Chapter 1

I tried to hope. I like to think of myself as an optimistic person, more ready to smile than frown, but I am pretty sure my smile was brittle today. This would be my third foster home and I had already got the impression that my new foster parents didn't care about any of us, apart from the money that we could bring. On the plus side, the one person I had been most scared to meet was my new foster father after the fiasco with my last one and Greg seemed harmless and completely disinterested.

This was also a foster home for girls and Lisa, Greg's wife, and clearly the one who wore the trousers in the house, had made sure that I knew my place. I was an unusual case and was hoping that I would keep the details private, however, Lisa had just asked me to explain to all the girls why I got the small cupboard, that was called a single bedroom, all to myself. Having been read the riot act about telling the truth, I knew I was about to out myself and was positive my life was over before it had begun.

We were sitting at the dinner table and I had taken part in its preparation while Lisa sat down like a queen and directed us. Now I had to explain why I was special.

“I err... have a condition that means my hormones don't react the way they are supposed to. It means that although I was technically born a boy, I have developed as a girl. My male bits don't work, I look like a girl, so I am now considered female.”

It took three hospital trips and a doctor threatening to sue before the state decided to take any action and that was to move me to a different school zone and reclassify me as female. I had hoped to be able to have some different clothes, which Lisa said we couldn't afford, and enter the new school with everyone believing I was a girl. With three younger girls and one older now knowing that I had been born a boy, I wasn't going to expect any improvement from last year. Apart from this year, I presumed my foster father wasn't going to try and rape me. Fingers-crossed.

I was expecting a deluge of questions, but I had forgotten that no one was allowed to talk at the dinner table unless asked a question. I got a horrified look from Demi, who was the older girl and more curious looks from the younger ones. Demi probably had a right to be upset since she had been forced to vacate the cupboard and join the two double bunk beds in the other bedroom with the other girls. From what I understood, Demi was turning eighteen in about nine months and would have to look for alternative arrangements after that. I was only just sixteen, so I had another two years potentially. I wasn't sure I would live that long, but it was possible.

School had started a week ago and Lisa asked each of the girls to tell us about their day and what they had learned. Clearly, this was a common question and everybody had an answer already organised. Lisa seemed to be a strange mix of a strict disciplinarian and uncaring liberal. Because I was sixteen, I was expected to do some housework and was given a schedule, but I was also expected to be responsible for my own decisions, so there was no curfew and I could be there for dinner or not as I chose. Of course, if I wasn't there then I wouldn't be fed.

My school lunch was being paid for by the state, so I prayed that it was good enough and satisfying enough that I could skip dinner. Breakfast was cereal, a few non-sugar, high-fibre varieties, with very low-fat milk and we were allowed one piece of fruit a day, usually an apple. Dinner was usually a salad with a bit of meat mixed in. Greg would have additional items like steak and baked potato. I noticed that Greg had left his salad portion. I ate mine but had never liked salad.

When dinner was finished we all cleared up together, silently because Lisa was there and then asked permission to be excused which she regally granted. I went back to my room and all the younger girls followed me. I then had a choice. They were obviously curious and I could shut my door and not talk to them or I could let them in.

I sighed and let them in.

They looked between them, deciding on the person who was going to lead. I sat on my bed cross-legged and waited for them to settle themselves and choose a leader. They waited for my permission to sit on the bed, which was polite. I gestured acceptance and kept my smile friendly.

They were silent for a bit, until the youngest, who was only about six, prodded the oldest who was maybe nine.

“Why do you need your own room if you are a girl?” Lana, the nine-year-old asked.

“I still have remanent boy bits and if we were in the same room, you would see them when we were getting dressed. Young ladies are not allowed to see boy bits,” I explained.

“You mean a penis and tentacles,” Daisy the six-year-old stated.

“Have you seen a baby boy?” I asked, trying not to laugh at the word choice.

“I have,” Lana said.

“When a baby boy is born they have a small penis,” I said holding my fingers apart to show about an inch. “And when they go through puberty it gets larger, only in my case, it didn't. Instead, I grew breasts like Demi.”

“What about your tentacles?” Daisy asked.

In fact, my testicles had never descended, but that was too complicated to explain, so I just told them the end result. “I had them removed because they weren't working and they could have made me ill.” I thought these girls were cute and I didn't want to correct them.

Jill the silent girl in the middle prodded Lana again. There was a furious whisper between them that I didn't catch, then Lana asked, “can we see?”

“I'm sorry, but you're not allowed to see until you are older. If I showed you I would have to leave here,” I explained.

