Fic: The Anatomy of a Fall (MCR, Frank/Gerard, 5a/12)
Part Four | Index
***
That night Mikey was upset, jittery with some new corticosteroid treatment they had him on.
“Don’t like it,” he whispered at Gerard, hoarse and quiet. “I can’t stay still. I can’t sleep.”
So Gerard climbed in the bed with him and let Mikey play with the old broken bits of glass Frank had collected, running them over his hands and listening to them clink together like windchimes while Gerard described the river and the toppled gravestones. He figured it was safe telling Mikey about the mill house, about Frank’s sleeping bag, because who would Mikey tell? Mikey kept all Gerard’s secrets; Gerard didn’t know how not to tell him.
Mikey seemed just as worried about Frank as Gerard, but didn’t have any better ideas of what to do about it, so Gerard let it drop for a while. Mikey had enough to deal with, after all.
Gerard got out an old issue of Sandman and read it aloud, instead, doing all the voices, Doctor Destiny and everything. Nurse Ratched came in after an hour or so, to stare disapprovingly and inject some poison into Mikey’s IV, taking spirometry measurements.
He made himself watch for the IV thing, because if Mikey had to deal with it then Gerard could at least do the solidarity thing, and tried not to shudder too obviously.
“’S cold,” Mikey said, sighing and rubbing at his arm above the needle insertion. Gerard was not going to throw up. He put his arm around Mikey in a show of support. IVs were the worst of all needles, maybe even worse than the eyeball death needles from Fire in the Sky, which were pretty fucking bad. He started flipping through the comic book again, trying to distract himself from the rising bile in his throat.
“You smell weird,” Mikey told him after the nurse had left, burying his face in Gerard’s shoulder and sort of wheezing carefully into the cloth. “Like dirt.”
“Your mom smells weird,” Gerard retorted, and Mikey rolled his eyes. “I told you, I fell in the fucking creek. And stop talking, you’ll make it worse, man.”
Mikey shook his head, face calm and resigned as his breath rattled and his thin frame shook with each intake of air. Gerard hated it. He hated the face Mikey made sometimes, like he’d given up hope, like he’d accepted the inevitable cruelty and irrationality of the universe and moved on.
Gerard choked down his directionless rage. Maybe he was like Mikey’s portrait of Dorian Grey, siphoning off all the unhappiness and despair Mikey couldn’t afford to feel or articulate. He wanted to smash shit and scream and rip down curtains until someone gave into his tantrum and fixed things. Fixed Mikey. He flashed on a memory of Ted’s sneering face and had to close his eyes, count to ten for a moment.
“M’okay,” Mikey said, leaning into his brother, head on his shoulder. He mouthed the words into Gerard’s shirt, and Gerard could feel them, warm and soft. “M’okay, Gee.”
“You’re not,” Gerard said lowly, quiet enough that Mikey couldn’t hear, and took a couple deep breaths of his own until he could force a smile on his face, into his voice. “Yeah, I know, Mikey. Hey, did I tell you about how awesome Bob and Ray are? I told you about our sleepover plans, right? Lemme get my sketchpad out, I’ll show you.”
He spent the rest of the hour drawing. He drew Bob and Ray in the lunch line, Bob drooling on his desk during history, Ray in safety goggles making a dubious face as he wielded scissors and dissection pins at a dead frog. When his mother caught his eye and jerked her head towards the door, he realized that Mikey was sleeping, wheezing faintly and eyelids twitching. Gerard always worried that Mikey would suffocate while he slept. Gerard should be there to make sure he was safe, to listen for the sound of choking, the restless twitching of bedclothes.
“Time to go, Gee,” his mom whispered. “Let him sleep.”
Gerard disentangled himself, and left the sketches and his Sandman comics under his brother’s sleeping hand.
When they got home around ten or so, Gerard really, really wanted a drink. Something to numb the stinging behind his eyes. But it hadn’t worked out so well last time, so he just made himself some black coffee, strong and bitter, and resigned himself to a night awake. His mom disappeared into her bedroom and Gerard was left to poke through the half-assembled kitchen alone, finding a stash of Diet Coke and a jumbo can of Beefaroni.
He wondered how his mom could sleep like this, listening to the house and the empty spaces. Just her and Gerard, rattling around the lack of two people in a four-bedroom farmhouse. Mikey should have been in his room, practicing bass or listening to Morrissey at three in the morning. His dad should have been in the living room, watching the weather channel and fiddling around with one of his model cars, making everything smell like craft glue and turpentine. Instead it was just his mom, locked into her room and quiet. Gerard was alone in the echoing kitchen with the bright cheerful yellow lights and black windows, plugging in the microwave. He leaned a hip against the counter and watched the fake pasta revolve, waited impatiently for the coffee pot to stop gurgling.
He wished Frank could have made it out here. They could have ordered a pizza, watched Jesus Christ: Vampire Slayer, or the sixth season of Buffy, or just hung out. If Frank was worried about being spotted or whatever, well. Gerard was reasonably sure he could elude any unwanted notice by just blending into the shadows like he always did. He’d seen Frank do as much in broad daylight, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t really that asking that much, was it, wanting Frank to visit the civilized, well-lighted lands instead of forcing Gerard to leave his warm, though hatefully quiet house and tromp through the wilderness.
Frank had looked genuinely distressed, though. As if stepping foot out of the forest would result in him immediately being set upon by demons, by ravening wolves. In Gerard’s head the wolves wore the ragged remains of baseball uniforms, and Frank was waving a silver shotgun at them menacingly, outnumbered but still fierce.
The microwave dinged three times, dragging him back to reality, and Gerard tugged his hoodie sleeves down over his hand so he could pick up the hot bowl without burning his palm, then trudged upstairs precariously loaded down with the Chef and the pot of coffee and a slightly chipped mug. Each step creaked ominously beneath his weight, and he didn’t have a free hand to flick on the light switch, so he just edged his way up slowly in the dark to his room and hoped the house would give him a break for once.
It seemed like every part of his body ached, not the just the bruises, but the muscles, too, he guessed from dragging himself up and down every hill in fucking Vermont over the last few days. Gerard was tired, so fucking tired. He flipped the TV on and eased himself into bed, mounded the covers and pillows up around himself until he was vaguely comfortable.
He wanted Frank here, on the other side of the bed with him, chortling over a Diet Coke at Jesus’ haircut and flicking ash on the comforter. Every room in this house seemed so fucking empty. He wanted Mikey snorting and making derisive comments on the cinematography, or Pete composing porn soundtracks and Gabe constructing some sort of elaborate drinking game out of DDR and handheld Simon Says. Anything but this fucking quiet.
He texted Pete to tell him about how much life sucked and how the quiet spaces were filling up everything, and Pete responded with a stream of nonsensical, lyrical lines about an ocean of leaves and smiles like sunshine and skin like scurvy. An hour later Gabe sent him a picture of what appeared to be a nostril (fuck, please let it be a nostril) and of his snake, Beatrice, poking her head out of someone’s sleeve, and then Mikey texted him goodnight, and Gerard felt minutely better about life again. He finished the rest of Jesus Christ: Vampire Slayer, and then watched old reruns of Adam West’s Batman until it blended in with his dreams. Then it was bang, pow, time for high school again. He’d rather face the Riddler or the Penguin any day, even if it did mean wearing spandex.
Gerard was nearly forced to skip Geometry because Ted was practically having sex with some girl in the hall outside class. There were hands in inappropriate places, and Isaac was leaning against the wall nearby and rolling his eyes. Gerard tried to keep his own eyes averted as much as possible, because it was totally gross. It was a terrible start to the day, then it was compounded by a pop quiz and Noltes squeaking his desk forward to try and look at Gerard’s answers, Mrs. Hall yelling at both of them, like it was somehow Gerard’s fault.
