Gerard was so drunk, he couldn't stand up. He was sitting on the pavement with his back against the lamppost, trying to grasp a thought long enough to figure out how to get inside the front door. He knew he couldn't sleep on the sidewalk; someone could hit him with a car, or his parents would know he'd been drinking, and he had school tomorrow. The path up to the house was just behind the bushes, he simply had to get up the stairs and find his keys. He needed to go to bed. He wanted to be drunker.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes to clear his head. When he opened them again, the soft, pink pre-dawn was painting the road and the sky and his skin. It was beautiful and for a moment he just watched, blearily. When he tried to get up, a stabbing pain nailed him to the tarmac--he pictured a giant spike going sideways through a pale, long-haired gothboy, much prettier than him, but still him, into his neck and out through his chest and into the ground--and then he managed to get up and make his way into the house, up the stairs, and into his room. He collapsed on the bed in his clothes and woke up once when his mom asked if he was sick and again when it was 4 in the afternoon and he was feeling frayed and thirsty.
--
All students had to do sports. This was a problem. Gerard hated sports. He also did not need to hand people another reason to make fun of him, and he didn't want to share showers with guys who were stronger than him and looked better naked, and he smoked, and he was sometimes so hungover it felt like any type of running, jumping, kicking could quite possibly kill him. Croquet was a simple choice, really. One of the simpler choices he'd had to make that year.
There were mostly other misfits in the croquet class. Gerard hesitated to call them a 'team'. They set up the lawn and stood around watching each other and the sky and their watches.
Except there was this one kid who actually seemed to know the rules. He was a short, dark-haired boy with a nice smile who might be considered really cute until he started babbling on about death and chemistry compounds and the lifespan of stars, and once Gerard actually watched him wave at one of the cheerleaders then trip over his own feet and land on his back, narrowly avoiding being pierced by a croquet hoop. "Who was that?" Ray had asked him, looking after the blonde, preppy girl - because Ray would be a big whore if he could only get a girl to talk to him - and the kid, whose name was Frank, had brushed grass from his knees and said, "oh, that's Martha, we were friends in 3rd and 4th grade, she had ear infections too."
But Gerard had noticed that when Ray asked if he and Martha had ever dated, Frank had looked genuinely perplexed.
--
Gerard didn't think much about boys. He had more important things to consider, like his art, and how to get ahold of liquor, and how to avoid the more obvious traps for getting beaten up, and music. He only thought about boys when he was drawing quick serrated forms in his sketchpad, or when someone called him a fag, or when he had his eyes closed.
--
He and Mikey weren't typical prep school students, but that was only the beginning of their problems.
They lived in an unfriendly neighbourhood in a bad part of town. Their house was big and gothic-looking and falling apart slightly, just cracking at the edges, and sometimes Gerard thought it was a fucking metaphor for his life, and sometimes he thought he was possessed by the insane spirit of the house, and sometimes he thought he was nothing, nobody.
He didn't talk to Mikey about these things, but it was good to have him next door.
Mikey spent a lot of time in his bedroom, playing music so loudly that the wall they shared vibrated. Luckily, he had inherited most of his taste in music from Gerard, so it was decent. They had always been close, but they were quite different, which Gerard was happy about. He would not have been able to watch another version of himself go through the same problems at school. Not that Mikey was popular by any means – he wore glasses and wheezed if he had to do something strenuous, and he was on the croquet team too - but Gerard didn't see that haunted look in Mikey's eyes that he saw staring back at himself every morning from the French mirror in their shared bathroom.
Sometimes he thought about when they were younger and it was mostly just the two of them, and how different things were now. He didn't exactly miss it. He was mostly focused on growing up. He hated teenagers; it would be awesome not to be one.
--
"If I get an A they'll buy me an electric guitar," Ray said.
They were sitting on the steps to Gerard's house. They had spent the morning watching Breakfast at Tiffany's, because Gerard loved that movie, even though he wasn't sure why; it wasn't visually interesting, but for some reason it always made him feel better. And Ray didn't mind what they watched as long as it wasn't sports.
