Mix Tape [1]
Ray/Gerard
Chaptered fic - COMPLETE
Based around a hypothetical mix tape; tracks Ray's relationship to Gerard from their first meeting in high school. Some chapters are more closely connected to their songs than others. Currently at a hard R rating for language and sexuality. Some chapters may be triggering.
91,597 words
Written June 21, 2005 - August 17, 2005
Ray isn't quite sure why he's sitting next to this kid Gerard. Rather, why he is sitting next to Gerard and not next to Chris, who is his Best Friend Forever And Ever, Amen. The first day of sophomore year and already he's ready for it to suck - at least last year he waited until the second week for that. Of course, he is a sophomore now, which requires some kind of gravitas. They're not freshmen anymore. They can't be fixated on Best Friends. Which is clearly why Chris has thrown years of sitting in math together out the window, all for Melissa Reed.
"Her breasts aren't even that nice," Gerard comments, and Ray jerks upright.
"What?"
"Melissa." Gerard offers a shy smile, clenching his hands together in his lap. "You were staring at her. And I said, her breasts aren't that nice. Kind of high up."
Ray sputters for a moment, before saying, "I was not staring at her."
"You totally were, man. It's... um. It's fine."
"I wasn't - " Ray takes a breath, runs a hand through his hair. His jeans feel too tight. Awkward. Are they? Maybe, he's growing lately. It makes him feel off balance. Gerard's pants look tighter, and Ray wonders briefly if he's one of those kids. He takes another deep breath. "My best friend, man. He's sitting right next to her."
"And you're staring at him?" Gerard giggles. Fuckin' giggles, for Christ's sake.
"I'm... forget it."
There's a long silence, while the teacher begins droning about the syllabus. His name is Mr. Hatch. Already, Ray is sure Chris has thought of at least five dirty nicknames for him, two of which might rhyme. He sees Chris lean over and whisper to Melissa. Something in his stomach tightens a little bit. It's not like he's angry, per se, just - sitting next to this kid? Christ. Melissa wears her shirts cut too low and a bit on the filmy side, and definitely will not appreciate hearing any sense of humor resembling Chris's.
The Gerard kid shifts in his seat, scribbling on a blank page. Ray looks pointedly at the syllabus until the words "geometry one" are engraved on his brain, and he finally lets his eyes wander to the page. There are rows of girls sketched on it - sharp, angular ones, with pointed Madonna breasts and distinct knees. Ray isn't sure whether or not he's noticed a girl's knee before. Or her elbow, for that matter. Or the narrowing of her wrist. Gerard seems to have paid close attention to all three. The girls are all naked, and the sharp triangles of their pubic hair are mere sketches. All of them have sheaves of hair falling over one eye or the other.
Ray can't help mumbling, "Those are really good."
It's Gerard's turn to sit up quickly, shoving the page away, smudging the ink. "Oh! These? Um. These." He pushes a notebook over it. "Thanks."
"I mean it," he says, not knowing exactly why. The teacher has his back turned, and is drawing something lopsided on the board. Ray says, "I liked the one with the light hair." And he does.
Gerard peeks back at his own page, then breaks into a wide grin. His lips are very narrow - Ray can't help noticing how they seem to sort of split his face. "That's Melissa," he says.
"Yeah?" Ray pauses, lets his gaze shift back to her. Chris is whispering in her ear. A lock of her hair is twisted around his finger, loosely, and occasionally he tugs on it lightly. Ray looks back at the page. Sure enough, he sees it now - the breasts sit too high. She looks off-balance, like she's perpetually leaning forward. Barbie, almost. He looks back up at Chris, with his sort-of-long hair and his unshaking hands. He thinks for a minute. He says to Gerard, "I can see it. Yeah."
Gerard's face stays fixed with that overly large smile. He looks at Ray, nods once, and turns back to the teacher. They don't speak again for the rest of the period.
-----
That weekend, while Ray and Chris are resting after a game of basketball, Ray casually brings up "that... Melinda girl." Chris gives him a blank stare before saying, "Oh! Missy."
Missy? The hell? Ray shakes his head and says, "That's her name, huh. So... she nice?"
"Nice enough." Chris shakes his head as well, his hair shining a bit in the light. It's an Indian-summer afternoon, the kind that makes Ray miss being a kid and running through the sprinkler for the last time, drinking apple juice out of clear plastic tumblers. Ray is wearing an ugly cut-off shirt; Chris is not. He did sit-ups and lifted weights all summer. He can afford to play basketball shirtless, and sit on the curb afterwards. Ray stayed in his room playing guitar. He's actually paler than Chris for once.
Ray says, "You... y'know. Into her?"
Chris ponders this for a bit, watching the cars soar by in the distance. He says, casually, "I felt her tits." It is, from his tone, a perfectly acceptable answer.
"Were they... um. Were they nice?" Ray leans back onto the grass. It's gotten taller, so that between his unruly hair and the weeds, he feels no less comfortable than if he were in bed. Chris stays sitting up. He stares out at the road. Ray wonders, briefly, if this is an acceptable question to ask.
It is, apparently, because Chris says, "Nice enough. Everyone's felt 'em, though." He glances at Ray. "I mean... you know. Everyone who hangs out with her."
Ray watches him, not caring much about the veiled insult. He wants to ask what they felt like, whether they were pointed. He mentally flashes on the pictures Gerard drew, but finds himself instead wandering to how he looks at girls in the winter, when they forget their coats. Their breasts do look pointed then. Because of the nipples, and all. Sometimes when he sees this it makes him feel a little funny inside, like his stomach is on a trampoline. But it's the same feeling he gets when he looks at Mark Peters, who has the locker next to his and who is made entirely of muscles. Even his hair looks like it has muscles. And if he gets that feeling when he looks at boys, it must not be an important thing. So he doesn't ask about the girls with their pointy breasts.
Chris continues, "And anyway, she's dating that junior. If you can call it dating..." He snorts. "So whatever. I'm gonna ask Jenny to homecoming, though. She's got a nicer ass anyway."
"Jenny... with the blonde hair?"
"Yeah."
"I know her," Ray says. "We used to be friends. She really liked playing hide and seek. I was like... five." He rests his hands behind his head, staring at the leaves above him. "She used to hide in the trees all the time. And I couldn't climb them so she always won."
Again, Chris thinks on this before responding, "That's nice, I guess."
