Chapter Five.
"So, how long did you two spend finding your glasses?" Gerard insinuated over yet another cup of coffee. He sat crosslegged on his bed, twitching slightly from both the caffiene and the surge of good news that was quickly filling the tiny dorm. It was the Monday night after Thanksgiving, and Monday nights were "Boys' Nights" in their room. It meant coffee and Stewart's and Cracker Jacks and calling out a pizza and plain, good ol' guy time. Mikey sat on the floor, leaning against his bed with a smug look on his face. He'd taken immense pride in recounting every last detail of the adventures last Tuesday night.
Sonny's short-statured, dark-haired roommate, Frank, straddled Mikey's chair backwards and munched on his 3rd slice of pizza. He giggled from under his oversized sweatshirt's hood as Mikey's eyebrows flashed up and down a few times and took a long swig of Stewart's finest in response to Gerard's question.
"Long enough." was all he said.
The two other boys let out a chorus of catcalls, and when the laughter subsided, Mikey spoke up agian.
"Gerard, you've been twitching like that since Helena's party - what the hell is going on?!"
A wide, lopsided grin spread across Gerard's face, and Frank jerked his head around to stare quizically at him. Gerard had kept mum about the party, so news that there had even been one had yet to reach Frank's ears.
"Well!" said Gerard with an almost rehearsed flourish, "Wouldn't you like to know."
"Aw, c'maah..." Frank chimed in between mouthfuls of pizza, "Maa-kaa tor ufs hifs so-ree."
Gerard and Mikey looked in utter bewilderment from each other to Frank, who casually gnawed his way through the lump of cheese and pepperoni in his mouth. "I think he said 'Mikey told us his story', but I'm not really fluent in Pizza, so don't quote me." said Mikey after a pause. " And I must say, I agree. I told you about how I got to actually talk to Carla--"
"Woah, woah, woah, little man. You didn't just talk to Carla. You fucking got a date with Carla. There's a world of difference there." Gerard cut in.
"Yeah. But I don't want to sound greedy. She's amazing. I don't want to jinx anything..." Mikey mumbled into the bottle of Stewart's he was still nursing.
"Dude, you'll do fine. At least she knows you exist and there's pretty effin' good chances that you'll start seriously going out with her." Frank had managed to swallow most of the pizza and had decided to speak in english again.
"Uh oh, is that a little emo I see coming into the conversation?" said Gerard in mock surprise.
Frank just blushed and lowered his head so that his hood obscured his face. Mikey shot a warning look at Gerard, who shot back a look that read "What? What did I do?"
"Frankie, what is it?" Mikey asked, taking a slice of pizza for himself.
"Nothing..." he sighed. "Just that... nah, forget it."
"No, really. What is it? We're not gonna laugh at you." Mikey shot another warning look at Gerard, who threw up his hands in exasperation. Frank felt his entire face and down the back of his neck burning. He waited a minute, but since the topic didn't change, he sighed again and decided to just get it over with. Without picking up his head, he took a deep breath and spoke.
"It's Sami." There was longer-than-necessary pause. Frank tipped his head up enough to catch two expectant looks from his friends, and sighed again. He really didn't want to talk about this, but at the same time, he figured if anyone could help him out, it would be these two guys. "I can't stop thinking about her. And I really think it's getting to be one of those 'obsessive' things, because I realized that I know way too much information about her - like way too much. Like, her locker combination. Her schedule. Where she usually sits for lunch. GAH, I saw her in the hallway that second day of classes, and I just died. I'm freaking addicted to that girl! I seriously cannot stop obsessing over her."
There was another long pause, in which Mikey had begun to organize some form of a comforting response in his mind, but his train of thought was interrupted as Frank unexpectedly spoke up again.
"God, it sounds so stupid and cliched, but she really doesn't know that I exist. Sometimes, I'll be sitting there in the hallway and she'll smile at me, and it's the best feeling in the world... until her friend who was standing next to me goes up and gives her a hug. I mean, I tried. I honestly tried to say someting that would make her be all 'Aww, you're so cute' and whatnot and like me, but it didn't work. I had the whole thing planned out since the day I first saw her. And it took the better part of a month until the perfect moment came up. She was standing by her locker, pretty much alone, so I walked up to her and I bit her."