"What kind?" he asked.
"I said I wanted a Gibson Les Paul."
Gerard wasn't surprised. Ray's parents had bought him a Playstation for being on the honor roll last year. Gerard thought about how lucky it was that his hobby only used pens and papers.
They had been friends since their freshman year. It was the kind of friendship where Gerard sometimes wasn't sure if he even really liked Ray. The worst things about Ray was his hair, no, his voice, or possibly the way he attempted to talk to girls. Gerard had never met anyone who failed so badly with girls. Gerard would probably get laid before Ray did, and he never even tried to. It was the best decision of his high school career, because he might be a virgin, but at least he got to keep his dignity. He also had a nagging feeling that if he ever tried to get girls he would be even more obvious somehow.
"Once I get it, we should start a band," Ray said. It wasn't the first time he had mentioned it.
Gerard sighed. The sun was bright and he was tired. He wished that everything could be in technicolor. "I don't play guitar."
"We're gonna need a singer."
"I can't sing." Gerard hadn't sung since he played the lead in a school production of Peter Pan. He counted it as the moment all his troubles began.
Ray shrugged. "You don't have to be able to sing."
"Fine, okay." Gerard didn't want to argue, he didn't think anything would really come out of it anyway. He loved music, but his art was safer, less confrontational.
"Your brother could play bass," Ray said. He didn't have a lot of people to choose from to fill his band. "You think he'll want to?"
Gerard snorted. The thought of Mikey working up enough enthusiasm to do anything on a regular basis was quite far-fetched, but he said, "Sure, ask him."
--
A ball hit Frank's lap, scattering his lunch over his feet and clothes, and Gerard noticed that Frank looked surprised more than upset. There was something resigned about the way he brushed the rest of his sandwich off his lap and bent to pick up the juice pack. As he sat down again, he threw a quick look over at Gerard, and Gerard didn't acknowledge him, but he thought that there was something incredibly stupid, yet unselfconscious, about the way Frank just sat back down again; he didn't even bother to move an inch. Gerard would have moved to the other side of the school by now, the other side of town, if he could, but it didn't seem to bother Frank that people had seen it. Gerard had seen it too, but he was looking at the way Frank was pushing a strand of hair out of his eyes, and he was already forgetting.
That night, he was drawing at his desk with his headphones on. It was for an art project, and the theme was nightmares, and he knew he would ace it. He drew horror movie-themed sketches almost every day, to feel better, to unload his brain, and he started with the view from the window and sketched werewolves and demons ascending on to the dusky street, people running, screaming and dying. He glanced up, and added the streetlamp he'd spent the night with, then he drew someone running from a werewolf in a straight collision course with it, hands flailing, almost comical. He looked down at the figure and sighed; it wasn't supposed to be funny, but there was no point forcing a feeling, that's what his grandmother had always taught him, so he decided it wasn't going to be part of the project, and started adding details to the people instead, making them almost recognisable as celebrities and the lacrosse team. It was always cathartic. He was hardly aware of when his focus shifted and he ended up meticulously drawing Frank sitting cross-legged on the pavement eating his lunch and not caring about the monsters.
--
The first time they worked together on a science project was because Gerard wanted to get anything above a D.
He couldn't get his head around science at all. He thought it was probably why he was so good at art. The only subject he was remotely interested in was anatomy and what gruesomeness could look good in red and black spilling out of a person, but the rest, mixing different substances to make other substances, was boring and used a completely different set of sensibilities than Gerard was used to. By the way Frank loved chemistry, he had assumed that pairing up with him would be a good idea, and, also, Frank was on the croquet team and it wasn't like Gerard had a lot of friends in the class to choose from.
As it turned out, Frank had some interesting ideas and read a lot of books, but he couldn't get the practical bit right.
"I mostly get C's," he confessed when they sat at a corner desk, looking at the instructions. "I'm really going to have to study hard for this one. We can help each other."
