He She It

twenty: the boss man

"Morning, Eve."

Eve opened one eye and saw a (very blurry) Lilly, stood over her and dangling a tampon in her face. She lifted a hand to swat it away, pressed her face back into her pillow, and groaned a barely audible 'fuck off.'

And so naturally, Lilly sat on her.

"It's seven o' clock," she said, flicking Eve in the ear. "We have school in an hour, Eve. Une heure. So unless you want to share the bathroom with our dear friend Richard, I suggest you get your arse out of bed. My bed."

"Fine," Eve mumbled, words muffled by the High School Musical pillow Lilly had thrown at her last night after they'd all decided that it was probably not in anybody's best interests for Eve to go back home. She lifted her head from Troy's crotch and gave Lilly a shove. "And it's Adam again, remember?"

Lilly raised her eyebrows and picked herself up off of the floor, her previous smile now gone. "You can't really be serious about that."

"Lil, I can't stay here forever-"

"Of course you can!" Lilly interrupted, and Eve stumbled out of bed, tripping over her jeans as she did so. She picked them up from the floor and started to pull them on as Lilly channelled her irritation into making her bed - her method so violent Eve was surprised poor Troy didn't rip in half. "You get to stay Eve, and I get an excuse to stay away from Richard. Everyone wins!"

"Be realistic, Lil. I've got to live with my parents for another two years," Eve said, searching the floor for her t-shirt - which was, fortunately, one of the most stereotypically masculine pieces of clothing she owned: a horrendous green t-shirt with the words 'The Boss Man' stamped across it in bold. Her Dad, who was a fan both of James Brown and gender policing, had bought it for her for her fifteenth birthday - right around the time that she started showing an interest in Vogue and he started showing an interest in making sure his son didn't turn out to be, in his words: 'a bloody queer.' If she really had to go back home to retrieve her school uniform, then she couldn't think of a better outfit to do it in than this. "If I want to try and make those years as painless as possible, then I've got to make them think I'm their nice, normal son that just went through a bit of a weird phase." She shrugged, as though the idea of taking such a huge step back didn't bother her in the slightest, and then pulled her shirt over her head. It was the first time in a week and a half that she hadn't stuffed a bra with toilet paper first. "I don't love it, but it's better than having them hate me."

"Oh, so you're just going to let them win?" Lilly asked, sweeping her hair up into a bun. "You're just going to give in. That's it."

"I'm not giving in," Eve protested, blinking back tears. "I - you don't understand, Lilly. They hate Eve. They hate me. But Adam? They think he's God's gift to Earth, and if I have to wear this fucking t-shirt and play football to make my parents love me, then that's what I'm going to do."

"But you've come so far."

"And I can come this far again," she said, taking hold of the door handle and glancing over her shoulder at Lilly. "In two years. But until then, I'm Adam. And if you don't like that, then fine, but don't try and tell me what to do with my own life, Lilly. You've fucked it up enough already."

Lilly let the skirt she was holding drop, and her jaw (which, for all its faults, could still manage to unhinge when the situation really called for it) did the same. Eve opened her own mouth like she was about to say something, but then she shook her head and turned back around to march out of the bedroom.

Lilly didn't move. She heard a 'sorry,' (Eve) and then an 'honestly, mate, are you a bird or not?' (Richard, of course). It wasn't until the door slammed that she was jerked back into action, and she marched out of her room and into the bathroom, where Eve was having a valiant attempt at brushing her teeth with her finger.