CHAPTER 22
I woke slowly, for once, no sudden impact of awareness on my mind, and then I remembered, and of course Emily was there next to me, still, awake and looking at me as I slept.

Her dark curls hung over one green eye, and I could see the tiny faint scars of her acne. Her head propped on one arm, she just stroked my cheek with the back of the other, and I could smell that scent again, the scent of my mother’s laundry basket, of Cunningham as she whipped me, of that woman who liked to wank as her husband buggered me after dressing me in what she clearly saw as sexy clothes, and I was nearly overwhelmed with a flashback till Em smiled, and that smell became a fresher memory, of her face flushing as we made love.

“Stevie, love….I know you hate me saying so, but you do look pretty. I’ve been watching you for an hour, and…oh, I don’t know. I never went for girls…there were girls, you know, when you’re young, and you get a crush, and you can’t tell whether it’s envy, or love, or lust, or if you’re a lezzer like in the papers...oh, why can’t I say it right?”

She flopped down on her back, almost pouting, and I realised that despite her strength, her love, she was still only sixteen, and confused to hell. I pulled myself across so that I lay on her shoulder, her arm around me, and looking at the ceiling she tried again. Slowly, quietly, she tried to put order to her thoughts.

“I wanted a boyfriend, just like most other girls. I read the books, you know that, and they were all so simple. You have the ups and downs, the separation, and then it all comes together in a big reunion scene, and there’s kissing, and then dot dot dot. Yeah, I know every book is the same, but just now and again there would be a way of saying something, something a little new, and I would dream…

“Then you were there, and I said this last night, and I said this before, but you looked right past my spots, and my belly, and my fat arse, and you were funny. You were funny that first day, and that’s what I hate most, they beat that out of you, Stevie, and I want it back.

“Please just shut up. Let me try and get this right, because I don’t want to hurt you. I can still see you, despite the changes, and you are still inside. When I tell you you look pretty, I mean to say that they didn’t make you something to scare kids with. It means we can walk down the street and not get stares, and that means that we have a chance of getting more of your life back. I know you are a boy, a man, and if you choose to have the doctors try and fix you, I will be there, still, but….

“Stevie, you are so much better at words than me, and all I am trying to say is whatever you do, whatever you want to do with your body, I will still love you, because it’s still you, just don’t do anything, any more harm, just because you think you have to for me”

Her hand was stroking my shoulder and the top of my breast, and I realised that I felt both wrong and absolutely right with her. Wrong, because all of my body was foreign territory. I wanted to be the man, I wanted to act as I had dreamt of when I was younger, finding my Dad’s stash of dirty books when Iain and I had searched for our Christmas presents in advance. At the same time, I was used to the body I wore. I hadn’t been thrown into it, I had grown it as any teenaged girl would have done. My balance, my spatial sense, had altered with me, and all I can say is that while my body was WRONG, it didn’t feel foreign.

“Em….I just never wanted to be pretty. I wanted to be me, just bigger, just another boy. I promise you I won’t do anything without talking to you.”

I shuddered. Doctors. That would involve doctors. After my terror at the hospital, all of my doctors so far had been female, but the thought of seeing them brought me out in cold sweat. Where the fuck was Mitchell?

Emily’s cuddling had reached my nipple, and of its own volition it responded. She giggled.

“Stevie…please, please take this the right way, but last night…oh, my…..”

So what was I, then? She had done things to me that had had me almost screaming, but they mostly involved bits of my anatomy that were not supposed to be there. It had been like that first fumble, at home in bed, and I realised that I had never, ever had a sexual experience as a boy would. It just didn’t respond, not like that, though it leaked something…

Sorry, this is all getting very clinical. I talked it through with one of my doctors, years later, and they pointed out that I still had a prostate, I still had plumbing. She had the good grace, unlike an earlier medic, not to ask if any of the rapes had ever ‘aroused’ me.

There I was, in bed with my girlfriend, a boy with breasts, with a girlfriend who had used those same breasts to bring me to orgasm, who was now idly starting me off down the same path once more, playing with the breasts that made me want to scream when I thought about them, which was every hour of every day, and I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was going to do. I just knew, knew utterly, that I wasn’t going to let anyone near my body with a knife, ever again.

“Em…?”

“Yes, love?”

“Been thinking…I know you are all confused, and so am I. But I know one thing…this is what I have, this is what I am going to have to deal with, and those bastards aren’t going to win. I’m going to have a good life, whatever I look like, and fuck ‘em”

She pulled me to her, and my hand naturally found her breast, and, well, it had been supposed to be a school day, but after Iain and his…parents, for that was what they were, had left that morning, my new family, for that was certainly what they were, had looked in on us, and Nana had rung Netherhall and explained. She knew damned well what we had been doing, and after Emily had finished celebrating my new life with me, she brought us a cuppa.

“Tha’re both sixteen, so it’s legal, but aal I will suggest is that before Tom teks thee to school, tha have a shower”

With a sudden impish grin, she added “And separately, otherwise tha’ll never get out of the house!”

That was another moment of rebirth, that morning, that lovemaking. I had been dealt a hand, and I would play it. I wasn’t a woman, I would never, ever be a woman, and I would never want to be one, but I wasn’t dead, and fuck them if they thought I would ever finish what they started. I was going to live.

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Tom took us to school, and we were there in time for my first proper English literature lesson. It was a class we shared, and it was quite funny when Miss Stephenson…oh, god, after all those years, dear, sweet Miss Stephenson…when she had to ask Tom to sit in the back of the class because half of the girls were salivating over him. That was quite sneaky on her part, because I soon realised she wasn’t exactly repelled by my bodyguard, and it gave her a better chance of looking at him.

We were working, as a class, on Richard III, and the opening lines spoke volumes to me. There was a man, for good or bad, speaking of a new day, a new Spring after a dreadful Winter, and Em saw my reaction, and squeezed my hand. There was a fine moment of generosity from Miss S as well, when she asked me to read, and it wasn’t a woman’s part, but the crookback himself, and when I stood up, dropped one shoulder and did my best to imitate Olivier the class fell about.

When Miss S stopped laughing, she just said “Thank you, Larry Jones. I look forward to your attempt at the Scottish Play, but please, don’t bring a kilt”

Em passed me a little note as I sat back down. She had drawn a little box, with a tick n it, and next to it the words “recover sense of humour”

School dinner was another favour the hellhole had done to me, in that I was actually able to appreciate the cuisine. My table was mobbed by a series of wellwishers, and once more banality made my day. Most of the boys wanted to ask about Brian. There I was, a multiply-raped eunuch with tits, and they simply wanted to talk football. I cannot express how that pleased me. The rambling, confused talks with Em, my new determination, all of them flourished in the school’s warmth of spirit.

I had just turned away another group of autograph seekers, when a solid man appeared at the table, and Tom stirred quickly as I had a moment of panic before realising that it was Mr Robson.

“Welcome back, Steve. Welcome back indeed. I bet you missed the running, and we missed you”

“I’ve just started again, sir. Running round the grounds till I see if I can get my strength back. Once I have a bit of that, I’ll probably be back on the fells”

“No hurry, son, no hurry, but if you want any help, any track time, you know where I am”

And he was off, and yet another moment of simple humanity hurried my healing along.