother. You shame me, I imagine her screaming. You disgust me. I don't want to disgust her. I just want to be loved, to be her child, to be her daughter. The scrunchie is rough against my skin; the harder I press it, the less I have to think about the million ways Mum might disown me. I'm red raw by the time I work up the nerve to turn the shower off.

Then I stand there, in silence and darkness. I can't even be bothered to dry myself, just to stand there, dripping. Time is not a thing in my mind; maybe I stand there for an hour, maybe only a couple of seconds. I'm just in a trance. The me of my ideal, the girl, seems for a moment to be separate to the man I might have grown to be. They fight for supremacy. In my apathy I don't even notice which one wins—even my subconscious can't hold my attention.

It's the distant pinging of my computer that breaks this reverie. Olivia's messaged me back. One little, insignificant thing, but it's all I need to refocus. I once again feel the gentle chill of the early September morning on my body, amplified by a thousand beadlets of water. I'm once again Hannah, girl unmanifested.

I'm bloody cold.

*

Dressed for another day in the horrible prison of my uniform, I sit down at the computer. It's impossible to put into words how much I hate trousers, and the school uniform trousers are particularly horrible. They leave me perpetually aware of certain parts of my body which do not belong. How did I cope for fifteen years like this? How am I supposed to keep coping now I've realised the horror?

Facebook flashes Olivia's reply: 'Sure. What did you want to talk about?' The little green dot by her profile picture tells me she's online at the moment.

I type. 'I promise this isn't some sort of joke. I'm not trying to tease you or anything.'

Olivia is typing...

'What is it?'

Deep breath. Why am I nervous? If anyone's going to be supportive, it's Olivia—one-time best friend and actual trans girl herself. Unless she's got some weird Highlander-type "there can be only one" deal, which would be out of character for the Olivia I know. 'I have to get this off my chest and I don't exactly have many friends but I figure you'll understand.' Send. 'I'm trans.' Send.

Her profile picture zips to the bottom of the chat, confirming that she's seen the message. Then Olivia is typing...

I exit out of the tab and step away from my computer. It's too painful to sit there, waiting, while she replies. Instead I go over to my bookshelf, to all the books I used to read five years ago when my brain hadn't yet lost its ability to concentrate for long spans of time. Those were the days, I muse. When I didn't have to think about gender at all, when nothing about me was outwardly masculine, when I could read a book in a day. What changed? What went wrong?

The answer, I realise, is puberty went wrong. It made me into something I didn't want to be. All my spare energy these last few years has gone towards keeping me functioning like a human being—it's no wonder I never had the energy left for reading.

I go back to Facebook after less than a minute, unable to prise myself away any longer. I brace myself for an unfavourable reply, but I see none.

No Olivia is typing either.

I'm just beginning to panic when at last Olivia's reply comes through. 'Omggg. Proud of you girl.'

Girl. Olivia calls me 'girl', and my heart flutters. More than ever, now, I know that I'm right. I am Hannah. I am a girl. Any doubt can be swept aside with prejudice.

*

I waste away enough minutes in front of the computer that by the time I get downstairs, Mum is already there. Two bowls have been laid out on the table, one full of Shreddies for me and the other holding Mum's Weetabix. She has a grim expression on her face, which—when I walk into the kitchen—she turns into a strained smile. I don't return the smile. I don't even want to look at her.

"Good morning, kiddo," she says.

I grunt a good morning back and start on my Shreddies.

"Don't you start," Mum grumbles. "It's bad enough that my daughter's gone woke and embarrassed me. I won't have my son ignoring me."

I can promise you, Mum, you won't ever have a 'woke' son. You might end up with two 'woke' daughters, though, so be ready for that. "Thanks for the Shreddies, Mum," I say.

"Ha. I suppose it's better than nothing." Mum shakes her head. "I don't know what I did wrong with Beth. I tried to raise her right, but I clearly messed up somewhere. The things she said... I think I must have left her on her own too much. Ignored her. So Harry, I want you to know you can come to me with anything."

"I'm fine, Mum." The last thing I want is Mum trying to spend more time with me.

But she taps her fingernails on the marble worktop and tuts. "You were crying in the car last night," she says. "I'm not blind, Harry. I can see when my children are unhappy. So tell me, what's the matter."

"It's nothing."

She shakes her head. "It's not nothing."

"Later, Mum," I say.

