Being True (2 page)

I ducked into Ms. Garcia’s office, which reeked of bad perfume, just as the first morning bell buzzed, and sought shelter in the corner. Her office wasn’t the standard high school counselor sanctuary filled with books, plants, and soothing colors. The walls had been painted a burnt orange, which was the spirit color for BHS, and dozens of posters from the school’s various athletic booster clubs hung on the walls. Judging by the sheer number of baseball calendars, Ms. Garcia preferred the diamond to the football field.

“What’s the matter with you two?” Ms. Garcia asked the two boys who stood just outside the office door. Her tone was more annoyed than angry.

“He looked at us funny,” one of the guys said.

“And he’s funny-looking,” added his friend.

Was Ms. Garcia actually chuckling? That didn’t bode well. I’d had some experience with high school administrators who, for whatever reason, sided with the bullies over the bullied. Perhaps they resented the weakness I represented or reminded them of the kids they’d once tortured in their youth.

“Do you want to end up in ISS?” she asked.

“Fuck, no!” one yelled.

“Aw, come on, Ms. Garcia,” the other pleaded. “I just got out of in-school suspension last week.”

“I know. And unless you want to end up there again, I suggest you lay off the little white boy.”

What a bitch! If my mother were here, she’d tear into Ms. Garcia. Just like she’d laid into the principal of the school I’d just transferred from. She’d practically shredded Mr. Meyers to pieces for not keeping me safe.

The scraping of sneakers against the linoleum floor announced the boys had agreed to her terms and were headed to class. A few seconds later, Ms. Garcia entered her office to find me seeking refuge in the corner.

She sighed. If she’d have been any more aggravated, she would have shoved me against the lockers as well.

But now that I got a good look at her, I understood why she found me distasteful. The school-educator exterior hid an aging former high school cheerleader.

She’d done her best to hold on to her youth. Her face was pulled tighter than a snare drum, which caused her eyes to bug outward and her pencil-thin eyebrows to arch farther across her forehead than God had intended. Her platinum blonde hair, which looked like a home dye job, also had a body wave added to it that reminded me of a coat on a cocker spaniel.

She fought time tooth and nail. She had perky, full boobs that were likely only two years old, and the six coats of cherry red lip gloss likened her to a sixteen-year-old. The turkey wattle neck, though, revealed she was fighting a losing battle.

“Take a seat,” she said as she rounded her desk and sat down. I did as instructed, eyeing my open academic file on her desk. She’d been reading all about me. And what a fun read it must have been.

“Six high schools in four years is quite the record,” she said as she sat back.

I nodded. It wasn’t exactly an achievement to be proud of. Moving from school to school because I kept getting my ass kicked hadn’t exactly been a treat. As it was, my mother was at her wit’s end. I had to find some way to make this school work, find some way to fit in. I was seventeen and only had a few months before graduation. I would survive until then if only for her.

She’d been through enough, and she needed a break. So did I.

But I wasn’t going to tell Ms. Garcia any of that. She didn’t care. This was just a job she endured to pay for her plastic surgery.

“Your file says you’ve had a rough time of things at your other schools. Being bullied and such.”

I nodded, but she kept staring at me as if she expected a blow-by-blow account of every beating I’d taken throughout the years. Was she a sadist or something?

When it was obvious I wasn’t going to elaborate, she added, “And I’m sorry about your stepdad.”

So was I. But not for the reasons she thought.

I was sorry Bart Cox had ever entered our lives.

“You do speak, right?” she asked. “Nowhere in your file does it say you’re a deaf mute.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I finally uttered. I made sure my voice contained equal measures of respect for her position and apology for not immediately responding. Why couldn’t I just tell her to jump into a lake of fire and burn in hell for the condescension that poisoned her tone? Or for the look of disgust that sneered her lip? The reason was simple enough. I was the perennial good boy, or Goody Tru as I’d been called since my class read
The Scarlet Letter
my junior year at high school number four. “I’m just nervous and ready to get to class.”

She sighed again, no doubt displeased that her fishing expedition had turned up nothing. “I’ll walk you to class,” she said as she rose. “To avoid any further hallway disturbances.”

I appreciated the gesture even though it was obvious she’d rather sit at her desk filing her nails.

