CHAPTER 10
That was rather amazing. Her lips were incredibly soft, and I found out why noses don’t squish when people snog.

It wasn’t some mad tongue wrestle, either, just a sweet, gentle and rather prolonged kiss. Emily broke away, pushing a strand of hair back from her mouth. She was smiling and blushing, all at once.

“Bloody hell, Steve….that was, that was, oh…”

She gave me another, much shorter, one, and then shyly asked “Will you go with us?”

I just nodded. If I had a girlfriend, I must be normal, I must be like other lads. I knew I never would be, really, though I still wasn’t too sure exactly what they had done to me down there, but….there was only one thing I could do, and that was some more kissing, this time to the ribald jeers of some passing fourth years. As they walked away, I heard “Nah, that fair one’s in boy’s kit”

There needs to be an explanation here. Nothing about my medical ‘care’ was ever spelled out to me. I was the child, I was the object of that care, and that word should be stressed. I was an object. Mitchell had promised my mother he would be having tests done to find out why I wasn’t growing, and I assumed they must have been done, but Mam told me nothing, nothing at all. It took years before I could access the records the bastard had meticulously kept and find out what he had told her. That was where I later found that phrase, ‘passive effeminate homosexual’, and all the rest.

I didn’t look forward to seeing him at any time, and certainly not that afternoon. Mam ran us up to town in the old Viva and parked by the hospital. She took my hand as if I was some sort of infant, or as if she thought I might run off, which I was actively considering. She went into his office for a private chat before I was brought in and my mother waved out to rejoin Iain.

“Hello, Stevie, how are we today?”

I would call him a snake, sitting waiting for something to strike out at, but there was more passion behind his eyes, more hunger, greed. I was prey. Sharks, like snakes, when they attack, have dead, flat eyes. His were more like that of a kid at the door of a sweet shop: what can I have first?

“I don’t know how you are today, but I still hurt. And I stopped being called Stevie ages ago”

“Because you want to impress the men with your maturity?”

“No, because I’m a teenager, not a kid”

“Who was the man, Stevie?”

“My librarian, Sid, and he didn’t do anything”

“Why were you holding hands?”

“We weren’t, that’s a lie!”

“Your mother’s friend saw you doing it”

“Then she’s a liar!”

“So much hostility, Stevie. Why is that?”

“Because it’s all lies! We never held hands, we just talked”

“What did you talk about?”

“Books. And women”

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

“Did you do any kissing?”

That was the moment I truly understood that he wasn’t actually listening to me, not really, but ploughing ahead with his own agenda. Whatever I said would either be ignored or twisted to fit his own plans. The mention of kissing, though, got through to my shy, inner self, and I am sure I blushed.

“Ah, so you did do some kissing, then. Did he kiss well?”

“It wasn’t him I kissed!”

“Who was the man you did kiss, then?”

“It was a girl, in my class, she’s called Emily, and we’re going together now, so stuff that where the monkey put his nuts!”

There was a definite twitch to his eye then, but he kept the same hungry expression on me. “So… this Emily? Is she bigger than you?”

“Everyone’s bigger than me. You were supposed to sort that out.”

“Yes, I have something for that, we can deal with that later. Does she have short hair, that sort of thing?”

“No, she’s really girly, like Mills and Boon books, that sort of thing”

He muttered something about ‘overcompensating for true desires’ as he made a long note, then he asked for Mam to come back in.

“Mrs Jones, I have had a most informative chat with little Stevie here, and I think it is time we moved along his development. Stevie, your body is no longer producing the things it needs to make you grow, so we need to give it a bit of help. It will mean some injections, and I am afraid they will have to be into the bottom. You will need to have an injection each week for a little while, just till we see how your body is reacting to the medicine. I will also give you some tablets to take each day, but what I need is to examine you each week when you come for your jab.”

The promise that I might grow almost overrode my hatred and distrust, and as Mam, thankfully, left the room again, I underwent a reasonably quick examination of my scars after I dropped my trousers and underpants to receive my very first and very painful dose of growth juice, as I immediately dubbed it. Sore-arsed, I went with Mam to the hospital pharmacy and filled Mitchell’s prescription. Mam was acting odd, a little embarrassed it seemed, and I am sure I saw the slightest hint of an incipient tear. We drove home and as I sat on my sore arse I took the first of my magic pills.