“Why?” Daisy asked.

“They are adult rules and I don't get to make them or change them,” I answered.

“Are you nice?” Daisy asked.

“I try to be. I do want to ask a favour. Can you not tell anyone else about my boy bits?” I asked pleadingly.

They all shrugged and nodded. I didn't expect my secret to remain a secret though. Six-year-old's don't keep secrets very well and Demi would be a hard case to win over.

The next morning, I had my shower in my appointed time, brushed my shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail and used an elastic band to hold it together. I put on the only clothes I had available, my old male clothes. Not that it made me look like a boy. If it had I probably wouldn't have had half the problems. It did make me look shapeless. I had no bra, just a tight T-shirt and a looser hoodie to go on top, boys underwear and baggy sweatpants. My shoes were trainers meant for young boys.

We all left together first to drop off the younger girls at their school, then on to ours. Demi told me in no uncertain terms that I was to stay away from her and that she would have nothing to do with me. She wasn't going to tell anyone my secret because she was worried that she would be tarred with the same brush. I found out later that she tended to hang with the stoners and was considered 'easy', so I'm not sure why she worried about her reputation.

I tried to act invisible. I noticed the look of disgust on the face of the pretties, the dismissive look from the guys and, to be honest, I was happy with that. If only it could stay that way. My academic classes were fine and I had a doctors certificate to get me out of gym class. The only issue was using the disabled toilets. I wasn't allowed to use the girl's toilets and if I was fortunate enough to make any friends, I would have to explain that.

At lunch, I chose the table near the bins, guessing that it would be the outcast area. There was only one girl sitting there and she seemed a bit hunched in like she was expecting the world to beat her.

“You may not want to sit here,” she told me, looking up.

When she looked up I was surprised by how good she looked. She had these sparkling blue eyes that were just gorgeous. I began to wonder if I had chosen the wrong table.

“Err.. is this the outcast table?” I asked.

She did this cute snort giggle and smiled at me. “Yup.”

I smiled back. “Then I am in the right place. I qualify on a number of levels.”

Another girl sat down. She was also pretty but had quite bad acne. “New girl, you're at the wrong table,” she told me quite severely. “Dressing badly doesn't earn you a spot here. You need to be a lesbian or ugly.”

I smiled at her, despite her scowl. “Dressing like a boy, having no money, being an orphan and liking girls. I am also disfigured, but I am not showing you that.”

One more girl sat down. “Who's the new girl?” she asked.

“Hi, I'm Adi,” I told her.

“She's a disfigured lesbian orphan with a bad sense of style,” the girl with the sparkling eyes told her. “Hi, I'm Chris,” she gestured to the girl on her left who had just arrived and was sitting opposite me, “Stacy, and the angry one is Rebecca or Bex. She has had a few friends turn on her so she is always suspicious. Just in case you are wondering, Bex, is not a lesbian.”

I felt like protesting that she wasn't ugly either, but I knew she was probably very conscious of her acne on her face. She did have quite a bad case of it.

“If you show me your disfigurement, I'll accept you,” she told me.

I think the colour drained from my face and I felt physically sick. I got up hurriedly from the table and rushed to the nearest disabled toilet. I was throwing up in the toilet when I felt a hand stroking my back. I had gone in so fast I hadn't locked the door.

“I'm sorry,” a lost voice said repeatedly.

I managed to lever myself up, spitting to try and get the taste out of my mouth. I moved to the sink to cup some water and rinse my mouth. Bex was still with me, now looking forlorn.

“I didn't mean to upset you. It's just, mine is so obvious and in the worst possible place, I didn't think yours could be as bad.”

“Bex. It is not a competition and, for the record, I don't think you are either ugly or disfigured,” I told her.

Her angry scowl came back in a hurry. She crossed her arms and glared at me. “You think you have it worse than me.”

Now I was getting angry. “Yes, I think I have it worse than you. Lock the door and I'll show you my disfigurement.”

Bex locked the door, now looking uncertain.

I pulled my pants down, still staring her in the eyes. “I am not a man, I am not a woman. I can't have children, I can't even have sex, the bloody thing doesn't work and even if it did, I doubt a woman would even feel it. I have no friends, no family and no money. You think I am wearing these clothes because I want to? Now, thanks to you, my only meal of the day is down the toilet, literally. So, you have acne, big deal!”

Her eyes mostly stayed on mine but flicked down occasionally.

