The teacher either didn’t notice or didn’t care that our desks were still together when the bell rang signalling the resumption of css. Perhaps my aura of bndness and forgetability was finally clocking in for the day, a full 2 hours te for work. Alice tried to continue our conversation in a low whisper, but I shut her down. “I came to school this morning with the intention of earning an education and I will not have you interfere with that”. She took an uneasy gnce at my several pages of notes from the morning’s lessons. “You know like, none of this stuff matters right?” she whispered.

  “Matters to me, now hush” I replied in a tense whisper. She pulled a pouty face but left me to my note taking. After a few minutes though: “You know literally nobody else is taking notes, right?” she whispered, suppressing a giggle. “If nobody has ever done it before then I’d be honoured to be the first, not that I believe that’s true.” I whispered back. But when I cast my gaze about I realized there wasn’t a single pen or copybook in sight. Strange.

  Some of the other students were listening, enraptured by the fascinating tendencies of wheels in motion to produce sinwaves when cast down to 2 dimensions. Most of them were whispering among themselves while the teacher politely ignored them. I realized that of all the students who were listening, I was the furthest from the front of the css. I debated moving. I dismissed the idea out of hand. I’d just managed to vanish into the background. I wasn’t about to jeopardize that by drawing attention to myself. I resumed my note taking.

  She left me to it for another 30 seconds, and then she whispered “Why do you care about this useless shit anyway? Its not like you’ll ever use it!”. I sighed. This was nothing I shouldn’t have seen coming. “Alice, I don’t need friends who are going to make fun of my hobbies or interests. I’ve had far too many”. She did not take that well. “I’M SORRY!” she shrieked, bursting my bubble of privacy and unremarkability like a child’s dreams. The teacher gnced our direction with a frown. “Miss Wolfe, Mr Cooper, please quiet down, there are people in this room who wish to learn, precious few though they may be” he drawled.

  “My apologies sir, I did not mean to disturb. In fact, while I have your attention anyway may I move closer to the front? I rank myself in that number” I stated calmly. “Nooooooooo!” cried Alice, tching onto me furiously. “Please don’t go!”. I tried to forcefully detach her, but she didn’t react to anything I did to dislodge her.

  “Miss Wolfe, Mr Cooper, state your grievance with one another” he said tiredly. “She’s dismissing my interest in academic matters as pointless sir” I said bluntly, still trying to push her off. He nodded. “Mr Cooper?” he asked. “Miss Cooper you mean” I stated. “Whatever” he rolled his eyes. “She says she doesn’t want to be friends anymore sir” cried Alice. The teacher turned to me, as if expecting me to justify that statement. “I don’t need friends who make fun of my hobbies or interests sir. Is it not natural not to be friends with someone who thinks your interests are stupid?” I asked robotically.

  “No, that’s a pretty stupid reason to end a friendship actually. My best friend Mike is always going on about what crap the fish want this season. And I couldn’t give a damn. And simirly the only tangent he knows about are all the tangents about how the youth don’t appreciate tangents anymore I go off on when he takes me fishing on Sunday so we can both avoid our wives! And then we both go round to Billy’s cabin and drink whiskey and eat fish and I pretend to care anything about either outside the end product. I think all my friends have stupid interests. But they makes them happy so what do I care?” he said with a dismissive grunt.

  “Well what if Mike came into your cssroom and tried to stop your students from learning sir?” I asked. “Well I’d ask him to leave and he would because he respects me and I him.” he replied. I nodded. That made sense I suppose. “Alice, please let go of me so I can go to the front of the css and listen to the teacher’s lecture”.

  “B-b-b-b-but…” she sobbed. Wow. She was not reacting well to rejection. The teacher turned on her. “Miss Cooper, please expin your problem with Miss Wolfe engaging with the css.” he asked, not unkindly. “Because then I’ll be… then I’ll be… ALL ALONE!”.

  I tilted my own head in confusion. Did she not have other friends? Oh. Right. Transgender girl in a backwards podunk town. Yeah. That. Crap. “Hey, don’t act so glum. We can hang out ter. You can come over to my house after school, okay? So don’t cry. Just because I have other stuff I want to do doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. You just need to accept that I have interests outside of you, okay?”

  She looked into my eyes, hers red from crying. Then she closed them and nodded three times and finally stopped crushing me. I picked up my book bag and migrated to the front of the cssroom, with the other sad nerds who cared about mathematics. “Have you never had a friend before?” the teacher asked. “No” I replied, and didn’t eborate. This made him sufficiently uncomfortable to ignore me for the rest of the css.

  Another teacher came in after the mathematics lesson to teach History. Once that was over with she had us read some Shakesphere though she made no attempt to analyse it. Then we broke for lunch in the communal cafeteria. I picked a table in the corner and sat down with Alice and regaled her with the tale of the Stonewall Inn and how sick of persecution, the LGBT community had gone to war with the state and the state had (for a time) backed down. That really seemed to resonate with her and she strongly suggested I tell the same story to the nice dy who taught us history. I strongly doubted she’d receive it so positively, but with some begging from Alice I relented.

  It was a little disconcerting seeing how free she was to express her emotions. I was a little envious. My previous school environment had not encouraged that in any of its students and the less said about my previous home environment the better. And there was no way in hell her emotionality was being encouraged by the school. I’m pretty sure if he wasn’t worried I’d tattle to the state school board over “bullying” then the mathematics teacher would have torn into her for disrupting his css. She must have such a strength of character to push through all that and still scream and cry and pout like nobody’s watching.

