My best friend was in the prettily lacquered pine box 4 feet away.

I looked down at my notes. I looked around the packed-in room at all the hypocrites. This was a small town. This kind of thing made the press come out. There was even a newsvan outside, and a guy with a camera in the back of the room.

"Excuse me a moment. Before I go on, I need to, ah, gather myself," I stalled.

There was a murmur at the irregularity of it, and I folded up the notes that Lance's mom had written for me.

"Sorry, folks, but... he was my best friend. I won't be long, just need a breath of air first."

Then I motioned to Kirby and headed toward the door.

We stood outside for a minute at the foot of the stairs and then the two from the newspapers in town and the lady from the evening news and her cameraman, followed us outside. Not wanting to intrude on us. I started walking with Kirby, he was being quiet and waiting for me, but all of the news folks caught my hand motion to follow us from behind my back as we walked around the corner of the building.

We were standing there waiting when they got there, and when they saw us waiting for them, they all looked kinda embarassed to be horning in.

"You folks want to know the real story of what happened, you'll be in there and ready when I get back up there. Kirby. I want you to make sure no one shouts me down, no one stops me, and no one leaves. Can you do that?"

He looked at me kinda strange and then as understanding lit his eyes, he gave me that slow nod of his.

"Alright. You folks. Go back inside. Tell them we waved you off if anyone asks. We'll be in directly."

After they had gone back inside, Kirby let out a sigh.

"What're you going to do, Sara?" he asked, concern in his eyes.

"Screw them. I'm not going to lie to make them feel better."

He nodded his slow nod again, and we headed back inside.

I walked slowly with my head down up the aisle, listening to the whispers in the gathered. I unfolded the notes again, and... I began.

"Lance Seniewicz... was my best friend. So many people here, if you look around, were shocked at his death by his own hand. So many people here cared for him..." I paused to swallow a sob that fought to escape.

"And so many people here," I looked around the room at his mother, his sister, the teachers that showed up, "... are bald-faced liars and acting like to try to win an Oscar."

There were, of course, gasps of surprise.

Kirby stepped forward and quieted those that looked about to protest with a glance. I could hear one of the newslady people whispering into a recorder.

"Lance was forced to commit suicide, as much as if those responsible tied the rope and pushed him out of that loft themselves. You want me to tell you the story? You want to know the truth?"

I glared at them all, took a settling breath, and started in.

"Lance was a small guy, liked the arts and was good at them, he was gentle, kind, respectful, and he would do what those he was supposed to respect told him to do. And they took advantage of that to destroy him. Did those things make him want to be a girl? No. Why would they? Is it only girls that like to dance and sing and read and act? What about Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby? Is it only girls that are respectful? Why would boys get in trouble for sassing back, then? No. He was betrayed by those who should have protected a wonderful, sensitive boy like Lance."

I stopped for a moment, breathing hard in my anger, feeling good to let it out. There were several people that were fidgeting uncomfortably, and would likely have gotten up and left if some of the boys there hadn't stood up to back up Kirby and joined him in his great baleful stare.

"Here's what happened. Saint Ezekiel's was going to have a Spring Showcase. Dancing, singing, acting, all rolled up together. Lance should have been the star of the show. He should have been the one they focused on. But his teachers," I pointed at Miss Gult, Miss Juniper, and Miss Holsteader in turn -- the Drama, Choir, and Dance directors respectively.

"... but his teachers," I continued, "decided that they couldn't have a specimen like Lance represent them and show how their best was 'unmanly' and inferior to their other darlings. Ladies and gentlemen, Lance was more of a man than anyone. Sorry, Kirby, but it's true. Lance stood when a girl entered the room. Lance did all the old-fashioned gentleman things for a girl, even me who he was as close to as his sister. Lance was the kind of boy that would become a man that any woman would FIGHT just to say they got to date him once. Lance... was the bravest man I've ever known."

Lance's mom finally couldn't take it.

"Sara! How could you disrupt this funeral like this!? Young lady, you sit down or I've half a mind to --"

I just stared at her.

"Wait your turn, Mrs. Seniewicz, I'll get to your part in this," I said infinitely more calmly than I felt.

She turned the meanest shade of red I've ever seen.

"How DARE you, you little dy--"

"Sit down, mother, before you say something to make this worse," said the quiet voice of Emily, Lance's big sister as she looked at me with tears streaming down her face and nodded for me to go on.

I took another breath and bit back the sob that was still trying to have its way with me, "These three women decided that the best way to achieve the goal of having a 'real' man represent their ambitions was to destroy my best friend."

All three made noises of protest, but then stifled themselves as two of Kirby's goon squad stepped to the end of the aisle they were sitting in.

"Knowing that he had no real choice but to accede to them, and knowing that his only recourse would be to have his mother plead his case, they first went to Mrs. Seniewicz before ever trapping Lance into the situation that they did. And damn her to hell... she agreed to help them."

Emily looked revolted and unbelieving. Her mouth gaping, she looked at her mother for a sign -- ANY sign -- that what I was saying wasn't true. To her credit, Lance's mom had the decency to look guilty. Emily stood, and at first I thought she was going to leave as she was approaching Kirby, but she went and hugged him, then came up on stage behind me, and gave my shoulders a little squeeze of encouragement.

I was now guiding everyone in that room. Even those I was accusing -- the guilty. No one was making a sound without looking to me for approval first. No coughs, no throat clearing... nothing.

