Be a girl

James was all too unhappy that he needed to, once again, dress as a girl for school the next day. It was something that Dad and I knew he’d have to get used to eventually. Not to say he had to enjoy it, but that screaming and crying about it wouldn’t change anything.

Yeah. It was bad.

I waved James goodbye as I left on my walk to school, but he didn’t really respond to me. I didn’t take it personally, knowing full well his terrible mood wasn’t directed at me. If he was mad at anyone, it was mum. And possibly even dad, for not doing anything about her behaviour.

Dad didn’t mention that he’d quit his job to James. To be fair, James didn’t really think much of dad being home early yesterday; he probably just thought it was nice that he could spend more time with him.

It was a little cooler today, but it was still quite a comfortable temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. A gentle breeze wafted through the suburbs as I walked. It was comforting. Out here, I could forget about my worries, focusing purely on the soft sound of the wind blowing through the trees, and the occasional car driving past.

My eyes wandered around, taking in the sights of all the different houses, flora, and occasional fauna. I looked skyward to see the waning gibbous moon to the west smiling down at me, and I smiled back. Day moons were always a special sight. So beautiful.

I arrived just before the bell signalling the beginning of the school day rang. Perfect timing. Jaxon decided to sit next to me in homeroom. It was a weird feeling, having someone actively choosing to sit next to me, and not for any sort of nefarious reasons either. My initial game plan at this school was to stick to the shadows, just out of view, so that people left me alone. I’d never considered that someone might actually want to be friends with me. I wasn’t against the idea.

We parted at the end of homeroom, each making our way to our respective classes. My first class for the day was physics, and I was somewhat excited to head my way over there. The teacher had gone over the syllabus yesterday, and it seemed promising… Until I learnt that none of the topics we would cover contained any calculus.

It wasn’t right. Calculus was the lifeblood of physics. You couldn’t have the latter without the former! It simply wasn’t possible. This problem could have easily been fixed if the people setting the curricula simply required that all students taking physics also take maths methods, which was the maths course that taught calculus. But no, they had to make physics easier so that more students could take the course. Disgraceful.

Still, it wasn’t the end of the world. I’d still be learning new things about how the world worked, and that was really what mattered to me. I’d just have to wait until university before I could really get into the meat of physics. Ah well.

This lesson wasn’t anything too special. Second physics lesson of the year, I wasn’t expecting much from it. It was always slow going at the beginning of the school year. I still hadn’t really talked to anyone in any of my classes, besides Jaxon, and physics was no exception. I just huddled myself at the back of the room, away from everyone else, and paid attention only to the teacher.

Jaxon met me at our lockers, insisting that I come meet his friends for real this time. He assured me that it would just be a few of his close friends, rather than the overwhelmingly large group he presented me to yesterday, and that we’d meet up in a more secluded and quiet area away from most others. I tentatively followed after him, hoping that I could trust him.

I was relieved to find that he told me the truth. He led me to an area off to the side of the oval, with trees for cover and located a small distance from the buildings. It was definitely much quieter here than where he’d had me meet his friends yesterday.

There were already two people waiting for us when we arrived. They gave us a wave, which I returned timidly, and which Jaxon returned with more enthusiasm than a dog greeting its owner after a day of work. He rushed up to both of them with a big smile on his face, beckoning me over excitedly. As I reached them, Jaxon pointed out another person who was approaching us, and beckoned them over as well.

“Alright so, proper introductions this time,” Jaxon said, trying to contain his excitement a tad. “Everyone, this is Ben. They’re new here.”

I gave another timid wave, feeling smaller than usual.

Jaxon started his introductions with a girl who looked to be a couple inches taller than me. “This is Rachel,” Jaxon said, gesturing to her.

The girl placed her hands on her hips in an assertive pose. “Hey,” she said with a confident and toothy grin. She looked rather athletic, and kept her straight brown hair cropped relatively short. About the same length as my hair actually but styled much more femininely. Whereas my haircut was messy and unkempt, owing to lack of interest in maintaining it, hers actually looked good.

He then moved on to a girl who was just a little shorter than me. “This is Isabel, or Izzy for short,” he said, gesturing enthusiastically in her direction. Isabel’s curly red hair was tied back in a high ponytail. Large glasses framed her extremely pale, freckled covered face quite nicely. She gave me a wave and a cute smile which revealed a set of teeth covered in blue braces. I was somewhat relieved that I wasn’t the shortest one in this little group. “Izzy is our resident geology expert,” Jaxon continued, “I think you’ll like her; she rocks.”

“Pfft, hell yeah she does!” Rachel exclaimed cheerily, causing Isabel to go a bright shade of pink.

“You rock more than me,” Isabel mumbled timidly.

“Nah, I don’t rock, I slap!”

“Aye!” Jaxon exclaimed, holding his hand up. Rachel immediately understood his cue, and high fived his hand so hard the resulting crack nearly hurt my ear drums. Jaxon shook his hand out to help relieve the pain caused by the hearty slap.

