Back in December, Edwin wouldn't have thought he'd ever be an activist like Vincent. Maybe he's not a real activist yet, and certainly not like Vincent, but he'd offered his help in February, when they'd been together for a while, and mentioned Mona's request to put him on the library program. It's taken a few months for Vincent to get back to him because they have their regular volunteers and they can't suddenly open up a new slot. But today is a Saturday morning during Easter break, and Mona is going to show Edwin and Caroline the ropes. Xe's very excited and has been texting Edwin pictures or titles of books, asking if he knows them. Unfortunately, Edwin's knowledge of books for children and teens is about two decades out of date, so he only knows the classics. It doesn't stop Mona when he tells xem that.

Somehow, in the past few months, they've stayed in touch and become friends. Xe has a similar sense of humour and xe likes some of the same books and movies and sometimes, xe reminds Edwin of Ellen, in xir interests and personality. As with Vincent, he's gotten used to xir looks (and pronouns), which are a confusing blend of masculine and feminine, and even though xe's more like Vincent than like Edwin and xe knew Vincent first, xe's Edwin's friend, not Vincent's. Caroline has joked that Edwin's been adopted by all the gender outlaws as an honorary member.

It took a bit more convincing for Caroline to join them today, since she doesn't like children as much as Edwin. But since Edwin got together with Vincent, it's been more of a puzzle to fit all his friends into his schedule — between work and family dinners and dates and rehearsals and trainings — so they haven't seen each other as often and that was enough of a draw.

They all arrive separately at the library, before it opens to the public, and Mona lets them inside with a badge, though there's employees preparing for the day. Caroline and Mona haven't met before, but within minutes they are chatting.

"So what are we supposed to do today?" Caroline inquires. "Edwin couldn't tell me anything except that it was activism and with children."

"Only part of it is with children. We have story times for children and teens later in the day, but we do more administrative stuff first." Mona shows them into a small office and takes out xir laptop from xir bag, showing them the login to xir library account. They go through the mailbox together, both some old correspondence and the new e-mails. It's mostly communications with different schools, about collaborations and logistics. The schools have the best chances of reaching the children and the parents, Mona explains.

"I know it's boring, but it needs to be done, " xe offers apologetically. "Next order of business is slightly more exciting." Xe pulls a cardboard box towards them and lifts it onto the desk. "Donations. The employees don't have time to process them, but we're volunteers, so we do."

The cardboard box is full of books that people donated to the library. Some are falling apart and Mona discards those outright. "There is no space for everything and people don't want to pull a book off the shelf if it has no spine." Xe holds up a book where the spine is indeed only precariously attached on one side and the pages have a brown stain. Some books, the library already owns and those are similarly discarded, except if they're highly popular, which they can check in the library system. Less than half the box is left after that, and there's one last step.

"The library has a policy about which books they want and don't want. So you need to check if these books match the criteria. You'll need to do the same for the other thing we do, which is acquisition suggestions."

"Like books with gay characters," Edwin says.

"Any kind of diversity or representation, really. Books or movies or games or music where people on the margins are put in the centre. Can be non-fiction, too."

"So it can be for adults, too. Not just children."

"Sure. We only focus on children and teens because when you're young, you're even more likely to feel wrong or abnormal or alone if you never see a book about someone like you having a cool adventure."

"I wish there were more queer characters having cool adventures when I was a child," Caroline complains. "Instead of thinking I liked Éowyn because she was a woman with a sword and I wanted to be a woman with a sword, too. Turns out it was more than that."

Mona laughs, a strand of xir black hair falling in xir face. "The quintessential bi childhood. Just like how I wanted to be both Galadriel and Legolas in a totally cisgender way, when the movies came out. Nobody can tell me now the Elves are not a very genderqueer people by nature."

"I don't think Tolkien intended them that way," Edwin says.

"Probably not," Mona admits. "But who cares? If they're not going to give us actual representation, we'll find it in the unspoken gaps. There's enough of us who play the part of a cis and straight person in real life, so that's not so different."

