Boy2Girl

by Terence Blacker

  I smiled to cover my surprise. ‘I don’t think so. You came to the funeral and you took him away. Now I want him back.’

  ‘Do you know, I think there’s been a terrible misunderstanding,’ said Mrs Burton, giving me the big freeze. ‘I certainly attended my sister’s funeral but I returned alone.’

  ‘Misunderstanding?’ I said. ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘No, I’m not…kidding you, Mr Lopez. I suggest that you direct your enquiries through the correct legal channels.’

  I felt a tight knot of rage forming in the pit of my stomach.

  Ottoleen

  Beside me I feel Crash tense up as if he’s trying to keep his cool. I murmur ‘Crash’ but it’s too late. He brings down the hand that’s holding his teacup hard, and there’s bits of china and tea all over the table, scattering across the carpet.

  ‘He’s my son!’ he shouts.

  Mr and Mrs Burton are looking kind of wide-eyed and freaked now, but they say nothing.

  ‘It’s the money, isn’t it,’ goes Crash. ‘You’re holding out to cut some kind of deal, but listen, maybe you don’t understand what you’re dealing with here. This is family, right? This is family money. That means it’s sacred.’

  Mr Burton is staring down at the broken china and looks like he’s going to do a you-know-what in his pants, but Mrs Burton kind of squares her shoulders.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ she says.

  Crash

  I got to my feet and the Burton guy flinched like I was about to pull a piece on him.

  ‘You want to do this the hard way?’ I said. ‘Then be my guest.’

  I left the room, looked in the kitchen. Then I ran upstairs, two steps at a time.

  There were three closed doors. I pushed away into the first room – a big bedroom, empty. In the second, some kid was sitting in front of a computer. He started when I opened the door.

  ‘Where’s Sam?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’ he said.

  There was music from behind the third closed door. I pushed it open.

  And there was this blonde kid, brushing her hair in front of a mirror. She looked up at me coolly. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m Simone,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  Ottoleen

  Crash has cooled down somewhat by the time he reappears in the sitting room.

  ‘There are two kids upstairs,’ he speaks to me as if the Burtons aren’t there. ‘But no Sam.’

  ‘Two?’ I go.

  ‘Yeah, a British kid and someone called Simone.’

  Mrs Burton actually smiles at this point. ‘Ah, yes, Simone is a friend from Canada,’ she says. ‘She’s over here on an exchange programme.’

  Mr Burton stands up and says, ‘I’m so sorry that you’ve had a wasted journey.’

  Crash tells him that he can get you-know-whated for all he cares and storms out of the house.

  I go, ‘Thank you for the tea,’ and follow.

  This is not what we planned.

  Matthew

  Slam. That was the front door. Slam, slam. Two car doors. Then the revving of an engine, a squeal of tyres. Then silence.

  I made my way to Sam’s room. He was sitting on the bed in his coat and skirt. Ten minutes ago, when we had come upstairs, he had been Sam, the guy. While the adults were talking downstairs, he must have changed.

  ‘So that was your dad.’

  He was staring ahead of him. ‘Yup,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You made up your mind then?’

  He nodded.

  My parents appeared behind me.

  ‘Well done, Sam,’ said my mother, her voice shaky as if she was still in shock. ‘You were very brave.’

  My father sat down on the bed and put an arm around Sam’s shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  Sam shrugged him off, a look of real distaste on his face. ‘Just leave me alone,’ he said.

  Dad stood up and the three of us waited uncertainly in Sam’s small room.

  ‘Bug off, all of you,’ he said in a quiet, weary voice.

  Tyrone

  Matt messaged me the news that night. CRASH VISITED SAM NOW BOY2GIRL FULL-TIME, he wrote.

  Any other time, I would have wanted to know more, but the truth was, that night I had my own problems.

  After school, my mother took me round to Juliana’s house where I met the girl she’s determined I should go out with.

