Evelyn '11' Tanaka-Smith pushed open the door and entered the massive piece of building known as The Refectory. lang College was the only college she knew that had a refectory instead of a common room, not to mention a small first letter in its name.
She looked around, hoping to spot Basia or Anja. She had arranged to meet them here on the recess of their first day, as this was, and she didn't want to be the one floating around the room or sitting alone at a table. Taking another look round, she spotted someone who was sitting alone at a table. She did a quick double-take, not completely sure why.
Then she realised why, and she stopped dead.
'No way,' she mouthed to herself.
She walked up to the lone girl at one of the corner tables. 'Dominique,' she said evenly. Dominique confirmed that it was more than just a superficial resemblance 11 had seen by looking up on hearing her name.
Three expressions ran across Dominique's face in the space of a few seconds. The first was blank curiosity at someone hailing her. The second was recognition. The third represented a feeling that she couldn't quite name, but was a mix of shock and fear, bitterness and sadness.
It had settled down to just surprise by the time she spoke. '11.' The voice was of one trying and failing to show that nothing's wrong.
'My God,' breathed 11. 'You did it, didn't you? I don't believe it...you actually fucking did it...'
Dominique couldn't tell if 11 was surprised, disgusted, both or neither. She knew why she was reacting, though: The two had known each other years ago, right up to the start of high school - but while 11 hadn't been much different then from the way she was now, Dominique had been - as far as anyone could tell - male.
Dominique followed 11 into an alcove-style gap that was part of the outer wall of C Block. 11's sister had apparently claimed that it was a kind of unwritten rule at lang College that if you came to the alcove, you didn't set foot inside if you didn't know the people within - 'D&M Corner', it had been dubbed.
Dominique knew that she and 11 had to talk, but she didn't know that this entailed 11 saying how much she didn't believe what had happened.
'I'm...sorry,' Dominique said slowly, after 11's seventh repetitive statement.
'Sorry? You're sorry?'
'I realised I'd made a mistake when I told you...I thought back then that you were the sort of person I could talk to about it. I didn't know that it was going to...alienate you so much.'
11 left a huge pause before she responded. 'I didn't understand why...I still don't understand why. Especially...this.' She indicated Dominique's current appearance. 'I can't believe you went through with that.'
'Don't get too uptight, it's only cosmetic - it's still the original equipment underneath.'
11 shook her head. 'Does this...what's this...God, I don't know...Until...' Whichever sentence she was trying to begin, they all died in her throat.
'I know - before that time that I actually tried to ask you what you thought, you thought it was all some big joke. That I just referred to it from time to time to make myself interesting. Well...it's true. It goes much deeper than that.'
'I can tell. Does this mean you've told your parents?'
Dominique snorted. 'If I had, do you honestly think I'd be standing here now? They'd have kicked me out of home faster than you can say gender re-assignment. If they'd known what I was, they'd think of me as nothing more as an abomination.'
'Then how...?'
Dominique sat on the ground against the wall. 'I'll tell you, 11. I'll fill you in on everything that happened since I left Wanniassa High.'
'You went to Les Freres, I know that much.'
'Yes, but why did I go to Les Freres? Because I don't quite know how or how much, but my parents suspected. So what did they do? They sent me to an all-boys school, hoping I'd...I don't know...grow out of it? Fat chance.'
'What did happen?'
'Well, it was bad enough being there, stuck in a school where it made no sense that I was a student. But then...well, this other bloke there, right? I'd known him all my life. He knew about it. He knew what I wanted to do. So, having been entrusted with this huge secret of mine, he quite naturally takes it upon himself to tell someone else. Someone I didn't know very well, and quite frankly wouldn't tell in a million years.' Dominique stopped herself. She could hear the emotion in her own voice. Anger? Fear? Sadness? She knew it was the same emotion that she was feeling, but had never been able to put a name to it.
She held her left hand between her knees to hide that it was shaking violently as she tried to talk. 'The next thing I know, the whole fragging school knows about it.' She pulled her dress up past her shin. 'See that?' she said, pointing with an unsteady hand. 'That thing that look likes a ladder in my tights?'
'Nnh.'
'It's a ladder in my leg. While some people at Les Freres were as uncomfortable as you were with the idea, they weren't so ready to just think I was a bit strange. This scar was made in 1995 with a woodworking awl.' She looked back at 11, who saw that tears had started to form in her big brown eyes. 'All Les Freres was for me was three years of utter hell.'
'Three? years?'
'Towards the end of last year my parents moved back to Newcastle. I managed to stay behind. Within a week of their leaving, I left Les Freres...'
'Can't say I blame you,' admitted 11.
'...and for the end of last year I went to Amallawong. Only this time, I had my documentation list me as female. You'd be surprised how easy that part was, especially since a name like Dominique sounds pretty female to start with. There's so many bits of information going wrong and getting changed that the administration people never noticed a thing. I simply let my external appearance match my internal feelings for once.'
'And now you're here.'
'And now I'm here.'
11 shook her head slowly. 'I still can't understand what you're doing. Why would you want to be female? I mean, women have to bleed every month, we've got an increased risk of breast cancer, there's all that pain in childbirth...'
Dominique looked at her squarely, her voice choking slightly less. 'I don't like to be presumptive, 11, but I don't exactly think you've given birth or had breast cancer all that often.' 11 had to concede that one. 'And as for the rest - yes, I know all that. I know what being a woman means. Wouldn't the fact that I'm aware of all this, and I still feel this way show that I'm sure about it?
'I'm actually past caring if you accept it or not, 11. Do you know how I felt inside for almost sixteen years before I started living like this? Even when you knew me? Underneath that fast-mouthed' (11 wouldn't have qualified the Dominique she'd known as 'fast-mouthed', but let it pass) 'exterior, there was a scared little girl. A scared little girl who didn't know what she'd done to deserve this. A scared little girl who was still unprepared for...her life.'
She appeared to change tack. 'Puberty's hard for a young girl, isn't it?'
11 found herself nodding.
'Imagine how hard it was when it was the wrong one.' Dominique wasn't even trying to keep the emotion out of her voice any more. In spite of who she was doing it to, it somehow felt good to talk about this. 'By the time I left Les Freres, that scared little girl was a nervous wreck. An emotional nightmare. And after all that time at Les Freres, and the way I was betrayed last time, I didn't think I'd be able to talk to anyone about it ever again.
'If my parents hadn't left when they did, and I hadn't taken the chance to find myself, I don't think I'd...I don't think I'd have lasted much longer at Les Freres. I don't think I'd have lasted much longer, period.' She let out a shaky breath. She herself wasn't sure what she meant by that last part.
She took her still-shaking hand out from between her knees and instead jammed it in her pocket as she got up. 'You think what you will about me, 11 Tanaka-Smith. I can't stop that. I just wanted to state my case, that's all.' She was definitely trying to stop herself crying as she left D&M Corner.
11 watched her go.
'Her'? Stuff that. He's just strange. Still trying to make himself interesting. But would anyone who just trying to be interesting really have said everything that Dominique Westgarth had just said? No, it couldn't be. 11 didn't know people like that. They were Oprah's territory.
But what about that scar...?
That could be...
Well, what about...
11 was glad that she had stayed in D&M Corner, for now it was she who started to cry.