"I never even thought to want gay characters," Edwin admits. Even since he came out, he never looked for it. It seemed ... Well, it seemed like something for people who needed to feel special. Books for the sake of 'diversity' rather than a good story. Would there even be fantasy with gay characters? For some reason, if he thinks about gay main characters, he can only picture very serious books that drag on, about how terrible life is when you're gay. They would naturally end in a tragic death. There was no appeal in that.

Vincent told him about gay Disney villains once, but there was no appeal in that either. Those villains aren't like him at all, flamboyant and breaking the rules. Even if it's necessary to push boundaries, as Vincent and Edwin's friends have impressed upon him, he's never going to be the one for big gestures. He's never going to be the one to pick the fight, to draw forth the abuse and bigotry that people carry and unmask them. Maybe that makes him a coward, but at least he'll be a coward who has carved out a space of happiness for himself.

"That's precisely what they want," Mona says, pulling him back to the conversations. "They want to keep you small, to hammer down in your subconscious that you don't deserve to be seen in full, that you can never be the main character, never live a long and happy life, that you can never exist beyond your suffering. But rep is not some sort of favour to us to appease our delicate sensibilities; it's just showing the natural diversity of humanity."

"But doesn't that happen naturally, if you just pick books that are good? Nowadays, I mean." They have gay writers, like ... Tom Lanoye? Edwin's pretty sure Lanoye wrote a book about growing up gay. There must be others like him who are good, who get published.

Mona shakes xir head. "I wish. But how many books with queer characters have you read, without specifically looking for it?"

"Maybe one," Caroline replies in Edwin's stead. Which is more than Edwin.

"And we can't be the only ones who'd like to see ourselves in a good fantasy novel." Mona taps the book xe's holding. "There must be other readers, writers."

"Are you saying that all the publishers are homophobes?" Edwin asks.

"Not like that. But they think being neutral is enough, that they are truly neutral."

"But true equality is not about treating everyone the same," Edwin says, thinking back to that employee that harassed Vincent at the brewery. "You think you're neutral, but you're not questioning your assumptions."

"Exactly! It's about systemic biases and structural inequalities. Sometimes targeted action is important because a specific group might not be served by things that work fine for other people."

"Because our lives are different than those of straight people."

"Yeah. That's the whole reason we do this program. We target disadvantaged children because reading lots is the best guarantee for literacy and better life outcomes. And we give them books that are about them, so they know they're wanted and loved just as they are."

"You know a lot about this," Caroline remarks. "You're very passionate."

Mona laughs. "Comes with the territory, I think. I was a social worker in my twenties, and then I wrote my thesis on literacy and became a teacher."

"Damn. And now you're half a librarian, too."

Mona chuckles. "I am, if we actually get this done before story hour. Chop chop."

***

They focus on processing donations for an hour. The library opens to the public during that time and they can hear the murmur of people walking, talking, children running around. The donations take much more time than Edwin expected, even if entering them in the catalogue is only a few clicks. They don't have time to select new books before story hour. Edwin is kind of glad for the reprieve because he wouldn't have known where to start. Now that he understands the goal and the importance, he wants to explore on his own first — what the library owns, what exists out there, what he personally might like. He could ask Mona for some recommendations, or maybe Caroline too. This is one area where Vincent won't be any help, since he only reads comics and graphic novels. He leafed through one of Edwin's childhood favourites once — Tonke Dragt's The Letter for the King — and joked that must be how Edwin had gotten his arm muscles.

Ten minutes before story hour, they leave their small office, each with a book Mona had selected. In the hall, they pass a Middle-Eastern man with a cup of coffee. He greets Mona and xe greets back. "Hey Ahmed, these are the new recruits. Ahmed is going to occupy the parents with Dutch conversation class while we entertain the children."