After class, Gerard got turned around and went the wrong direction down the hall and wound up in a completely different section of school, a hallway he’d only wandered through once or twice before. It was lined with trophy cases and old black and white photographs-a hall of mirrors, throwing back carnival reflections of the students rushing past. Noltes caught up with him, snagging his bookbag and pulling Gerard up short with a nauseating yank. He threw the bag down the hall, after rifling through it and stealing Gerard’s emergency can of coke.
The whole time, he was grumbling something about it being Gerard’s fault he had detention. Gerard fought the urge to make mocking cave-man like grunts at the douchebag, and stomped off down the hall to get his things. By the time he got to his bag, the bandana kid from the day before was holding it, blushing a terrifyingly bright crimson. Gerard was a little worried the kid was having an aneurysm. He also appeared to have a fake rose in his buttonhole, which was sort of awesome.
“Thanks?” Gerard said, fidgeting. He gestured awkwardly with his elbow while scratching his head, letting his hair fall down into his eyes. “I like your flower.”
The kid somehow got even redder, shoved the bag into Gerard’s arms and took off down the hall before Gerard could ask if he knew which stairwells led to the second floor. Gerard managed to figure it out on his own, after some trial and error-for some reason, one stairwell only had steps that descended into the basement where, if Buffy was anything to go by, the gym coach was probably breeding amphibious carnivorous jock-monsters in locker-cocoons.
He burst into English class ten minutes late, and Carew was seriously a scary dude, with burning eyes. Maybe he was the one breeding the amphibo-jocks. Bob gravely agreed with this assessment, and then punched Gerard in the shoulder for not showing up to play Halo and Resident Evil yesterday afternoon. When Gerard gave him a wounded look, Bob just went to sleep, which seemed to be his standard response to classwork and lectures. But apparently it mysteriously worked for him; Ray said he got mostly Bs. Lucky bastard. Gerard wished he could sleep through the school day.
“You should sit in on band practice, seriously,” Ray said after class, lingering in the hallway. He put his head on Gerard’s shoulder and made giant pleading eyes until Ted stomped by shouting about how the school was overrun by fucking faggots.
“One day,” Bob said. “I’m going to steal Worm’s tuba, and beat Sikowski’s head in with it.”
“That is why you’re our hero,” Ray replied, smiling at Bob hugely. “Worm’ll kill you, though.”
“Meh.” Bob shrugged. “See you at lunch, Toro. Way.” He nodded at them both and then sauntered off, and Gerard was left with Ray, who was still smiling adoringly after Bob, and luckily Patrick showed up before Gerard could actually start snickering, because oh god, it was sort of ridiculously adorable, Ray’s giant moon-sized crush.
Gerard hadn’t really taken in just how short Patrick was until he was surrounded by upper classmen. It was possible that Patrick was even shorter than Frank, which boggled the mind. Patrick and Ray started talking about the show on Saturday night, and who would drive. Gerard kept quiet, for the most part, but Patrick kept looking back at Gerard, and then, like, looking over Gerard’s shoulder at something and snickering, which was weird. Gerard would have been more put off, except Patrick didn’t seem to be laughing at Gerard, exactly, and actually seemed really interested in Gerard’s opinions on music and different groups.
Fuck, Gerard actually had somehow managed to make friends, of his own. It was kind of amazing. Normally he just kind of got absorbed by Mikey’s friends-Mikey made friends simply by existing. It had never been that easy for Gerard, but somehow these guys were different.
He spent History passing notes with Bob. It started out as a lengthy discussion about famous drummers and Guitar Hero, and then devolved from there into a critique of Mario Galaxy and a cartoon where Bob was Donkey Kong and Ray was Diddy. Bob kept cracking up and getting them in trouble with Mrs. Gist, but Gerard was secretly thrilled. He could make Bob Bryar laugh. Gerard felt like a million bucks of awesome.
Of course, because his life couldn’t stay on a plateau of happiness for more than three minutes, as they left the class, Ted slammed into Gerard’s shoulder, hard, and then sneered at Bob. “Watch out, Bryar, that fucker’s a fairy. Don’t get too close, you don’t want anyone thinking you’re one of them.”
Bob just narrowed his eyes, and said coolly, “Watch your own self, Sikowski.” Ted hesitated a second before scowling and stomping off.
“What a dumb fucker,” Bob said flatly. “I can’t wait to get out of this fucking town.”
Gerard was sort of relieved Bob hadn’t, like, edged away or anything, which was an asshole thing to think, actually. Bob was way too awesome to do anything like that. But still. It was nice, having someone stick up for him. He really hadn’t expected anything like that in Glen Fell. Bob had never exactly asked about Gerard’s sexuality, but when Gerard mentioned it obliquely, said something about how hot Robert Downey Jr. was looking lately, he’d nodded and agreed, hadn’t batted an eye. If not for Frank and the fact that Ray would probably kill him with scalpels and dissection probes, he’d probably have a moon-sized crush on Bob himself.
“No fucking kidding,” Gerard said, and Bob grinned at him. “Hey, have you applied for colleges yet? I’ve got, like, just the one in, to SVA in New York, but I should probably apply to more. Thank god Mr. Russo already wrote me recommendations, ‘cause the art teacher here fucking hates me.”
“I thought I might go back to Chicago for school, actually,” Bob said as he pushed open the cafeteria door, raising his voice slightly as a wave of conversation and clanging utensils filled the hallway. “Patrick sounded interested too. Don’t know about Ray.”
“Oh,” Gerard said as they got into line. “I bet Ray’s totally interested in, uh, Chicago. Wouldn’t be surprised. Heh.”
Bob shot him a bewildered look.
“You’re weird, Way,” he said, but he said it in a bemused way, not mean or anything, so Gerard just smiled mysteriously and picked up a tray.
Lunch was sort of awesome. The school served pizza that was almost edible, and had jello cups for dessert. It was warm out, warm with the sun overhead and with the palette of colors around them, rich browns and reds and oranges, golden grass and bright blue sky. It was like sitting inside a campfire, or a bucket of Halloween candy.
Ray got involved in a tiff over who was driving what car to Burlington for the Dinosaur Jr. show on Saturday, and kept asking Gerard’s opinion, like he was completely confident of Gerard coming along. Not that it mattered, since Gerard had no idea who had what car and if Patrick’s story about Bob backing out of the driveway and taking out all four mailboxes on his block was true or a gross exaggeration. Gerard was sort of busy wistfully wishing Frank could come to the show, but, well. No one had to know that.
Somehow without his noticing, the topic had shifted, and everyone at the table was staring at him. Gerard stopped shredding the crust of his pizza.
“Uh, what?” he asked, alarmed.
“Those fuckers are still picking on you,” Bob said mildly. “We’re figuring out a game plan.”
“Oh!” Gerard said, shocked, and wow, he really didn’t know what to say. “I, uh. Thanks? Fuckers always pick on me, though. No big deal. There’s nothing I can really do about it.”
“Hmm,” Patrick said. “I did hear you were sassing Ted at lunch the other day.”
Gerard squinted at him. “Did you just say sassing?”
Patrick grinned and tugged at the brim of his hat. “Shut up. But seriously, Ted’s gang is sort of pissed. I’m just worried, that’s all.”
“Oh, come on,” Gerard scoffed. “They were fucking with that kid, it was bullshit. Someone needed to do something.”