  Let me put this as kindly as I can. She was not exactly my type – skinny, taller than me and with a face like a sour plum. After tea, Mrs Lavery offered to show my mother some new curtains upstairs (yeah, right), leaving me with Juliana.

  It was the longest and most embarrassing five minutes of my life. I didn’t like Juliana. Juliana was not too impressed with me. We had nothing in common. We ran out of conversation after about thirty seconds and, having sat in silence for about a minute, Juliana skipped (I hate skippers) to the piano and started plonking away.

  When eventually the parents returned, they looked at us – her at the piano, me on the sofa – and smiled as if they were witnessing the most romantic thing they had ever seen.

  ‘So,’ said Mum when at last we got out of there. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s what I think. No, no, no.’

  My mother smiled in a sickeningly knowing way. ‘These things take time,’ she said.

  14

  Matthew

  I’ll say this much for Sam. Once he made up his mind, there was no shifting him.

  That Saturday morning, he came down to breakfast in his school uniform, as if being a girl were the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘So when we going shopping?’ he asked my mother.

  ‘Shopping?’

  ‘And I don’t want no low-class tat,’ he said. ‘Simone likes to accessorise, right?’

  Mum frowned. ‘I’ll give you a hundred pounds. That’s quite enough for you boys to get a nice dress, a blouse and some shoes.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty pounds,’ said Sam. ‘I want a bag too. Maybe some make-up.’

  ‘You’re far too young for that,’ said Mum.

  ‘A hundred and fifty pounds, please,’ said Sam.

  Defeated, my mother reached for her handbag. ‘I think I preferred you as a boy,’ she said.

  Zia

  I spent the weekend in my room, writing songs. Hearing Sam sing had released something in me. Suddenly I knew the sound that I wanted from my music. On the surface, it would be bouncy, acoustic, guitar-band stuff, but underneath there would be some weird chords, all minors and diminished sevenths and stuff, just when you were least expecting them.

  In my head, I could hear Sam’s voice, high and pure but with an edge to it, a sort of strange, mysterious sadness. It may sound stupid, but I knew that, with my songs and backing vocals and Sam’s voice, something special would emerge.

  I wrote about being alone, about wanting a boyfriend, about feeling different from other people, about someone who was so into herself that she was hardly able to see straight (take a bow, Elena Griffiths). They weren’t exactly songs to make you glad to feel alive – in fact, most of them were downright doomy – but they were better than anything I had written before.

  By the end of the weekend, I had written five new songs, ‘Inside My Room’, ‘Mr Perfect’, ‘Private Cloud’, ‘Invisible’ and ‘The Ego Has Landed’. I played the guitar and vocals into the tape machine in my room and typed out the lyrics on my dad’s laptop.

  Sam was in for a big surprise on Monday.

  Jake

  You know how it is when someone tells a joke and it goes on just that bit too long? The smile muscles begin to ache, right? You want to say, ‘OK, we got it. Can we move on now?’

  That’s how it as on the Saturday when Tyrone, Matt and me hit the High Street with the official Miss Sam Lopez.

  It had seemed such a good idea, shaking up
the girls by sneaking a spy into their midst. Now it was no longer about Elena and her crew. Sam was getting kitted out for girlhood, and none of us knew how long it would be before he became a boy again.

  Another reason why the joke had suddenly got serious: old Crash-Bang-Wallop was in town. From what Matt said, he was like the Godfather meets the Terminator. Now, if Sam got caught, his whole life would change.

  So that Saturday, the day it all changed, Sam was different. He still played the part of a girl, prancing about, trying on his clothes, giving the shop assistants hell, but now and then there was a look in his eye – a hard, unforgiving glint – that reminded me of the way he was when he first arrived.

  We were at Burger Bill’s, a favourite since Sam had convinced him that he was Little, Miss Tragedy. Shopping bags were around our feet, and, thanks to the cash Sam now had, we were each tucking into Bill’s Burger de Luxe, the most expensive item on the menu.

  ‘So how do I look?’ Sam asked at one point.

