Oscar's Blazer

Toby's transition visit began with a wrong entrance and a blazer that made him look as though he had borrowed a more senior person's shoulders.

Leila took him because Mum's early work visits could not be rearranged that morning. This collection had been on the timetable from the beginning, agreed rather than absorbed. That made a difference even though the bus was still crowded and Toby still complained about the collar.

“Everyone will know it's second-hand,” he said.

“Only if you introduce yourself as Oscar.”

“The label's still there.”

“Mum's taking it out tonight.”

“Why not yesterday?”

“Because yesterday had other jobs in it.”

She checked his reflection in the bus window. The blazer was too large, but no larger than several others they passed near the school gates. Adults appeared to buy school uniforms for the person a child might become rather than the one currently trying to move his arms inside them.

At the entrance, a teacher with a clipboard checked Toby's name. Leila stood close enough to answer any question before realising she was doing exactly that.

“I'm Toby Grant,” he said before she could speak.

The teacher found him on the list and pointed towards a group beside the hall.

“Your guide will come over in a moment.”

Toby did not move.

“What about lunch?”

“Your group will go together. You'll get a card when you're registered.”

He glanced at Leila. She could see the next questions lining up: where to put his bag, what happened if he got lost, whether someone would tell him when to leave. She wanted to ask all of them at once so he would not have to appear worried.

Instead she said, “I'll be at this gate at three.”

“The same gate?”

“Yes. This actual gate.”

He looked at its blue paint and the sign above it, fixing the place in his head.

“And if you're late?”

“I'll ring the office. You stay with the staff until I'm here.”

He nodded, then went towards the group. A boy beside him had the same overlarge blazer and a haircut so recent that a pale line showed above his ears. They looked at each other with the mutual caution of people who might become friends or might spend the day wishing they had stood elsewhere.

Leila waited until Toby joined them. Then she left before waiting became an announcement that she did not think he could manage.

She had three hours before her next lesson. The public library was close enough to walk to, so she went there with the intention of working on her artist statement.

The exhibition needed a short paragraph beside each student's work. Not a life history, Armitage had said. A way for someone looking at the piece to enter it. Leila wrote about the nine stops, the change from walking to buses, the fronts and backs of buildings. The paragraph was accurate and bloodless.

She deleted it and began again.

For the past weeks, my family has lived in one hotel room on a retail park.

The sentence made her sit back. In a private form, it had been information. On a wall beside a drawing, it would become an invitation to strangers.

She continued anyway. She wrote about learning to do things in front of other people, about using the bathroom to speak privately, about hearing Mum awake at night. Then she wrote something she had never said aloud: Sometimes I want to be away from the people I love, and sometimes I feel frightened the minute I am.

She looked around the library. A man read a newspaper at the next table. A child asked a librarian for a book whose only identifying feature was that it had a horse but was not about horses. Nobody knew what Leila had just put into a document.

She saved it under STATEMENT PRIVATE DRAFT and went to college.

At three, Toby came through the blue gate beside the boy with the new haircut. They were discussing a science demonstration involving a balloon. Toby introduced him as Callum, then forgot Leila was there until Callum's grandmother arrived.

“How was it?” Leila asked as they walked away.

“Fine.”

“What did you do?”

“Stuff.”

“Excellent. Detailed.”

He looked back at the gate, checking whether Callum had gone.

“The food was good. There's a room where people can go at lunch if they don't like the noise. Not a punishment room. Just a room.”

“Would you use it?”

“Maybe. Callum says he might.”

They reached the crossing. Toby pressed the button himself.

“Did anyone ask where you live?” Leila said.

He frowned. “Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“The hotel.”

“Just like that?”

“What else would I say?”

She felt both proud of him and slightly foolish for the amount of energy she had spent avoiding the same answer.

“Did it feel strange?”

“A bit. Callum asked if there was a swimming pool. I said no. Then he told me his grandad has a pond with a fish that bites.”

Leila laughed.

“Does it?”

“He says so.”

On the bus, Toby told her more. The teacher who spoke too quietly. The staircase everybody used despite there being another one. The fact that the changing rooms smelled exactly like the changing rooms at his current school, which he found reassuring for reasons he could not explain.

She listened. At one stop, he moved his bag to let an older woman sit down without being asked. The blazer sleeves covered part of his hands. He was growing into something, though not always at the speed the clothes expected.

Back at the hotel, he asked Mum to remove Oscar's label before anything else.

Mum found scissors and unpicked the stitches carefully. Toby watched until the little white rectangle came free.

“Keep it,” he said.

“Why?”

“In case we meet Oscar.”

Mum put the label in the bowl of spare coins by the kettle. Leila opened her private statement again that evening. She added a sentence about how Toby had answered the question at school.

Then she stopped, her fingers above the keys. That was his moment. She was not yet sure it belonged on her wall.