Patrick was snickering again, just a little. What the fuck was so funny, Gerard wanted to know. Social oppression and the entrenchment of the hetero-patriarchal norm wasn’t funny. It was fucking tragic.
“No, it’s not-you’re right,” Ray said earnestly. “But that’s what we’re saying. No one should do that to you either, you know? But Isaac’s dad’s the mayor. Ted’s family is basically the police department. They could get away with murder without more than, like, a slap on the wrist.”
“I’m totally cool with you starting a revolution,” Bob said, stealing Gerard’s pizza crust. “Just, next time, get one of us to come with. You need back up. Muscle.”
“And you shouldn’t just walk around alone with those guys gunning for you,” Ray said, steepling his hands and glaring at Gerard. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s really not that big a deal,” Gerard protested. Wow, okay, the last thing he was expecting to have to deal with in Vermont, for the record, was fending off attempts to give him a personal guard. He focused on stripping a crimson leaf to its veins. Another leaf was stuck in Ray’s hair, bright yellow against the brown. “Seriously, it’s nice of you guys, but they’re just hassling me. I’m fine. Really.”
“Hmm,” Bob said, and the conversation dropped. Bob picked the leaf out of Ray’s hair and Ray went totally, completely scarlet, which effectively distracted him from the topic for the rest of the day, thankfully. Gerard couldn’t help but tease him a bit about it as they got their goggles and shit ready in Biology, and Ray got dithery and vague. It was hilarious.
Gerard couldn’t quite shake the feeling of unease, though, that maybe Ray and Bob were right, that he should be taking this more seriously. But it really wasn’t a big deal. Ted and his gang might have the run of the town, but they were just kids.
Over their disemboweled frog, Ray looked at Gerard sideways and frowned. His hair was pulled back in a giant pink scrunchy borrowed from the teacher-Gerard had snagged a sparkly red one, himself.
“So, listen, I know you think we’re all just crazy, but you really should be careful. Where’d you go yesterday, after school? We were all sorta worried Ted had grabbed you, but you showed up this morning,” Ray said, eyes concerned behind his goggles. He was methodically sucking the formaldehyde out of the body cavity with a pipette with a disgusting whooshing sound, and if he didn’t pay more attention, that shit was going to get everywhere. Again.
Gerard didn’t know how to respond, so he just went back to trying to pick the frog’s filamentous lungs out of the assorted heart and perforated digestive goop.
“Do you think this is a lung?” Gerard asked dubiously, picking up a gray membrane with his tweezers and squinting. “This is such a waste of life, I swear. I’m not learning anything, you’re not learning anything, and a frog is dead. It could have been out there, like, spawning tadpoles. Eating flies. Living the lily pad life.”
Ray hunkered down and peered at the strip of tissue. “Uh, I could be wrong, but I think that’s part of the. . . liver? Why are we even bothering. You know the teacher doesn’t give a fuck.”
“Because,” Gerard said primly, setting down the liver-lung. “The frog gave its life for us to learn the organs of the amphibian. And we will learn them. Or, well. Try. Anyway, I just-” he sighed and lowered his voice. “I just went out the back by the band room, you know? And waited out in the woods for everyone to leave. It worked pretty well. I’ll probably do it again today, I guess. So stop worrying, alright?”
Ray stared at him, mouth open.
“What?” Gerard asked, bewildered. “Is something in my hair?”
“You went into the forest? Seriously?” Ray waved the pipette in the air and gesticulated with it unhappily, voice rising in alarm. “The forest? Seriously?”
In the front of the room the teacher was typically oblivious, half-hidden behind her desktop and clicking away-apparently this had been her MO her entire Glen Fell career. Rumor was bondage porn was involved. The result was a senior bio class that was largely a chaos zone of burned pond scum and filched formaldehyde. Easy A, if you weren’t a target. Either way, it meant Ray could freak out totally unfettered and probably not get yelled at.
“Dude,” Ray hissed, leaning in. “Dude, you can’t go into the forest, no one goes into the forest.”
“Yeah, kind of the point,” Gerard said, puzzled, and mentally washed his hands of their poor frog for the rest of the period. Ray clearly wasn’t in the mood for learning, and, well, it wasn’t like the teacher would notice them slacking off. Ray had a point there, at least.
“No, man, that forest is bad news. It’s fucking creepy. It’s, okay, look. Don’t laugh. It’s totally haunted.”
“Really?” Gerard breathed, entranced, before he remembered Frank chortling about nitwits thinking the ruins were haunted, Frank hunkered down in his run-down mill house in a ratty sleeping bag and cold at night, alone. He blew out a disappointed breath. “Dude, hate to disappoint you, and myself, but I’ve been going out there for ages now, and I haven’t seen any ghosts. It’d be fucking cool, but no dice. Still, if it keeps people away, works for me.”
Ray shook his head and his ponytail bobbed wildly.
“No, I’m telling you, people have seen shit. I’ve, well. I’ve seen shit. Something, anyway. You know how it is, fucking go in on a dare, right? I went when I was a kid, and I heard something, I don’t know. I was out there with Patrick, you can ask him. It suddenly got cold, in the middle of July, see-your-breath fucking cold. And the wind picked up, and it sounded like somebody talking. It was really hard to hear, but it was freaky as hell. And Patrick said he saw somebody on the path, right fucking next to me, all fucking see-through and reaching out.”
How was that fair? Gerard had been going into the forest for weeks now, it seemed like, and all he’d seen was Frank, and a graveyard, and maybe he’d heard someone chuckling at him, but it’d probably just been the wind in the trees, or the sound of the river. He wanted to believe it was someone chuckling-definitive proof of life after death would be a nice thing to have, some days. Just in case-well, it’d be nice. And fucking wicked cool.
Maybe some of the envy showed on his face, because Ray scowled at him. “It’s not a game. I’m serious, the forest is bad news.”
“It’s not like you got hurt, though, right?” Gerard asked, shrugging. “I’m just saying. Even if you did see something, it doesn’t sound like it was a big deal. And you were just a kid, right?”
The bell, thank god, would be ringing soon, and then he could escape this formaldehyde hell and draw insipid art for Mr. Felts. And then go visit Frank, and maybe laugh about this, about Ray and his superstitions, about Bob’s bizarre guard-duty idea. Of course, first he had to somehow elude Ted and his dim minions. Maybe Bob had a point. Gerard rubbed at his sore jaw uneasily.
“I was twelve,” Ray muttered. “I wasn’t, like, an infant. And that’s not the point! I’m not the only one, Gerard. Shit’s happened to other people, too, for years and years. Once the baseball team went in there on a camping trip, but they left like ten minutes after sundown, screaming bloody fucking murder. They’d all heard voices. Some people saw shit.”
Okay, it was sort of weird, that multiple people had seen shit, but rumors built on rumors, right?
“Drugs, maybe?” Gerard suggested. “I dunno. I guess it’s possible. I’ve just never really seen anything out there.” Well, except for Frank, but he’d promised not to bring Frank up, not around Ray.
“Well, maybe you’re just not sensitive to that sort of thing,” Ray pointed out archly, and started putting away their dissection kit while Gerard stripped off his gloves and scrubbed at the latex powder left behind. “Apparently some people just don’t see or hear anything, but dude, they still get cold, and if rocks are being thrown, they get hit. Just… think about it. Be careful.”
“It’s the woods,” Gerard scoffed. “So it gets cold sometimes.”
“Look, if you’re worried,” Ray said cautiously, stripping off his own gloves and washing his hands in the sink, “about, you know, those assholes ganging up on you, just. We’ll meet you by the band room, okay, and walk you home, me and Bob and Worm and Brian. They’ll leave you alone, they’re fucking cowards like that - they’ll never go after you if you’re in a group.”