Ray closes his eyes. He doesn't feel like he thinks about sex enough, sometimes. All his friends have stacks of Playboy hidden under their beds; their bedsheets could pass for toxic waste material. Ray just doesn't think about it that much. Maybe next year he'll start paying attention. Ray's mother calls him a "late bloomer" when she talk with the other parents; she gets affectionate, rubs his head, makes him duck away in embarrassment. Maybe if he stared openly at girls in music videos, she'd decide he was older. He doesn't see the point. He's smarter than most of his friends, and he's getting bigger than most of them too. But they like tits. So they must be older.
He says, quietly, "How far have you gotten with Melissa?"
"Aw, hell." Chris yawns exaggeratedly. "I dunno... it happens a lot, you just kinda lose track of it, and all. I'd say... third base."
Ray doesn't know what third base is. He hasn't met anyone who is quite sure what third base is - or at least he thinks so, because every guy he knows gets the same shifty look in their eyes when they declare they've been that far. Maybe "third base" is really code for "I've held her hand." Ray hopes it's true; he'd like to be able to bullshit as well as the other guys. Instead, he just says, "Yeah? Man, you're lucky," and when Chris smirks, Ray can almost believe he is jealous.
-----
Gerard is drawing women naked again, and Ray can't help looking over his shoulder. The desks are closer together now, which makes it remarkably easier. Mr. Hatch has pushed them together into pairs. Despite the fact that he is 'going with' Jenny, Chris continues to twirl Melissa's hair and whisper crude jokes into her ear. Ray tries to ignore it. Gerard's paper helps.
The women are in various positions, some with their legs crossed, others hiding their mouths behind their hands. Their eyes are narrowed. Some have wide, motherly hips and solid waists; others have legs that narrow neatly from their thighs to their ankles. Gerard is paying special attention to their feet lately. He's managed to make their toes look natural, and now he's working on the little bones of their ankles.
Ray murmurs, "That takes balls."
Gerard glances up. "The... drawing? Or the naked?" He's blushing a little, leaning forward. His hair is cropped short, but he pushes at it anyway. Ray sometimes thinks he is like those Vietnam vets who still imagine their legs. He's sure Gerard had longer hair once. Nothing else explains his constant fidgeting, the way he bends his head forward, like he can hide behind something.
"The nakedness," Ray says, turning red as well. He keeps his voice low. "Most guys... uh, they wouldn't do that in school. Y'know. That's cool."
He shrugs, looking down at the page. The girls seem to be looking past him, their eyes sliding out to Ray. They have long eyelashes. Sharp, like spider legs or tiny thorns; Ray wonders how good Gerard is with his pencil, if he can make lines like that. The girls look like they want to bite something.
Gerard says, "If I had balls, I wouldn't draw this." He stares at the page, then twitches a little, looks up at Ray. He smiles. It's a very small one, so that Ray barely notices it, but it's there. Shy. That's the one word he'd have to use to pin down Gerard, if he didn't choose "bizarre." That smile makes Ray rethink asking what he means by what he'd said. So, he looks at Gerard's shirt instead. It's black and torn, with something scrawled on the hem. He squints at it.
"Does that say... What is that?"
Gerard jumps, then looks down at where Ray's looking. "Oh! The lyrics. Umm..." He blushes harder. "It says, 'pretty girls make graves.'"
"The Smiths?" Ray lets himself smile, glancing to the front to make sure the teacher is still ignoring them. He's sure it's blatantly obvious how happy he is, but still - he smiles. "I love that song."
"Yeah!" Gerard's eyes light up. He shifts a little, turning out towards Ray. "I think their earlier stuff is better, for sure - 'This Charming Man', all that."
"Aw, shit." Ray smiles. "I mean, Hatful of Hollow was probably the best album they had. Before things went to shit between Morrissey and Marr." Gerard is nodding along eagerly, eyes wide. His eyes are all of a sudden fixed tight to Ray's.
"And that had 'How Soon is Now' on it, and y'know, that song's like... a fucking classic. Best teen-angst song ever written." Gerard laughs, and points to the small of his back. Across it, in a different hand, someone has scrawled, "I am the son and the heir." Ray wonders who's written it - he can just picture some nameless person pinning Gerard to the floor, writing sloppily. He can even imagine Gerard laughing at it. It's not something he's never quite been given the opportunity to see, but it's a natural image anyway.
He says, "That looks really cool. Man, my friends never want to talk about music."
Gerard shrugs, still beaming. "Your friends suck." Ray is inclined to agree.
He watches Gerard for a moment, and before he can stop himself, he's saying, "One of them called you a faggot." There's a heartbeat where Gerard just stares at him, face blank and pale like plaster, eye sockets hollowed out. Ray feels himself instinctively shrink back.
And Gerard just smiles. He says, "Your friend's a faggot."
"He is," Ray says, breathing in deeply. "Definitely. He has the swishy hands." Which is an utter lie, but sometimes he does pretend Chris is gay. Just to make things easier. Just so Ray is not immensely, disgustingly bitter. Gerard smiles.
"And," he says, "Hatch is a fag. For sure."
Ray glances around the room, then takes a breath and says, quietly, "And he's a fag." He points to a boy in the front row.
Gerard beams at him as if to say, now you get it. "You've got a good sense for this. And... hm. Him? Faggy as hell." He nods toward a boy wearing an oversized sweatshirt. Ray lets his breath out, smiling back now. He isn't in seventh grade, where it feels rebellious and cool to curse, but something about the way Gerard says "fag"... it's like he is utterly, supremely self-assured in his right to say it. It's like he should be saying this about everyone.
Ray says, "And him."
"Definitely him. Have you seen the way he walks? Fag. And..." Gerard pauses, laughing under his breath. "Him."
"What about me?" Ray holds his breath again, trying to maintain his smile. He notices that the letters on Gerard's shirt are smudged a bit, as if a hand trailed over them after writing. He wants to bend down and rewrite it. Just because it's going to annoy him otherwise, every time Gerard wears the damn shirt.
Gerard inspects him, squinting a bit. After a long moment, he sighs, nods. "Yeah. Bigger fag than anyone in this room." And Ray giggles nervously, smiles at him. Gerard smiles back. They both turn back to the front, and Ray can feel his hands shaking a bit when he tries to start writing down the notes again. Next to him, Gerard's are still in the same smooth, precise lines as his sketches. In a way, it makes Ray feel calmer, and after a moment, his hands return to normal.
On the way out of class, Chris says to him casually, "What was so funny, man?"
Ray shrugs. "That kid next to me. Um... Gerard."
"The fag!" Chris shakes his head, laughing. "I know that kid. Jesus."
"Yeah," he says, slowly. "The fag."
-----
Ray is dating a girl. Her name is Jacqueline, but everyone calls her Jackie, and she has freckles. Ray likes them a lot - when they watch movies together, they turn blue during the nighttime scenes, and he wants to kiss them individually, even though his lips are too big. She also has a large house and a best friend who is in love with Chris. Ray thinks she's nice enough, even if she insists he pay for everything.
