Hearing Miss Jorgensen call me Hannah leaves me feeling on top of the world, and I'm still riding the crest of the wave as I reach home. Why does it make me feel so good? It's not my name, it's just a girl's name that I came up with as part of my justification for looking too long at Jessie's skirt and being envious of her. This whole thing has got way out of hand. 'Hannah' should make me feel guilty, guilty for this convoluted web of shit that I've now managed to loop Miss Jorgensen into, all because I was too chicken-shit to just say to Jessie "I'm kind of envious of the way you get to wear skirts". Or, better yet, just say nothing at all. That's what most boys do.

But I don't feel guilty. If anything, Jessie and Miss Jorgensen calling me 'Hannah' has been the most 'right' I've felt in years. It's almost enough to make me think that I might be a girl after all. Is that a thing people do? Get themselves into situations where they're pretending to be transgender, only to realise that in fact they are transgender?

That wouldn't square with what Olivia said, though. She's always been a girl. My affinity with the name 'Hannah', with girlhood, is two days old at best. Even in my adolescence, when puberty started and my body began changing in a way that girls' bodies didn't, I wasn't upset. I was apathetic at worst. 'Boy' was the role I'd been given when I was born, and I've always assumed it's the only role open to me. Realising that I can be a girl if I want—that I can just do that—is opening up a new can of worms in my mind. I try not to think too hard about it.

Mum's there when I get in; she's sat at the kitchen table, a half-drunk mug of grey tea in front of her, and a face like thunder. She's got a letter in her hands. The envelope it came in sits torn on the floor, where the cat's having a good sniff. I waggle my fingers at Puss. He looks at me as though I'm crazy, then returns his gaze to Mum's discarded envelope.

"Hi, Mum," I say, stepping into the kitchen.

She grunts an acknowledgement.

"I thought you'd be at work until late tonight."

"Why did you think that?" she asks. "You know I work variable shifts. Are you even glad to see me?"

"Of course I am," I say, uneasy—Mum's not normally like this. "I just meant... never mind."

Something seems to shift in Mum's head. "I'm sorry," she says, irritably. "I'm snapping. I had a bad day at work, that's all."

"How bad?"

"They sent me home at midday," Mum said. "I'll be working from home for the next couple of weeks." She forces a broad and very fake smile. "So we'll have plenty of time together, kiddo."

"Are you alright, Mum?"

"Course I am," she says, fobbing me off with a jocular flick of the finger. "Just some namby-pamby PC bullshit."

I've never heard Mum swear before. The word seems particularly shocking coming from her mouth. I take an involuntary step back; she's clearly agitated, and that's done a number on the vibes in the whole room. Puss feels it too. He scampers out of the room, the envelope forgotten.

Mum seems to realise that I'm perturbed. She takes a deep breath, and the calm woman I know comes back. "What about you? How's school? I feel like we've missed each other a lot these past two days."

"Yeah, school's fine," I mutter. I decide not to tell her about the part where I told my friends and my English teacher that I'm a girl, nor the part where I'm genuinely beginning to wonder if I actually am a girl. I can read a room. Now is not the time.

"Busy with homework I bet."

"Not really," I say, shaking my head. "They tend not to give much homework in the first week of term." I had a shitty worksheet from Maths this morning, one of those that you see and you just really can't be arsed with but which you know will only take about fifteen minutes once you actually sit down to do it. Which was why I'd made the executive decision to leave it till the last minute.

Mum nods and smiles. "Well, how about we go out to eat tonight? You, me and Beth. It's been a while—and we should really take advantage of Beth being here. Would you like that, Harry?"

"That sounds nice," I tell her. There's a sinking feeling beginning to form in my gut, a horrible discomfort. That name grates against me. I hate it. Hate it. Why couldn't she have given me a nice, cute name? Why couldn't I just have been Hannah from the start? I make excuses. I can't stay in the kitchen any more, can't be anywhere people can look at me. I don't want to be looked at, I want to be invisible. To shrink away. I barely pause to kick my shoes off as I run up the stairs and straight into the mercifully-not-occupied bathroom.

I lock the bathroom door and sit down on the toilet. I've always sat down to piss; standing up always makes me feel like some sort of animal, and public urinals get me so uncomfortable that I just dry up and can't go. I'm not even ashamed of this. Back before Dad left, when I was just reaching the age where I could stand to piss provided I stood on a plastic stool to reach the toilet properly, I remember telling him how much I didn't like it. There's no shame in sitting down, he told me. After all, women sit down to pee all the time; if it's good enough for them, it should be good enough for any men.

I pull my uniform shirt off while I'm still sat on the loo, and chuck it in the general direction of the upstairs linen bin. It misses. Hits the floor. When I've finished my business I pull the flush and go to pick my shirt up. As I do so, I see my bare chest in the bathroom mirror. I freeze. Chest tight. Breathing heavy. My face is red and sweating, and my hands are all clammy. What is it that's wrong with my chest? Beth assured me that it was fine, but if it was fine I wouldn't hate looking at it so much. It's an effort, but I force myself to look closely. I'm not musclebound at all. I've never really seen the point of working out. Is that the problem? I picture myself with bulging muscles, firm and defined pecs.