“No,” Gerard said immediately. Fuck, he hated the smell of latex on his hands, and the crummy antibacterial soap didn’t get rid of it at all, and if it couldn’t get rid of condom-glove smell, then he sort of doubted it could get rid of dead frog germs. “No, okay. You don’t need to get involved. And you guys have marching band practice anyway.”
Ray looked frustrated, loosing his hair in a reddish thunderhead and shaking it out. Gerard couldn’t lie, it was impressive. “We’ll just meet you at the band room, don’t worry about it. You can wait and watch practice with us, talk to Mr. Curtis about chorus. We’ll go play some video games after, it’ll be great.”
Gerard rolled his eyes, still undecided. He really didn’t want to drag Bob and Ray, or any of the other band kids, into actually confronting Ted Sikowski. Ray was at least tall, but picturing him next to Noltes made Gerard a little queasy. Plus, there was Frank.
“The woods aren’t so bad,” he reiterated, more to himself than to Ray. “I really think it’s just… urban legends run wild, you know?”
Ray huffed out a sigh. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, you’re right, it’s not like I got hurt. And some people say that it might be Frank’s ghost out there, and I don’t think Frank would ever try to bash my head in with a rock or anything. But it was so fucking creepy out there. I don’t get how you can stand it, man.”
As Ray talked, Gerard felt all his internal organs go into a panicked mambo and he clutched the edge of the lab desk, black spots dancing in his vision.
“Who?” he managed to get out from between clenched teeth. “Whose ghost?” It was possible all the blood vessels in Gerard’s eyes had just popped; they felt like they were literally bugging out of his skull.
“Frank’s? Frank Iero?” Ray said slowly, clearly bewildered. “Remember, I told you about him at lunch the other day, the kid who disappeared when I was little. I guess it might not be his vengeful spirit, or whatever, but that’s what everyone’s always said - the whole haunted forest thing started up after he went missing, right after the searches stopped. I dunno. Hey, are you okay?”
Then the bell rang, thank motherfucking god, because Gerard had absolutely no idea what to say.
He gathered his things in a daze. Ray was still talking, his voice slow and indistinct, like Gerard was underwater and Ray was miles away, on the surface. Gerard stared at Ray’s mouth moving for a moment before turning and walking off. He wound up stumbling down the hallway, past the stairwell and towards the cafeteria. He fumbled in his pockets for his lighter as he walked, concentrating on that. On placing each foot after the other. On finding his Bic, and his pack of Marlboros.
Normally he would have camped out in the creepy basement or maybe the library, hidden in the stacks of books and smoked furtively, but now he just wanted to get outside, away from everyone. He made it out without being caught by any adults or fellow students, kicked his way dully through leaves and dirt and wound up outside the band room. He leaned against the back of the huge old maple tree and chain-smoked four cigarettes, not seeing anything. His mind kept doing this leaping thing from thought to thought, disjointed and useless.
He focused on smoking, the physical sensations of it: the smoke in his lungs, the thin tube of paper and tobacco between his fingers. Keeping his hand steady was oddly difficult-he couldn’t stop shaking. He fumbled the lighter, flicking it again and again until his thumb was raw and burning but in the end he finally got a light going despite the breeze and his own treacherous nerves.
All these clues and hints kept suddenly leaping out at him. Ray sitting beneath this tree, mouth full and gesticulating wildly with his hands, saying ‘He fucking knew everything about music, man, I thought he wrote the book on cool.’ Frank seeing Gerard for the first time, appearing out of nowhere on the path, ragged and dressed for a spring afternoon in the middle of October. Frank in the middle of the graveyard, begging Gerard not to tell anyone about him.
Nothing made any fucking sense. His head hurt, and fuck, he was smoking the filter. He dropped the ragged remains of the cigarette on the leaf litter and ground it out with his toe. Suddenly his problems with Ted seemed completely inconsequential.
Mikey. Mikey would know what to do. He pulled out his scuffed black Nokia-his mom had had a fit the other month when she realized he’d cracked the screen again, like it was his fault the new cellphones were so small and slippery and tended towards slinky-like suicide leaps down stairs-and fired off a text. He pulled out another cigarette and waited for a response. He could wait all day. He had nothing else to do, so long as Ted didn’t show up and Ray didn’t find him and Mr. Curtis didn’t ask him to join chorus. It was nice to pretend he could just stay here forever, leaning against the tree, looking at the sky.
He didn’t know how long it had been before the phone buzzed at him-another two cigarettes, at least. Gerard was starting to get light-headed from the nicotine, which was a fucking feat.
dont know what to do about what? blinked onto the screen, and he could just see Mikey, sitting up in bed and frowning at his phone. Fuck, he missed Mikey patronizing him all the time, rolling his eyes and sighing obnoxious, tolerant sighs.
ray says franks been dead for like 10 yrs. No point in beating around the bush.
There was a long pause. By the time Mikey responded, Gerard had gotten tired of standing and had slid down to the base of the tree and snuggled amidst the roots. It was actually pretty fucking comfy, if a little damp-he’d found the perfect spot for his ass and there was a little knurl to lean his head against. Like he could drift off Rip van Winkle style and sleep through all this bullshit and wake up with a wicked beard.
whats frank say?
That was not good advice. That was crap advice. Gerard scowled at the phone.
if thats even his name. maybe hes been lying the whole time?
why would he lie? And then immediately after. sorry, tests, g2g. if hes a zombie take pics
Gerard made a face at the phone and snapped it closed; it made a worrisome crunching sound that probably meant he’d fucked up the flippy-thing again. That hadn’t been helpful at all. Fucking Mikey, all, ‘why would Frank lie.’ Because, fuck, why would he? It didn’t make any goddamned sense.
Frank obviously wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. That was ridiculous. Gerard would have noticed. Frank was weird, sure, but he wasn’t- except-
Except there was a lot of weird shit about Frank, and it was… Gerard could actually buy it, in a way. It made about as much sense as his serial killer or runaway theories, that Frank was some sort of undead entity.
Frank, living in the forest and popping out of nowhere onto the path and wearing the same scraggly jeans and t-shirt day after day. Well, okay, Gerard did that too. But still, he at least, you know, changed hoodies. But on the other hand-Frank was totally solid and non-see-through. Gerard should know; he’d tripped up against Frank enough times in the forest, and Frank was an awful big fan of invading Gerard’s personal space. Maybe a zombie, he mused, grinding his last cigarette out thoughtfully. But even then, he was remarkably well-preserved for a rotting corpse.
Plus, he hadn’t exactly gone after Gerard’s living flesh. More’s the pity. Gerard could go for Frank mauling him, only maybe with less teeth and more tongue, and okay, now was not the time to be thinking about this. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled.
In the distance, the bell for last period was ringing, shrill and piercing, signaling Gerard had to leave his tree or be trapped, either by Bob and Ray and the rest of the marching band, or by Ted and his fucking friends. Gerard wasn’t in the mood for admonitions to join chorus or questions about his woodland jaunts, and he definitely didn’t feel like getting used as a punching bag again.
And, okay, he could admit to himself, he really wanted to see Frank. And fuck, if ghosts were real, Gerard would have been all over that, and Frank would have known that and told him. He would have told Gerard if he was dead, right? There was no fucking way. Frank was probably just going to laugh at him when Gerard brought it up, because Frank was a common name, and it was totally ridiculous to think his Frank was the Frank Iero of Legend, the missing boy from days of yore.