As she led me toward my first period precalculus class, I tried to hold my breath. Why did every high school smell like a musty unfinished basement where stale farts hung in an invisible cloud?

“Get to class,” Ms. Garcia scolded a pair of mousy girls lingering in the stairwell. They glanced at me out of the corners of their eyes, most likely recognizing a fellow loser, before they scampered away.

We reached the top of the stairs and entered the main second floor hallway, which had been waxed to a fine sheen. The fluorescent lights that lined the ceiling gleamed off the polish, making the area so bright, I had to squint. Not even the ambling bodies of unmotivated students deflected the shine.

Ms. Garcia, though, got most of them moving. When they saw her coming, they ducked into their classrooms. Was this Hogwarts, and was Ms. Garcia really Dolores Umbridge in disguise? They sure as hell reacted as if she were an agent of Voldemort.

But a quick glance around revealed I hadn’t been transported into Harry Potter’s world. I’d landed at an impoverished San Antonio high school, where silver metallic lockers stood sentry along the halls.

As I passed, I eyed the many dents along their worn fronts. How long would it take before my head added to the collection?

“W
ELCOME
TO
Burbank,” Mr. Rodriguez, my new precalculus teacher, said shortly after Ms. Garcia handed him my transfer papers before slipping out of the classroom without so much as a good-bye.

As he scanned the information, I surveyed the room, which reeked of sweat and desperation. That was typical of an advanced math class, as were the unhelpful posters about signs and cosigns that were plastered everywhere.

The classroom, and most of those I’d passed on my way here, clearly indicated I now attended a poverty-stricken school. My last school, Reagan High, had been located in a more affluent neighborhood, and the classrooms had had all the bells and whistles wealthier taxpayers could afford, like flat screen computers, smart boards, and plasma televisions.

This room had big, bulky desktops, a chalkboard, and a television sitting on an old rollaway cart.

I’d secretly hoped that by transferring to a school where other kids were just as economically embarrassed as I was, I’d perhaps find company in financial misery. All the rich kids saw was poor, white trash. When was I going to learn?

I still existed at the bottom of the totem pole as I had everywhere else. The judgmental eyes of my classmates proved that. As they silently scrutinized me, I did my best to avoid their gazes.

I’d learned quickly that making eye contact led to disaster. It was as if locking eyes with someone began a struggle for dominance that only ended in spilled blood.

High school and the wild had a lot in common. Everyone traveled in packs and gathered at the same watering hole. As long as you did your thing with those like you and kept your nose down, you’d live another day.

If you dared to do more than that, a pair of unseen jaws took you out.

My problem, though, was that I’d entered their habitat uninvited. Packs had already been established, and unless I found a group of losers willing to take me in, I’d be skirting the periphery and fending for myself the rest of the year.

“Queer!” someone coughed into his hand. The comment created a ripple of hushed laughter in the room. All of which escaped Mr. Rodriguez’s attention. He was either deaf or just didn’t care.

Either I was growing tired of being the butt of everyone’s private joke or I was suffering a brain aneurism, but before I could stop myself, I coughed “douche” in my hand as a reply.

The class grew deadly quiet.

A few seconds later, a low whisper caught my attention as one of them pointed at me before more muffled laughter filled the room. They were probably making wisecracks about my ears, my messy hair, or my jacked-up clothes.

They weren’t exactly dressed in name-brand jeans and tops. Their clothes came from department stores like JCPenney. Mine came from the Goodwill clearance bin.

One girl, a cheerleader dressed in her burnt orange and white uniform, giggled to her cheerleader friend while sticking her finger down her throat in a gagging gesture. They both had their long dark hair pulled into ponytails so tight it made them look slightly Asian.

I pretended not to notice their theatrics.

Adjacent to Gag-arella, which was what I’d call her from now till the end of time, sat a row of jocks. Naturally, they took up the entire back row, forming a wall of tight denim, muscled bodies, and letterman jackets. What was it about jocks and the back row? Was that, like, in their playbooks or something? As if the farther away they sat from the teacher, the cooler they were? Whatever!

