Chapter 6

“And what does Ellen say?”

“That social transition means living a normal social life in my preferred gender role,” Anton recited. “But it’s hard.”

“Honey, you have already come a long way. Too far for ‘hard’ to be an excuse,” Mum said. She dried off her hands, then came around the worktop to hug him. She was slight, like he was, and if he’d been happy as a girl, Anton figured he’d have been happy to end up looking like Mum. She was pretty, with the same fair hair as him. He had a narrower face, thankfully, but the same brown eyes, too.

Most importantly—and oddly, he supposed, for someone like him—he didn’t look too much like Dad.

The divorce had been…bad. Anton still felt a bit guilty, deep down, no matter how many times Mum and Ellen and Aunt Kerry had told him it wasn’t his fault. But at the end of the day, if he’d been…cisgender (Ellen hated him saying ‘normal’) then he’d have just been Natasha, and Mum and Dad would never have started arguing.