"Didn't you see his hair?" responded Elfed as the tinkle of the two boys relieving themselves echoed around the room. "Yes, I saw it is pretty long, so what?" asked Alex. "Yes, but it looks a bit girlie, like he's taking care of it, you know washing it and stuff," The Price To Pay - Vol. 2.05 - School by Alys

I finished drying myself and dropped the towel to the floor to start dressing. I glanced at myself in the mirror, at my mostly androgynous looking body, before picking up my underwear off the side table.

The jiggle of my boobs, as I pulled up my underpants, painfully reminded me of the anomalous gender that I needed to effectively disguise before going to school. I positioned my packing carefully and after a few adjustments was satisfied with the appearance of my faux penis.

"Celyn, are you nearly ready?" my Mother shouted up from the bottom of the stairs, " Siá´n will be here in about ten minutes"

"Not far off, Mum, " I responded as I struggled to pull down my tight vest.

"Can I borrow your black eyeliner?" asked Taran as she barged into my room wearing her long black Goth skirt and a black bra.

"Have I got some?" I wondered aloud, not really being completely au fait with the contents of my cosmetics drawer.

"Yes, it's in the make up set I bought you last week," Taran explained.

"Fine, help yourself, " I responded and continued to dress.

My sister grabbed the required item before commenting, " you're going to struggle to fit into that t-shirt soon, sis"

"Tell me about it, Taran," I stated in response, before pressing down on my constricted breasts, " I'm not looking forward to the next growth spurt here"

My sister stood next to me as she used my wall mirror to finish applying her makeup.

"Are you sure this is such a good idea?" she asked.

"What other choice do I have?" I responded, " I need to pass my GCSE's next year if I want to do A'levels and go to Uni*"

"You could still get a transfer," Taran stated, finishing her final artistic touches and as usual taking her interpretation of the school rules, allowing subtle makeup for girls in the sixth form, to the limit and beyond.

"I'm not ready to be a girl full-time, sis, " I responded.

Taran replaced the borrowed items in my drawer, " you can't put it off for ever."

I finished dressing, putting the final knot in my school tie. I turned to my sister to seek her opinion, "how do I look?"

She stepped back and studied my appearance carefully for a few seconds.

"You look almost like my brother again, Celyn," she replied, "it's just that your face seems softer and your hair is longer. You'll be fine, got to go, Anwen is picking me up in ten minutes"

My sister disappeared to her goth lair and I muttered after her, " lucky sod having a lift to school."

"Hard luck, sis," she responded, laughing, "the advantages of being the eldest child"

Fifteen minutes later I was cycling with Siá´n on the way to school. It was already a warm day, even though it was only a little past 8am. I hoped I wouldn't regret having to wear the t-shirt under my school shirt.

The traffic out of town on the way to workplaces in the nearest city, Casnewydd, was already busy. I was glad that the council had completed the cycle path in the Spring. Twenty ton lorries thundering past two inches away from me was an experience to avoid if at all possible.

Not too soon we reached the school gates and locked our bikes up in the pupil bike stands. I grabbed my bag and started to slowly walk towards the school entrance. Everything looked so familiar, it felt like I had not been away at all. For a moment the life changing events of the previous months seemed to have been just an unpleasant dream.

"Hey, you'd better hurry, Celyn, you'll be late for registration," said Siá´n as he caught up with me, "something wrong?"

I matched his pace as we hurried into the building.

"Did your parents ever tell you about a famous TV series from the eighties when they brought back one of the characters, who had been killed, by saying the previous series had just been a dream?" I asked.

"Not sure," he replied, "..wait, was it something about oil, in America?"

"Yep," I responded, "that's it, not sure what the name of the series was though"

"I think it was called Texas** or something, why?" Siá´n asked.

"Dunno, " I replied, " it's just that sometimes it feels like it all never happened, you know, the cancer and stuff, especially now I'm back here and everything looks exactly the same"

"Don't worry, once you see everyone in the class again," said Siá´n, reassuringly, " everything'll be back to normal and you can begin to forget it ever happened"

The strange sensations of my prosthetic moving and the rubbing of my nipples on my t-shirt brought me back to the immediate reality of my situation and the abnormal nature of my situation.

The bell for registration went and so we rushed down the main corridor and up the stairs to our registration class***.

"Celyn!" yelled Ceri, as we walked into the room, "welcome back!"

"Hey Celyn," greeted Sioned as she walked over to me and hugged me, before whispering, "welcome back, we've all missed you"

Soon I was the centre of attention for the whole class who came over and welcomed me with pats on the back and shoulders, from the boys, and hugs, from the girls. I was glad for once that Meryl wasn't in the same class as me for registration. I wasn't looking forward to seeing my ex-girlfriend again, only three weeks after I had ended our relationship.

"What's going on here?" asked Mr John, our form-teacher, in a curious tone, as he walked into the classroom and observed the crowd of pupils gathered around me.

We all stopped talking, I disentangled myself from the latest sweet hug, and we all turned to face the friendly middle-aged History teacher.

"Hello sir, " I said, "everyone was just saying hello to me"

"Oh, I see, Celyn," said Mr John, smiling, "well it's great to see you back"

"Thank you, sir, " I said, as I found my way to my usual table with Sioned, Ceri and Siá´n.

Mr John sat down and quickly registered us on the OCR form. He then made the usual announcements, followed by the school's concession to the legal requirement for religious observance every morning.

