Being True Read Online Free PDF Page A

solace amid the stacks of boxes or the contents of our lives strewn across the floor? No pictures of my family hung on the walls. Only disgusting brown streaks decorated the interior.
    This place wasn’t home. It offered no unseen embrace of familiarity with which I could lose myself.
    Apartment C at 603 Esperanza Street had nothing I needed. Not even my mother was home.
    After tossing the camera Claudia had given me on the couch, I hopped on my bike and pedaled as fast as my legs could go.
    I had no clue where I was going, and I didn’t care. I just needed to get as far away from the hell my life had become as possible.
    I sped down streets lined with trash and weeds and broken concrete. I zoomed around potholes big enough to swallow cars and by alleys filled with shadows and graffiti.
    Cars horns blared as I darted through intersections, not caring to look if the coast was clear. What would it matter if one hit me anyway? My life had stripped the ignorance of death from me already.
    Yet my heart pounded in my chest like a rabbit that had just escaped a pack of hounds, and fear held me tight and refused to let go. So I pedaled faster, pumping my legs in a vain attempt at wiping the image of Rance’s hate-filled, glazed-over eyes from my mind.
    I’d never been that terrified before in my life. I’d been beaten up before several times, but this was the first time I’d actually believed I might not make it out alive.
    All the other times it had happened, there’d been witnesses. Rance had had me cornered in a secluded area where he could have done anything to me, and no one would have been the wiser.
    Skidding tires drew me from my thoughts. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed a brown Honda fishtailing to a stop six feet to my right. The driver laid hands on his horn and shouted curses at me out the open window.
    But that didn’t stop me. I continued onward until sweat dripped down my forehead and stung my eyes. I only slowed down once the dull ache in my side grew into a blinding, stabbing pain. My lungs pleaded for air, and I realized I was wheezing and on the verge of passing out.
    I stopped pedaling and coasted. The blur my surroundings had become cleared, and I realized I had no idea where I was.
    Just how far had I gone?
    The rundown buildings that made up my neighborhood had disappeared. Actual houses surrounded by chain-link fences now lined both sides of the street. Cars were parked in driveways and not on the lawns. And they even had all four tires. They weren’t resting on cinder blocks.
    These homes weren’t the residences of the well-off. They were obviously owned by those of the lower working class, but considering where I lived, they might as well be mansions.
    “Hey, you!” someone behind me shouted. “Stop.”
    Panic once again crushed me as the unmistakable clank of a spinning bike chain came from behind. I didn’t waste time looking back. What followed me could only be further torment at the hands of another bully. So I rose off my seat and put my full weight into each pedal.
    “Hey, man. Wait up!”
    Yeah, right. For what? Another jock beatdown? No, thank you.
    Up ahead, at the top of a small hill, stood a set of uneven train tracks. If I didn’t slow down, the tracks and my momentum might send me tumbling to the cracked asphalt. Such a spill could probably split my skull open. But getting caught by whoever pursued me would likely end the exact same way.
    I pedaled faster.
    The lights atop the crossing gate arms flashed red in warning before lowering, and the horn of an approaching train blared three times.
    If I could beat the train, I would be safe on the other side. There was no way the guy behind me could make it before it hit the intersection. It would give me the time I needed to take a side street to safety and then circle back around.
    The apartment might not be home, but within its moldy walls, I’d be relatively safe.
    “What the hell, man?” the voice asked through panting