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

Stewie. The cartoon character on her shirt regarded me with disdain, as if the next words out of his mouth might be, “Speak, you imbecile. Or die!” I’d either answer her questions, or she and Stewie would find some bleach and empty its contents down my throat for me.
    “I’m not really very interesting,” I answered, waiting to see if Stewie would leap out of the fabric. “Just your standard high school student exiled to the land of misfit toys.”
    “Love the Rudolph reference,” she said with a click of her tongue. Whenever Claudia really liked something, she made that unusual sound. “But we’re not talking about our favorite childhood Christmas specials. We’re talking about you.”
    “I think the adventures of Rudolph and Hermey are far more exciting.”
    “Is that because you’ve never fit in?”
    She was really going to make me do this, wasn’t she? Her raised eyebrow resembled half an arch on a McDonald’s sign. “Nope. Never,” I finally answered.
    “You’re not the only one,” she added. “When I was a kid, all the other girls obsessed over unicorns and rainbows. Witches, magic, and vampires fascinated me. Probably because my grandmother was a curandera in Mexico.”
    “Really?” I asked. I’d heard about traditional Mexican faith healers, who were revered in the Hispanic culture, but I’d never met anyone who knew one.
    She nodded. “She taught me a whole bunch of stuff while she was alive. Like how to ward off the evil eye.”
    “How do you do that?” I asked, hoping to divert Claudia’s attention away from me and onto her grandmother. If I could distract her for another thirty minutes, I’d escape the Claudia Zamora inquisition she was about to launch.
    Claudia opened her mouth to answer but said nothing. She drew her lips together in a slant that mimicked Stewie’s expression on her shirt. “Nice try,” she said. “But I’m far too clever to fall for that.”
    Well, crap. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Like hell you don’t,” she said before punching my arm.
    “Hey, that hurt!” I complained, making a bigger deal of the pain than there was. I grasped my shoulder and scrunched up my face as if I’d eaten a whole bag of lemons.
    “Oh, my God,” she said in utter exasperation. “You’re such a drama queen.” Her eyes grew saucer-wide, and she covered her mouth with her hand.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said.
    “Why?”
    “For calling you a queen,” she said. “That’s probably one of the reasons you don’t fit in, right? Because you’re gay?”
    Was it that obvious? But since she’d asked me directly, I had nowhere else to go but with the truth. “How’d you know?”
    She shrugged as she brushed the black and purple strands from her fair skin. “I have a cousin who’s gay. He’s a junior in college. He and I have always been super close. More like brother and sister really. And you sort of remind me of him.”
    “Which I’m assuming is a good thing.”
    “It’s a great thing,” she said, beaming. The love she had for her cousin couldn’t have been more evident if she’d been holding up a gay pride sign. “Which is probably why I liked you almost instantly. That doesn’t happen very often. I usually hate most people because, well, most people suck donkey dick.”
    I chuckled. I couldn’t argue with that. “That they do.”
    “Do you get bullied about it a lot?” she asked. Her tone had softened to a sympathetic whisper.
    “Yeah. And it’s not like I tell people. The only ones who know are my mom and grandparents. But it seems like people look at me and immediately see a fairy.”
    “I don’t like derogatory names,” she said. “A woman isn’t a bitch. A black man isn’t the N-word, and gay people are not fairies.”
    What planet had Claudia Zamora come from? Most people insisted on labeling others. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to offend.”
    “You shouldn’t worry about offending me,” she said bluntly. “You