The image makes me want to throw up.

I try another image. This time, I imagine my arms slim and shorn of the hair that's beginning to grow on them. My shoulders as slender as they are now. I imagine my chest swollen into a pair of breasts—girlish breasts. And I don't want to throw up. More than that, in fact, everything that I hate about my chest is absent from this picture. I want my chest to look like that. I feel a pang that I'm destined to be flat-chested forever; the only other option would be to change my body, to be a girl.

I really want to be a girl. I can't imagine not being a girl when I'm older—for as long as I can remember, whenever I've pictured the future, I've pictured a future where I'm a woman.

Oh shit.

Life-changing realisations can really knock you for six. For a while I just stand there, my breathing steady but hoarse. What do I do? What the fuck do I do? I have to talk to someone. Jessie? But I've already told her once—how do I tell her that my big secret this morning was totally a lie, but by the way I've realised that I actually am a girl, even though I lied about being a girl not ten hours ago, and now I'm freaking out? It's a non-starter. And anyway, Messenger isn't enough.

I knock on Beth's door, still bare-chested.

"Come in," she says, and when I push the door open I see she's lying on her bed with a mint-green facemask on, thumbing through a book. "How was your day at school?"

"It was fine," I tell her. "Look, I've been thinking about our conversation yesterday."

She perks up immediately. She sits up straight and puts a bookmark in her book before setting it to one side. "And?"

"I'm a girl," I say. And it's not a lie. I know that now—I'm not just a boy who wants to be a girl, I'm not just pretending. I am a girl.

And I'm glad I am.

Beth stands up in a flash. "You're a girl," she says, grinning. "Harry, you're a GIRL!"

"Hannah," I whisper.

"What?"

"My name's Hannah."

Beth holds her arms in the air. "Hannah, you're a GIRL!"

"Yes, I am," I say.

"Do you know what that means? It means we're sisters. We can do sister things—oh, just wait till our first proper girl-talk. And we'll have to get you some better clothes, because the stuff you wear looks so uncomfortable, and I—" Beth stops. And then she lowers herself back onto her bed, and starts to cry.

I sit beside her, and I start crying too, and there we are, two sisters, crying beside each other. "What's wrong?" I ask her. "Don't you want a sister?"

Beth looks up at me, her eyes bleary, her facemask ruined. "Of course I want a sister. It's just... I should have seen this years ago, when you asked why you were a boy and not a girl. All this time I could have said something, done something. How long have you been suffering, pretending to be a boy? If I'd been there for you, you could have transitioned ages ago."

"No." I shake my head. "Beth, you did nothing wrong. If I was ready to... to transition, years ago, I'd have said. I wasn't. I needed the time to figure myself out. Not twenty minutes ago I had myself convinced that I wasn't a girl and that I'd told Jessie I was a girl because I was a pervy boy who wanted an excuse to check out her skirt."

Beth blinked. "You told someone you're a girl. Before you realised you were trans?"

"Two people actually," I say. "Miss Jorgensen kind of knows, too."

"Jesus, Hannah, you were such an egg. If you hadn't cracked yourself, I'd have had to do something or you'd never have figured it out."

We sit in silence for a little while. I consider asking what an egg is, but I'm not sure I want to know. Knowing Beth, it's probably something obscene. Eventually, Beth breaks the silence.

"So what are you going to do now?"

"What do you mean?" I frown.

"You're a girl," Beth says. "And that's great. But do you plan to transition? How do you plan on doing that? What sort of girl do you want to be?"

I think for a second. "I want to be a girl like you, or like Jessie. I want to wear pretty clothes, and I want to be cute, and I want the body a girl has. I want the—" I blush. "Feminine parts."

"By feminine parts, I presume you mean boobs and vagina?"

I redden even more. "Beth..."

"We're all girls here, Hannah," she says. "And you need to get used to talking about those things if you're planning on having them for yourself."

"Okay," I say. "I'll get over it."

Beth puts a finger on my nose. "Say it."

"Huh?"

"Say the words. You're gonna get used to them, why not start now? Say 'I want to have boobs and a vagina'."

My face is breaking new grounds in the shades-of-red department. Pantone are going to be knocking on the door tomorrow asking if they can photograph my rosy cheeks for a new range of colours. "It's embarrassing."

"Good," says Beth. "You're my sister. It's my job to embarrass you—and you need to get to the point where it's not embarrassing. So say it."

"Fine," I sigh. "I want to have boobs and a... a vagina." Saying the words doesn't end the world. I let out a giggle. "So where do I start?"

"I'm no expert," Beth shrugs. "But I'd figure you'll need to speak to a doctor. And since you're still only fifteen, baby sister—yes, I am going to keep calling you baby sister; I missed out on fifteen years of it, so I'm getting my lot in now—you should probably tell Mum first."

Mum. Of course. She loves me; I'm sure she'll be happy to have a second daughter.

Surely she will.