Anyway, the jocks sat there glaring at me when they weren’t trading sideways glances at each other. Or trying to get the attention of the meanest-looking jock of them all. A snarl seemed to have taken permanent residence on Mr. Badass’s upper lip. His sand-blond hair, dark eyes, and beefy arms certainly made him the strongest and most attractive of the group, but the way the guys around him looked to him for guidance marked him more importantly as an alpha among his pack. I’d been around enough Big Men on Campus to know the drill. Being tortured was in my immediate future, especially if he was the one I just called a douche in front of the class. I’d either suffer through yet another swirly in a urine-filled toilet or get pissed on as I exited the shower in gym class. Oh, joyful day!

There was only one face among the entire class who stared blankly at me. No harsh judgments wrinkled her face, which was caked with white powder, and no friendly twinkle lightened her almond-colored eyes. Either she was an emotionless void, or she just didn’t give a rat’s ass. Based on her all-black clothing and the purple streaks in her hair, which definitely set her apart from the carbon-copy clones around her, it had to be a little bit of both.

“So, Truman,” Mr. Rodriguez said as he rose from behind his desk and patted his tiny belly covered in brown plaid. The mention of my name elicited laughter, which Mr. Rodriguez ignored, from my future tormentors in the back row. Everyone except Mr. Badass apparently found my name knee-slapping hilarious. The big, dumb, predictable jerks! “Why don’t you tell the class a little bit about yourself?”

“Why?” I asked. “They don’t care.”

Mr. Rodriguez rankled at the appraisal. Although I hadn’t meant to come off as disrespectful since I’d just been stating a rather obvious fact, Mr. Rodriguez had no doubt already placed me on his shit list. The man crossed his arms in front of his birdlike chest and gazed at me over his glasses. “You’re not making a very good first impression, young man.”

Yeah, well, neither was this class. But I didn’t have the balls to make such a rebuttal. Instead, I apologized. My apology took some of the bluster out of Mr. Rodriguez’s sails; his arms fell to his sides, but it also resulted in further derision from the class. They rolled their eyes at the lame-ass geek they’d already pegged me as being. Only Emo Girl’s expression remained unchanged.

“What do you want to know?” I asked, trying my best to sound like the dutiful student I really was. I couldn’t alienate the teachers. They were the ones who’d end up saving me in the hall.

“Anything you’d care to share,” Mr. Rodriguez said with a smile at the class. He no doubt believed he had successfully shamed me into compliance.

Before I could launch into the speech I’d given countless times throughout the years, the door behind me opened and shut. Mr. Rodriguez’s triumphant sneer broadened into a hearty smile, and the entire class underwent a metamorphosis. Even Emo Girl lit up a kilowatt or two. Who the hell had just walked in, Leonardo DiCaprio?

I glanced over my shoulder. At the door stood the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen in my life. He had big, ebony eyes, flawless skin, and a full head of rich, jet-black hair. The Burbank Bulldogs baseball team T-shirt he wore spread nicely over his full chest. Strong arms clutched at the backpack he’d just shrugged out of, and a lopsided grin tugged at his lips as he wiggled his big bushy eyebrows at the class.

This kid certainly knew how to make an entrance.

My cock apparently agreed. It had awoken and filled my briefs in an effort to snake out and introduce itself. I lowered my textbook in front of my groin and glanced around. No one had seen the tent in my jeans. Thank God.

Most kids already teased me about being gay because of my odd yet delicate features. Popping a boner for the hot jock in the middle of math class would only add unnecessary fuel to that fire.

“Sorry, I’m late,” the tardy hunk of lean muscle said as he exhaled a lungful of air out the corner of his lips. The sudden rush of air caused his dark locks to briefly flutter on his forehead before once again settling into perfect alignment. “But coach wanted to run a few things by me before practice this afternoon.”

Mr. Rodriguez’s snort told everyone he didn’t appreciate the tardiness. “Well, I will speak to Coach Moore about this, Mr. Castillo. That’s the second time this week.”

The young man shrugged in response to Mr. Rodriguez’s reprimand, as if being tardy was beyond his control and nothing to worry about. Had this guy ever worried about anything in his life? Most likely not. He was not only insanely good-looking, but he carried himself with a devil-may-care attitude that obviously swept up everyone in his proximity.