“Do you want more of a sob story? I've got more. My new foster family made me tell my foster sisters so the whole school will know my secret soon. Then the abuse and the beatings will start again. Although this time, I hope my foster father doesn't try and rape me.”

My anger drained out of me. I pulled my pants back up and sighed. “Just go,” I told her quietly. “Do what you want, tell, don't tell. I don't care.”

Bex just stood there, stunned. I didn't want to wait for the inevitable disgust, so I just walked past her and opened the door to let myself out.

Chapter 2 Chris' POV

I was annoyed with Bex when Adi took off. Obviously showing her body to Bex was horrifying to her and she had specifically said that she wouldn't. Yes, we were outcasts but I had never thought that we were unkind. We tried to leave the nastiness to others. To be fair, Bex did look devastated when she saw Adi's reaction and normally has a heart of gold.

I was now waiting for Bex to return, hopefully with Adi and everything forgiven.

Eventually, Bex returned, but she was spaced out, in a kind of daze.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I had err... an epiphany. You know when all these realisations happened at once. I am still processing.”

We both gave her a couple of minutes but the daze didn't appear to be wearing off.

“Did you apologise?” Stacy asked. “And where is Adi?”

“Yes?” Bex answered uncertainly. “Maybe. Well, I did, but then I cocked it up.”

“How could you mess up an apology?” I asked, confused.

“I apologised, but also explained why I had said what I had said and she told me that it wasn't a competition and that she didn't think I was ugly,” Bex explained.

“The bitch,” Stacy said sarcastically.

“Exactly,” Bex answered, ignoring the sarcasm. “So I got a bit angry and she got angry right back and showed me her... umm... disfigurement.”

“Was it really bad?” Stacy asked worriedly.

“No. It was actually kind of beautiful,” Bex said with a sigh. “I'm not making much sense, am I? OK. Let me try a different way. You know when you have missed a meal for whatever reason and you get really hungry at your next one. Say I hadn't eaten yesterday so, at this lunch, I was starving. But we know there are people in various parts of the world who are much worse off, right, you know, who are literally dying of hunger. I would be here thinking I am so hungry, probably more hungry than anyone else in the room. In fact, no one has experienced as much hunger as I was experiencing. And I am speaking to someone who I have never met before who is smiling at me and because she is smiling at me, I know she can't be as hungry as me and I am angry at her for smiling when I am feeling this hungry. So I tell her that she doesn't know what hunger is, she has no idea of true suffering and she just smiles at me and tells me that I have only missed food for a day. I yell at her, telling her I am much worse off than her and she gets angry back and tells me that she hasn't eaten in a year.”

Bex leaned back on her chair. “That startles me, of course, but then I wonder, why was she smiling and I realise that I was looking at what I didn't like, concentrating on my suffering and she was looking for things she was grateful for. I have a family, friends, people who love me. I am angry at the world because I have one thing wrong with me, one thing I don't like. She has so much wrong in her life and she is looking for one thing to like, to enjoy. I feel like shit.”

“But you said she isn't disfigured,” I said, trying to understand.

“That's just it. I don't think she is, but that is not important. She thinks she is, just as she doesn't think I am.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Stacy said.

“That has been said to me a lot, especially by my mother and I never understood it. Now, I think I do. I couldn't understand how anyone could look at my face and not see ugliness, but I could see Adi thought the same about her issues and she is wrong. So I guess I must have been wrong too.”

Bex then leaned forwards again fixing us both with a serious stare. “We have to help her.”

“I don't even know what is wrong with her,” Stacy muttered.

“I don't want to talk about it here. Do you want to meet up at my place after school?” Bex asked.

We all agreed. Bex had an older brother and they had converted the room over the garage for his use. It was separate from the house so it gave him some privacy and now that he had moved out, Bex had the use of it. Her parents didn't want her to move into it permanently, but it was a useful place for us to meet.

Stacy and I had a meeting with an LGBT group, so we didn't manage to get there until it was almost seven. Bex said she would order pizza and my mum agreed to pick us up at ten and drop us both home. It was a bit late for a school night, but we had said it was for a good cause. I had great parents and Stacy did too. It was because they were so understanding that we had both felt able to come out to them two years ago when I was fourteen. It came as a bit of a shock to discover the world was not as nice.

Having pizza was quite a big thing for Bex. Since her acne had started she had tried everything to make it go away. Various doctor prescribed drugs, creams, cleaning regimes and then diet changes. None of it had worked. I can't think of the last time she had agreed to eat something greasy like pizza. She had been a member of the beautiful crowd and even worse had been a regular beauty pageant contestant. On the plus side, it meant she had been good with makeup and had managed to hide it for some time, but when the acne refused to go away, the comments started and her supposed friends abandoned her. She went from being one of the most beautiful girls in the school to feeling like she was one of the ugliest.