She likes it when he calls her randomly, so he's made it a habit to call at four-thirty every third afternoon. She hasn't caught on yet. He lies on his bed, staring at the posters littering his room - there are more than a couple Iron Maiden ones, but he put up a Smiths one the other day. Morrissey is looking rather angsty on it, as is the norm. Ray likes to look at his face while he talks to Jackie. It makes him feel like he is Morrissey, and not a geeky Puerto Rican kid with big hands and legs he hasn't grown accustomed to yet.
Today, she's talking about the spring dance. Ray isn't sure if he can afford another dance with her, but she did ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance, so he supposes it's only fair. And she's talking about a dress she's already found.
"Pink," she says, "with, like.. ruffles. On the hem. And a empire waist, that's, like, a high one... like, above your stomach? Yeah."
He makes a noncommittal noise. He likes Jackie, he really does. She gives him an excuse to make jokes about third base, how bitchy girls are. Chris hangs around him more now. He actually hasn't done anything more than hold her hand, and sometimes kiss her cheek, all in a rush. She scowls at him when he does so.
Sometimes, when they are watching a movie, he'll look at her and notice some things. Her breasts sag a little, but he thinks she has wonderful wrists. Not too bony, but slender, just enough for his first finger and thumb to fit around. Her arm is the same width as her wrist. It's lovely. Just lovely. Whenever he looks at her wrists, he wants to hold her, just put his arms around her shoulders until the movie is over. And then he wants to sit in the lit room with her after that, until the janitors kick them out. Just holding her.
Whenever he tries, she hugs him back, then pats his back after a moment. And if he doesn't let go after that, she pulls back. He doesn't try it often.
"And it's got, like, a matching handbag... yeah. It's not pink. More... uhhh. What's the word." She yawns deeply. "It's, you know. Salmon." She pronounces the 'L' when she says it. Ray tries not to sigh.
He looks at the poster of Morrissey. It's in black and white, which makes his clothes look twice as neat as they probably were. Sometimes he wishes he could dress like that. Just wear a suit around, make everyone think he was stylish as hell. Not this awkward mess of teenager that is Ray Toro. The longer he looks at the poster, the more he wants to be Morrissey. He has "How Soon is Now" stuck in his head and it's pissing him off.
"Hey, Jackie?" he says, when she pauses for breath.
"Yeaaah?"
He says, very slowly, "Do you ever think, there's someone out there? Like, one special person? Just for you?"
"Like... soul mates? Like that?"
"Yeah," he says. "Do you ever just... wanna go find that person? Wherever they are, doesn't even matter. Just... somewhere. Just go out and look for them."
"I've got a boyfriend," she cries. "I mean, like... why would I do that? Are you saying you, like, wanna... break up?" Her voice is shrill, almost, and Ray wishes she were in his room at this moment so he could just stare at her wrists and tune out all the sound in the world. Just focus on that one image, the colors of her veins underneath her skin.
"No," he says. "That's not what I mean at all. Don't worry."
"Okay," she says. "You still wanna go to the dance?"
"Yeah, Jackie," he says. "Of course I do. Don't worry."
She continues about her dress, and he stares at the poster. Maybe if he were a different boy he'd dump her, just forget her entirely. He doesn't like being around her enough. But he likes having been with her, and the way Chris punches his arm a little harder these days. He likes the fact that Gerard seems more eager to ask his opinion on his drawings - "Does this position look right? Is it natural?"
Mostly, he likes the way she sighs when he says goodbye. The soft tone of her voice when she says, "I'll see you tomorrow." To him, those are the best moments he has when he's around her.
"I gotta go," he says. "My dad's calling me."
"See you tomorrow," she says, quietly. He smiles as he hangs up the phone.
-----
"I'm just saying," his mother says, "it's the only one you'll ever go to. That's all. You don't want to regret it, honey."
Ray sighs and shakes his head irritably. His mother is bustling around the kitchen, from sink to fridge to stove to counter. Watching her make dinner gives him migraines sometimes. Between this and her constant questions about senior prom, sometimes he feels like she's on an entirely different frequency from him. Something much, much faster.
"I'll be fine," he says. "It's not like I'll be sitting at home. We're gonna go out to... Andrew's, I think."
"Do I know Andrew? Oh, dear - " She rushes over to the stove and lifts a pot off, just before it bubbles over. "Andrew. Andrew. Dark hair? A bit on the large side?"
"That's Gerard. Andrew's the one who lives in the big house, out on King. You know. With the old car you like." Ray sighs. His mother is terrible with names - and worse, her memory latches onto a few people. She's called about five of his friends Gerard, and just as many of the girls Jackie, making them tease him incessantly. "So many girlfriends, can't even remember one," they say, laughing. "Or else she musta been special."
Really, it makes him a bit uncomfortable - he was such a damn geek sophomore year. His mother still asks him on a regular basis when he's going to see "that nice Jackie girl" again; there's no polite way to remind her that Jackie was a goddamned airhead with no sense of tact. She was the only of his friends to call Gerard a fag to his face. Gerard shrugged it off, but there were fewer whispered conversations for the rest of that year.
His mother says, "That Andrew! Oh, I just love him. You'll be with him? That's fine, then!" She nods. "Are you going to get nice clothes? You need a suit, dear, you outgrew your last one."
"We're just going to be hanging out. It's... it's not a big deal." He shakes his head. "Anyway, it's too late, it's this week."
"I know, but - oh, dear, just rethink it." She wipes her hands on her apron, the motion oddly decisive. "You're only eighteen once. You should have fun."
"We will, Mom. I promise." He smiles a bit. "Rob's gonna bring all his old tapes. And Andrew has a pool, you know? So... we'll have that. And, um, there'll just be a ton of us. It'll be fun."
"Yes, well." She turns back to the counter and begins chopping something - Ray leans back in his chair, trying to see. It looks like peppers. Maybe chives. The entire room smells fresh and green, which is fairly appropriate. The sunlight spilling over her shoulders lights up the edges of her hair, and Ray's shoes on the table are edged in gold too. He breathes in. The air is tinged with that yellowy color too; he can feel it soaking into his lungs. The knot on his mother's apron is perfectly tied. The ends hang evenly, and when she turns around, he smiles at her widely.
"A little scary, huh?" he says. "I graduate in a month."
"Don't remind me!" She throws the knife down and claps her hands to her ears, laughing. "Don't make me go on about how my baby's all grown up now."