  We looked at him. The hair was in a ponytail, he had dangly silver earrings in the shape of his star sign, Scorpio, some coloured false nails. He was wearing a tank top and there was a pale stomach showing above green trousers.

  ‘All right,’ said Matt. ‘But my mum’s not going to like those nails. They’re way too tarty.’

  Sam was looking at his reflection in the window. ‘I had never seen myself as a tank-top girl, but there you go,’ he said. ‘You don’t know if something’s going to suit you until you put it on.’

  I caught Matt’s eye and he gave a slight wince. Sam, the fashion victim – it was all we needed.

  ‘You don’t think you’re getting into this a bit too much?’ I said to Sam, as casually as I could.

  Sam gave me a look which reminded me of our big fight at this very table during the summer holiday: ‘How d’you mean?’ he said.

  I noticed that Tyrone and Matt were giving me don’t-go-there looks, but I decided to ignore them. ‘The clothes, the act, the voice. They’re all very well, but don’t you wish you could be normal?’

  ‘What’s normal?’ said Sam.

  I laughed. ‘Not dressing up as a girl maybe.’

  Sam clenched his fist, but then seemed to relax. He stretched out his fingers and examined his fake nails. ‘It’s different being a girl. You can do things you can’t do as a guy. It’s kinda fun sometimes. You got a problem with that, old boy?’

  I looked at him more closely. The strip lighting had revealed something about Sam that I had failed to notice before.

  ‘Not as big a problem as you have,’ I said. With one finger, I tapped his upper lip. ‘Nice little moustache you’re growing there, old girl.’

  Sam put a hand to his mouth. Muttering, ‘No need to get personal,’ he stood up and wandered over to the cash desk. ‘I’ll pay for them all, Mr Bill,’ he said.

  ‘That doesn’t seem right.’ Burger Bill winked at the three of us as we approached. ‘You boys allowing the little lady to pick up the tab?’

  Sam pulled a roll of notes from his back pocket and peeled off a twenty-pound note.

  ‘We don’t talk about little ladies any more, Mr Bill,’ he said. ‘It’s what we call sexism.’

  Bill seemed about to say something, but then, perhaps remembering that the American girl had problems in her life, he thought better of it and pushed the change back across the counter with a curt, ‘There you go, love.’

  Tyrone

  It was when we were at Burger Bill’s, with Jake just asking to get his face smashed but somehow getting away with it, that a rather brilliant little idea occurred to me.

  As we made our way through the precinct, I mentioned it to Sam.

  To my amazement and joy, he agreed.

  Ottoleen

  That weekend Crash is totally stir-crazy. He keeps saying, ‘If Sam isn’t with the you-know-what Burtons, where the you-know-what is he?’

  We talk about whether the stuck-up English family we visited might have hidden him away somewhere, but then we figure they couldn’t have known we were going to turn up on their doorstep. He puts in some calls to his contacts in America. They tell him that the word is that the kid’s still in London.

  So Crash mulls all this over, gazing out of the window, chewing gum, looking at the grey London scene.

  It’s then that I have my great idea. ‘How about if we call up some schools?’

  ‘Turn the volume up on some of the teachers?’ goes Crash. ‘I guess it could work.’

  ‘What I mean is that maybe the kid’s been shipped off to another family in the area, so we can’t track him down. But he still has to go to school, doesn’t he?’

  Crash is cracking his knuckles. ‘Maybe we could bust into the principal’s office, grab the pupil list and—’

  ‘Which school, Crash?’

  He frowns and thinks about this for a moment. ‘You got a point there, babe,’ he says.

  I open the drawer to the bedside table, take out a local telephone directory and look up the listing for schools in the area.

  I pick up the phone and dial. ‘Is that St Peters?’ I ask in my best, butter-wouldn’t-melt voice. ‘Ah, thank you very much. I’m a parent and I’ve just moved into the area. Your school was recommended to me by one of my son’s friends, Sam Lopez…You don’t have a Sam Lopez? Sorry to trouble you, ma’am.’

