How might we bear witness to the fluidity and fragility of identity work that takes place during classroom discussion? How do teachers and pupils play with the personal politics of positioning during our everyday interactions? The piece that follows is written as a story almost entirely in everyday dialogue. It takes a methodological turn towards narrative imagining in order to develop an approach that explores the performance of projected, received and contested identity positions during an English lesson. A brief discussion of some of the issues raised and of what informed the process of writing serves as an epilogue to the story.