"I'm not," he says, laughing as well. "You can take care of me forever. I'm just as immature as when I was five."
She tips her head for a minute, raising her eyebrows. "Hm.... hmm." She nods enthusiastically. "I see it! I definitely see it."
"Aw, hell - " He slings his feet back to the ground, shaking his head. "I'm hurt. I really am. Christ, Mom, I expected you to be nicer." And he stands and leaves, his mother still giggling the whole time. He can hear her start chopping again. The knife makes a steady sing-song rhythm, and she hums along with it, her voice pitched higher with happiness.
I'll be out of this hellhole in a year, he thinks, and not a single moment of sadness comes with that thought. It's affectionate, really - he loves Belleville. It is a hellhole, and he would be perfectly content to pick his family up and drop them in a new town miles away. But he's here, and his friend Rob has a stack of mix tapes dating back to freshman year. Andrew has promised to invite a variety of girls, all of whom he says look excellent in bikinis. And they will get a bit drunk and cry about how much they'll miss each other, and talk about the memories.
Ray can just see it now - how they'll tease him about dating Jackie, and he'll shoot back that at least one of them had a crush on Melissa Reed. They'll blush, deny it heatedly. He'll talk about Chris, that pompous football-team asshole, who ignored Ray through all of junior year after Ray actually did make it to third base with a girl. He'll say, "He was actually proud of being with Melissa," and the girls will laugh so hard they almost choke on their drinks.
He loves Belleville, he really does, but fuck. He'll be glad to get out of here. There are about ten decent kids in the entire damn town. He's friends with eight or nine of them and that's just not enough to make the town worth it. Nobody could make this damn town worth it. Ray smiles as he heads upstairs.
-----
The best part of spring, to Ray, is probably the ability to walk home every day. His car is terribly beat-up from a previous owner; the paint has been chipped off frequently enough to make it look two-toned. He isn't sure whether the red paint or the gray paint came first. There's a couple BBs from a neighbor's gun embedded in the trunk. Ray loves his car and wouldn't trade it for the world, but Christ, he's scared of driving the thing sometimes. So he walks home in the spring.
Sometimes, when he knows he's not working that night and doesn't have much work left - a lot, this spring, now that he's a senior - he goes down the side streets. He tries to figure out the most complex route back to his house. If he has a lot of time, he tries to pass his favorite houses, with the tiny planter boxes overflowing with flowers. The poppies look like gunshot wounds in the empty yards. The children who go racing past scream like they're being chased by older men; the metal of abandoned bicycles looks like smooth gun barrels. Ray really does like Belleville, in his own way.
He's walking home today, hands in his pockets, whistling to himself. Andrew has promised that Maria will be there on prom night. Maria has eyes shaped like a cat's, and she wears full, lacy skirts that fall to her knees. She ties ribbons to the hem and spins around constantly, so they whip other people in the legs. There are beads on the ribbons and one day last year, she spun around near Ray and left marks on his legs.
Ray likes her a lot, which is why he tries not to think about her too often. If he does for long enough, he starts imagining her naked in black-and-white. She has insanely thin legs. He can see the bones in her knees, which makes him think of Gerard's drawings sophomore year, which makes him wonder what her breasts are like. They don't look too high up. She wears her hair parted very far to one side, so her hair falls like in the pictures Gerard drew. Far over one eye. She doesn't look like she wants to bite anyone, though. Just like she wants to take deep breaths for a long time. She never seems to be able to get enough air. Ray thinks it's a little sad that he notices this much about her. He keeps whistling.
When he turns a corner, he's surprised to find Gerard walking home, a few feet down the road. He stops abruptly - it's as if he's hallucinated Gerard out of nowhere. They've sat next to each other in math class every day for the past three years, but still, he's grown almost... accustomed to him. Gerard stopped being a novelty long ago. His ink-splotched hands and torn jeans; the bats scribbled on his shoes.
Gerard hasn't noticed him yet; he's walking with another, taller boy. Ray can hear Gerard singing loudly - he's gesturing wildly. The other boy's laughter floats back to him. It sounds rusty. Unused. Gerard is bouncing as he walks, bellowing out the words.
"Never guessed it got this good, wondered if it ever would -" At this he spins around, arms out, his hand latching onto the other boy's. He screams out, "Really didn't think it could - "
His voice cuts off abruptly when he spots Ray, and he stops walking. Next to him, the boy turns around, eyes wide behind his thick horn-rim glasses. Ray stops short, then takes a breath, smiles. He waves. "Hey, Gerard!"
"Oh! Um... Hi. Hi, Ray." He nods too quickly. Ray forces himself to start moving, walk closer until the three are standing face to face. As he gets closer, Gerard says, "This is my brother, Mikey. Mikey, this is Ray. He sits next to me in pre-calc."
Mikey offers a shy smile, then kicks at the ground with a steel-tipped boot. "Hello."
Ray offers him a nod, then turns back to Gerard and says, "The Cure?" Gerard's face turns bright red, but he just shoves a hand through his short, bristly hair.
"You know it. 'Mint Car'."
"Well, yeah." Ray rolls his eyes. "I didn't even know Robert Smith could be happy before I heard that song."
With that, the tension breaks. Gerard and Mikey both laugh. Mikey's voice is lower than he expected for such a tall, thin boy, but it makes Ray smile. He likes the kid already - he looks exactly as geeky as Ray did two years ago, especially with his hand still clutching Gerard's. It's sweet.
Gerard says, rather affably, "Then you need to listen to 'Friday I'm in Love', for Christ's sake. Now that's ten kinds of happy."
"It's about drugs," Mikey says, still giving off that shy smile. His hands are tucked into his track jacket, and he's kind of hunched over, but he seems assured when he speaks. "That's why it's happy, because it's about drugs, and partying, and how that makes you so happy after a boring week." Gerard tips his head a bit, bites his lip, then nods.
"The kid is right. Ray, you'd love Mikes, he's fuckin' genius about music. Really knows his stuff."
"Yeah?" Ray nods as well. "I bet I would. You know me, man. I'm..." He shrugs helplessly, turning to Mikey. "Total music dork."
"You like Britpop?" Mikey sucks his lips into his mouth.
"Yeah... I'm more of a metal fan, though. Iron Maiden? Best thing to come out of Britain."
"Oh, no way - " Mikey shakes his head violently. "If you're going metal, it's all about the post-metal genres, thrash metal. Anthrax, man, they're genius. Fuckin' genius." Ray tries not to laugh at the way he unintentionally repeats Gerard's phrasing. Gerard does laugh, though, then sighs dramatically.