"Harry, if you're unhappy... I can phone the school, you can take a mental health day—"

"No, Mum. I don't want to skip school." In my position, I think anybody would want to go to school. School is where Jessie and Olivia are, two girls who know I'm a girl too, my friends. If I were to stay at home with Mum, she'd pry. She'd pry until she figured out what was eating me up.

Until she figured out that I'm trans.

I'm not ready for her to know. Not ready to pit her motherly love against the depths of her bigotry. I'll blow her off as long as I can.

Mum nods. "School it is then," she says. "But don't walk home tonight. I'll pick you up."

"Mum, you don't have to—"

"Nonsense," she says. "I'll be at the gates at 3.30pm. We can get chips, just me and you, and you can tell me everything that's troubling you."

I open my mouth to protest, but she shushes me.

"I won't take no for an answer, young man," she says. "I want to understand you. And I can't stop you hurting unless I know what's hurting you."

When I've wolfed down the last of my Shreddies, I hot-foot it out of the door. As soon as I'm round the corner I whip out my phone and send a text to Beth. 'Mum wants to talk to me tonight,' I say. 'How do I get out of this?'

Beth hasn't replied by the time I get to school.

*

I'm freaking out as I sit through morning form. Mrs Calne reads the register and I don't even hear my name. Mum is persuasive. It was all I could do to buy myself a stay of execution to this evening; once she gets it into her head that something's wrong with me, she's tenacious enough that she won't stop until she finds out what it is. I tried to hide the fact that I was being bullied back in primary school, and that lasted all of two weeks before I broke. And I knew Mum wouldn't hate me when she found that secret out.

This time, it's different. There's a good chance Mum doesn't ever see me in the same light once I tell her, and that only exacerbates my nerves. I won't be able to resist her fake mother-love for long. One curry sauce chip and I'll crack.

Perhaps I could just walk home, try and dodge Mum's car, say I forgot. It's briefly an appealing idea. But no: she'll just meet me at home and then drive to the chippy, and we'll be in the same position except she'll be low-key pissed off at me before I begin to tell her the truth.

I'm dreading tonight, truth be told.

"You alright mate?" Tom is looking at me with an expression of great concern on his face.

"Huh?"

"You zoned out." I've got to be honest, I'm surprised Tom noticed. He's not usually the type to pay me this much attention. "I was telling you all about my wet dream with Sam Douglas and you didn't react once. Not even a blink when I told you about—" I tune out the rest of what he says. Figures. Tom doesn't care about me. He cares that I don't care enough about his vile story.

*

Lunch finds me once again sat with the girls, but though I let their conversation wash over me I barely participate myself. I'm feeling... ill, is the word. Like I have to watch what I say. Part of that is no doubt borne from my nerves about the impending conversation with Mum, but there's also the fact that I've put the girls on two different levels. Jessie and now Olivia have been folded into my trust, knowing that I'm a girl, but Emma and Kiah have not. I'm keeping bits from them.

Worse, my selective honesty is putting pressure on Jessie and Olivia. I've been friends with them less than a week and I've already got them lying to their besties on my behalf, pretending I'm a boy because I haven't yet given Emma and Kiah access to my true self. To their credit, neither Jessie nor Olivia slips up. At one point, when Kiah explicitly identifies me as a boy, Jessie manages to give me an apologetic squeeze of the shoulder while outwardly agreeing with Kiah.

Unfortunately, Emma isn't in on the secret, so she doesn't know to be tactful. As Kiah talks about how she's never had a boy in her group of friends before, and how it's not at all like she thought it would be, so Emma's eyes kind of narrow and she looks at me.

"That's assuming Harry is a boy," she says.

"What?" I splutter.

"Of course he is a boy," says Jessie, and Olivia nods along.

"Come on," Emma laughs. "I know an egg when I see one. It's about time you hatched, Harry. Let's let the girl inside you run free."

I blanche. Kiah looks confused. "Not cool, Em," says Olivia. "You don't get to just decide somebody is an egg."

"It was a joke," Emma mutters. "Sorry, Harry, I shouldn't have said anything."

In that moment I realise that I can't be bothered with the lies and deceit. I stand up. "It's fine," I tell her. "You're right. Or rather, you were. I was an egg, a big one, but I hatched on Tuesday."

Kiah looks at me with wide eyes, doing the maths in her head.

"You mean—?" Emma begins.

"Hi," I say. "I'm a girl. And my name's Hannah."