Emily was waiting for me outside the school gates the next day, and she admitted later that she had left home as early as possible so as to be sure she caught me as I entered, and once more we shared the delights of a proper snog. She wasn’t Karen, by any stretch of the imagination, and she never would be, but she was nice, she kissed wonderfully, and she was all mine. I held her hand into class, and there were a few sniggers, but also a lot of smiles. Such a difference to my old place. The word had obviously gone around, and somebody had left a label on our shared desks: “Lovebird seats”

I didn’t mind at all. It was all new to me, new and wonderful, and if I had had anything left I am sure I would have been in agonies of arousal and having constant Nocturnal Emissions, but that had already been dealt with. Terminally, as I was still to find out.

Even the teacher got in on the act, in our registration group. She called out the girls first, and after Emily called out “Here!” Miss Stephenson loudly added “So that means Steven Jones is here too, then”

It was teasing, but it was sweetly done. Emily was a popular girl, and the class hadn’t learnt to hate me, so the mickey-taking was more of a celebration than an infliction. That day, I was happier than I ever remembered being before. It was also the day I decided I would start to run again. According to that snake, I was just about healed, and I wanted to make a name for myself in some small way, a name that might stop all the assumptions that was a girl. I could, I can, run, and as Miss Graham had promised I would have all the help and advice needed to find my distance. That first cross-country run seemed like ancient history now; if I could manage some laps today, then I would be on the fells with Nana again at the weekend. I had growth juice fizzing in my veins, after all, and a book on rock climbing to show her.

That threw me. I had to find some way of using the library without my mother making a fuss. At morning break, I asked my girlfriend (how amazing to be able to say that!) for ideas, after filling in the gaps about Sid.

“Why don’t you just bring the books to school, and we walk there together at lunchtime? If you are with a girl, especially one who really, truly knows you are certainly not a puff, what can anyone say? Especially if we have a snog…”

“Sid says it’s better to call him gay than a puff, but, yeah, you’re right. Now….shall I prove I’m not gay again, then?”

“Mmmmm yes please”

To a chorus of cheers and shouts of “Throw a bucket of cold water over them!” and “Ecchhh!” I proceeded to do my best to lay such rumours to rest.

That afternoon, I got kitted up in my Umbro shorts and Dunlop plimsolls to do a few laps of the track marked out in white on the grass of the sports field. I started gently, just feeling how my legs were working, and sensitive to any pain from my wounds, but soon I was in the zone that distance runners enter, where the body is just running at the aerobic balance point and you feel you can go on forever. The rest of the class were doing various organised things, such as high and long jump practice, and putting the shot, but I was off in my own world. With a start I realised that I had company, one of the teachers in a track suit pacing me as I ran, and he started to talk to me.

“Son, you are running rock solid ninety-five second laps, which is amazing given your size. Where do you normally train?”

“(pant) Eskdale (pant) fells (pant) sir”

“No bloody wonder you cruise this flat stuff, son. I’m going to drop out before you kill me, you’ve already done three miles.”

He moved to the inside of the track, and then started giving me shouted instructions, to lift and ease my pace, and I later discovered he was using a Scandinavian system called fartlek, intended to take my body out of that comfort zone and better replicate the sort of running I did over the fells. It was hard work, which was his intention, and I eventually had to stop as the fatigue poisons built up. I stood inside the track, hands on knees for a while, then on my hips as I walked off the soreness. Mr Robson, the teacher, was all smiles.

“You, son, are good, really good. No false modesty here, and praise where it is due. Why have I never seen you running in any of the schools events?”

Because the shits at my old school did their level best to kill me any time I went into the changing rooms, that’s why. “ I’ve never entered any, sir”

“Well, if you want, I can change that. How would you like to do the 5,000?”

“Five thousand what, sir?”

“Metres, son. Twelve and a half laps, about three and a half miles. Now, it’s long enough to let you settle, but also long enough to have tactical running. Let’s find somewhere to chat after your shower”

That was the start of gaining my new reputation.