Being True (4 page)

“I’m really sorry,” I said when it became apparent she’d finished talking. “I didn’t mean to be an asshole, but you’re right, I assumed you were judging me. And even though it happens to me a lot, I guess I can’t go around thinking everyone is going to do that to me, huh?”

She snorted. “Oh, people are gonna judge us every fucking day of our lives. We just have to learn not to give a shit what others think or return the favor by being shitty to others.”

I couldn’t disagree with her, so I didn’t even try. I merely nodded. “So you think we could be friends?”

“Well, before you interrupted me with your judgmental crap, I was about to say there was something about you that made me want to trust you.” I about fell over. Only my family had ever said those words to me. “And I’m not a trusting individual. Ask anyone around this godforsaken school. I don’t let most of these dipshits within five feet of me because I know what kind of assholes they are. They’ve taught me that most people will betray you in a heartbeat. Which is why I prefer animals. They have good hearts. Not like humans who just suck balls.”

Normally, I suppressed my laughter since most people made fun of me when I brayed like a donkey. But I couldn’t hold it in. It forced its way out of my throat, and I gave myself to the moment. It wasn’t like Claudia had said anything that was hilarious. It just felt so good to not only carry on a conversation with someone my age but to talk to another teen who appeared to be a kindred spirit.

Claudia squinted at me dubiously. She was no doubt trying to determine if I was making fun of her, or if I’d just lost my mind. I opened my mouth to assure her I wasn’t laughing at her, but when I tried to speak, the giggles and guffaws strangled the words, making them completely incomprehensible.

“You’re very bizarre,” she finally said before rolling her eyes. The smile that stretched across her lips was one of the most welcome sights I’d seen in a long time.

After I got myself under control, I wiped the tears from my eyes. They were among the few I’d shed out of joy and not sadness. “You have no idea,” I finally uttered through one final snicker.

“Okay, enough fun and games. It’s time to get to work. That’s if you’re serious about working for me. And before you answer, you should know when it comes to journalism, I’m the biggest bitch there is. When I say move, I expect you to already be halfway gone. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered with a salute.

“Dumbass,” she teased. Now that was a name I’d been called plenty, but Claudia was the first to not really mean it.

She walked over to a cabinet in the corner and took a camera from one of the shelves. “Here’s what I want you to do,” she said before placing the equipment in my hands. “I want you to head over to the gym after last period. Our baseball team went to state last year, and we’re hoping for a repeat this year. I’ve gotten quotes from all the major players on the team, even that dipshit Rancid.” I chuckled at her nickname for Rance Parker, formerly known as Mr. Badass. “But I haven’t been able to get a quote from the star himself. And I need one.”

“Okay,” I said with a nod. “Who is that?”

“Javi Castillo,” she answered with a glint in her eyes. “Remember him from precalc?”

Remember him? How could I forget the boy who’d given me a hard-on all day? “Of course,” I mumbled, hoping my soft speech hid the excitement that coursed through me.

“Get me a quote and a photo for the paper. He’s not fond of doing either. Think you can do that?”

I nodded. Oh, I’d get them both. Especially since Javi had been super decent to me this morning. I anticipated no problems whatsoever.

O
BVIOUSLY
, I
had never been more wrong in my life.

I’d gone to the gym looking for Javi but found Rancid instead.

My cheek exploded with fire when Rance’s fist collided with my face. I stumbled backward, my jaw feeling as if it had unhinged, before I slammed once again onto the hard tiled floor.

“Who the hell said you can come into my locker room?” He once again lifted me off the floor by the collar and shook me like a dog with a chew toy. He bared his teeth and practically barked, “You think you can come in here with that camera of yours and snap pics of our cocks? Is that what gets you off, you dirty little perverted fuck?”

“I’m here for
The Harvest
,” I mumbled. My words didn’t form correctly. My cheek throbbed and had grown to at least twice its usual size, so my attempts at communication came out garbled.

“You’re here for the hairiest?” Rance asked in disgust. “Fucking fairy!” He then shoved me out of the shower area and back into the lockers. “Let’s see how many pictures you take once I break your thumbs.”

I had nowhere to go. Rance’s big body blocked the exit, and based on what I saw reflected in his eyes, only my death would be acceptable to him.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Coach Moore’s voice caught us both by surprise.

When Rance turned to gape at the coach, I sprinted past them both and out of the locker room. And I wasn’t stopping until I got home.

Chapter 2

W
HEN
I
made it back to The Projects, which was what our government-subsidized housing complex was called, I didn’t rush inside. No comfort could be found within its strange, cracked walls and crumbling brick façade, where cockroaches on the hunt for stray food outnumbered us.

How could I find solace amid the stacks of boxes or the contents of our lives strewn across the floor? No pictures of my family hung on the walls. Only disgusting brown streaks decorated the interior.

This place wasn’t home. It offered no unseen embrace of familiarity with which I could lose myself.

Apartment C at 603 Esperanza Street had nothing I needed. Not even my mother was home.

After tossing the camera Claudia had given me on the couch, I hopped on my bike and pedaled as fast as my legs could go.

I had no clue where I was going, and I didn’t care. I just needed to get as far away from the hell my life had become as possible.

I sped down streets lined with trash and weeds and broken concrete. I zoomed around potholes big enough to swallow cars and by alleys filled with shadows and graffiti.

Cars horns blared as I darted through intersections, not caring to look if the coast was clear. What would it matter if one hit me anyway? My life had stripped the ignorance of death from me already.