Gerard was genuinely surprised. "I thought you were – I thought you liked science?"
"Yeah," Frank giggled, and Gerard groaned.
Chemistry was the only class they had together apart from croquet, and Gerard was just happy he didn't get killed or burned from sitting next to him for an hour with no protection apart from goggles.
--
He had once been called into the counsellor's office on the grounds that he drew dismembered people in art class and dyed his hair black. Gerard thought that if he had been brave enough, he would have let them lock him up somewhere – he always pictured some place right out of the Fifties with lots of white walls and crazy people and daily dosages of pills – he didn't know what that said about his mental health, but in the end he was declared completely normal. Mikey was the one they actually did tests on.
"You're very talented," his Arts teacher said of his latest project, "I'm not sure I'm even supposed to get this, and I don't, but I can recognise the process. "
"Thanks," he said.
Her voice softened, "Look, Gerard, once you're at SVA, things will be better. Life will really begin."
Adults said that to him all the time. He nodded. "Yeah, sure."
Mikey had been put on medication in the end, but Gerard didn't know if he was still on it. His parents hid all pills except for vitamins and Mikey's acne medication, because they must know how Gerard liked to get high on whatever he could to make his life feel okay. But they let him listen to whatever music he liked and do what he wanted to his hair, so at least he had that.
He was often alone and falling-over-drunk when he dyed his hair, staining the tiles in his and Mikey's bathroom. Sometimes it made his scalp burn - he would sit down on the toilet seat and read a comic with the wine bottle between his legs and music blaring, and he would forget to wash it out. The first time he hadn't read the instructions carefully enough and had stained his fingers and hands a greyish black that wouldn't come out even when he scrubbed them raw. He always used the gloves now. He didn't think that coloring his hair said anything in particular about his sexuality, but he couldn't be completely sure.
--
"We should have a cram session," Frank said, catching up with him just as he was leaving campus.
Gerard didn't know how to say that he had planned on spending the evening alone in his room working on his comic and listening to music and not thinking about school until the next day when he would cobble something together in study hall and hope that Frank had done enough to earn them a C, so he just sighed and said, "okay".
"The library is open late today. We could sit there," Frank suggested, as if he thought location was why Gerard hesitated.
Frank had on big sunglasses and he talked incessantly all the way back towards the library. As they crossed the lawn, he suddenly said, "Hey, there's Mikey. Mikey!" and when Gerard looked over, Mikey was walking across the lawn a bit away from them, but however much Frank waved he couldn’t get his attention. Gerard didn't even try; he figured Mikey had his headphones on and the volume up. He could almost tell by the way Mikey walked what album he was listening to.
In the library, Frank read parts of the chapter on solvents out loud in big whispers, and Gerard looked out of the window and thought that he might be the biggest loser this school had ever seen, but at least he wasn't as big a geek as Frank. That was always something to treasure and bring with him to college next year.
--
It was dark by the time they finally left campus. Frank was leading his bicycle and Gerard was carrying his heavy backpack. They had missed the school bus and Gerard would need to take two different city buses to get home, but he thought that at least it was late enough that they'd be empty of students.
"You wanna go by the cemetery?" Frank said then. "It's just up here. It's nice."
Gerard frowned. He really should go home, but something about it caught his interest. He hadn't even known there was a cemetery around there. "Sure," he said.
Frank turned off on a side street and Gerard followed. The road winded upwards until they came to the edge of the graveyard, and the lushness of the trees hanging over the stone, the quiet and the dark immediately appealed to Gerard.
Frank leaned his bicycle against the wall and took off his jacket. "We have to climb the wall," he said.
As Gerard watched, Frank went a bit further along until he found a tree to help him scale the stone wall. It was obviously not the first time he'd done that. Gerard followed and climbed up on one of the lower branches of the same tree, pushing himself up to the top of the wall. Frank helped him to stand up, and then he took Gerard's hand. Before Gerard had time to pull his hand back, Frank had jumped, pulling Gerard with him.