***
PART FIVE CONT.
***
That night Mikey was upset, jittery with some new corticosteroid treatment they had him on.
“Don’t like it,” he whispered at Gerard, hoarse and quiet. “I can’t stay still. I can’t sleep.”
So Gerard climbed in the bed with him and let Mikey play with the old broken bits of glass Frank had collected, running them over his hands and listening to them clink together like windchimes while Gerard described the river and the toppled gravestones. He figured it was safe telling Mikey about the mill house, about Frank’s sleeping bag, because who would Mikey tell? Mikey kept all Gerard’s secrets; Gerard didn’t know how not to tell him.
Mikey seemed just as worried about Frank as Gerard, but didn’t have any better ideas of what to do about it, so Gerard let it drop for a while. Mikey had enough to deal with, after all.
Gerard got out an old issue of Sandman and read it aloud, instead, doing all the voices, Doctor Destiny and everything. Nurse Ratched came in after an hour or so, to stare disapprovingly and inject some poison into Mikey’s IV, taking spirometry measurements.
He made himself watch for the IV thing, because if Mikey had to deal with it then Gerard could at least do the solidarity thing, and tried not to shudder too obviously.
“’S cold,” Mikey said, sighing and rubbing at his arm above the needle insertion. Gerard was not going to throw up. He put his arm around Mikey in a show of support. IVs were the worst of all needles, maybe even worse than the eyeball death needles from Fire in the Sky, which were pretty fucking bad. He started flipping through the comic book again, trying to distract himself from the rising bile in his throat.
“You smell weird,” Mikey told him after the nurse had left, burying his face in Gerard’s shoulder and sort of wheezing carefully into the cloth. “Like dirt.”
“Your mom smells weird,” Gerard retorted, and Mikey rolled his eyes. “I told you, I fell in the fucking creek. And stop talking, you’ll make it worse, man.”
Mikey shook his head, face calm and resigned as his breath rattled and his thin frame shook with each intake of air. Gerard hated it. He hated the face Mikey made sometimes, like he’d given up hope, like he’d accepted the inevitable cruelty and irrationality of the universe and moved on.
Gerard choked down his directionless rage. Maybe he was like Mikey’s portrait of Dorian Grey, siphoning off all the unhappiness and despair Mikey couldn’t afford to feel or articulate. He wanted to smash shit and scream and rip down curtains until someone gave into his tantrum and fixed things. Fixed Mikey. He flashed on a memory of Ted’s sneering face and had to close his eyes, count to ten for a moment.
“M’okay,” Mikey said, leaning into his brother, head on his shoulder. He mouthed the words into Gerard’s shirt, and Gerard could feel them, warm and soft. “M’okay, Gee.”
“You’re not,” Gerard said lowly, quiet enough that Mikey couldn’t hear, and took a couple deep breaths of his own until he could force a smile on his face, into his voice. “Yeah, I know, Mikey. Hey, did I tell you about how awesome Bob and Ray are? I told you about our sleepover plans, right? Lemme get my sketchpad out, I’ll show you.”
He spent the rest of the hour drawing. He drew Bob and Ray in the lunch line, Bob drooling on his desk during history, Ray in safety goggles making a dubious face as he wielded scissors and dissection pins at a dead frog. When his mother caught his eye and jerked her head towards the door, he realized that Mikey was sleeping, wheezing faintly and eyelids twitching. Gerard always worried that Mikey would suffocate while he slept. Gerard should be there to make sure he was safe, to listen for the sound of choking, the restless twitching of bedclothes.
“Time to go, Gee,” his mom whispered. “Let him sleep.”
Gerard disentangled himself, and left the sketches and his Sandman comics under his brother’s sleeping hand.
When they got home around ten or so, Gerard really, really wanted a drink. Something to numb the stinging behind his eyes. But it hadn’t worked out so well last time, so he just made himself some black coffee, strong and bitter, and resigned himself to a night awake. His mom disappeared into her bedroom and Gerard was left to poke through the half-assembled kitchen alone, finding a stash of Diet Coke and a jumbo can of Beefaroni.
He wondered how his mom could sleep like this, listening to the house and the empty spaces. Just her and Gerard, rattling around the lack of two people in a four-bedroom farmhouse. Mikey should have been in his room, practicing bass or listening to Morrissey at three in the morning. His dad should have been in the living room, watching the weather channel and fiddling around with one of his model cars, making everything smell like craft glue and turpentine. Instead it was just his mom, locked into her room and quiet. Gerard was alone in the echoing kitchen with the bright cheerful yellow lights and black windows, plugging in the microwave. He leaned a hip against the counter and watched the fake pasta revolve, waited impatiently for the coffee pot to stop gurgling.
He wished Frank could have made it out here. They could have ordered a pizza, watched Jesus Christ: Vampire Slayer, or the sixth season of Buffy, or just hung out. If Frank was worried about being spotted or whatever, well. Gerard was reasonably sure he could elude any unwanted notice by just blending into the shadows like he always did. He’d seen Frank do as much in broad daylight, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t really that asking that much, was it, wanting Frank to visit the civilized, well-lighted lands instead of forcing Gerard to leave his warm, though hatefully quiet house and tromp through the wilderness.
Frank had looked genuinely distressed, though. As if stepping foot out of the forest would result in him immediately being set upon by demons, by ravening wolves. In Gerard’s head the wolves wore the ragged remains of baseball uniforms, and Frank was waving a silver shotgun at them menacingly, outnumbered but still fierce.
The microwave dinged three times, dragging him back to reality, and Gerard tugged his hoodie sleeves down over his hand so he could pick up the hot bowl without burning his palm, then trudged upstairs precariously loaded down with the Chef and the pot of coffee and a slightly chipped mug. Each step creaked ominously beneath his weight, and he didn’t have a free hand to flick on the light switch, so he just edged his way up slowly in the dark to his room and hoped the house would give him a break for once.
It seemed like every part of his body ached, not the just the bruises, but the muscles, too, he guessed from dragging himself up and down every hill in fucking Vermont over the last few days. Gerard was tired, so fucking tired. He flipped the TV on and eased himself into bed, mounded the covers and pillows up around himself until he was vaguely comfortable.
He wanted Frank here, on the other side of the bed with him, chortling over a Diet Coke at Jesus’ haircut and flicking ash on the comforter. Every room in this house seemed so fucking empty. He wanted Mikey snorting and making derisive comments on the cinematography, or Pete composing porn soundtracks and Gabe constructing some sort of elaborate drinking game out of DDR and handheld Simon Says. Anything but this fucking quiet.
He texted Pete to tell him about how much life sucked and how the quiet spaces were filling up everything, and Pete responded with a stream of nonsensical, lyrical lines about an ocean of leaves and smiles like sunshine and skin like scurvy. An hour later Gabe sent him a picture of what appeared to be a nostril (fuck, please let it be a nostril) and of his snake, Beatrice, poking her head out of someone’s sleeve, and then Mikey texted him goodnight, and Gerard felt minutely better about life again. He finished the rest of Jesus Christ: Vampire Slayer, and then watched old reruns of Adam West’s Batman until it blended in with his dreams. Then it was bang, pow, time for high school again. He’d rather face the Riddler or the Penguin any day, even if it did mean wearing spandex.
Gerard was nearly forced to skip Geometry because Ted was practically having sex with some girl in the hall outside class. There were hands in inappropriate places, and Isaac was leaning against the wall nearby and rolling his eyes. Gerard tried to keep his own eyes averted as much as possible, because it was totally gross. It was a terrible start to the day, then it was compounded by a pop quiz and Noltes squeaking his desk forward to try and look at Gerard’s answers, Mrs. Hall yelling at both of them, like it was somehow Gerard’s fault.
