This question
https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/55633/restrooms-for-characters[1]
inspires me to ask about a story idea I have been thinking about.
The problems of using a fake identity as a member of a different gender in a contemporary American high school.
And of course there are many thousands of contemporary American high schools and there are probably at least a few where the character would not have any problems with their deception, but It would be better if they could manage it in a more typical high school.
The premise is that a rather weird and eccentric ten year old boy has three separate strong reasons to take on a new identity, which I won't bother explaining. So, with the advice and cooperation of a few adults he plans to move to a new community and assume a new identity as a ten-year-old girl entering the seventh grade junior high school. Being highly intelligent it is easy for him to skip a grade, and he intends to only take about every other grade and graduate much sooner than usual, skipping several more grades.
HIs only reason for going to a school instead of studying on the internet is to have a chance of making at least one friend to replace the ones in the old school he had to leave.
Fortunately he is so cute that in his old neighbordhood he was often described as a beautiful little girl dressed like a boy, so if he dresses iike a girl he should not be suspected of being a boy, and everyone will think he is a weird and eccentric little girl instead of weird and eccentric little boy.
Obviously it would be wrong for him to use either the boy's bathroom or the girl's bathroom. I never used the boy's bathroom in six years at my high school, but my home was just a block away so I went home and used our bathroom during lunch break -I only ate in the school cafeteria once. But it might not be possible for him to go home during lunch break, and he might not be able to avoid using the bathroom all day.
I hear that some modern schools have restrooms for students who are not gender typical, and those should be small enough for only one person at a time, so he might be able to get permission to such such a bathroom.
When I was in high school such an impersonation would never work, because the boys showered after gym class, and presumably the girls also did. But I have read that in some modern high schools that is no longer the practice. If that is the case he can get away with his deception.
As I remember, kids changed into and out of their gym costumes for gym class. And of course if he did that with the girls he would see them in their underwear or less. Being a highly eccentric child, he prides himself on never doing anything wrong, and on his reputation, and if it is ever discovered that he is a boy, his reputation will suffer.
So maybe he will wear his gym costume instead of regular clothes all the school day instead of changing into it for gym class. Or maybe he will negotiate a reason to be exempted from taking gym class, perhaps on the grounds he will probably graduate before becoming full grown and thus will always be much smaller than his classmates.
Anyway, those are the main factors I can think of which might make such an impersonation impossible.
So how could my charcter handle those problems and are there any other big problems I haven't thought of?
Added 04-25-2021
One thing he could do is go to an all boys school which is going to becoming co ed in the future. So they plan to build facilities for future girl students a few years in the future.
So possibly the school might be persuaded to take him as a test to see how the boys might react to girls. Though of course they wouldn't realize just how much different he is from a typical girl or boy, or how little the school's experience with him will relate to their future experience with normal girls.
Thus he would be except from using the boy's locker room and showers, and the girl's locker room and showers would not exist yet.