Being True (27 page)

But I was worried. Javi walked around school with a hair trigger. What would happen when the wrong person said or did the wrong thing at the absolute worst time? As crazy as it might seem, the one person who seemed to keep Javi from self-destructing was Rance.

He was one of the few team members Javi had who still talked to him. And even though Rance wanted to kill me, I’d been grateful he could be there for Javi when I wasn’t, like at lunch or baseball practice.

Rance gave Javi the friendship he needed to remain levelheaded at school. I just hoped what I gave him fed his heart and soul as much as he fed mine.

Doing that in secret, though, proved difficult, but we stuck with the plan Claudia helped us draw up. We continued our routine of arriving to and leaving from school together to show that we didn’t have anything to hide. Completely changing our pattern would be as strong a confirmation as throwing open the closet door and telling the world.

It was the second part that was the toughest.

We had to try to keep physical distance between us at school. According to Claudia, we naturally gravitated to each other. If we stood side by side, we found a reason to touch or lean against the other. That just wouldn’t do. So we made certain whenever we were talking at school, we stood opposite each other even though what we wanted was to leap into each other’s arms.

We also had to be mindful of our eye contact. Claudia claimed our eyes lit up when we saw each other, and everyone else seemed to vanish. We had to stop that as well, which was pretty damn difficult. Talking to Javi without solely gazing into his eyes had been torture. I had to force myself to look around, and Javi had gotten into the habit of counting to ten, looking around, and smiling at people passing by before returning his gaze to mine.

It wasn’t what we wanted, but it was what we had to do. The alternative wasn’t acceptable for either of us.

But was I being fair to Javi?

Most people blamed me for Javi’s fall from golden child status. Whenever people like Alison passed me in the hall, they twisted their expressions and rolled their eyes. For a while, every time she saw me, she’d screamed, “Selfie!” and taken a picture. Now, she barely justified my existence. Because of me, Javi had lost perhaps half the friends he’d once had, and his life had profoundly changed.

Javi claimed he didn’t care, that it was their loss. Claudia said pretty much the same thing. And they were right to some extent.

But should being with someone cause this much pain?

I had my doubts.

“Have you lost your tail or something?”

I switched my attention from the ad layout I was working on in the Mac lab for the yearbook to Claudia, who suddenly stood at my side. Alice in Wonderland decorated her black T-shirt today. Except this Alice had tattooed arm sleeves and wore a Jack Daniels shirt. The playful scowl on Claudia’s face told me she believed she’d just made a funny. “What?”

She shook her head and chuckled. “I guess you have,” she said. “I shall call you Eeyore from now on!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I replied before turning my attention back to adjusting the photo on the template.

“What’s the matter with you, Tru?” She plopped down next to me. If she were any more concerned about me, she’d be prescribing happy pills. “You’ve been mopey all damn day long. You’re acting like it’s
not
the last school day before spring break. You should be in the other room with us listening to music and winding down.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve got things to do.”

“Yeah, well, I’m the boss around here,” she said as she turned off my monitor. “I order you to have some fun.”

I glared at her before switching the monitor back on. “You can’t order someone to do that.”

“I believe I just did,” she replied, switching the monitor off again.

“Come on, Claudia,” I said when she refused to remove her hand from the power button. “I’ve got to finish this.”

She placed her hand on my shoulder until I made eye contact. “What going on?” The playful pain-in-the ass routine had ended. She’d switched on the worry button.

“I’ve been thinking these past few days that maybe I’m not being fair to Javi.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Have your feelings for him changed?”

“Oh, God no!” I said. I didn’t even think such a thing was possible. Every time I saw him, I found it hard to breathe. When he touched me, my skin burned and sizzled, and when he kissed me, I swore it was like standing before the gates of heaven. “I’m worried he’s paying too high a price to be with me.”

“I’m still not following you.”

“Look at how many friends he’s lost,” I said. “In Mr. Rodriguez’s class alone, he only speaks to you, me, and Rance. The rest of the Jock Brigade barely gives him the time of day. And how many people has he mouthed off to today? At last count it was, what? Five?”

