Bang! ‘Freak!’ Bang! ‘Weirdo!’ Bang! ‘Faggot!’

Bobby Simpson was preparing to hit my head off the school locker when a large pair of hands grabbed him around the neck and lifted him off the ground.

‘Stop hitting him!’

Bobby gurgled in response.

‘Do you know who I am?’

‘You’re Beatrice the Beast’.

‘Call me that one more time and you’ll wake up in hospital.’

She dropped Bobby who stumbled, just avoided a face-plant and ran whimpering around the corner of the corridor.

‘You saved my life. My hero!’

I threw myself into Beatrice’s arms, reached up and gave her a small peck on the cheek. I pulled back, made eye-contact with a slightly stunned Beatrice, rolled my eyes back into my head and went completely limp.

Beatrice caught me before I hit the ground. I opened an eye and winked at her.

‘What just happened?’ she asked.

‘It is a tradition that once a comely princess rewards their valiant rescuer with a kiss on the cheek, their emotions get the better of them and they faint clear away.’

‘You’re a boy’.

‘A boy can’t be a princess? How very 20th century of you.’

I reached behind my head, pulled my hair out of its hair tie, tossed my head around and blinked several times at her.

‘What ARE you doing?’

‘I’m seducing you by letting my hair down and batting my eyes at you. Am I doing it wrong? Not enough mascara?’

A little smile started to appear on her face.

I put my head on her chest and my hand on her heart and in my most sultry voice said, ‘You had me at stop hitting him!’

I heard a loud honk, followed by several more. Beatrice seemed to be having a seizure of some kind. Tears were rolling down her face.

‘Are you OK?’

She gradually got back control and wiped her face.

‘I haven’t laughed like that since…since ever. That kid was right in one thing. You are a weirdo. Do you have a name, princess?’

‘I’m Christopher. My friends, if I had any, would call me Kit. I am a weirdo. Guilty as charged, but I’m not a faggot. I have an exceptionally fine appreciation of women, of one woman in particular, the spectacular Beatrice, best Rugby player the school has ever had, renowned for deeds of extraordinary strength and valour on the battlefield’.

‘It’s a rugby pitch and I usually end up face down in the mud with ten people piled on top of me’.

She looked a little closer at my face.

‘You ARE wearing mascara. Did you set this whole thing up just to meet me?’

‘Possibly.’

‘What did you say to that kid to provoke him so much?’

‘I merely enquired which of his parents was the non-human one.’

She began to laugh again. ‘Stop, I can’t take much more. Why me? I’m six feet tall and built like a brick shithouse and most people think I’m gay. Why such an elaborate ruse?’

‘I’m five foot six on a full moon and a strong breeze blows me over. How else was I going to get you to notice me?’

‘A full moon?’

‘The pull of the lunar gravity makes me slightly taller’.

‘I’m sorry I asked’.

‘I heard the rumour that you were a dike being spread by some of the boys that came on to you and you turned them down.’

‘If by turning them down is a euphemism for avoiding attempted rape after they wouldn’t take no for an answer, then yes, that’s how it started’.

‘I saw the Baby Dikes trying to flirt with you and getting nowhere and the Bull Dikes getting all defensive and territorial, so I knew it wasn’t true’.

‘Yeah, I don’t swing that way. To be honest I don’t know which way I swing. I’ve not had a lot of opportunity to find out. When I put on a dress and makeup, I just look like a drag queen and I have all the social graces of someone who brings a roast pig to a bat mitzvah.’

She brushed a little blood off my forehead from where it had made contact with the locker.

‘I should clean that up for you and put some antiseptic on it. Can’t have Princess Kitty getting an infected wound.’

Princess Kitty? I can live with that.

‘You know that if you save someone’s life you are stuck with them forever.’

‘That’s not a real thing’.

‘It should be.’

‘Weirdo’.

I put my arm through hers as we walked down the corridor.

‘So, the rugby field…pitch! (See I was listening) is a release for you?’

‘Yes, it’s the one place where I feel free to be myself and I get some respect and camaraderie.’

‘What do the girls on the team call you?’

‘Bea or sometimes Xena.’

‘Well, Xena, you’ve found your Gabrielle.’

She grinned and looked down at me.

‘Gabrielle, Eh? I can see you now looking cute in a beaded crop top and flared suede miniskirt.’

‘That can be arranged.’