"Mikey absolutely refuses to shut up about Anthrax. He's got this shirt, right - looks like a dog ate it." He drops Mikey's hand, but only to ruffle his hair. Mikey squawks and ducks out of the way, trying to shove his hair back into place. Ray does laugh at that. Mikey swats at Gerard's hand, and Gerard slings his bag off his shoulders, tries to hit Mikey with it.
Ray claps, laughing, but at the same time he says, "Be nice to the kid!" Mikey jumps back, yelling, "Thank you, Ray!" And Gerard's bag goes soaring out into the air, sending notebooks everywhere.
"Oh, shit, I'm clumsy," Gerard moans. "Sorry, Mikes, you all right?" All three of them go running for the notebooks. The wind shuffles the paper around, making whistling noises.
Ray scoops up one. It's covered in drawings, of course - figure sketches. Ray feels himself flash back to the first day of geometry, and Gerard with his nice ink pens, sketching like a machine. They seemed so excellent then - these look recent. The lines are cleaner. Ray can't remember the last time he saw Gerard actually drawing but it's a relief to know he hasn't quit.
Of course, this all registers in a second; it's what comes next that really hits him. All the figures are naked men. And they still have their sharp knees and elbows, their solid wrists, just as Ray remembers, but the detail - Ray gasps inadvertently. They're all so fucking naked, and they're all finely muscled. None of them have the spare room in their hips that those awkward women had. They're... beautiful.
Gerard snatches the notebook back. "Thanks," he mumbles, slamming it shut. His eyes stay pinned to the ground. "Hey, look, I gotta get Mikey home. He's having some friends over... I gotta clean up. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yeah," Ray manages. "Pre-calc. Not like we really have to show up, anymore, huh?"
"Yeah." Gerard smiles weakly. "So. See you then."
"You know," Mikey chimes in, "if you want, you can come over later, Ray - it's more of a party, really - we're playing a lot of good music! You should come!" Ray and Gerard shake their heads at the same time.
Gerard says, "No, you promised Mom not too many people."
"Yeah, but - "
"Another time," Gerard says.
The two set off down the road, and Ray turns back the way he came. Mikey yells back to him, his voice stronger, "Nice to meet you, Ray!" He can hear Gerard's voice, hushed and fierce. He can't make out the words. It doesn't matter, he guesses. They're clearly not meant for him. So he starts back towards home.
-----
"Totally do not see the problem." Scott shrugs, blows his hair out of his face. "You're overreacting."
Ray says, very patiently, "I kissed a guy."
"And..."
"And I kissed a fucking guy!" Ray falls back, hand over his eyes. This is partially from aggravation but mostly so he doesn't have to look at Scott's basement ceiling. There are about twenty water stains and he only knows where five of them came from. That scares him, a little. Scott tends to wave things like that off, but Ray isn't quite comfortable with it. Sometimes he wishes he could be more comfortable with things. Like, case in point, the fact that he fucking kissed Andrew. Andrew, of all people. Andrew wears his jeans too large and he smokes all the time and he once laughed so hard he threw up. Ray doesn't think about it much, but he has the vague feeling you aren't supposed to learn these things until after you kiss someone.
Also, Andrew is a guy. That can be an issue.
Scott slides off the couch to sit next to Ray. He says, "Look, it's not like he punched you or anything."
"Well. No." He slides his hand off his eyes.
What Ray has not said is that, rather than punching him, Andrew kissed back. Hard. Maria was in a bikini with a scarf tied over her hips, dancing so it swirled around her in slow motion. They really were a little drunk, and the water slid around everyone like they were flying. The music slowed down two beats between the radio and them. Andrew pushed Ray underwater; he swam away, jumped out and ran for the house. Andrew chased him inside.
Ray sat on the kitchen counter, laughing, and then Andrew was standing between his legs, shaking him lightly. Ray's head came down a bit far and then they were pressing their lips together, kissing like they were thirteen years old, hands shaking. Andrew's hands tangled in Ray's hair. Ray felt like he'd swallowed the entire pool and it was all inside his stomach, and he was filled up with the blue moonlight color of it, the entire night. Andrew tasted like beer.
Then he stepped backwards, leaned against a chair, laughed. He said, "Maria's gonna be pissed I didn't dance with her," and he stumbled out the door. Ray sat on the counter alone.
Now, he says, "But listen, listen. Does that make me gay?"
"Did you like it?" Scott yawns. Ray does not particularly want to slap him, but he wouldn't mind shaking him by the shoulders. He likes Scott. He really does. Scott is dense as hell, and he thinks it's perfectly acceptable to kiss whoever you want, whenever you want. He wears girls' jeans a lot. This is the only reason Ray came to him first, but maybe he shouldn't have.
"I don't know," he says. He doesn't. "I guess. If it wasn't Andrew."
"So," he says. "Do you ever wanna kiss other guys?"
Ray thinks about it. He hasn't especially ever wanted to do so, but the way he felt when he did - he recognizes that. The flipped-around feeling, like he was carrying something immense. The way he feels when he thinks about Maria. That's how he felt when he kissed Andrew, and he's looked at boys and felt that before. So he must be.
"I think so," he says. "Nobody specific. Just... guys. But girls, too! I mean, I can't do that, right? I can't be gay then. Not if I like girls."
"Bisexual. Man, you can definitely be both." Scott makes a weird face. "It's like you've never seen a porno in your life, dude."
Ray bursts out laughing at that. "But that's... that's porn. It doesn't count. Chicks like that aren't real, except for the sluts. And they don't count."
"No, man, no. Totally true." Scott nods emphatically. "You're sheltered. Christ. Totally true, swear on my aunt's grave. Cross my heart." He pauses, gives Ray a sidelong look. He lisps, "You can be anything you want, sweetheart."
Ray just sighs. "Whatever you say. That's really true? You're allowed to do that?"
"Who's gonna stop you?"
Yeah, Ray thinks. Nobody's going to call the goddamn cops. He looks up at the splotchy ceiling, the floor of the rooms where half his best friends lost their virginity (though not all at once.) He likes Scott's house. It's not big like Andrew's, and it doesn't smell like fresh bread like Jane's, but it's very familiar. He can sleep on the couch quite happily without worrying that somebody will find him in only his boxers. If he wakes up before anyone else, he can make himself breakfast easily. That's a strange feeling for Ray; he usually can't even make breakfast in his own house. His mother is up at six every morning making toast and coffee. No matter how he tries to beat her to the kitchen, she has a sixth sense about it.
Ray likes being in his house, mostly, because Scott is there. Scott doesn't mind if he just lies on the floor staring at the ceiling, or if he blurts out something insane like "I kissed a guy." Which is nice. Sometimes Ray just needs to turn things over, let himself get onto tangents about food or his photography class or something ridiculous. So he doesn't quite have to stare down that idea. I think I'm bisexual.
