Read Online Being True by Jacob Z. Flores - Free Book Online Page A

enough to convince Claudia to keep my secret.
    The bell rang, announcing class had begun. Two seconds later Javi scrambled into the classroom, his charming half grin plastered on his face.
    Mr. Rodriguez shook his head in exasperation and nodded for Javi to take his seat. Javi did but not before saying, “Hey, Tru,” in front of the whole class.
    My cheeks once again burned as I returned his greeting, and my cock jumped up to say hello too. The entire class did a repeat of their expressions yesterday. They stared at me with mouths agape.
    “He’s not an idiot, you know,” Claudia whispered from her seat. “He’ll figure it out.”
    “Maybe he will,” I answered. “But I won’t tell him. And I hope you won’t either.”
    She sighed in resignation. “Fine, I won’t say anything.”
    “Thank you.”
    “But I still think it’s stupid,” she said.
    I could live with that. What I couldn’t live with was Javi exiting my life as quickly as he had entered it. It wasn’t a chance I was willing to take.
    “Where’s Mr. Parker?” Mr. Rodriguez asked as he took roll.
    “He’s in ISS,” Rance’s girlfriend, Lucy, announced. She narrowed her rich green eyes, which were obviously the result of tinted contacts, at me from where she sat a few rows over. She knew what had happened yesterday, and if Rance had been given in-school suspension for hitting me, then Lucy no doubt held me responsible for it.
    But what worried me the most right now was whether or not Javi had seen the blame in her eyes. If he had, then he might put two and two together.
    But Javi was as astonished as everyone else. Even the back row Jock Brigade. “What the hell happened?” he asked.
    “Please watch your language in my classroom, Mr. Castillo,” Mr. Rodriguez said.
    “Why don’t you ask your friend?” Lucy commented before slowly looking away from me.
    “I will,” Javi replied. Javi’s broad shoulders slumped. Knowing a friend was in trouble evidently greatly affected him. So much so that he missed Lucy’s sarcasm.
    She hadn’t been referring to Rance. She’d been talking about me.
     
     
    M Y DAY without Rance went on without a hitch. I was still ignored by everyone except Javi and Claudia. Although he and I only had first period together, he made it a point to stop and chat with me between classes, which made me feel special. It also deepened my already growing affection for him.
    It was a precarious situation. As an awkward outcast, I appreciated how Javi’s attention made me less of a pariah. But as a gay boy who’d never had the attention of any other boy before, much less the popular, hot athlete, well, I worried I would be unable to control, much less hide, my emotions.
    That, more than Rance tossing me around the locker room like a chew toy, might destroy our newfound friendship.
    Whenever Javi turned his lopsided grin my way, or he nudged me after teasing me about proper bike riding, my heart thudded in my chest and beads of sweat broke across my flesh. As for what happened inside my jeans, that was why God made thick history books. Although from the grimace on George Washington’s face, which graced the cover of my textbook, he was getting tired of being poked in the eye.
    Thankfully, Claudia usually arrived to save me from myself. Like Rance, she was in the majority of my classes, and we walked to each one together. She even ate lunch with me, which was a first. I’d grown so accustomed to gobbling down my food in solitary silence, I’d almost forgotten how to speak.
    Around Claudia, though, that didn’t matter. She preferred to do the talking rather than the listening, which suited me fine.
    We were in sixth period journalism, working on the layout for the Friday edition of the paper, when she switched to an uncomfortable subject.
    “So, tell me about you.”
    I’d rather drink a gallon of bleach than discuss my life. Claudia’s persistent gaze, however, indicated she wouldn’t be put off. And neither would