All that did was leave me in severe confusion, wondering what the two of them were on about. By the looks of things, some inside joke that I wasn’t privy to, which only left me feeling rather awkward. Whatever it was, it seemed rude to ask. I didn’t want to intrude.

Having recovered from his minor injury, Jaxon finished off the introductions with an Asian boy sporting short straight black hair. He was quite a bit taller than me, though he was still about a foot shorter than Jaxon. But that really said more about Jaxon’s height than anything. He greeted me with that small upwards nod that I’d seen some guys do. He didn’t wave, keeping both his hands firmly in the pockets of his shorts.

“And lastly, this is Holden,” Jaxon said with a flourish.

The boy rolled his eyes at Jaxon, clearly unamused. “No one calls me that. My name is Oscar.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Jaxon nodded, “Holden, cause you’re an Oz car.” He chuckled at his silly pun. Oscar merely sighed, while Rachel snorted.

“If you’re gonna be hanging around us from now on, Ben, you better get used to his guy,” Oscar commented, pointing at the giant beside him with his thumb.

“Too right!” Rachel beamed, patting Jaxon on the back, “We love the big man and his silly puns.”

“My puns are refined and cultured, I’ll have you know,” Jaxon pouted. He didn’t keep it up for long before he and Rachel quickly divulged into a fit of giggles.

The group began to mingle amongst themselves, leaving me standing at the edge, not really sure of what to do. These people knew each other well, and I was merely a stranger in their presence. An outsider who was terrible at speaking to people with whom I was unfamiliar.

The smaller girl, Isabel, noticed my apprehension, and came over to me. “Hi Ben, it’s nice to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand to shake, to which I obliged. She looked over at the other three, chatting away with each other. “I know how you feel, you know. I was new here last year, when Jaxon practically adopted me the moment he laid eyes on me. It was very scary at first, given his size, but he somehow made me feel safe around him despite that. He can be a bit much sometimes, but he’s very sweet and kind.”

I didn’t respond to what the girl said, instead just staring at the three others chatting away with each other. Isabel paused for a while, also listening to the louder members of the group having fun together. “I don’t blame you for getting all overwhelmed like that yesterday,” she said out of nowhere. I turned my gaze towards her, though she was still looking over at the others. Once again, I didn’t respond, and we both stood there for a moment, exchanging no words.

Eventually, she spoke up again, “And here I thought I didn’t speak much,” she giggled.

I felt my face go flush with embarrassment. “Sorry,” I managed to get out.

“No, no! It’s fine,” she reassured me, waving her hands about frantically, “I was just saying.” She sighed and took another pause. “I’m glad that you aren’t a giant like the others. My neck was starting to hurt with how much I had to look up.”

I chuckled at her remark. I couldn’t help but agree. “Yeah, I’m glad I’m not the shortest here. I used to go to an all boys’ school, so everyone was taller than me.”

“Oof, I can only imagine.”

I shrugged, “It doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t go to that hell hole anymore.”

“Hmm, yeah,” Isabel said pensively, “Jaxon mentioned you being bullied at your last school. That really sucks. But, if you stick with us, you won’t have to worry about that.” She smiled at me sweetly, and it made me feel somewhat better. I hoped she was right. “He also mentioned your skin condition but left out its name. I was just kinda wondering what it’s called.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied tersely, and perhaps too quickly that it may have come off as rude. But I really, really didn’t want to talk about my mystery skin condition that turned boys into girls. Sorry.

“Oh, ok. I guess this kind of thing can be a bit embarrassing.”

“Yeah.”

An awkward silence broke out between us. We both listened to the others chatting away about what they all did over the summer holidays. Not anything I could contribute to. Even if I did do something over the summer holidays that I felt comfortable sharing, they likely wouldn’t have cared anyway. If it wasn’t dull and boring, it was terrible and awful. That was my life.

“So, my cousin got these magnet toys for Christmas, right?” Rachel said as I tuned into the conversation that the other three in the group were having. “And he asked me if I knew how they worked. Which like, of course I don’t. Does anyone? They’re basically magic right?”

“Well, magnetic fields are a result of changing electric fields,” I interjected. Everyone’s attention turned to me, but I tuned it out. I had physics to explain. “If you have a moving electric charge, such as when there’s an electric current moving through a wire, then there will be a magnetic field orthogonal to the electric field. What that means is, if you have a current moving down a straight wire, then the magnetic field is in a circle around the wire.

“Conversely, if the electric current moves in a circle, such as in a coil of wire, then the magnetic field goes in a straight line through the middle of the coil. Of course, once you reach the end of the coil, the magnetic field curls around and then goes back in the other end.

