Being True (28 page)

“You better watch yourself,” Rance warned. He again feinted to the right, but still I didn’t move.

“No, really,” I said. “What is it? I’d really like to know. I’ve done nothing to you that I know of. What is it about my friendship with Javi that cheeses you off so bad? The two of you have been best friends since second fucking grade. Are you that insecure?”

“I’m not insecure of shit!” he said. I had worked him into a frenzy. He cracked his knuckles and practically foamed at the mouth.

“What really has you so pissed off?” I asked. “It can’t just be my friendship with Javi. There’s something going on with you.” He snorted as if I was crazy. “Javi’s seen it too, you know? He told me. You’ve changed. Something about summer camp.”

Rance didn’t react well to that at all. He picked up a ten-pound weight and hurled it. I ducked as it shattered the mirrored wall behind me. I’d never had such reflexes before. Perhaps playing catch with Javi these past few months had its benefits after all. “Fuck!” I surveyed the shattered fragments of glass littering the floor and the volleyball size hole in the wall. “What the hell happened to you at camp?”

“You’re so gonna pay,” Rance said. He licked his lips in anticipation of smacking me around. His eyes burned with a hatred I’d never seen before in any of my past tormentors. Most of them had enjoyed the thrill of picking on the weaker and more unpopular of the pack, but that wasn’t Rance’s problem.

His hatred of me cut down to the bone.

He despised everything I was. Everything I represented. As if by existing, I challenged something so basic, so primal within him, his unstable reality teetered on the edge of oblivion.

But what was it about me that caused Rance to act this way?

That was when it finally occurred to me. There could only be one reason that explained Rance’s knee-jerk reaction to me and my relationship with Javi. “Are you jealous?”

Clouds of fury gathered in his eyes, and the low growl in his throat rumbled like thunder.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Now it all made perfect sense. Rance hated me not just because I was gay, but because I’d been able to do something he likely had wanted to do for years—capture Javi’s heart. “You’re in love with Javi, aren’t you?”

“You are so dead,” Rance said through gritted teeth. The vein on his forehead bulged.

“Javi doesn’t know,” I said, talking more to myself than Rance. “That’s what happened at camp. You hooked up with some boy for the first time, and after that, you realized what you’d felt for Javi all these years wasn’t friendship. You were in love with him.”

Rance’s chest heaved, and his fists clenched at his sides.

“But you didn’t know what to do with those feelings, did you? So you pulled away. You turned into an even bigger douche than you were before because if you put distance between you two, then you wouldn’t have to deal with what you were feeling.”

“I’d stop now if I were you,” he said. The poison in his voice had vanished. Dead calm now filled his words.

“Then, when you saw me that first day and pegged me as a fag, you hated me because you hate yourself. And when Javi and I got close, when those rumors started circulating that he and I were more than friends, it didn’t make you angry. That’s not what this is about at all.”

“I. Said. Stop.”

“It broke your heart.”

In one swift motion, Rance hurdled over the weight rack. If his foot hadn’t caught on one of the weights, causing him to stumble and the dumbbell to crash to the floor, he would have collided with me before I had a chance to react. While he struggled to regain his balance, I dashed to the right and toward the door.

Fueled by dual motors of anger and heartbreak, Rance would likely overtake me before I’d find help, but we wouldn’t be in the isolated weight room when it happened. The scuffle would catch the ears of teachers, who’d be able to pull Rance off me before he inflicted irreparable damage.

All I had to do was make it out the double doors ten feet away and through the gym doors twenty feet down the hall. Only thirty feet stood between me and salvation.

And I wasn’t going to make it.

I’
D
MANAGED
to get five feet from the outside gym doors when Rance’s hand gripped the collar of my shirt and yanked me backward. I slid along the waxed floor before crashing into the wall. Before I had a chance to get my bearings, Rance pounced again. He grabbed me by both wrists and dragged me toward the weight room.

“Let me go!” I yelled, hoping my cries would catch the attention of someone passing outside or in the locker room.

Rance didn’t respond. Drool slid down his chin as if all intelligent thought had been switched off. What appeared to drive him now was instinct and pure hatred, a deadly combination.