  When I hang up, Crash is giving me the look I know so well, the one that’s telling me I don’t know you-know-what about detective work.

  Just this once, I decide to ignore him. I dial the next number.

  Mrs O’Grady

  Being a successful school, Bradbury Hill gets all sorts of enquiries from would-be parents coming through to the school office, but, as it happens, I do recall receiving an enquiry from a lady with an American accent.

  When she mentioned the name of Sam Lopez, I was tempted to tell her that having one troublesome American in the school was quite enough, but, at the end of the day, I am professional enough to know that it’s my boss, Mrs Cartwright, who must make these decisions.

  ‘I’m delighted that Sam has recommended us,’ I said in my coolest voice. ‘But we require all applications for entry to the school to be made in writing.’

  Crash

  Like all women, Ottoleen gets these crazy ideas in her head. I guess that simply by the law of averages one of them had to be OK.

  I had dozed off on the bed, the sound of my wife making these calls, one after another, in the background, when suddenly I was woken by this mad whoop of triumph.

  I opened my eyes. She was standing at the end of the bed with this piece of paper in her hand.

  ‘Now what?’ I said.

  ‘I found it,’ she says, a big smile all over her face. ‘I found out where your boy is.’

  I took the paper and read the name that was written down in her loopy handwriting.

  ‘Bradbury Hill Secondary School.’ I smiled. ‘You know, for a broad, you can be pretty smart sometimes.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Crash,’ she said.

  Mrs Sherman

  Tyrone and I have a very good relationship. Very open, you know? When something is on his mind, he knows he can talk to his old mum about it. And if I’m a bit concerned about, say, the amount of time he spends with his rather uncouth, scruffy, inarticulate, under-achieving two male friends, I can share my thoughts with him in a caring, motherly way.

  ‘And they speak very highly of you too, Mum,’ he’ll say (he’s very quick, my son – I think he could be a politician one day).

  So when, over breakfast on that first Sunday after the beginning of term, Tyrone mentioned that he had a friend coming round for tea, I was able to joke, ‘One of your Neanderthal “mates”, I suppose.’

  Tyrone bit into his toast. ‘Not that Neanderthal, as it happens,’ he said, chewing.

  ‘Sitting in front of your laptop, making occasional grunting noises at one another. Honestly, you boys.’

  ‘She’s not a boy, actually,’ said Tyron
e, cool as you like. ‘And she doesn’t grunt.’

  ‘She?’ I remember that my teacup was halfway to my mouth when this momentous news struck home. ‘Did you say “she”?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘It’s not Juliana, is it?’ I asked hopefully. Tyrone made a vulgar puking gesture. ‘So who is it?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘Are you telling me you’ve got a girlfriend, Tyrone?’

  He seemed to think about this for a moment. ‘Let’s say we’re just good friends at the moment. I don’t want to crowd her – you know how it is.’

  ‘I do know, of course I do. Maybe I should get crumpets for tea. Chestnuts! We could roast chestnuts on the fire and—’

  ‘Mum.’ Tyrone gave me the weary look which he does so well.

  ‘You don’t want me around, do you? You’re ashamed of your own mother.’

  ‘No. I’d like you to meet her. Just cool it with the old happy-family-round-the-fire thing. She’s a bit shy.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘That’s just fine.’

  Tyrone

  So that was my idea. We had helped Sam. Now it was time for Sam to help me.

  It was going to be a piece of cake.

  Mrs Sherman

  What do you wear for a visit from your son’s first girl-friend? I know parents are expected to know this kind of thing by instinct, but I have always found it rather difficult. After several false starts, I opted for a relaxed but formal trouser suit, but wore some purple designer trainers to show that I am an easy-going, young-at-heart sort of mum.

  As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. When she appeared, Sam, as I learned her name to be, was a charming little thing – not at all like some of the bossy, loud-mouthed girls one sees around town.