Chosen - Chapter 1 (Excerpt)
Near the wall, a display board had been set up beside the leaflets.
RESTORATION SUCCESS STORIES.
I drifted toward it because standing alone felt worse.
There were numerous laminated profiles arranged in a grid. Each showed a before-and-after pair. I'd seen a few of these before, I think. The before photographs were always all of different, people but somehow the same. Men in suits. Men at lecterns. Men with folded arms. Men caught mid-speech. Men selected for angles that made them look defensive, pale, unsightly.
The after photographs were brighter, better framed.
A former barrister stood in a grey uniform dress behind a reception desk, hands folded, smile polished, white teeth compliantly bared . A former headteacher arranged flowers in the foyer of a school I recognised. A former doctor sat in what had once been his own waiting room, wearing a pale pink cardigan with a flared skirt and a name badge with a new name printed in rounded letters. His hair was up in a ponytail. He looked shy.
Beneath each photograph was a caption.
FORMER ROLE: SENIOR LITIGATION PARTNER.
CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: FRONT-OF-HOUSE SUPPORT.
REGISTERED SPONSOR: HUSBAND AND CIVIC GUARDIAN, PETER THOMPSON.
I read three of them before I realised my mouth had gone dry.
A man beside me said, "They always choose the worst before pictures."
He was younger than most of the volunteers, maybe late forties, maybe early fifties. Tall. Salt-and-pepper hair. Strong features. Black turtleneck under a dark jacket. Not official in the same way as the others. No sash. No clipboard. Just a laminated badge clipped neatly to his chest.
He smiled as if we had both been sharing a private joke.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"I did slightly. I can startle people sometimes. Light footsteps."
His smile deepened. He had a calmness that made the room seem louder around him. Not stiff. Not cold. Just certain of himself in a way that did not need to press.
"Archie," he said, glancing at my badge.
I pressed the peeling corner again. "Yes."
"That was meant to be a joke," he said. "Everyone's first time. Usually."
I laughed because he had given me somewhere safe to put the laugh, a little space to reach generously toward him to help accomodate for his awkwardness. He nodded toward the display board. "Ghastly, aren't they?"
"The captions. The fonts. The whole little museum of social virtue." He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. "I keep telling them if they want young men to take their little masculinity project more seriously, they might begin with photographs that don’t look so… manufactured.”
I smiled properly then. I could tell that he ‘got’ it.
It was such a relief, suddenly, to stand beside an adult man who seemed to find the day faintly ridiculous. Not frightening. Not reverent. Not delighted. Ridiculous.
"I thought that," I said.
"Of course you did. Anyone with eyes would. There's no emotion here. Nobody could relate to this."
Behind us, the hall burst into applause. Jamie was on stage again, now holding a prop handbag and waving like royalty. Amy was laughing with her friends, one hand over her mouth.
The man beside me watched for a moment, amused.
"A useful substitute, at your age."
I glanced at him again. He wasn't as awkward as I thought. Actually, he was quite quick. There was something about the way he said at your age. Not dismissively. Almost fondly. As if nineteen were a country he had once visited with a former lover, and remembered with a certain distant, tolerant romance.
"I'm going to university in three weeks," I said, though I didn't know why. “After this, I mean.”
"A dangerous combination."
"Apparently not dangerous enough to get me out of this."
He laughed softly. I liked that - it made me feel like this clear example of a certified adult, and definitively a man, was a peer of mine.
"Nobody gets out of this," he said. "That is rather the point, I’m afraid.”
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