Really, it's not such a bad idea either. It explains things. It explains Mark Peters and Gerard's notebook and a lot of silly loose ends that he breezed past mentally. Not avoided - just skimmed over. But there they are. He lets them soak in slowly. Boys with muscles, drawn in sharp relief against clean white pages. It's not a bad idea.
He turns back to Scott. "So okay," he says.
"So?"
"So let's go get some food, I haven't eaten all day."
"In your house?" Scott snorts. "I refuse to believe that, absolutely refuse, just not possible."
"Believe it," Ray says. "Totally true."
-----
"Still working?"
Ray jumps at the voice in his ear, nearly dropping his camera. "Shit! Michelle, don't do that. Just ruined the damn shot."
"Mister Toro," Michelle says, flinging her arms around his neck, "You need to lighten up. Take a break. Tim said you've been shooting since morning. Come on, let's go get a coffee, something - it's not healthy."
He ducks out from under her arms, turning the camera off. "Well, since you screwed it up anyway..." He laughs, shakes his head. "You wanna go to the Olympian?"
"Why yes, sir, I'd love to! It's on me." She spins around, arms outstretched. "I thought the project wasn't due for a month, anyway."
"It isn't, but..." He shrugs. "Sarah's got a side project going, she wanted some candids. Nothing big. Just... y'know." He gestures with one hand, to the crowd of people spread over the stairs to the dorm entrance. "People doing stuff. You know Sarah."
"Do I know Sarah," she says, grabbing his hand. "Coffee. Now. I'll even drive, you don't have to do a thing. Just turn the damn thing off already."
"It's off!"
They make their way out to the parking lot, Michelle digging through the numerous pockets on her jacket for her keys. Once they're in the car, she says, "Anyway, you're getting too old for this. Stop doing everyone else's homework."
"It's not homework! She just wanted to... put something together. She wrote a script for it, you know. She's excited about it."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Michelle flaps her hand at him, like it's a mouth talking. "Goddamn film students. Can Sarah even write? Has the girl picked up a pen in her life? I bet she hasn't, it's going to fail miserably. I love her. It'll be a black hole. Oh, God, you film students."
"Film students, my ass. You're an art history major! You can't talk. This school, and you're doing history. It's... it's blasphemy, is what it is!" He tips his head back, laughing. "You have offended God. If you were meant to study history you'd be at... I don't know. Yale?"
"Yale's got no damn character." She parks on a narrow street, tapping the junked-up car in front of her. It makes a noise like a dying cat. She bounces out of the car, slamming the door behind her; Ray is pointedly delicate with his. "This is what I mean," she says, gesturing to the Olympian. "Character."
He wonders briefly whether or not character is composed of two parts rust to one part dirt. Probably not, but knowing Michelle... it's possible. There is also an aspect of stale cigarette smoke involved, and maybe a bit of black coffee. Michelle hates black coffee, a fact she incessantly complains about; she feels it makes her less of a poet. She claims all decent poets will drink black coffee without flinching. She also wants a beret, so maybe her opinion on the matter is a bit biased. Although she is certainly right about one thing - if there's anything the Visual Arts School of New York has in spades, it's character. Sometimes Ray wants to get a tattoo, or pierce his nose, just to blend in a bit more. That thought still makes him laugh.
Ray holds the cafe door for Michelle. As they sit down, he tells her, "If you want character, you should come back home with me. See Belleville. You'd love it."
"Mm, that's right. You're a Jersey boy!" She giggles behind her hand. "Mister Toro, you are just too much sometimes." She turns to the waiter - a skinny teenager whose clothes look far too large - and says in a very loud, honest voice, "Hey, sweetheart. How're you doing?"
"All right," the waiter says, smiling briefly. "What'll it be?"
"No, no, sugar," Michelle says. "I mean, how are you, honestly. You doing all right?"
The waiter considers it for a moment. He says quietly, "Well, my feet kinda hurt."
"Then don't you dare rush for us. Two coffees, that's it, and take your time!" She makes a shooing motion, then turns back to Ray, smiling widely. Her teeth look big and very white. Ray likes that about her - she has movie-star teeth, and the skinniest, palest lips he's ever seen. She asks him regularly to trade lips. "Just for an hour," she likes to say. "A couple, maybe. Enough to get some damn good kissing in."
Now, she says, "So, you. What's going on with all this work? It's almost summer! Oh, God, exams are going to be bad enough, don't give yourself more to do."
"I know, I know." He grins and shakes his head. "Her script is just... it's fantastic. I didn't think it would be. The colors, though, Christ - lots of orange. Warm colors, yellowy-green. The characters are just so bitter and then she's got this warm autumn-type backdrop for it. Absolutely fuckin' genius."
"Geek," she says, leaning over to ruffle his hair. Her tone is affectionate. "It's a script, it doesn't have colors."
"I can see them," he says. He smiles at her. "We're gonna do some indoor shots with colored lights later. You wanna come by? We could use a makeup girl. Sarah's... you know. She's hopeless at it."
"Sarah just plain is hopeless." She nods. "Only if you promise me one thing."
"Yeah...?" He leans back, biting his lip in amusement. If there's one thing college has taught him it's that you never, never agree to something without hearing it beforehand. Including the catches. More than one drunken bet has gotten him in trouble this way, including one memorable incident with a statue and a can of spray paint. Ray likes to tell his stories that way. They sound much more interesting - there just isn't much charm to admitting to the details. This is why he likes Michelle, probably. Her entire life is a series of details that she skips over. She fast-forwards to the Good Parts.
She says, "I'm having a birthday party for Tim on Friday. My place, I promise, we won't wreck your room." Ray sighs in relief at this. "But, we're going out to a bar or something after that, so... You have to come. Fair?"
"Like I have anything else to do on a Friday night." He rolls his eyes.
"You might have a hot date!" She winks exaggeratedly, raising an eyebrow, then bursts out laughing. "Nah, nah, don't take it wrong. I just.. oh, God, Ray. You and 'hot date' go together as well as... Me and black coffee. That is how well."
"There might be someone!"
"But there isn't," she says, nodding firmly.
"There was."
"Oh?" She winces, pursing her lips. "Let me guess. He was straight? Ray, you have the worst gaydar ever. Ever. I'm better than you, and I'm a straight woman."
"Actually," he says, chuckling, "she was a lesbian. This goddamn town... I swear. Picking up girls is like Russian roulette with an automatic." Sometimes he forgets how much of character seems to involve being trendily gay - at least with the college students. Either that, or septum rings. Sometimes both.