And so she had joined our little group.

I went up the stairs and knocked on the door.

“Come in!” I heard her shout.

We entered finding Bex in the kitchenette cutting up and dishing out a pizza and shock of shocks, she was smiling.

“How was the meeting? Anyone new?” Bex asked.

“No, just the usual,” I admitted.

I only went because my therapist insisted and I think Stacy only went because I went. Stacy and I weren't a couple although everyone thought we were. We were very good friends and had tried it once, but we are both a bit submissive and like it when someone else takes charge. It was a shame that Bex wasn't that way inclined. She had the right kind of bossiness that we both liked.

“So what's with the pizza. I thought you were never going to eat it again,” Stacy asked Bex.

“Not eating it wasn't making a difference. If I feel it is worse in the next couple of days I might swear off it again. I feel like I have been in a pit for the last couple of years and spent it all complaining and only just realised that I could have spent all that time happy if I had just concentrated on what was important. Yes, I still don't like how my face looks and I will still be trying everything and anything to get rid of my acne, but whether I do or not should not determine whether I am happy. Some people have it much worse than me.”

“Speaking of which, can you tell us now what is going on with Adi? I am still confused after your speech at lunchtime,” I queried.

She was munching on her pizza slice so we had to wait and she was clearly thinking about what to say at the same time.

“Everything she said to me has been ringing through my brain all day. I've done some research, but I don't really know what is going on. I do have some guesses. Let's start with the obvious stuff. No one cares about her and I mean, no one. I don't know what happened to her birth family, but she has been in foster homes and in the previous one her step-father tried to rape her. She has just moved to a new one, I suspect so that she can move to a new school zone because she was being bullied so badly in her previous one. Her new foster parents have just revealed her secret to her new foster family which probably means her secret won't stay a secret for long.”

“What secret?” I asked.

“Let me ask you a question. Do you see anything masculine about her?” Bex asked. “Don't try and guess based on the question, just think about her and tell me.”

“She was wearing boys clothes, but no, the only impression I got was that she was female. Is she transgender? Is it female to male transgender?” I asked.

“No. I think she was born a boy. She has a really small penis and an empty sac underneath it. That is her 'disfigurement', but I have to say it looked kind of cute. I don't think she is deliberately transitioning. She said she could never have sex because it didn't work. If she wanted to be a girl I think she would be quite happy with it not working. My guess is that she has some type of intersex condition.”

“Why do you think that?” Stacy asked curiously. None of us were going to get upset by any variation on gender or sexuality. If the school did find out though, she probably wouldn't fair well, judging by our treatment.

“In foster care, I'm not sure you would get the best medical care, but for her to have no masculine features and no testicles she would have needed to be on anti-testosterone type drugs from an early age. I didn't see her top half, but her bottom half looked very curvy and very feminine. I just don't think that would be allowed. Normal practice is to wait until you are sixteen for hormones and eighteen for the operation.”

I sighed. “OK. How do we help then.”

“The most important thing to her right now is friendship. Drag her to our table and see if we can make a better impression. After that, she needs clothes and maybe a job,” Bex suggested.

“I don't know if any of our clothes will fit her. She looked a bit overweight, although, with those baggy clothes on, that might not be true.”

“Why don't we go through our clothes and pick out all the stuff that doesn't fit, or we thought we liked, but have never worn it and if we can be honest with ourselves and admit, we never will. Anything that doesn't fit we can take to a charity shop and maybe do a swap. I can do a make-over and maybe, if we can get her in the right clothes it would be easier to find her a job. I would have to get my mum's permission. I can't do the make-over here.”

“My mum might be willing to donate some underwear,” I suggested. My mum ran the local Victoria's Secret store. “I would have to tell her as well. I don't think that is a problem, though.”

“Food is the other issue. If she is overweight, I don't think she will be for long. The only decent food she gets, and the word decent is questionable, is lunch at school,” Bex said.

“At the weekends we can invite her to our houses for lunches or dinners. Do you think it would be OK if I tell my parents as well? They could check her out medically, if she was willing, and make sure she is being treated right,” Stacy added.

“That sounds good to me. Why don't we tentatively organise this Saturday for the clothes, make-over and lunch? We will all speak to our parents and see what we can do. That gives us a few days to win her over,” Bex decided.