After class, Gerard got turned around and went the wrong direction down the hall and wound up in a completely different section of school, a hallway he’d only wandered through once or twice before. It was lined with trophy cases and old black and white photographs-a hall of mirrors, throwing back carnival reflections of the students rushing past. Noltes caught up with him, snagging his bookbag and pulling Gerard up short with a nauseating yank. He threw the bag down the hall, after rifling through it and stealing Gerard’s emergency can of coke.
The whole time, he was grumbling something about it being Gerard’s fault he had detention. Gerard fought the urge to make mocking cave-man like grunts at the douchebag, and stomped off down the hall to get his things. By the time he got to his bag, the bandana kid from the day before was holding it, blushing a terrifyingly bright crimson. Gerard was a little worried the kid was having an aneurysm. He also appeared to have a fake rose in his buttonhole, which was sort of awesome.
“Thanks?” Gerard said, fidgeting. He gestured awkwardly with his elbow while scratching his head, letting his hair fall down into his eyes. “I like your flower.”
The kid somehow got even redder, shoved the bag into Gerard’s arms and took off down the hall before Gerard could ask if he knew which stairwells led to the second floor. Gerard managed to figure it out on his own, after some trial and error-for some reason, one stairwell only had steps that descended into the basement where, if Buffy was anything to go by, the gym coach was probably breeding amphibious carnivorous jock-monsters in locker-cocoons.
He burst into English class ten minutes late, and Carew was seriously a scary dude, with burning eyes. Maybe he was the one breeding the amphibo-jocks. Bob gravely agreed with this assessment, and then punched Gerard in the shoulder for not showing up to play Halo and Resident Evil yesterday afternoon. When Gerard gave him a wounded look, Bob just went to sleep, which seemed to be his standard response to classwork and lectures. But apparently it mysteriously worked for him; Ray said he got mostly Bs. Lucky bastard. Gerard wished he could sleep through the school day.
“You should sit in on band practice, seriously,” Ray said after class, lingering in the hallway. He put his head on Gerard’s shoulder and made giant pleading eyes until Ted stomped by shouting about how the school was overrun by fucking faggots.
“One day,” Bob said. “I’m going to steal Worm’s tuba, and beat Sikowski’s head in with it.”
“That is why you’re our hero,” Ray replied, smiling at Bob hugely. “Worm’ll kill you, though.”
“Meh.” Bob shrugged. “See you at lunch, Toro. Way.” He nodded at them both and then sauntered off, and Gerard was left with Ray, who was still smiling adoringly after Bob, and luckily Patrick showed up before Gerard could actually start snickering, because oh god, it was sort of ridiculously adorable, Ray’s giant moon-sized crush.
Gerard hadn’t really taken in just how short Patrick was until he was surrounded by upper classmen. It was possible that Patrick was even shorter than Frank, which boggled the mind. Patrick and Ray started talking about the show on Saturday night, and who would drive. Gerard kept quiet, for the most part, but Patrick kept looking back at Gerard, and then, like, looking over Gerard’s shoulder at something and snickering, which was weird. Gerard would have been more put off, except Patrick didn’t seem to be laughing at Gerard, exactly, and actually seemed really interested in Gerard’s opinions on music and different groups.
Fuck, Gerard actually had somehow managed to make friends, of his own. It was kind of amazing. Normally he just kind of got absorbed by Mikey’s friends-Mikey made friends simply by existing. It had never been that easy for Gerard, but somehow these guys were different.
He spent History passing notes with Bob. It started out as a lengthy discussion about famous drummers and Guitar Hero, and then devolved from there into a critique of Mario Galaxy and a cartoon where Bob was Donkey Kong and Ray was Diddy. Bob kept cracking up and getting them in trouble with Mrs. Gist, but Gerard was secretly thrilled. He could make Bob Bryar laugh. Gerard felt like a million bucks of awesome.
Of course, because his life couldn’t stay on a plateau of happiness for more than three minutes, as they left the class, Ted slammed into Gerard’s shoulder, hard, and then sneered at Bob. “Watch out, Bryar, that fucker’s a fairy. Don’t get too close, you don’t want anyone thinking you’re one of them.”
Bob just narrowed his eyes, and said coolly, “Watch your own self, Sikowski.” Ted hesitated a second before scowling and stomping off.
“What a dumb fucker,” Bob said flatly. “I can’t wait to get out of this fucking town.”
Gerard was sort of relieved Bob hadn’t, like, edged away or anything, which was an asshole thing to think, actually. Bob was way too awesome to do anything like that. But still. It was nice, having someone stick up for him. He really hadn’t expected anything like that in Glen Fell. Bob had never exactly asked about Gerard’s sexuality, but when Gerard mentioned it obliquely, said something about how hot Robert Downey Jr. was looking lately, he’d nodded and agreed, hadn’t batted an eye. If not for Frank and the fact that Ray would probably kill him with scalpels and dissection probes, he’d probably have a moon-sized crush on Bob himself.
“No fucking kidding,” Gerard said, and Bob grinned at him. “Hey, have you applied for colleges yet? I’ve got, like, just the one in, to SVA in New York, but I should probably apply to more. Thank god Mr. Russo already wrote me recommendations, ‘cause the art teacher here fucking hates me.”
“I thought I might go back to Chicago for school, actually,” Bob said as he pushed open the cafeteria door, raising his voice slightly as a wave of conversation and clanging utensils filled the hallway. “Patrick sounded interested too. Don’t know about Ray.”
“Oh,” Gerard said as they got into line. “I bet Ray’s totally interested in, uh, Chicago. Wouldn’t be surprised. Heh.”
Bob shot him a bewildered look.
“You’re weird, Way,” he said, but he said it in a bemused way, not mean or anything, so Gerard just smiled mysteriously and picked up a tray.
Lunch was sort of awesome. The school served pizza that was almost edible, and had jello cups for dessert. It was warm out, warm with the sun overhead and with the palette of colors around them, rich browns and reds and oranges, golden grass and bright blue sky. It was like sitting inside a campfire, or a bucket of Halloween candy.
Ray got involved in a tiff over who was driving what car to Burlington for the Dinosaur Jr. show on Saturday, and kept asking Gerard’s opinion, like he was completely confident of Gerard coming along. Not that it mattered, since Gerard had no idea who had what car and if Patrick’s story about Bob backing out of the driveway and taking out all four mailboxes on his block was true or a gross exaggeration. Gerard was sort of busy wistfully wishing Frank could come to the show, but, well. No one had to know that.
Somehow without his noticing, the topic had shifted, and everyone at the table was staring at him. Gerard stopped shredding the crust of his pizza.
“Uh, what?” he asked, alarmed.
“Those fuckers are still picking on you,” Bob said mildly. “We’re figuring out a game plan.”
“Oh!” Gerard said, shocked, and wow, he really didn’t know what to say. “I, uh. Thanks? Fuckers always pick on me, though. No big deal. There’s nothing I can really do about it.”
“Hmm,” Patrick said. “I did hear you were sassing Ted at lunch the other day.”
Gerard squinted at him. “Did you just say sassing?”
Patrick grinned and tugged at the brim of his hat. “Shut up. But seriously, Ted’s gang is sort of pissed. I’m just worried, that’s all.”
“Oh, come on,” Gerard scoffed. “They were fucking with that kid, it was bullshit. Someone needed to do something.”