"And just as painful," she says. "So you'll come? I mean, of course you're coming, he's your roommate, but I mean - you'll be happy about it?"
"Of course," he says. "Jesus, Michelle, you must think I'm some kind of Neanderthal. It'll be fun!"
The waiter shows back up, clutching their cups so hard his knuckles look white. He kicks at the ground, then says softly, "Here you go." Michelle squeals in delight and rips open three packets of sugar. One falls on the table, and she scoops a bit up with her fingertip, licks it clean.
"Thank you so exceedingly much, Mister - " She pauses and squints at his nametag. "Mikey! Thank you, Mikey, you're a darling. We'll leave a good tip. Promise." She reaches for her wallet, and his eyes widen a bit, but she just goes on smiling at him. Ray reaches over and knocks at her hand.
"Don't be silly," he says. "The tip's on me." He nods to the waiter - Mikey - and then turns to his coffee. It's black and he likes the rich smell emanating from it almost more than he likes the drink itself. He's never been a big fan of drinking it, but having coffee - that's something special. The heat melts through the ceramic of the cup and into his hands, down into the tiny finger bones.
Later, in the car, he digs through his bag until he finds his tapes. Before Michelle can ask what he's putting on, there's a blast of music, and "Mint Car" is blaring out of the speakers. "The Cure?" she says, wrinkling her nose. "God, Ray, I thought you had better taste than that."
He thinks for a moment. There's really no proper way to explain, "I don't know him, but that waiter had the same name as a the brother of the boy I sat next to in pre-calc senior year." Nothing quite does that moment justice - meeting Mikey, seeing Gerard's sketchbook. Christ. Gerard. When was the last time he thought of him? Not since that summer, probably; he was so caught up in college and Life and A New Start and all that bullshit. And now... well, it's weird. The little things that bring back those moments. Ray shakes his head.
Skip to the good parts.
He says to Michelle, "This song reminds me of someone I used to know."
"Oh, sugar, say no more." She turns the volume up, lowers the windows, and hits the gas. They go off down the narrow side streets, and Ray closes his eyes. The afternoon sun has warmed the seat perfectly and now the wind is whipping over his face. Michelle is dancing next to him whenever they hit a red light. Caught up in the moment, he even starts dancing with her.
-----
Ray isn't used to being really drunk, but fuck if he doesn't like it sometimes. Michelle throws awesome parties, and Tim has awesome taste in bars, and everything is just... awesome. Very, very awesome. He isn't really drunk yet but he's sure he will be, and it's not such a bad thought. Someone has convinced the bartender to play a tape they brought, and Tim is bouncing from table to table, dragging Ray behind him. Everyone offers him a drink. It's nice. Girls pat his hair, which he submits to with a patient smile, because they are usually pretty cute and they make a show of squealing over how sweet he is.
"Now, now," Tim says, rather grandly. "This is not just a haircut. This is Ray Toro, this is the motherfuckin' Torosaurus. This is the most fabulous roommate to ever exist in the same space as me." He leans over, grabs someone's beer, takes a swig.
"Torosaurus?" Ray says in confusion. "Did you just turn me into a dinosaur?"
"Yes. You're a dinosaur, you are absolutely ancient, have a drink. You are old enough for it," Tim says, snickering. Ray shakes his head and grabs the beer. He won't be twenty-one for another two months, making him one of the youngest juniors he knows, but everyone tells him he acts older. Like he's not even a damn college student, they say.
What the hell, you only live once. He takes a drink.
One of the girls tells Tim he's just got to bring his other friends around more, to which Ray says, "He hasn't got any others! It's just me." Tim slaps him, hard, across the back of his head. Ray just laughs.
"I think," Michelle says in his ear, "we have taken over this entire bar."
He glances around. "Nah, there's some people... well. Over there? And there!" He points to a few random corners, giggling. Oh, shit. He's fucking giggling. That means in about an hour he'll be dead drunk. Ray feels... debauched. He feels like a stereotypical frat boy. Considering the school, that makes him a damn outsider, and it feels nice. Tim is slapping him on the shoulder now. Ray sits down at the first chair he finds, and just looks.
It's a pretty rainy night, for May. The sky outside the window is a deep royal blue overlaid with patches of gray and white. Ray thinks he wants to film it, maybe, with the bright shining stars of the lights inside in front of it. And he wants to speed up five hours of film into five minutes - the clouds going by and the girls dancing and the constant back-and-forth of the bartender. Their bright clothes and the sparkle of jewelry.
"I am so in love with this place," Ray says.
"Drunk already, huh?" Michelle giggles. Her hair smells like vanilla. Ray wants to be back home, five years old, watching his mother cook... his big brother used to help her mix things. Ray was so jealous. God, vanilla, he hasn't smelled that properly in ages.
"Just a little buzzed," he says. He smiles. She smiles back and he starts spinning around on the chair. It's one of those old stools, the really fabulous kind, and he goes slow so he doesn't mess up his stomach. He can see everything and he is a little buzzed, but oh, Jesus. It's a beautiful place. He's twenty and out with his friends and honestly, what the hell does a guy need besides that? Skip to the good parts but these are the good parts, the details, the way even the people not with them are dancing to the tape. Everyone's dancing.
And there's a boy on a table in the corner, and he's dancing, with his back to the rest of the room and Ray can't make out his face but he's beautiful, so beautiful. He's moving like he has scarves tied to his wrists, just floating, and he's much faster than Ray is seeing him but it doesn't matter because everything is at a crawl. The music hits his ears one note at a time, and the boy is turning so slow. His hair flies in his face, the edges feathering out like a dove's wing caught in the wind and his hips spin with him. His center of gravity is perfect and Ray wants to stand below him, watch the look in his eyes. He'd bet anything the boy has nice eyes.
Then it hits him - the boy dances like Maria. Maria, who almost kissed Ray on prom night, and had feral eyes and oval fingernails. Maria who was the object of his fantasies for three months after, who wore a yellow bikini and painted her toenails cherry red. The boy has the same wrists she does. Delicate. He's raising his hands now, some special aura trailing after his wrist like scarves, and he's clapping. Ray swallows hard.
The boy claps fast fast fast and someone hands Ray a drink, so he drinks, and his mouth is still dry. The boy is shaking his hips and striking his palms together like flint, at the heel of one hand. He's clapping. His hair is long and dark and it looks he's underwater, the way it's floating in the air.
