Free Being True by Jacob Z. Flores

should be offended by the name. By calling yourself a fairy, you take on the negative power everyone else gives that word. You should love yourself more than that. That’s all.”
    I nodded. Claudia was right. I did need to love myself. It was difficult to do that, though, when so many people hated you for just being you. “I’ll work on that.”
    “You’d better,” she said with another jab to my arm. This time I didn’t pretend to be hurt. I took it like a man.
    “So is that why you came to Burbank? Because you’d been getting bullied?”
    I sighed. “Being bullied” didn’t adequately explain what I’d suffered through five high schools and three junior highs. “Yeah. This is my sixth school.”
    “Fuck!” She gritted her teeth. “That’s rough.”
    “It hasn’t been easy,” I agreed. “Especially for my mom. It breaks her heart every time she sees me banged up. It’s like they’re kicking her in the stomach, and every time I see that sadness, I feel like I’ve failed her. That I should somehow be stronger and beat up the guys who use me for a punching bag. But I’m no match for them. I’m not big or strong. I’m just me.”
    “Well, I think who you are is pretty damn great so far.”
    No one besides my family had ever told me that before. “But you don’t really know me,” I said. “I could be some jerk or a gay who hates breeders.”
    She gazed deeply into my eyes, searching deep within my soul. When she found what she was looking for, she shook her head. “Nope. You’re just as I thought you were.”
    “And what am I?”
    “You’re a good guy with a big heart. I can see that as plainly as the scabs on your face. I don’t think there’s one spiteful bone in your body or that you could hate anyone. Not even Rancid Puker, the worthless fuck.”
    Although I hated to agree with her, she was right about the last part. I didn’t hate Rance, or any of the other bullies who’d made my life hell. I pitied them. To inflict that much pain on someone spoke more about their internal suffering. “Well, some might say that makes me a spineless coward. To quote my stepfather, ‘A man stands his ground. He speaks his mind. He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else.’”
    Claudia gritted her teeth again. She only did that when she didn’t like what she was hearing. “He sounds like an asshole.”
    “You’re being far too kind.”
    A smile briefly lit up her face. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told me that before.”
    The computer beeped. The photos had finally started to upload on the slow-ass machine. In a few moments, we would see the photos I’d snapped of Javi and me.
    “Is your mom still married to your stepdad?” she asked once they were done.
    I shook my head. “He’s dead. Drove his car into an approaching semi.”
    “Holy shit!” She crossed herself and said a silent prayer. “Why didn’t you tell me I was speaking ill of the dead?”
    “I think God will forgive you because I’m pretty sure he’s not up there anyway.” Not many people knew the details of my life with Bart Cox, so I surprised myself by providing them without being asked. I revealed everything: how Bart used to hit my mother and me when he was drunk, how he’d worked at some accounting firm and embezzled money. He’d even lost most of the more than two hundred grand my mother had received in death benefits from the city when my dad, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty. Then, to get their money back, Bart’s company went after all of his assets, and since my mother was married to him, that included everything they’d owned together. My mother was left with nothing besides Bart’s debts that she had to work like crazy to pay off. The only possessions we still had were the few items she’d owned when she was married to my real dad, and we had to pinch every penny we had in order to squeak by every month.
    “Holy shit!” she exclaimed again when I was done. “And most everyone in