They tumbled onto the grass on the other side of the wall. Gerard landed a bit clumsily and pain shot up through his right knee, but he couldn't help laughing. Jumping was always fun, especially when it was a surprise. Next to him, Frank brushed grass from his knees and laughed too. They were inside the confines of the cemetery.
Gerard looked around. "Cool," he said.
"It's pretty around here," Frank agreed, "Peaceful."
Gerard nodded. The grey stones surrounding them seemed sheltering in the dark. They started walking along a small path. All around them were rosebushes and flowers, some wild growing along the wall and some freshly planted in front of the headstones.
They walked for a while until Frank said, "Here, let's sit down," and gestured at a slope on the side of the stony path. "It's pretty, I usually sit here."
He dropped his jacket on the ground, and Gerard took off his jacket too, and sat down next to him. "It's very quiet," he agreed.
"Yeah," Frank said.
They didn't speak for a few minutes. Gerard picked at a few strands of grass, looking around at the flowers and the dusking sky and all the names and dates around them. Frank had stretched out on his back on top of his jacket. His eyes were closed and he had one hand under his head. Gerard looked at him and thought that his skin was very pale and his hair was very black.
"Are you going to draw it?" Frank asked, cracking open one eye.
"I – what?"
"This spot. It's nice."
"I didn't bring my stuff," Gerard mumbled.
"Sorry, I should have reminded you. It'd be cool if you drew this place, I heard you're great, so." Frank peered up at him. "Next time, maybe?"
"Yeah." Gerard got clumsy closing the bag. "Do you, uh – are you into art?"
Frank giggled, "I can't draw to save my life. But I like visual stuff, like movies. I love Tim Burton movies, especially Nightmare Before Christmas. I'm obsessed with it."
"Really?" Gerard was slightly surprised. He wasn't sure why he hadn't expected that from Frank, but he hadn't.
Frank nodded enthusiastically, "Totally. But I'm more into music, it's easier to get. Your brother's got a great collection. I got to listen to his ipod – well, I was allowed one earphone."
"Most of those are mine," Gerard said. He was sort of surprised at Frank. It was...something, and it made him wonder how many other people at school were actually quite different from how they seemed.
"Really?" Frank looked impressed.
"He likes my stuff, except for Queen. I don't know why, but he just doesn't seem to get it."
Frank frowned. "Not sure I do either."
"Okay, how can you not – "Gerard caught himself and stopped. He bit his lip, "Actually, never mind. I'm not going to get into it. Let's just agree on Green Day?"
"Fuck yeah," Frank nodded. "It's the reason I learned guitar."
Gerard blinked. "You play?"
"A bit. Well, every day," Frank looked over at him, "Do you?"
"Only a little bit." Gerard had some trouble readjusting his view on Frank. The good taste in movies and the art appreciation and the decent taste in music was one thing, but a guitarist? He was a science geek, Gerard wasn't sure how the two could combine.
"I spent a lot of time in my room," Frank said, as if he knew what Gerard had been thinking, "I had ear infections and chronic bronchitis when I was younger." He smiled.
Gerard smiled back. That explained it. He lay down on the grass and looked up at the sky. After a while he heard Frank stretch out as well. The night was mild and quiet, and Gerard closed his eyes and enjoyed the thought that there were gravestones surrounding them on all sides.
--
As they slid down to land on the other side of the wall again, Frank touched Gerard's arm, and said, "Wait – " He dug something out of his jacket. A pack of cigarettes, Marlboro light.
Gerard stared. "Didn't you just say you have chronic bronchitis?"
Frank shrugged. "I don't smoke a lot." He held out the pack. "Do you?"
Gerard smoked maybe five a day on bad days or when he was drawing. He took one, dug a lighter out of his pocket while Frank was still searching his backpack. "Here."
"Thanks." Frank leaned in and Gerard lit the cigarette for him. He took a drag and started coughing.
