Chapter 56

It was one of the annoying things that he argued with Mum and Ellen over. He didn’t like having to ration water at school so he didn’t have to piss, but…there was just something about toilets. The boys’ room was for boys. If he went in there, and he was found out—hell, if he went in there, he would be found out. They’d know, somehow. Anton wasn’t meant to be in there.

Ellen called it a societal hang-up and said it was no different from ticking ‘male’ on surveys, or buying clothes from the men’s section of shops. Mum said nobody would come into the stalls and see him anyway, and whose business was it of theirs? Aunt Kerry always pointed out that they didn’t have a special bathroom for boys in the house so why couldn’t he use whichever one he liked in public?

But they weren’t the ones doing it. It just felt weird, he hated it, and he avoided it whenever possible. It made his skin crawl, and he felt…vulnerable. Exposed. And he hated it.