Chapter 2

“What, Larimer?”

“Miss,” he said, licking his lips. “Er. What if I don’t want to…present myself…to my partner?”

The class sniggered. Anton, figuring it was safe, joined in.

“Larimer,” the teacher said dryly, “I have it on remarkably good authority that you are quite happy to present yourself to whosoever is amenable to your doing so at any given moment. Now is not the time to get shy about it.” The sniggering got louder. “In any case, I am not so stupid as to partner you with Walsh or Kalinowski. You will pair up with the person sat next to you—with the exception of you, Anderson and Crabtree. Crabtree, swap seats with Walsh.”

There was a general rummaging and shuffling, and the teacher stalked out from around her desk to lean against it, arms folded and staring at the class. She wasn’t quite scowling, but she definitely wasn’t smiling.

“Shall we start with the obvious? What’s an identity? Can someone give me an example of an identity?”

“Polack!” Walsh shouted. Kalinowski flipped him off without even turning round.

“Walsh, if you don’t stop using that disgusting term, I will write to your parents again.”

Walsh pulled a face that meant he didn’t much care.

“Anyone want to offer an identity that isn’t an ethnic slur?”

“Poles aren’t an ethnicity,” Larimer protested.

“Polish,” Emma said, rolling her eyes. “Someone can identify as Polish.”

“Thank you, Brown. Anyone else?”

“British.”

“Scottish.”

“Black.”

“Gay.”

“You’re gay, Larimer.”

“Bugger off, y’fa—”

The teacher cleared her throat loudly. The offending boy shut up quickly. “Yes,” she said tartly, “many of those are good examples of identifiers. Any more? Williams?”

Anton flushed. “Er,” he said. There was an obvious one. His one. But…he fumbled it, knowing to sound uncertain pushed it away from yourself, made it not yours. “Trans…gender?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s a good one—though it’s important to remember transgender people can identify as just male or female, not just transgender.”

“What, like, both at once?”

“Malefemale,” Larimer said.

“That’s called bigender, idiot,” Emma said scathingly.

“What, like bisexual?” Kalinowski asked.

“Yes.”

“That would be amazing,” Walsh chipped in. “That’d be like both sets—you could have a penis and a va—”

“Gender, you morons, not sex,” Emma said, and Larimer and Walsh both started sniggering. “Oh, real mature.”

“What do you expect, Brown,” the teacher said in a tired tone, and rapped her knuckles on the desk. “I want no more crass jokes. This is a sensitive subject. Don’t for one minute believe you’re all the same. There’s thirty-six of you in this class, and you will all have very different experiences—even those of you who share some identity labels.”

“I don’t want to share no labels with Kalinowski, God knows where he puts ‘em,” Walsh called out. Kalinowski, once again, casually flipped him off.

“Hopefully,” the teacher said loudly, “some of you might grow up over the course of this project. Now. In your pairs, I want you to list as many labels as you can think of, and then divide them into groups, such as nationality or sexuality. I will come around and check your progress—andno, Walsh, you may not write any foul terms.”

Anton chewed on his lip as Emma tore a page out of her notebook and started making a spider diagram. How awkward could this get? Tell Emma his labels, when he’d switched schools to hide those labels? Not likely. And have her present his labels in front of this lot? Whose shitty idea was this?

“This is a shitty idea,” Emma said quietly, and Anton jumped. “This lot are just going to find it all so funny. I really hope there’s nobody in our year who’s closeted or has a hidden disability or anything, these guys can come off so foul…”

“Are they always like this?”

“Yeah,” Emma said. “They’re harmless really, they don’t mean it, but not everyone gets that, you know?”

“I guess,” Anton said awkwardly.

“Right, labels!”

“Um, well, you seem to know all the…sex ones,” he hedged, feigning ignorance, and Emma rolled her eyes.

“Gender,” she corrected. “Sex is between your legs, gender’s in your head.” Anton itched with the urge to tell her he knew that very well, thanks. “I went through a phase,” she admitted, starting to scribble sexualities on her spider diagram. “Not a gender phase, a sexuality phase.”

“A phase?”

“Uh-huh. Okay, phase is the wrong word, but for a while I was so into girls. Like, I thought I was a lesbian for a bit. Maybe I’m more bisexual though, I came back around to guys.”

“And…you’re okay just…saying that?”

“Everyone knows,” she said dismissively.