They stood for a while against the wall, smoking and not talking. The sky was full of stars and the stone was cold against his back, but Gerard thought he could quite happily stand there until high school was over, until his head was better, until he had his life sorted out, had unravelled the big knot of problems it had become.
They could make out the school from there. They were quiet, but Gerard had a feeling they were both looking at it.
"I fucking hate that place," Frank said then, with venom.
Gerard nodded, but he didn't say anything. Putting words to it never made it any better. He thought maybe this would be a pretty spot to draw it from, though.
**
Their mom didn't expect much from Mikey anymore, but for some reason she was adamant that he should learn how to drive and as soon as possible.
He was too young to get a learners permit, but she would force him to drive her around the deserted suburban roads late at night, and she turned a blind eye if Gerard borrowed the car to go into town and Mikey came along. Sometimes Gerard wondered if maybe she wasn't so concerned that he taught Mikey how to drive around town as much as out of it.
"Mikey," Gerard hollered up the stairs. "I'm leaving now, if you're coming."
It was Sunday and she was gardening and had hinted to Gerard that he could borrow the car if he was going out, and to "please take your brother with you, he needs some daylight." Gerard didn't really want to go anywhere, but he didn't argue, because she could make life uncomfortable for him, especially around gardening season, so he had called Ray and asked if he needed a ride anywhere, and Ray said that he was in the mall looking at guitars and would like a lift back home. Ray didn't have a car at the moment, because he had failed a chemistry test and his parents had taken away his privileges.
Mikey finally came sauntering down the stairs. He didn't look happy, but he had obviously heard the tone of their mom's voice too and just held his hand out for the car keys.
They got into the car and Gerard buckled up while Mikey spent a long time trying to find a good radio station before settling on some classic rock, grimacing. Their car had never had a CD player.
"Check the mirrors," Gerard said automatically. He never knew if Mikey did it right or not, but he figured that was for the driver's ed teacher to make sure of. If Mikey got them killed because he hadn't adjusted his mirror properly, Gerard would never have known anyway.
Mikey threw a quick glance in each mirror, and turned the ignition and put the car in reverse. Gerard turned down the volume of the radio before they were even out of the driveway; the station was just too shitty. He rolled down the window and thought that it was a lovely day, bright and warm, and no school, so maybe it was a good thing he got to spend some time outside, as Mikey slowly backed out of the driveway. "Did you check for cars?" Gerard asked.
Mikey nodded. "Sure."
"No, you didn't."
"I did."
"Just please check for cars before you drive on to a main street, okay."
"I know."
Mikey sounded bored already. Gerard remembered that when he was fifteen he had been quite enthusiastic to learn to drive, but Mikey was never enthusiastic about anything. He wondered what it would take for Mikey to actually care enough to want to do something.
"You know the way to the mall, right?" he said.
Mikey nodded. It was an easy route, there weren't a lot of places to get into trouble, and Gerard never really worried about getting pulled over. He figured he wasn't the only one teaching his younger brother to drive. And it would be very handy once Mikey had his licence and could come pick Gerard up whenever he wasn't in a state to drive.
Mikey was pressing quite smoothly on the gas and he hadn't got distracted messing with the radio yet, like he usually did, which was the only time Gerard got really scared.
"You're doing a good job," Gerard said, encouragingly.
Mikey didn't answer.
They picked Ray up in the parking lot outside the mall.
"Thanks," he said as he climbed in. He was guitarless. He had only been allowed to look at them so far, just to whet his appetite, because he hadn't actually passed yet. "Hi," he said to Mikey. "Got your license yet?"
Mikey shook his head.
"He hasn't even got a learners permit yet," Gerard said.
"Awesome." Ray handed Gerard a guitar magazine, which was earmarked and practically fell open at one of the pages. "What do you think?"
Gerard didn't know all that much about guitars, but he knew enough to nod enthusiastically. "That's what you're getting? Wow."
"Yeah, well, if I pass." He took the magazine back, lovingly.