“Now, in ferromagnetic metals such as iron – after which ferromagnetism is named – there are a bunch of free electrons all looping around in circles constantly. But most of the time, they’re all whizzing about in random directions, so all the tiny magnetic fields cancel out and you don’t get a magnet. That’s why, for example, a nail isn’t a magnet. However, if you align all the electron currents in the metal so they all spin in the same direction, then the magnetic fields all add together to create a larger magnetic field. Hence, a magnet.

“And it’s of course the magnetic fields that cause the attractive or repulsive forces. Much like electric fields, field lines that point in the same direction produce an attractive force, and field lines which point in opposite directions produce a repulsive force. For electric fields, the field lines point outwards, away from positively charged particles, and inwards, towards negatively charged particles. Which is why opposites attract. The field lines of the two charges point in the same direction. That also means that for two positively charged or two negatively charged particles, the field lines point away from each other, and so they repel.

“It's the same for magnetic fields. The north pole has magnetic field lines pointing away from the magnet, and the south pole points towards the magnet. So, the north pole of one magnet, and the south pole of another have field lines pointing in the same direction, hence they attract. And of course, north to north and south to south repels.”

Once I’d finished my short explanation, I suddenly became aware of the fact that everyone was staring at me intently. A pang of anxiety shot through me as I realised that I’d just interrupted their conversation to go on a tirade that no one cared about. Why did I even speak? Now they all thought I was a weirdo nerd and they wouldn’t want to be friends with me. I should just leave right now.

“Wait, you actually know how magnets work?” Rachel inquired curiously.

“Um, yeah?”

“Damn, that’s pretty cool.”

Wait what? Someone other than my dad appreciated my ramblings about physics? I never thought such a thing possible. A warmth spread throughout my body, and I smiled. Maybe hanging out with these people could be worthwhile. In fact, joining them at lunchtime suddenly sounded appealing. A foreign concept.

Rachel snorted. “Hey Izzy, looks like Jax found you another science nerd to chat to.”

Isabel’s face went a bright pink colour. “Geology is not quite the same as physics,” she retorted.

“What’s the difference?” her friend shrugged, “Magnets are made of rocks, right? Basically the same thing.”

Isabel looked like she wanted to disagree with her friend’s remark, but was unable to come up with a suitable retort. I could hardly blame her, given that her friend had provided a good example of an overlap of physics and geology.

“Well, one could argue that all science is merely various applications of physics,” I remarked.

“See, look? He gets it,” Rachel said.

Eventually, the bell rang, and we all started heading towards our next classes for the day.

“What have you got now?” Isabel asked, turning in my direction.

“Chemistry.”

“Oh! I think we might be in the same class!” she said excitedly. “We should totally sit next to each other!”

“Sure.” She seemed nice enough, and I didn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t sit beside each other during class. But I hoped that she wouldn’t push the topic of my ‘skin condition’. If we were going to be spending more time together, I didn’t need people pressing me on something that I simply did not want to talk about.

After grabbing my supplies from my locker, giving a brief farewell to Jaxon as I left, I found out that Isabel and I did indeed share a chemistry class. And here I thought I’d be spending all my classes alone, off in the corner, away from everyone else.

Isabel thankfully didn’t bring up the matter of my ‘skin condition’ during chem, she simply greeted me as she entered and sat down next to me. We didn’t really chat much during class, instead actually focusing on the teacher for most of the lesson, which was fine by me.

When lunch rolled around, I met up with Jaxon at our lockers, and we made our way over to the same spot as recess. Jaxon, Oscar, and Rachel all dominated the conversation, with Isabel and me remaining mostly quiet.

Listening into the conversation, I learnt a few little tidbits about the others. Apparently, Rachel was a bass guitarist who was planning on joining the school’s jazz band. She, like Jaxon, was also rather sporty. Different sports than Jaxon, however. She planned on joining the school’s softball team, whereas Jaxon was going to join the cricket team. Not that they would ever play on the same team even if they played the same sports though.

Oscar on the other hand was very not sporty. He preferred spending his time indoors, at his PC, very much like me. He and Jaxon tended to play games together, which made sense. Turns out Oscar was also a nerd, though his interests were more focused on science fiction and fantasy media (and mostly video games at that), rather than physics like me.

Finally, Isabel was also planning on joining the school’s jazz band alongside Rachel, though she played the clarinet, rather than the bass guitar. She was also really into geology, which I strongly suspected after the conversation between her and Rachel at recess. Whether or not her passion for geology matched my passion for physics was unclear. She was planning to study it at university next year, which came as no surprise.

It was by this point in the conversation that Oscar addressed me directly. “Oi Ben, Jax mentioned that you play PC games. Is that right?” he asked.

I nodded, saying, “Yeah,” so softly I wondered if he could even hear me.

“Nice. You play Guild Wars 2?”

I shook my head. I’d heard of it before, but I’d never checked it out.

“Dude, you should totally come play with us! It’s free.”

“Oh, um, ok. I’ll check it out tonight.”

“Good shit. You better come along too Jax. Teach this noob how to play.”

The tall boy grinned at me. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”