"This began in October. You see, everything they told Lance was going to be featured in the Showcase were pieces specifically for a girl. His voice would be able to handle a contralto and counter tenor piece. He could dance any piece that a girl could, they argued. Only a real actor could convincingly pull off being a blushing bride. All of the women's parts in Shakespeare's time had been men. Every word, calculated to force him to a point of not being able to refuse. And when he got home, his mother... rather than being outraged for him or even sympathetic... told him he WOULD practice those parts and to 'help' him, she sent him to school dressed in his sister's clothing the next day. The humiliation my poor, dear friend put up with. Being spat upon, roughed up by boys he had no chance of overcoming if he didn't allow them their way, jeered... only thing is Kirby and the jocks still watched out for him because he was their tutor and more importantly... their friend."

Kirby gave a growl in the general direction of the teachers.

The sob finally escaped and I wept. I couldn't help it and Emily gave me a hug and held me while I cried. Seeing this moment as a chance to break the spell I had everyone under, the three teachers from the boys' school began clamoring for proof. Everyone there knew it was true, but they were right, if there were no proof, it didn't happen.

Unfortunately for them.

"Lance was NOT the idiot they thought him to be, as he put up with this garbage for months. He had the top grades in his school. Not his class. The entire school. And they thought he wouldn't see through what they were doing? They were planning the real Showcase in other rooms with their chosen while one of them would be forcing Lance to be as feminine as possible. He knew. He actually had acquired copies of the actual Showcase, and had learned them. He was NOT going to let them beat him. When he left all of this with me, I was aghast. I never thought I'd use that old word that Mister Jacobs taught us in Freshman English, but there it is. It's the only word that fits. Aghast. For what they were doing was ghastly."

The looks on those old crones' faces... their eyes widened and their mouths opened in a little 'o' each and they lowered themselves back to the chairs.

"Then, in March, he found out that his mother was in on it. He picked up the telephone to call me, and heard his mother discussing things with his teachers. How he wasn't breaking. How she was going to step it up and force him to dress as a frilly LITTLE girl both at home and at school. She was bigger than him, it's not like he could actually refuse."

I tried to bore a hole through the evil woman's nose with my eyes.

"And as he was sadly deciding he would put up with that for the two months left, he heard his mother admit to having been feeding him estrogens since the plan began."

Emily's hands tightened on my shoulders, and I continued.

"When he was finally able to get to a doctor in April, the doctor explained why he had a tender chest. Why he was more emotional. Why he couldn't, ah, get excited. And the doctor then explained that he was now irrevokably sterile. Lance could never be a father. He could discontinue the hormones -- he hadn't explained to the doctor what his mother had done... oh, hello, Doctor -- and he would continue about puberty, but he would never have an easy time of ... well, of sex and getting an erection, and he would never have viable sperm."

I felt something wet hit my shoulder and looked up at Emily's face. She was crying, still, but the look of hatred she was giving her mother was... downright frightening.

"All of this, Lance gave me copies of for safekeeping," I said speaking directly to the cameraman, "and if it sounds melodramatic to say that it's safe and ready to go to anyone if something happens to me, so be it. It's safe, and it will come out later today, whether something happens to me or not."

I stopped and took another breath.

"I was asked to give this eulogy because they all thought Lance was ignorant of what they'd done, and that they could sweep what they'd done under the rug. Lance was above that. He would never have used what he had, as long as he won. And he would have won by their rules."

I was having trouble breathing now.

"I was the one that found him, four nights ago, on the night that he died. I tried to get him to go to the hospital. You see... you all wanted people to think it was a shock, and there was no note. Well."

I was taking breaths in between my lurching, body-wracking, shoulder tremors that were the form my sobs took.

I found him behind the dumpster by the old playground. Still in his party dress that he'd had to wear to school. He was vomiting and bleeding and had been badly beaten. I helped him to his feet and then I helped him home, while he slowly told me what happened. There were three boys at school. Yes, I have their names. They caught him on the way home. They first beat him. Then they..."

Emily broke down and slumped to the floor wailing.

"My baby brother! No! Nononononono!"

Kirby went to her.

Mrs. Seniewicz looked shocked for real. She sat very still and her eyes asked me to go on. I had the weirdest calm about me. The hurt and everything just melted away. I looked into the camera and continued, matter-of-factly.

"They raped my best friend. In his mouth, in his ass, and in his mind. They told him that each of their favorite teachers had told them to stop Lance at any cost so that he wouldn't steal their Showcase. They figured that since he looked and -- to their minds -- acted like a girl, they would show him what it was like to be a girl."

The three teachers were finally hit by the magnitude. They were shaking their heads in denial.

"I sat in the barn with him for several hours. Holding him while he cried. Trying to get him to go to the doctor."

I looked up and a sense of well-being and peace washed over me, now the story was out.

"Lance was as close to me as to his sister. But to me... he was my soulmate. I loved him. I love him now. I would do again what had to be done. I left, and took the gun out of my father's desk. Then I went and found those three. They were still sitting around at the town square. They didn't know me. The four of us went out to the woods, and they didn't have any idea what was going on until the pop of the gun into their faces. Did I mention that I'm the junior girls' firearms champ for this state? I went back to tell Lance it was all better. That maybe he could love me as much as I love him. When I saw him, I couldn't believe it. He was more than that. The note fell out of his hand and I took it. I have it here:

I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough.

...he wasn't strong enough?"

"In closing, let me just say, Lance Seniewicz was the strongest man I've ever known."