Patrick was snickering again, just a little. What the fuck was so funny, Gerard wanted to know. Social oppression and the entrenchment of the hetero-patriarchal norm wasn’t funny. It was fucking tragic.
“No, it’s not-you’re right,” Ray said earnestly. “But that’s what we’re saying. No one should do that to you either, you know? But Isaac’s dad’s the mayor. Ted’s family is basically the police department. They could get away with murder without more than, like, a slap on the wrist.”
“I’m totally cool with you starting a revolution,” Bob said, stealing Gerard’s pizza crust. “Just, next time, get one of us to come with. You need back up. Muscle.”
“And you shouldn’t just walk around alone with those guys gunning for you,” Ray said, steepling his hands and glaring at Gerard. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s really not that big a deal,” Gerard protested. Wow, okay, the last thing he was expecting to have to deal with in Vermont, for the record, was fending off attempts to give him a personal guard. He focused on stripping a crimson leaf to its veins. Another leaf was stuck in Ray’s hair, bright yellow against the brown. “Seriously, it’s nice of you guys, but they’re just hassling me. I’m fine. Really.”
“Hmm,” Bob said, and the conversation dropped. Bob picked the leaf out of Ray’s hair and Ray went totally, completely scarlet, which effectively distracted him from the topic for the rest of the day, thankfully. Gerard couldn’t help but tease him a bit about it as they got their goggles and shit ready in Biology, and Ray got dithery and vague. It was hilarious.
Gerard couldn’t quite shake the feeling of unease, though, that maybe Ray and Bob were right, that he should be taking this more seriously. But it really wasn’t a big deal. Ted and his gang might have the run of the town, but they were just kids.
Over their disemboweled frog, Ray looked at Gerard sideways and frowned. His hair was pulled back in a giant pink scrunchy borrowed from the teacher-Gerard had snagged a sparkly red one, himself.
“So, listen, I know you think we’re all just crazy, but you really should be careful. Where’d you go yesterday, after school? We were all sorta worried Ted had grabbed you, but you showed up this morning,” Ray said, eyes concerned behind his goggles. He was methodically sucking the formaldehyde out of the body cavity with a pipette with a disgusting whooshing sound, and if he didn’t pay more attention, that shit was going to get everywhere. Again.
Gerard didn’t know how to respond, so he just went back to trying to pick the frog’s filamentous lungs out of the assorted heart and perforated digestive goop.
“Do you think this is a lung?” Gerard asked dubiously, picking up a gray membrane with his tweezers and squinting. “This is such a waste of life, I swear. I’m not learning anything, you’re not learning anything, and a frog is dead. It could have been out there, like, spawning tadpoles. Eating flies. Living the lily pad life.”
Ray hunkered down and peered at the strip of tissue. “Uh, I could be wrong, but I think that’s part of the. . . liver? Why are we even bothering. You know the teacher doesn’t give a fuck.”
“Because,” Gerard said primly, setting down the liver-lung. “The frog gave its life for us to learn the organs of the amphibian. And we will learn them. Or, well. Try. Anyway, I just-” he sighed and lowered his voice. “I just went out the back by the band room, you know? And waited out in the woods for everyone to leave. It worked pretty well. I’ll probably do it again today, I guess. So stop worrying, alright?”
Ray stared at him, mouth open.
“What?” Gerard asked, bewildered. “Is something in my hair?”
“You went into the forest? Seriously?” Ray waved the pipette in the air and gesticulated with it unhappily, voice rising in alarm. “The forest? Seriously?”
In the front of the room the teacher was typically oblivious, half-hidden behind her desktop and clicking away-apparently this had been her MO her entire Glen Fell career. Rumor was bondage porn was involved. The result was a senior bio class that was largely a chaos zone of burned pond scum and filched formaldehyde. Easy A, if you weren’t a target. Either way, it meant Ray could freak out totally unfettered and probably not get yelled at.
“Dude,” Ray hissed, leaning in. “Dude, you can’t go into the forest, no one goes into the forest.”
“Yeah, kind of the point,” Gerard said, puzzled, and mentally washed his hands of their poor frog for the rest of the period. Ray clearly wasn’t in the mood for learning, and, well, it wasn’t like the teacher would notice them slacking off. Ray had a point there, at least.
“No, man, that forest is bad news. It’s fucking creepy. It’s, okay, look. Don’t laugh. It’s totally haunted.”
“Really?” Gerard breathed, entranced, before he remembered Frank chortling about nitwits thinking the ruins were haunted, Frank hunkered down in his run-down mill house in a ratty sleeping bag and cold at night, alone. He blew out a disappointed breath. “Dude, hate to disappoint you, and myself, but I’ve been going out there for ages now, and I haven’t seen any ghosts. It’d be fucking cool, but no dice. Still, if it keeps people away, works for me.”
Ray shook his head and his ponytail bobbed wildly.
“No, I’m telling you, people have seen shit. I’ve, well. I’ve seen shit. Something, anyway. You know how it is, fucking go in on a dare, right? I went when I was a kid, and I heard something, I don’t know. I was out there with Patrick, you can ask him. It suddenly got cold, in the middle of July, see-your-breath fucking cold. And the wind picked up, and it sounded like somebody talking. It was really hard to hear, but it was freaky as hell. And Patrick said he saw somebody on the path, right fucking next to me, all fucking see-through and reaching out.”
How was that fair? Gerard had been going into the forest for weeks now, it seemed like, and all he’d seen was Frank, and a graveyard, and maybe he’d heard someone chuckling at him, but it’d probably just been the wind in the trees, or the sound of the river. He wanted to believe it was someone chuckling-definitive proof of life after death would be a nice thing to have, some days. Just in case-well, it’d be nice. And fucking wicked cool.
Maybe some of the envy showed on his face, because Ray scowled at him. “It’s not a game. I’m serious, the forest is bad news.”
“It’s not like you got hurt, though, right?” Gerard asked, shrugging. “I’m just saying. Even if you did see something, it doesn’t sound like it was a big deal. And you were just a kid, right?”
The bell, thank god, would be ringing soon, and then he could escape this formaldehyde hell and draw insipid art for Mr. Felts. And then go visit Frank, and maybe laugh about this, about Ray and his superstitions, about Bob’s bizarre guard-duty idea. Of course, first he had to somehow elude Ted and his dim minions. Maybe Bob had a point. Gerard rubbed at his sore jaw uneasily.
“I was twelve,” Ray muttered. “I wasn’t, like, an infant. And that’s not the point! I’m not the only one, Gerard. Shit’s happened to other people, too, for years and years. Once the baseball team went in there on a camping trip, but they left like ten minutes after sundown, screaming bloody fucking murder. They’d all heard voices. Some people saw shit.”
Okay, it was sort of weird, that multiple people had seen shit, but rumors built on rumors, right?
“Drugs, maybe?” Gerard suggested. “I dunno. I guess it’s possible. I’ve just never really seen anything out there.” Well, except for Frank, but he’d promised not to bring Frank up, not around Ray.
“Well, maybe you’re just not sensitive to that sort of thing,” Ray pointed out archly, and started putting away their dissection kit while Gerard stripped off his gloves and scrubbed at the latex powder left behind. “Apparently some people just don’t see or hear anything, but dude, they still get cold, and if rocks are being thrown, they get hit. Just… think about it. Be careful.”
“It’s the woods,” Gerard scoffed. “So it gets cold sometimes.”
“Look, if you’re worried,” Ray said cautiously, stripping off his own gloves and washing his hands in the sink, “about, you know, those assholes ganging up on you, just. We’ll meet you by the band room, okay, and walk you home, me and Bob and Worm and Brian. They’ll leave you alone, they’re fucking cowards like that - they’ll never go after you if you’re in a group.”