"Ok, everyone," Mr John said, with a serious tone in his voice, "it's time for our minute of contemplation, will you please read though the brief article, I've just handed out, from the Education Guardian about the situation in Darfur. While you're reading please consider how lucky you all are not to be living in a refugee camp, maybe having lost family and friends in the conflict and facing a very uncertain future"

It was a sombre group of pupils that filed out of the classroom a few minutes later on the way to our first lessons. I was soon in the swing of things as the welcome from my registration class was repeated by each group of new pupils I met in the next three hours. Everyone seemed friendly except that I soon discovered one of the downsides of returning to school. The shoulder strap of my school bag was soon beginning to bite into my shoulder with all the course booklets the teachers insisted on me taking to catch up on the work I'd missed.

"Got to go.." I said urgently to Siá´n, at break time, as we staggered out through the smoke and fumes of our latest near brush with death at the hands of our Chemistry teacher, 'Wildman Watkins'.

"k, see you by the pond," he replied, before I dashed off to somewhere I had dreaded having to visit on returning to school.

Two year Sevens were coming out of the boys' toilets as I reached them. I walked in and searched for a stall that was unoccupied. It was my lucky day! There was one available and miracle of miracles it had a functioning lock, something I knew was unlikely to be true for much longer into the term. There was of course no toilet paper, there never was. I took out the sheets that I had remembered to bring and used a few to clean the urine covered seat. Soon enough I was satisfied that it was safe to sit.

I heard some voices as some other pupils entered the lavs.

"Did you see that Celyn is back?" asked a familiar voice.

"Something odd about him though," replied another familiar voice.

It was Alex and Elfed, two rather unskillful members of the football squad.

"What do you mean?" asked Alex.

"Didn't you see his hair?" responded Elfed as the tinkle of the two boys relieving themselves echoed around the room.

"Yes, I saw, it is pretty long, so what?" asked Alex.

"Yes, but it looks a bit girlie, like he's taking care of it, you know washing it and stuff," explained Elfed, "and there's another thing too"

"What's that?" asked his friend.

"Have a look at his fingers, I'm sure I saw traces of nail varnish on it," said Elfed.

I looked at my hand and noticed to my horror a little bit of pink colour on some of the fingers of my right hand. I cursed my Mother for making me dress up and put on make up to go out for a meal the night before.

"You serious, mate?" asked Alex, " do you think he might be gay or something?"

"Could be," responded Elfed, " you know he ditched Meryl? What other reason could he have for dumping such a hot bitch as her?"

"We'd better watch our bums in training then," laughed Alex, as he and Elfed moved over to the sinks to wash their hands," mind there'd be one thing worse than having a poof in the team"

"What's that?" asked Elfed, as he turned the hand-dryer on. I stood up and rearranged my clothes quickly, grateful for the mask of the noisy machine. I almost didn't hear Alex's reply.

"Having a fucking girl playing!" came the crude response before the pair of bigots left the room.

I sighed loudly, in relief at my non-discovery. I was grateful in some way for confirmation of the wisdom of my decision to cover up my gender change but I also felt sad at the level of prejudice and intolerance shown by Alex and Elfed, two fellow members of the team I had thought I got along with well enough.

I was glad to find my friends standing around the school fish pond consuming their snacks and drinks. I took my muesli bar out of my bag, cursing my Mother again for not allowing me to bring chocolate to school.

"You're a girl now," she had said, when I queried the contents of my lunchbox before leaving home that morning, " you've got to watch your weight"

I noticed Meryl sitting on the grass.

"Hi Meryl," I said, a little shyly, smiling.

"Hi, Celyn, welcome back," she responded warmly, although I noticed there seemed to be a sadness in her eyes, I felt pangs of guilt. I was saved from having to say anything else to Meryl by Ceri's usual boisterousness.

"Hey, everyone I've got a new mobile," he announced, as he held up his shiny new device. Soon we were comparing our various phones and swapping numbers. I had more numbers to swap than everyone else and soon I was tiring of the chore of exchanging information with each person individually.

"This is going to take ages," I said after I had managed only five numbers with only a minute or so to the end of break.

"Why don't you just use bluetooth?" asked Siá´n.

"Good idea, " I responded and activated the facility on my device. A list of compatible phones in the immediate vicinity came up. I looked at some of the strange user names and realised that it would take me almost as long to filter out anyone who wasn't my friend from the list and then exchange numbers as it had been to do the exchange manually. I thought for a little while about how to short-circuit this process.

The sound of the bell ringing for the end of break crystallised my mind so I quickly sent my number to everyone whose bluetooth contact details had appeared on my phone.

I rushed after Sioned and Ceri for our next lesson. It was Biology with Mr Franklin, otherwise know as Franklinstein for his predilection for chopping up small creatures. Despite this rather unsavoury aspect to his personality I found the subject fascinating and felt that I was doing well in the subject.

Unusually he was late for the lesson so I sat down with my friends near the back as we waited for our teacher. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I had of course turned the ringer off. It wasn't a good idea to let your mobile go off in a lesson, it would be confiscated and you might never see it again.

I took the phone out my pocket, and flicked open the case to read the text message.

My eyes scanned the phone display. My heart suddenly raced and I felt something akin to a panic attack. The four words seared into my brain

"I know your secret"

*GCSE = school final exams at 16, A'levels = school final exams at 18 and also qualification for university/(other further education) entry
** Dallas and the death of Bobby
*** Registration class, called Homeroom in the US I think.