“Six,” she said with a sigh.

I had to rest my head on my hands. “Who now? And when did this happen?”

She shrugged. “All I know is what Lydia told me.” Lydia was one of the staff writers for the paper. While she didn’t particularly care for me, she liked Javi. He’d once brought her homework to her every day for two weeks when she came down with chicken pox. For Javi’s past kindness, she deigned to be coolly cordial to me. “Someone at lunch said something shitty in passing, and Javi about came unglued. Luckily, Rancid was there to pull his butt out of the fire again.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” I said. “Javi’s never had to face this kind of crap before. People loved him. They wanted to be his friend. Now they’re going out of their way to be nasty to him because of me.”

“Javi’s not complaining,” she said. “So why are you?”

Was Claudia really that blind? “Because it’s not right. Javi shouldn’t have to lose the life he had because….” I surveyed the room, making sure we were still alone. When I found only computer monitors and silent printers, I whispered, “Because he and I are dating.”

“Tru, you’re being a dumbass again. Which happens all too often these days. You might want to take something for that.”

How was she not seeing what I saw? For that matter, why wasn’t Javi? “Would you go through this for someone?” I finally asked.

“No,” she said.

I pointed at her as if she’d proved my point. “See?”

“I would for someone I loved, though,” she added.

I had to grip the computer table so I wouldn’t fall off my chair. Claudia’s words sent my world spinning. “You think Javi loves me?”

She laughed as if I was the stupidest person in the world. “Do you really have to ask me that? Don’t you know it already?”

I couldn’t speak. I was still trying to process.

“Why else do you think Javi is doing this?” she asked. “Because it’s fun? Of course it’s not. It’s awful, and it pisses me off. Every time some idiot opens his mouth and says some shit, I want to staple their mouths shut. But I don’t have to. Javi does it for me. And it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. And if you don’t see that, then you’re even more of a dumbass than I thought you were.”

Claudia was right. I was a dumbass. “Thank you.” I stood before giving her a peck on the cheek.

“Fuck!” she said, wiping it away. “How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t do mushy crap.”

“I know,” I said before crossing toward the door. “That’s why I did it.”

“And where do you think you’re going?” she asked.

I stopped at the threshold and peered back over my shoulder at Claudia. “I need to tell him I love him too.” And then I sprinted out of the classroom and down the hall to the gym, where Javi was getting ready for one final workout before the break.

M
Y
STUDENT
press pass got me by the questioning teachers and administrators who wondered why I wasn’t in class. “On a deadline for the paper,” I called as I sped past their distrustful gazes on the way to the gym.

I hadn’t been there since my first day, when Rance had tried to wipe me from existence, and I’d had no intention of ever going back. If the paper needed a quote or a picture at the gym when there wasn’t a game going on, Claudia assigned the task to someone else.

That was just smarter and safer.

But now that Claudia had helped me see the true reason behind Javi’s actions, I had to see him no matter where he was. Even if he happened to be in the bowels of hell. And to me that was pretty much what the gym was.

After I exited the main building’s side door and crossed to the orange-tinted brick structure that made up the outer exterior of the gym, I found it difficult to contain my glee. Inside, the boy who loved me had no idea I was going to say those three very important words to him for the first time.

Maybe it was too soon to make such statements. We’d only been dating a few months, and I wasn’t even eighteen years old yet. Was it possible to be in love at such a young age?

It had worked for my parents. They’d met in high school and would still be together today if my dad hadn’t been killed in the line of duty. When I thought about it that way, I realized when it came to love, age didn’t matter. Its power transcended such triviality. Because once true love took hold, it never let go.

So whether it was too soon or not, it no longer mattered. All that mattered was how we felt, so I pulled open the heavy metal door that led to the basketball court.

Almost instantly, my nose detected an overwhelming stench of plastic, rubber, and sweaty armpits. How the hell did people breathe in here? I had to switch to drawing breath through my mouth to avoid triggering my gag reflex.