“No,” Gerard said immediately. Fuck, he hated the smell of latex on his hands, and the crummy antibacterial soap didn’t get rid of it at all, and if it couldn’t get rid of condom-glove smell, then he sort of doubted it could get rid of dead frog germs. “No, okay. You don’t need to get involved. And you guys have marching band practice anyway.”
Ray looked frustrated, loosing his hair in a reddish thunderhead and shaking it out. Gerard couldn’t lie, it was impressive. “We’ll just meet you at the band room, don’t worry about it. You can wait and watch practice with us, talk to Mr. Curtis about chorus. We’ll go play some video games after, it’ll be great.”
Gerard rolled his eyes, still undecided. He really didn’t want to drag Bob and Ray, or any of the other band kids, into actually confronting Ted Sikowski. Ray was at least tall, but picturing him next to Noltes made Gerard a little queasy. Plus, there was Frank.
“The woods aren’t so bad,” he reiterated, more to himself than to Ray. “I really think it’s just… urban legends run wild, you know?”
Ray huffed out a sigh. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, you’re right, it’s not like I got hurt. And some people say that it might be Frank’s ghost out there, and I don’t think Frank would ever try to bash my head in with a rock or anything. But it was so fucking creepy out there. I don’t get how you can stand it, man.”
As Ray talked, Gerard felt all his internal organs go into a panicked mambo and he clutched the edge of the lab desk, black spots dancing in his vision.
“Who?” he managed to get out from between clenched teeth. “Whose ghost?” It was possible all the blood vessels in Gerard’s eyes had just popped; they felt like they were literally bugging out of his skull.
“Frank’s? Frank Iero?” Ray said slowly, clearly bewildered. “Remember, I told you about him at lunch the other day, the kid who disappeared when I was little. I guess it might not be his vengeful spirit, or whatever, but that’s what everyone’s always said - the whole haunted forest thing started up after he went missing, right after the searches stopped. I dunno. Hey, are you okay?”
Then the bell rang, thank motherfucking god, because Gerard had absolutely no idea what to say.
He gathered his things in a daze. Ray was still talking, his voice slow and indistinct, like Gerard was underwater and Ray was miles away, on the surface. Gerard stared at Ray’s mouth moving for a moment before turning and walking off. He wound up stumbling down the hallway, past the stairwell and towards the cafeteria. He fumbled in his pockets for his lighter as he walked, concentrating on that. On placing each foot after the other. On finding his Bic, and his pack of Marlboros.
Normally he would have camped out in the creepy basement or maybe the library, hidden in the stacks of books and smoked furtively, but now he just wanted to get outside, away from everyone. He made it out without being caught by any adults or fellow students, kicked his way dully through leaves and dirt and wound up outside the band room. He leaned against the back of the huge old maple tree and chain-smoked four cigarettes, not seeing anything. His mind kept doing this leaping thing from thought to thought, disjointed and useless.
He focused on smoking, the physical sensations of it: the smoke in his lungs, the thin tube of paper and tobacco between his fingers. Keeping his hand steady was oddly difficult-he couldn’t stop shaking. He fumbled the lighter, flicking it again and again until his thumb was raw and burning but in the end he finally got a light going despite the breeze and his own treacherous nerves.
All these clues and hints kept suddenly leaping out at him. Ray sitting beneath this tree, mouth full and gesticulating wildly with his hands, saying ‘He fucking knew everything about music, man, I thought he wrote the book on cool.’ Frank seeing Gerard for the first time, appearing out of nowhere on the path, ragged and dressed for a spring afternoon in the middle of October. Frank in the middle of the graveyard, begging Gerard not to tell anyone about him.
Nothing made any fucking sense. His head hurt, and fuck, he was smoking the filter. He dropped the ragged remains of the cigarette on the leaf litter and ground it out with his toe. Suddenly his problems with Ted seemed completely inconsequential.
Mikey. Mikey would know what to do. He pulled out his scuffed black Nokia-his mom had had a fit the other month when she realized he’d cracked the screen again, like it was his fault the new cellphones were so small and slippery and tended towards slinky-like suicide leaps down stairs-and fired off a text. He pulled out another cigarette and waited for a response. He could wait all day. He had nothing else to do, so long as Ted didn’t show up and Ray didn’t find him and Mr. Curtis didn’t ask him to join chorus. It was nice to pretend he could just stay here forever, leaning against the tree, looking at the sky.
He didn’t know how long it had been before the phone buzzed at him-another two cigarettes, at least. Gerard was starting to get light-headed from the nicotine, which was a fucking feat.
dont know what to do about what? blinked onto the screen, and he could just see Mikey, sitting up in bed and frowning at his phone. Fuck, he missed Mikey patronizing him all the time, rolling his eyes and sighing obnoxious, tolerant sighs.
ray says franks been dead for like 10 yrs. No point in beating around the bush.
There was a long pause. By the time Mikey responded, Gerard had gotten tired of standing and had slid down to the base of the tree and snuggled amidst the roots. It was actually pretty fucking comfy, if a little damp-he’d found the perfect spot for his ass and there was a little knurl to lean his head against. Like he could drift off Rip van Winkle style and sleep through all this bullshit and wake up with a wicked beard.
whats frank say?
That was not good advice. That was crap advice. Gerard scowled at the phone.
if thats even his name. maybe hes been lying the whole time?
why would he lie? And then immediately after. sorry, tests, g2g. if hes a zombie take pics
Gerard made a face at the phone and snapped it closed; it made a worrisome crunching sound that probably meant he’d fucked up the flippy-thing again. That hadn’t been helpful at all. Fucking Mikey, all, ‘why would Frank lie.’ Because, fuck, why would he? It didn’t make any goddamned sense.
Frank obviously wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. That was ridiculous. Gerard would have noticed. Frank was weird, sure, but he wasn’t- except-
Except there was a lot of weird shit about Frank, and it was… Gerard could actually buy it, in a way. It made about as much sense as his serial killer or runaway theories, that Frank was some sort of undead entity.
Frank, living in the forest and popping out of nowhere onto the path and wearing the same scraggly jeans and t-shirt day after day. Well, okay, Gerard did that too. But still, he at least, you know, changed hoodies. But on the other hand-Frank was totally solid and non-see-through. Gerard should know; he’d tripped up against Frank enough times in the forest, and Frank was an awful big fan of invading Gerard’s personal space. Maybe a zombie, he mused, grinding his last cigarette out thoughtfully. But even then, he was remarkably well-preserved for a rotting corpse.
Plus, he hadn’t exactly gone after Gerard’s living flesh. More’s the pity. Gerard could go for Frank mauling him, only maybe with less teeth and more tongue, and okay, now was not the time to be thinking about this. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled.
In the distance, the bell for last period was ringing, shrill and piercing, signaling Gerard had to leave his tree or be trapped, either by Bob and Ray and the rest of the marching band, or by Ted and his fucking friends. Gerard wasn’t in the mood for admonitions to join chorus or questions about his woodland jaunts, and he definitely didn’t feel like getting used as a punching bag again.
And, okay, he could admit to himself, he really wanted to see Frank. And fuck, if ghosts were real, Gerard would have been all over that, and Frank would have known that and told him. He would have told Gerard if he was dead, right? There was no fucking way. Frank was probably just going to laugh at him when Gerard brought it up, because Frank was a common name, and it was totally ridiculous to think his Frank was the Frank Iero of Legend, the missing boy from days of yore.
***
PART FIVE CONT.