Ray wants to be able to say he doesn't recognize Gerard with long hair but that's a lie. When the boy turns around his hair is in his face, and that is the most natural thing he's ever seen on Gerard - that ability to hide behind it. He's up on the damn table dancing, but he's hiding his face, and that means it must be Gerard. It could be no one else. Ray sucks in his breath but Gerard keeps dancing, and his laughter is floating across the room now, sinking into Ray's ears. He's fucking clapping to the song and when did Gerard learn to dance like that? When did he learn how to find a beat?
"You know," Michelle says, "The kid's got a nice ass but you don't need to stare like that."
Ray blinks. Breathes in deep twice. "I'm... oh, shit. Am I staring? I'm not."
"You are." She smiles cheerfully.
"I, um. I know him. From high school." Ray sips from his drink. It tastes sticky-sweet, like too much syrup on waffles the morning after a hangover. He swallows hard.
"You do? Go say hi! For Christ's sake, Ray, you are so dense." She smacks him on the arm lightly. Gerard has jumped off the table, is talking to a small group of people.
Ray shakes his head. "I'm drunk," he says. "It's been years. We... didn't say goodbye well." Michelle nods knowingly and he trips over his tongue trying to respond, saying, "Not like that, no, no, just - I found out something about him." There's a long silence as it hits him. Not silence around, just in his head, where it matters. He wants to run back in time and find teenage Gerard, yell at him in an ecstatic voice, me too! He wants to tell Gerard how good the drawings were. The men with their properly drawn ankles. He wants to scream, I get it, you don't have to run away.
Instead, he spins back to face the window. The night is going by in slow motion and Michelle says, "Honey, you can call him up tomorrow. Say hi to the boy. It'll be nice." He nods and watches the clouds go by like they're floating. Tim bounces past, shrieking about something or other, and Ray laughs. He really does. He laughs and he feels something in him float up, drift away and not come back down.
-----
Sometimes, Ray doesn't know why he bothers listening to the radio. It's not that it's bad, or anything, just... he lives in a college town. That means he gets to hear Alternative Rock, the kind that announces itself with fanfare and flannel, twenty-three hours a day. The other hour is crappy talk radio for the politically-aware students. So he sticks to old tapes, mostly.
He's driving home in his shitty car from a late night at Sarah's; she had insisted he come over to work on her project. He's read her script at least five times now. Something about the characters... they all sound so similar, angry, despondent. The few adjectives she's bothered to come up with describe the background perfectly. Tangerine and peppery and prismatic.
"That's what I want to be," he'd said, pointing to her scribbled notes. "That word."
"Breezy?" She made a face. "You don't."
"I do! It's a good word. It's... summery, is what it is."
"It's not." Sarah shook her head. "Breezy is like a blonde bitch with highlights who wears designer sweatpants, or transparent sundresses. And she wears pink lip gloss and waves her hand at you when she wants something."
Ray considered it, the way the word felt when he said it. He mouthed it a couple times. "Nah, still not seeing it. It's more like... a girl with black hair, and red nail polish. And she likes to dance and she was a harem girl for Halloween one year."
"That's not breezy," she said, laughing. "That's stereotypical. Men."
"Not at all," Ray said, and he laughed too because in a way he wasn't talking about a girl at all, or a word. He was talking about Gerard. For the past week he's only been talking about Gerard, but no one else knows it, because they don't speak the same language as Ray anymore. His choices of phrases are different now. Not because he feels different, but because one glimpse of Gerard meant every memory got triggered. And "every memory" is only a handful, maybe six or seven moments of clarity. But that's enough for Ray to start repeating his jokes. Stealing them as his own.
He keeps thinking of Gerard dancing. Christ. First slow like the entire world was floating by, and then that moment when he rocketed into fast-forward, started clapping hard enough to make it echo. The way he raised his hands over his head.
It's raining, making light thumping noises on the car roof, and Ray turns on the radio. He left his tapes at home. He hates listening to the radio sometimes but tonight, it's just drizzling, and he's wondering whether or not the moon can make rainbows too. That'd be pretty cool, he thinks. It's probably possible. Just very hard to detect.
He skims through radio stations, past heavy, thick guitar chords and brassy drums. Disillusioned twentysomethings growling into microphones, pushing their filthy hair back. He settles on something with a decent bassline - low-key vocals. He likes it. Background music. Something for driving at night in the rain and thinking about a boy he used to know - fuck. He can't get over that. Used to know.
Michelle said to call him. Michelle said this and that but quite frankly, Ray is not so into taking her advice - she means well but things work out poorly when she's involved. "He probably lives around here," she said.
"Maybe he's visiting a friend."
"You said he used to draw - maybe he's here, Ray. Do not even forget that boy."
Like he could. Gerard was a thick clumsy teenager, but he's grown into something that can pick out the beat to a song. There are hand claps whistling out of the stereo now, a squeal of music and feedback combining, and Ray wonders what the hell kind of music this is. It's angst music, is what it is. Music for being depressed as fuck because you can't get over some damn guy who sat next to you in math. But it's not really that kind of song it all, it's perky and sweet, and Ray is just projecting onto anything he can latch onto. Jesus.
He takes a breath. He's being illogical about this. Gerard left so fast that afternoon, but he still waved when he saw Ray come into their pre-calc classroom. He still smiled and asked for help on some things while he was reviewing. Polynomials - he had this mental block with them, this complete inability to remember how to deal with them. There's no need for Ray to get so damn upset about this. No need.
And just because the radio's being catchy as hell while he's missing Gerard... that's no reason to be this way.
He misses Gerard. That's what it is, that emotion's been pinned down, that's loss. Pure and simple. If you miss him, says his mind, it doesn't have to be that way. And of course it doesn't. Ray knows he doesn't need to feel anything that's pointless - that's how he's gotten this far. Just skip to the good parts and live those right, and block out what doesn't matter. Let it float away.
He rolls down the window. The rain strikes lightly against his cheeks and the backs of his hands. "All right," he says, "for fuck's sake, all right." The radio blares in party-girl whoops and firecracker sounds. When he gets home, he pulls out a phone book, skims through it. Gerard Way. "I can do this," he whispers. He puts the book face-down on the desk, marking the page, a star drawn in ink by Gerard's name.
Then he goes to sleep. His body relaxes under the sheets; they smell like laundry detergent and damp air. Something smooths out in his face and the tips of his fingers. He sleeps deeply, dreaming of the taste of oranges. Yellow scarves, washing his memories in sunlight. Shapeless black figures dancing on classroom desks, breaking down the walls, smashing out the glass faces on the clocks. The sound feels like a familiar voice. It feels like sleeping in his room in Belleville, so Ray's dreams are happy. He doesn't skip past that night.
-----
to chapters 4 & 5.