I didn’t have to deal with the angry scowls from the general physical education classes that usually occupied the gym at this time. The court was empty. Most of the gym classes had been suspended for the holidays. Those that were still in session had students running laps around the outdoor track about a quarter of a mile away.

That left the gym and the weight room, where Javi had said he would be, to the baseball team, which met during last period. Since the team had planned a Jock Brigade party in Coach Moore’s office in the adjacent building, Javi had chosen one last workout before the holidays over pretending to care about most of his teammates.

That meant we’d have the entire place to ourselves.

I shot through the hallway, taking a hard right before the locker room. Unless I had to, I was never setting foot in that tiled room again. I went straight through the double doors that led to the weight room and surveyed the area.

Javi wasn’t there.

Nautilus machines, weight benches, dumbbells, and other monstrosities littered the padded floor. What were some of these machines designed for? They resembled torture devices used during the Spanish Inquisition rather than apparatus designed to sculpt muscle and keep bodies fit.

And what the hell was that stench? It was like someone was trying to cover up the smell of sweaty ass with a truckload of Axe Body Spray.

More importantly, though, where the hell was Javi? Maybe he’d decided to go to the team party after all. Coach Moore could have made attendance mandatory, especially considering the morale problem the team was currently experiencing. He might have believed forced male bonding to be the cure.

When I saw Javi, though, we’d be doing some very special male bonding of our own. It was time to kick our intimacy up a notch. While I still wasn’t ready for sex, it was time to leave first base behind, and perhaps round second and head straight for third.

The door behind me swung open. Javi had finally arrived.

As I turned around, my advancing smile retreated. It wasn’t Javi at all.

“Well, well,” Rance said. The sneer I’d come to know all too well snaked across his lips. If he’d been a cobra, he’d have spit venom at me. “What do we have here?”

“I’m looking for Javi,” I said as I backed up. There was no way I was letting him get his hands on me again. “He’s going to be here any minute.”

Rance laughed. “Nice try, cock breath.” He took measured steps toward me as I continued to retreat. I gazed around the room, hoping to spot another exit, but the one behind Rance seemed to be the only way in or out. That made this place a death trap I’d happened to spring. “I saw Javi leave for the main building a few minutes ago.”

How was that possible? If he’d gone back inside, I would have seen him. Unless he’d bypassed the side entrance and strolled through the quad. Javi enjoyed treed areas, after all. That was definitely something he’d do.

That oversight was going to cost me a few ounces of spilled blood.

“Let’s not do this again, Rance.” I rounded the dumbbell rack. Thanks to the weights, I had managed to erect a temporary barrier between us. No matter which side Rance tried to take, I could sprint across the room from the other side and out the door. “Can’t we just call a truce?”

“Fuck, no!” His face twisted in disgust at the mere thought. “I’ve waited for this moment for the past few months. All I had to do was be patient. I knew somehow, some way, we’d find ourselves all alone again, and I could pay you back for getting me thrown into ISS.”

Perhaps it was the knowledge that Rance couldn’t make a move without giving me an avenue of escape, but a surge of confidence jolted through me I’d live to regret. “It’s not my fault you got caught beating me up, you stupid fuck.” Rance’s eyes turned to thin slits of hate, and he clenched his jaw so tightly, it popped. “It’s also not my fault that your pea-sized brain can’t stand that Javi’s my friend.”

“Javi’s
my
friend,” he mumbled like a child who had not yet learned how to share. He then feigned a move to the left. But the trick didn’t work. I stayed put in relative safety behind a waist-high wall that weighed about five hundred pounds.

“Are you kidding?” I was actively taunting him as if I’d not learned one lesson from all my previous beatings. Poking the bear ended only in disaster. “Javi has had other friends besides you for years. We both know that. So what’s the fucking deal that he makes one more? Why does him being my friend turn you from a common asswipe to King Asswipe of Shit Mountain?”