"You WHAT?!" exclaimed Mikey and Gerard simultaneously.
"I bit her! Just on the ear! Not hard or anything, and --shut up, I did it for a reason. God, what kind of freak do you think I am?! Wait, no. Don't answer that. Anyway, I bit her and she was like 'What are you doing!?', and I was like 'Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just taking a bite out of crime.', and she was like 'WHAT?!?!', and then I was like 'Well, it's gotta be illegal to look that good!' ...And ever since then she's been acting like she doesn't even know that I exist."
"Well...!" started Mikey after a moment. "I think... um..."
"I think you need to do something to get her to notice you, Frank. In a good way. Biting a girl is a... tad random and probably not the best way to get her to talk to you, let alone win her heart." said Gerard, slowly coming out of a pensive reverie. "You said you know her locker combo, right?"
"Yeah," said Frank, hurridly adding "Is that weird?"
"Not in the least." replied Gerard, per usual and not missing a beat. "Here's an idea. Come up with something - a poem, a picture, a something, and put it in her locker. She's bound to see it because she uses her locker every day, no?" Frank nodded. "So do something that will make her notice you, be intrigued by you. Do it like a mystery - a, a whatchamacallit... a secret admirer. Lead her on a little bit - trust a pro at this, Frank. It's okay to lead a lady on, if you do it in the right general direction, don't intend to harm her, and don't do it for too long."
"Yeah, but--" cut in Frank before he had the rest of the sentence planned out, so he waited a second while his brain caught up with his mouth. "Yeah, but I don't know how to do that. I don't know "intriguing". See, you can pull it off and it works for you because you've got that kind of vampire, gothy-gentleman, like Phantom of the Opera kind of thing going on. What've I got?"
"I dunno." said Mikey as he bit into the now quite cold pizza. "Surprise us. No, wait. Take that back. Surprise her."
* * * * *
Mikey ran across the courtyard, messenger bag slapping his thigh painfully on the off steps, looking left and right over the faces of those he passed. Finally, he spotted Gerard eating a sandwich on a little bench and ran over to him. Out of breath, chest heaving, he somehow managed to get across that Frank was about to do something incredibly stupid and that they had to go now.
Abandoning their bookbags and lunches, the two boys ran for the nearest door. They took the stairs two and three at a time, dodging students and teachers, making their way up to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, Gerard froze, and Mikey, who had fallen behind, crashed into him. He followed Gerard's gaze over to the lockers in the wall of the landing, and then to Sami, arms laden with books, making her way to them. She was about three feet from her locker when everything seemed to segue into slow-motion. Gerard and Mikey stood there, breathing hard and fighting their somersaulting stomachs, watching her hand inch closer and closer to the combination lock.
She turned the lock, entering the combination, and lifted the latch. Mikey's stomach shot clear through to his brain. Gerard managed to get a barely audible "Don't.." out before it did.
With a bang, the door to her locker flew open, and the Hobbit-sized form of Frank Iero came shooting out at the unexpecting girl. "HI!!!!" he bellowed. She let out a shriek that probably could have been heard in the next county, and jumped, sending her books flying. People stopped and stared as she ran down the stairs, looking back over her shoulder in sheer terror. Frank stepped out of the locker and closed the door with his foot. He straightened his tie as he walked in the opposite direction, a seemingly perfectly nonchalant expression on his face, but Gerard and Mikey both recognized the smouldering defeat he was trying so hard to conceal.
Watching him stalk off momentarily suspended the reality of what they had just witnessed. It was so ridiculously absurd. The two boys stood there motionless on the landing, catching their breath, and still staring vacantly in disbelief after Frank.
"Did you just see...?"
"Yeah. Did he really...?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Good to know you saw it, too."
"Likewise."