  After lunch we had to report to the gym for what was apparently a daily triple P.E. Period. Fuck. My. Life. Its not that I had any problem with exercise in principal. Hell, if I had to give my sperm donor a compliment, when it came time to run, I was more than capable of running. But Physical Education has a tendency toward things like team sports, and in case you haven’t noticed I don’t do well in a team. Something about my off-putting personality makes me a liability in a game where everyone pulling their weight and co-operating is of vital importance to achieve victory.

  Alice hesitated at the doors of the changing rooms, and I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her in without breaking stride. All eyes were on us immediately of course. And I got a terse “Excuse me, this is the girls changing room!” I didn’t make eye contact. I was busy stripping down to my underwear. I wasn’t exactly fond of changing rooms myself and had no intention of dallying there. “Well its a good thing we’re all girls here, isn’t it” I said coldly. “Oh Alice, stop gncing about, you look like a tourist”. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the floor. “Sorry” she squeaked.

  By then I was finished changing and ready to leave. I considered leaving her there. Or perhaps taking her to the boys changing room afterall, though I couldn’t imagine that being very safe for her either, built as she was. “Hurry up, don’t dwadle” I snapped.

  “I… um… don’t have a… girls tracksuit” she said mely. I rolled my eyes and fetched one of my spares from the bottom of my bag. It would be quite the stretch, but thank heavens for spandex. She also seemingly did not own a bra… which I found especially odd but I had one that fit.

  When I was in elementary school I had a nasty habit of forgetting things, which I ultimately solved by just carrying everything I needed at all times. My schoolbag contained 2 entire packets of biros, one bck, on blue, five foolscap copybooks, and ten half foolscap, half of which were ruled for arithmetic, my days lunch, a packet of freeze dried Ramen which I knew from experience I could eat raw in case I forgot to pack a lunch and didn’t feel like trying to steal from the cafeteria, and about half a gallon of water.

  My gymbag meanwhile contained 6 gym tracksuits, 2 changes of clothes in case I got rained on, a sailor moon costume that might have came with the bag (which was not new) 3 brands of tampons, 2 packets of sanitary pads and 5 multipacks of sports bras in various sizes bought on the off chance my experiments into the efficacy of praying to god bore any fruit.

  As I was ruminating on the line between overpreparing and hoarding one of the other girls called out with some irritation that her period had started and she would not be able to participate today. As written in the code of the sisterhood, I offered her a tampon. She seemed taken aback and I had to expin that as a girl raised in civilization, I had to give her even my st one if she needed it and I didn’t, in accordance with the dark conspiracy of women supporting oneanother. Then I spent the next 10 minutes expining the tenets of the sisterhood to the changing room at rge, which bought Alice a chance to change in peace. I was just getting to the part about watching each others drinks and abandoning any party that invites abusers when the st girl finished changing. As one, we left the changing room like we were marching out for war.

  Apparently the gym or track and fields were rearranged for a different sport each day. One day it would be basketball, another baseball, yet another swimming (don’t ask me how they were pnning to dig a whole swimming pool and fill it in afterwards. Was there just always a swimming pool below the gym? What happens if a basketball pyer gets too excited and crashes through the cover?). Today was volleyball. Presumably to build solidarity between students of different ages, all the highschool students of all csses were to be mixed into teams. I was put on a team with Alice, 2 sophomore girls called Rose and Leah and 2 seniors who ironically pyed no part in what came next.

  Leah was huge. Easily 6′ 1″ with broad shoulders and short bushy bck hair. Rose meanwhile was about 5′ 5″ with longish brownish hair tied back in a ponytail to keep it out of her face.

  Rose’s reaction to seeing Alice was instantly hostile. “Well if it isn’t the little freak! Are you wearing a girls jumpsuit? Ew, who’d you steal it from?” she snarled. “I don’t see what the big deal is” I snapped. She turned to me, as if only for the first time realizing I was there. “And who in the name of the flying dutchman are you?” she said acidly. “Vanessa Wolfe, I come from more civilized parts” I replied in equal earnest. Not the most diplomatic introduction of my life and hardly one that would earn me any friends. But in all honesty I’d already made more friends today than I’d pnned and I was in the process of discovering that I didn’t like when people spoke ill of them.

  Rose didn’t utter another sylble, she just raised her hand in a slow dramatic motion, and I found my feet were no longer in contact with the ground. She then spyed out her palm and I went flying backwards into the gymnasium wall and hit my head painfully. My vision blurred and I tried to stand, only to find myself floating again. “What was that you little pig” Rose intoned mockingly. I tried to focus on her but it was no use. The name “Nex Benedict” rose in the back of my mind and I resolved that assuming I survived long enough I was going to the hospital and I wasn’t leaving for at least 48 hours.

  But that required surviving. My vision returned enough that I could make out faces again, but I couldn’t breathe. I brought my hand in front of my neck and felt a brief pressure before an invisible force yanked it to my side. I looked down at Rose who was giving me an evil grin. Off to her side Leah was staring down anyone who might try and help me. I tried to call for help. That didn’t work. Alright, worth a shot. Spots started dancing on the edge of my vision. Yeah, I’m probably dying here. Nice knowing you all. I closed my eyes and focused on a single concept. I tried to calm my breathing before remembering I wasn’t breathing. Moot point then. I reached deep inside for every ounce of my strength and then, I internally screamed my final prayer. “Help me”. Then I bcked out.