"Easier on the gas," Gerard said, then turned to look at Ray again. "Did I tell you that Frank plays guitar?"
Ray frowned. "Frank Iero from the croquet team?"
"Yeah. And he's got a decent taste in music too."
"Really?" Ray was suddenly interested. "Do you think we should ask him to be in the band?" He asked it as if it was Gerard's band too, as if there even was a band.
Gerard could see Mikey throw a glance at Ray in the rearview mirror. He rarely spoke to Ray, but now he was suddenly paying attention.
"Ray wants to start a band," Gerard explained.
"Yeah. And we'll need a bass player, if you're interested," Ray said.
"I – um," Mikey swerved and Gerard had to quickly grab a hold of the steering wheel to keep them in the right lane. "Sorry." Mikey lifted his foot from the gas pedal and the car jolted violently, before it levelled out. "I don't know how to play," he continued, as if nothing had happened.
"It's not hard." Ray had a tight hold on the headrest in front of him, but he hardly seemed to have noticed the bumps. It wasn't the first time he was in the car with Mikey driving. "You can learn."
"Okay," Mikey said.
"Indicator!" Gerard said.
After they had dropped Ray off at his house, they headed back down the quiet, winding street towards town again. The rest of the drive went well. Gerard looked out of the window and tried not to let his mind drift in case Mikey decided to make a sharp turn without indicating again. The music was still bad, but still the best they could find, and Mikey had the volume quite low for being him.
"You think you wanna learn to play bass?" Gerard asked after a while.
Mikey just shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe."
They were quiet for a while. Gerard wanted to ask Mikey about school, if he found it hard, if people were as horrible to him as they had been to Gerard his first year, if he was interested in any of the girls, if he knew what he wanted to do after high school, how much pot he smoked, where he got the money from, if he needed to talk about anything, but instead he looked over and smiled.
"I like your hair." He reached over and pulled slightly at the tips sticking out under Mikey's knitted hat.
He thought sometimes that Mikey would be better off if he just got a normal haircut, but he actually really liked the way Mikey's hair was. It was different. Gerard's style was similar to hundreds of kids in hundreds of schools, but Mikey's style was his own.
"What do you call that?" he asked, teasingly.
Mikey ducked his head, but Gerard could see him almost smile. "Fuck off," he mumbled.
"Good name."
"What do you call yours?"
"Dracula chic." Gerard flipped his hair over his shoulder.
"Dracula chick," Mikey said.
"Change lanes here." Gerard laughed.
Mikey kept his eyes on the road, but he seemed to have relaxed, and Gerard noticed that it made him a better driver. His mom mentioned sometimes that Mikey drove better with Gerard than with anyone else.
**
Gerard didn't think he had done anything to deserve being hit until he bled, but sometimes he thought maybe he hadn't done enough to prevent it either. Somehow it must be his own fault. Ray was a loser too, but Ray never got beaten up; it was only Gerard who attracted that kind of violence.
He was sitting on the far side of the track field, hidden behind the raised bit of the lawn, his head rested against the stone step, wiping blood from his nose, when someone suddenly said, "Hi, what're – " and Gerard jumped and swore and the person jumped too, "Fuck, you're bleeding."
Gerard wiped his nose again. "Yeah," he said, "Hi." Frank was standing on the step above him with his backpack slung over his shoulder and big sunglasses on his face.
"What happened?" Frank jumped down to stand in front of him, "Did someone beat you up?"
"Yep." Gerard didn't know what else to say.
"That sucks." Frank reached into his pocket, got a wad of tissues out and handed them to him. "Here."
"Thanks." Gerard took the tissues and pressed them to his nose.
"Lucky for you I always have a cold." Frank laughed when Gerard quickly took the tissues away from his face again. "Don't worry they're new."
"Good. Thanks."
"You're welcome." Frank sat down next to him on the steps and Gerard finished carefully cleaning off his nose and upper lip. "So, are you going back to class?" Frank asked after a while.
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