He shoved open the double doors and tossed me back into the weight room. I tumbled and skidded across the padded floor. The rough rubber tiles on the floor scraped my flesh, causing a searing fire to spread down my right side as the friction scraped away some of my skin.

I tried to stand again, but Rance shoved me down. I rolled into the thrust and managed to put some distance between us by moving to the other side of the bench press. Once again, a piece of gym equipment separated us, except this time Rance wasn’t stopping to talk.

He kept coming.

Whenever I attempted to stand, he was there to send me sprawling once again. It was as if he were herding me somewhere.

A kick from his strong leg sent me forward, toward where Rance had heaved the weight, and that was when it dawned on me. He was leading me back to the glass.

The sharp, ragged shards that littered the ground mocked me by innocently glinting under the fluorescent lights. Nothing pure or good waited for me among their sharp edges. Rolling over them would slice my back, since my shirt now hung about me in tatters, or cut jagged lines across my face.

Or if Rance wanted, he could inflict far more permanent damage with the weapons that lay strewn about the floor.

“Please,” I managed before Rance lifted me off the floor by my neck. His big hands wrapped around my passageway, cutting off my ability to speak and breathe.

“You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you, Tru? That you have all the answers? That you know me. Or you know Javi. Well, you don’t know jack shit, bitch.”

He released his stranglehold, dropping me. I fell with a yelp on top of the glass, landing on my back. At least two pieces ripped into my skin, and my back grew warm.

“Let me tell you something,” Rance said. “Before you came along, Javi spent all his time with me. I ate dinner with his parents, and we played catch in the backyard. And I waited, and I prayed that one day he’d see it. That one day he’d realize what we could be. And then
you
came.”

He placed his foot on my chest and rested all his weight on me. He had me pinned. There was nowhere I could go. No matter how hard I tried to lift his massive size-eleven foot from me, I lacked the strength. To make it worse, Rance bore down. It became more difficult to draw air, and the glass under me continued to bite into my skin.

“Without a second thought, he replaced me,” Rance continued as if I weren’t struggling for air. “It didn’t matter that I’d been there for him for all these years. One look at your funny-looking face, and he was gone. That’s how much I meant to Javi. That’s how little he fucking thought of me.”

Rance increased the pressure, practically standing on my chest on one foot. My breathing became labored, and a fog enveloped my vision. I didn’t feel the glass cutting into my back anymore. Had the fragments somehow been swept away?

“And even when the rumors started flying, when it became obvious he had to choose, he didn’t choose his teammates. Or me. No matter how many times I kept him from getting into fights, it never mattered. He chose you.”

The red mist lifted for a moment. Pools of water welled in Rance’s eyes.

But they dried up as quickly as they’d formed, and he reached down for something I could no longer see. I gasped for air, but my lungs couldn’t capture enough.

My eyelids grew heavy, and I closed them for a second.

When I opened them again, Rance stood over me, the ten-pound weight held high over his head. This was it. The moment I’d dreaded for years. The funny thing was, I wasn’t terrified at all.

I had Javi in my heart, and I’d live forever in his as well. My only regret was that I never had the chance to tell him.

A strange roar suddenly filled the room. I couldn’t make out the voice. Had someone said my name?

I tried to focus, but it was like trying to look at the world from under water. Light and forms kept shifting. Something, or someone, was on Rance’s back. The surprise attack unsettled him and caused the weight to tumble from his grasp. I closed my eyes, preparing for the inevitable crushing impact, but it landed inches to the left of my head with a deep
clunk
.

A furious growl shook the room. Rance stepped off me and reared back, sending whoever clawed and beat on his head flying backward. There was a thud and a crash.

With Rance’s weight no longer on my chest, I sucked in air. I gulped it down as if it were food, and I hadn’t eaten in days. As a result, I coughed and hacked as my body once again filled with what it needed to survive.

After a few moments, I breathed normally again. The water, which had previously clouded my vision, retreated, and my world returned to normal.

The first sound I heard was Rance’s screams.

