Jakub curled his lip. “But we’re off track.” Calmer now, a surefooted historian, he asked if I remembered the bumpy lawn beside the cross.

“Not really.” Wasn’t this whole place one bumpy lawn?

“Do you want to know? It’s ghastly.”

I wanted to know.

Jakub explained that the lumps were a group burial ground in an old Austro-Hungarian rampart nicknamed by the prisoners Hujowa Górka, a pun on Dick Hill. The site before us, at the base of the martyrs’ monument, was another burial site, established later, when the Dick filled to the brim with bodies. The new site, a basin below the sculpture, was called Cipowy Dołek, meaning Pussy Hole. He pointed to each of our crotches to press his point. He looked at me, eyes sparkling. “Funny, yeah?”

I set my shoulders back, straining to watch him with the steady gaze of a man accustomed to concentration camp dick jokes. I placed my bike helmet over my lap so he couldn’t further reference my anatomy.

“But you aren’t a girl, are you?” He reached over, diddled a finger of hair I hadn’t cut short enough.

“What?” I said, startled. “You mean, like, a woman?” I skipped on the blobbiness of the word.

He touched the back of my neck. His stroke was firm and clinical, like he didn’t have to bother considering how I’d receive it, his gaze assessing my mullet and my hoodie dragged low over my hips, my snug fashion sweatpants, the mask around my neck still blocking the fine tip of my chin. There was nothing erotic in his painful, dragging strokes. “No,” he said, drawing out the word, like I was an idiot. “Daisy. But you’re a guy, actually. Right?”

I pressed myself more solidly into the grass. I shook my head.

A smug smile spread over his face. “Ah ha. But, I see, you don’t get it yet. But soon.”

“I do get it.” My voice was a whine, like a kid. “So shut up.”

He laughed. “I knew by the way Marek ushers you all over. He never does that with a girl.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Marek has a girlfriend.” I was trembling. Jakub could tell I was trans? How? Though it was all I wanted, it was like he was staring through to my organs and judging their spots.

“Only to keep the boyfriend. He likes a straight boy, and you, my friend, are straight.”

My throat clumped into knots. How awful to be suddenly accused of heterosexuality, even if it was true. My voice creaked: “What gave it away?”

He leaned his head back, his mouth opening in a silent laugh. “Oh, I know a straight when I see a straight.”