Being True by Jacob Z. Flores

yesterday. When I slowly turned to her, no glittering sparkles or flying unicorns pranced across her black T-shirt. It was a zombie, reaching out for his next victim. The white block print next to the rotting corpse face said, “All my friends are undead.” I was glad some things didn’t change, like the scowl on Claudia’s face.
    “Thank God,” I said in relief. “You’re still you.”
    “Who else would I be?” she asked, staring at me through narrowed eyes. “Did you fall off your bike into Rance’s fist again?”
    She grinned broadly at me while I stuck out my tongue. I had initially worried about the fallout once Rance was released from his in-school holding pen, but since returning, he’d made every effort to keep our paths from crossing. His eyes still shot daggers at me, and I had no doubt if we met in a dark alley, I’d never make it out alive, but Coach Moore had threatened to kick him off the team if he was caught fighting on campus one more time.
    That had been incentive enough for Rance to back off a bit.
    But it was more than just Rance. Even the Jock Brigade hadn’t been giving me trouble. They hadn’t suddenly become BFFs or anything. It was like some unseen cease-fire had been magically declared. Maybe it was because of Javi, or maybe it was because Rance wasn’t there to egg them on. Whatever it was, I was glad for the reprieve.
    But now that people I passed in the hall were actually acknowledging me, I found the sudden recognition far too bizarre.
    “Well, look who’s Mr. Popular all of a sudden,” Claudia said. She walked on my right toward precalc with a smug look on her face. Did she know something I didn’t?
    “What’s going on?” I asked as I smiled at another “Hey, Tru” that floated down the hall. This time it was Enrique Fuentes, the senior class president, from history class.
    “Are you kidding me right now?” she asked.
    I glanced at Claudia, who practically huffed in derision.
    “If you know what’s going on, I wish you’d tell me.”
    She blew a strand of purplish-black hair out of her eyes as she reached into the big, clunky black bag she carried with her everywhere. “You’re like the worst journalist ever!” she said when she pulled out the school paper.
    I still had no clue. I’d seen the paper. I did work for The Harvest now, so it wasn’t like I hadn’t already seen the mockup. “What’s the paper got to do with anything?”
    When Claudia handed it to me, I glanced down at the picture I’d taken of Javi and me my first week of school. Claudia had decided not to use it for the article she ran back then. That had been a story on the new team returning to state. Now that we were spotlighting individual players with each new issue, she used one of the shots of me and Javi, where he looked at the camera instead of at me.
    But in this shot, Javi’s arm was draped around my shoulder, and silly smiles were plastered on our faces. The story I’d written about Javi had made the front page. Was that all it took to get noticed around here?
    “This still doesn’t make sense.” I folded up the paper and tucked it under my arm. “So what if I wrote the lead story?”
    Claudia sighed loudly. Her disappointment in me clearly knew no bounds. “It’s not the article, you dumbass. It’s the photo.”
    “What about it?” I asked as I unfolded the newspaper for another glance. There didn’t seem to be any reason others would find the picture so special. I sure as hell did. In fact, I’d hung in my bedroom the one where Javi was staring at me. Why did anyone else care?
    “That photo,” she said, as she poked our faces on the paper, “basically announces to the entire school that you two are friends. And when you’re practically best buds with the most popular guy in school, well, others tend to take notice.”
    Best buds? Is that what everyone now thought, and was that why I was no longer the pariah?
    When we entered precalc, my classmates, who were already