“No!” he shouted as he knelt over someone who lay on the floor behind him. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Goddammit, I’m so sorry.”

I mouthed the words, “What happened?” But my throat burned. I could see and breathe, but I couldn’t yet speak. I struggled to sit up, to see what had changed Rance from an infuriated beast into a hapless kitten.

But Rance’s bulky frame hid what lay on the other side.

I crawled forward as Rance sobbed. Moving over broken shards of glass, I inched closer, sending ribbons of pain shooting through my forearms and bare stomach. The pain no longer mattered. All I focused on was getting around Rance. The desire to see what he saw dominated my body and my will.

As I crunched closer, Rance glanced over his shoulder. The madness had departed. Deep regret now strangled his expression. “I didn’t mean it, Tru. I swear. I didn’t mean it.”

“What?” I finally choked out.

And that was when Rance moved out of the way. That was when I saw Javi lying on the ground, his head next to the weight that had caused Rance to stumble earlier. The one that had almost given me time to escape.

The one that now had blood on it.

“Javi?” I rose and half crawled, half walked to where he had fallen. His eyes were closed, a trickle of blood draining from his mouth. “Javi!” I screamed as I knelt over him, trying to wake him up. Javi refused to respond. He lay there, no lopsided grin, no mischievous eye wiggle.

“I’m sorry,” Rance cried. “Javi, I’m so sorry.”

I turned to Rance. Fury I’d never experienced before exploded in me. “You motherfucker!” I punched him in the face. Blinding pain crushed my small hand while Rance just sat there, crying.

“I’m sorry” was all he’d say.

“Goddammit!” I screamed. I checked to see if Javi had a pulse. It was slow and thready. “Go get some fucking help.”

My words forced Rance to his feet, but still he only gazed down at Javi. Tears coursed down his cheeks. Misery wracked him.

“Now!” I said, far more forcefully than before. Rance turned on his heels and tore out of the weight room. His voice echoed off the walls as he ran outside and called desperately for help.

I turned back to my beautiful boy, who slept peacefully on the floor.

I gathered the tattered remains of my shirt and wrapped them carefully around the freely bleeding wound on the side of his head. Rich, red roses bloomed across the pale fabric by the time I’d finished.

When I was done, and while I waited for the help I hoped Rance would find, I kissed Javi’s cheek, curled up next to him, and rested my head on his shoulder. It was our routine after school, and I wasn’t going to change it now.

“I love you, Javi Castillo,” I said before the tears once again stole the world from my vision.

W
HEN
HELP
finally arrived in the form of Coach Moore and a teacher I’d never seen before, they had to practically rip me from Javi’s side. I’d refused to leave my place on his shoulder. That was where I belonged.

“Tru,” Coach Moore said. His voice low and calm. “I worked as a field medic in the army. I’ve had some experience with head trauma, but if I’m going to help Javi, I need to be able to work. I can’t do that if I’m tripping over you.”

I rose and stood about ten feet away while Coach Moore checked Javi’s pulse before he told the other teacher to retrieve the first aid kit from the closet.

“Has he been unconscious the whole time?” Coach Moore asked once he had the first aid kit in hand.

I nodded. “Is he going to be okay?”

“We’ll know better when he wakes up,” he said after he gently removed my bloodied shirt from Javi’s head. He tore open packages of gauze from the kit and placed them on the wound before securing it in place with white adhesive tape. “Check Tru’s back,” he told the other teacher, who rounded me to look at my wounds.

“I’m okay,” I told him. “Worry about Javi.”

“He’s got cuts and some glass embedded in his skin, but he should be fine,” the teacher told the coach.

“The paramedics are here,” Ms. Garcia said from the double doors. I hadn’t even noticed her standing there, or the other administrators who had arrived. The principal, Mr. Valdez, whispered to one of the assistant principals after nodding at me.

Suddenly two paramedics burst into the weight room, carrying a plastic board on top of a collapsible gurney. Without speaking, the two men rushed to Javi’s side, assessed the situation, and asked what happened.

“Javi fell and hit his head on that weight,” I responded.

They glanced at me and nodded. “Has he been drinking or taking drugs?” one asked.