“It’s not like I expected to get dragged into something like this”

~~~~~

I mean, I didn’t know she was a her then, she was pretty androgynous looking and in this big bulky hoodie that covered up her shape, and Doctor Emerson calling her just ‘Knife’ without any title didn’t make it any easier to work it out. We were in all the same classes, so the Doc told her to help me get around, not that I needed much help at all, go to as many different schools as me and you get used to working out where to go.

So I didn’t really need her help, but we got sent off with like 20 mins of Tutor group left to ‘show me around the school’, and from her perspective, to try and wheedle stuff for gossip out of me and see which rumours about me were true. Like I said, I have a rep, so it was a rush of questions mixed in with tiny, occasional comments about the school...

...

“You set fire to one of your foster homes?”

“No, why would I do that?”

“Hey, I feel like burning my house down sometimes. Oh, this is Miss Mathews room, you don’t have her this year, but she stays here at breaks if you need someone to talk too, way cool. What was the next one... oh yeah, you got caught in bed with one of your foster sisters?”

“Um, no.”

“Foster brother then?”

“No.”

“You’re going to need a nickname, no one goes by their ‘legal’ name round here. I figure Goatboy and Welshie are right out?”

“Too bloody right.”

“Hmm... you got caught fucking a dog?”

“Ugh, no.”

“You got caught being fucked by a dog?”

“Oh actually...”

“Wait, really?”

“Of course not.”

“How about; your mam was a stripper and or whore and they didn’t know her real name so they put her work name on your birth certificate, or that you got name from a scrap of paper in her bag?”

“...Actually, those ones are pretty much true.”

“Okay, like those are the believable ones.”

“And being a literal bitch was? And I said pretty much, my name was scrawled on an ultrasound printout in her bag, might have been one of me.”

At that, she stopped and hugged me, felt super uncomfortable, half because I couldn’t remember the last hug I’d had, and half because of her breasts pressing against the bandage on my chest.

“I’ve got a question for you now.”

“Sure, fire away.”

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

She got really defensive posture, but like feminine defensive which looked even weirder when she said, “A boy, obviously.”