Yet my heart pounded in my chest like a rabbit that had just escaped a pack of hounds, and fear held me tight and refused to let go. So I pedaled faster, pumping my legs in a vain attempt at wiping the image of Rance’s hate-filled, glazed-over eyes from my mind.

I’d never been that terrified before in my life. I’d been beaten up before several times, but this was the first time I’d actually believed I might not make it out alive.

All the other times it had happened, there’d been witnesses. Rance had had me cornered in a secluded area where he could have done anything to me, and no one would have been the wiser.

Skidding tires drew me from my thoughts. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed a brown Honda fishtailing to a stop six feet to my right. The driver laid hands on his horn and shouted curses at me out the open window.

But that didn’t stop me. I continued onward until sweat dripped down my forehead and stung my eyes. I only slowed down once the dull ache in my side grew into a blinding, stabbing pain. My lungs pleaded for air, and I realized I was wheezing and on the verge of passing out.

I stopped pedaling and coasted. The blur my surroundings had become cleared, and I realized I had no idea where I was.

Just how far had I gone?

The rundown buildings that made up my neighborhood had disappeared. Actual houses surrounded by chain-link fences now lined both sides of the street. Cars were parked in driveways and not on the lawns. And they even had all four tires. They weren’t resting on cinder blocks.

These homes weren’t the residences of the well-off. They were obviously owned by those of the lower working class, but considering where I lived, they might as well be mansions.

“Hey, you!” someone behind me shouted. “Stop.”

Panic once again crushed me as the unmistakable clank of a spinning bike chain came from behind. I didn’t waste time looking back. What followed me could only be further torment at the hands of another bully. So I rose off my seat and put my full weight into each pedal.

“Hey, man. Wait up!”

Yeah, right. For what? Another jock beatdown? No, thank you.

Up ahead, at the top of a small hill, stood a set of uneven train tracks. If I didn’t slow down, the tracks and my momentum might send me tumbling to the cracked asphalt. Such a spill could probably split my skull open. But getting caught by whoever pursued me would likely end the exact same way.

I pedaled faster.

The lights atop the crossing gate arms flashed red in warning before lowering, and the horn of an approaching train blared three times.

If I could beat the train, I would be safe on the other side. There was no way the guy behind me could make it before it hit the intersection. It would give me the time I needed to take a side street to safety and then circle back around.

The apartment might not be home, but within its moldy walls, I’d be relatively safe.

“What the hell, man?” the voice asked through panting breaths.

I had to give the guy his due. He was nothing if not persistent. And from the sound of his voice, the gap separating us had decreased.

It had to be one of the Jock Brigade. That knowledge caused me to piston faster and harder as I reached the bottom of the hill. The train’s horn thundered again as it bulleted toward the intersection. It was so close I could make out the tiny head of the engineer in the first car.

I maneuvered the bike around the crossing gates, skidding to regain my purchase on the road, and then aimed my bike toward the tracks that would either offer me safety from further beating or bring everything to a bone-crushing end.

As I rode over the tracks, the heat of the approaching train buffeted my flesh, and the roar of the horn drowned out all other sounds. A few seconds after, the train flew by.

I glanced over my shoulder to verify I hadn’t been followed, and the coast was clear. I had made it.

I’d never been more relieved in my life. At least until I turned around.

My trajectory over the tracks had set me on a collision course with a huge decorative stone in the yard of the first house on the downhill side of the tracks. I tried to correct, but it was too little, too late.

I struck the rock hard, flying over the handles of the bike and the boulder before skidding to a stop on my face.

I
HAD
no idea how long I lay there on my stomach. It could have been a few seconds or ten minutes, but my face exploded with fresh pain when I regained consciousness and opened my eyes. As if getting smacked around by Rance Parker wasn’t bad enough, I now had to contend with losing a fight against a rock and the ground. My luck fricking sucked.

Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop the tears. Or why I dug my fingers into the grass. I couldn’t take much more. Something had to give. My life had to change. If I didn’t find light at the end of the tunnel soon, I feared the darkness might whisk me away.

The rhythmic hum of the train flying across the tracks grew more and more distant, and the warning clangs at the railroad crossing ceased. The intersection was now clear. A few seconds later, a bike skidded to a stop a few feet away before frantic footfalls crunched across the dry grass. “Fuck, man!” Someone suddenly said at my side. “Are you okay?”

Great! Thanks to my carelessness and complete inability to dust myself off and get back on my bike, my pursuer could now kick me while I was down. But why did I hear genuine concern in the strangely familiar voice?

“Just leave me alone,” I said, not wanting to turn around. It was bad enough to be lying facedown in the dirt. To be crying like a baby only made matters worse. I prided myself on never letting my tormentors see my tears. I couldn’t control the fear, but I was damned if I’d ever let them see me reduced to a blubbering mess.

“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna,” he said. For some reason, whoever this was sat on the hard-packed ground next to me. What the hell was he waiting for? For me to stop crying so he could then kick the crap out of me? But if that was his motive, why join me on the grass? “You took a nasty fall, Tru, and I’m not leaving till I’m sure you’re okay.”

Who the hell was this guy?

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and glanced over my shoulder. Staring back at me were the gorgeous ebony eyes that had captivated me this morning in precalc. “Javi?”

He nodded. “Well, at least we know the fall didn’t cause amnesia.” The right corner of his lips tugged into a half grin. The tears that had previously streamed down my cheeks and blurred my vision dried up. How could I cry while basking in the warmth of such a smile?