"You say occupy as if I don't have the easier job," Ahmed says, with a strong Antwerpian accent. "I think it's the other way around and you are keeping the children busy."

In the children's section is a large open area with pillows and wooden benches, where they wait. There will be three groups: first the toddlers and lower primary, then upper primary, and lastly the teens. Caroline immediately volunteered for the latter because "small children scare me."

"I think teens are the tougher audience," Edwin had said, but he'd gladly taken the 8-to-11-year-olds. He likes children when he can challenge them and they can challenge him right back. The story hour is also what he had imagined when he signed up for the library program, and he looks forward to it, after the office work.

Mona reads to the youngest children and xe's clearly an excellent storyteller, asking questions, using xir face and hands and voice to their full potential. Xe must be popular with the children in school, if xe does this in class too. When Mona wraps up, Edwin has a ten-minute respite while the first group leaves and his group trickles in. He read the book in the office and brainstormed how he will introduce it, but interaction — with children — is always unpredictable.

But it goes off without a hitch. He asks the right questions, makes the right jokes, and the children don't seem terribly bored. Children are not subtle when they're bored, unless they're shy. There are a few shy children in his audience, but also a couple who were very rambunctious when they came in. It's a very diverse group; not just children of immigrant parents, Black and brown children, but white children too, both from working class and middle class homes. Mona had shown him and Caroline how they ensure the library doesn't only have books in Dutch, so parents are more likely to read with their children and children can read in their native language.

When Edwin is done reading, the children are encouraged to pick out a book of their own to take home. Instead of ten minutes, there's forty minutes until the next group starts, and the teens get a different area of the library, with couches and pouffes. Edwin observes the children walking through the shelves and the wooden bins with comics, checking if he can help someone. What he sees instead is one child shoving another.

"Hey hey," Edwin calls, and in two quick steps he's between them. "What's going on?" Both boys look sullen and angry.

"He pushed me," one of them says. He's wearing a pink sweatshirt with big white hearts on the front, and he crosses his arms.

"Because he's gay!" the other boy shouts, pointing. He's wearing a red football shirt and scuffs his shoe against the carpet. "He should stop being weird."

"I'm not gay!"

"Is it weird to be gay?" Edwin asks kindly. "I'm gay. But I think it's much weirder that I don't like chocolate."

"That's pretty weird," the football boy says.

"I know," Edwin agrees. "We're all a little weird, and that's okay. And if someone is gay, that's okay too. There are people who think it's not okay, but they're wrong. It doesn't hurt anybody if a boy likes another boy, but it does hurt if you're unkind." It suddenly feels vitally important that these boys understand that, that they won't grow up hateful of others or themselves. Edwin doesn't want them to be like him, blind to who they are, intolerant of anyone who breaks the mould too much.

"But boys don't wear pink!" the football boy protests. "It's a girl colour."

"And why is it a girl colour?" Edwin prods.

"Uh ... It just is!"

"It's not!" the other boy exclaims. "I just like it and I'm a boy, so it can't be a girl colour."

"That's right," Edwin says. "You can like whatever colour you want and wear whatever clothes you like. It's not a bad thing to be girly. If it makes you feel good and it doesn't hurt anybody, who cares what anyone else says." Saying it makes it feel more true, like Edwin fully believes his own words. Like he's finally getting to the point that Vincent, that his friends have been pushing him towards, where he actually doesn't care, as long as he's happy.

He sends the boys off with a reminder that they shouldn't push anyone, and he hopes again that the lesson sticks, that these story times will make a difference, for children to feel seen and to understand those who are different. In a different world, he was that football boy and Vincent was the boy in pink, and one won't begrudge the other for having fun, for expressing himself. They're just children. No one should police children's self-expression when they don't even know who they are yet.

He hopes the boy in pink grows up to be like Vincent, never doubting that any bullying, any insults, tell something about the other, that he's done nothing wrong. He doesn't owe anyone a thing, not a concession and not an explanation. He deserves to be unapologetically himself.