Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > My Dirty Little Secret
It Just Got Better (And By Better I Mean Worse)
9 reviewsIt just kept on getting worse and worse. You see, I was rather looking forward to the weekend after that disastrous Friday...
5Exciting
Chapter 4; It Just Got Better (And By Better I Mean Worse)
I was wrong.
It just kept on getting worse and worse.
You see, I was rather looking forward to the weekend after that disastrous Friday. Mr Harthan kept up his usual relentless teasing all through History and R.S, too, and Gerard just kept smirking like the evil sexy smirking motherfucker that he is. In the last lesson, music, I made a mini vow to myself that I would not be so pathetic the week after. So on Saturday, I was quite glad that I’d have that day and the next to sort my head out, without just seeing Gerard absolutely everywhere.
I spent all my weekend at band practice instead, and it was usually closed so none of my other friends could come along and fuck about - Michelle had been a fan of coming in and lazing around over all of the equipment so we couldn’t actually get anything done. Kayleigh was usually the only one that I trusted not to completely make a nuisance of herself. Usually.
I had said already how Phoenix played drums for my band, hadn’t I? Yeah, all the other people in my band attended other schools so we often didn’t see each other over the week. We’d all convene at our lead singer - Josh’s - house for the weekend. He lived on the other side of town in one of those giant, posh, amazing, fancy houses and he had a giant basement that we camped out in from Friday to Sunday.
I arrived on Friday in my Mum’s car after the half-hour drive with my usual two guitar cases and a rucksack full of sweets and chips, my cheeks still a perfectly bright red after all the times I made a complete and utter fool of myself since Tuesday. I was rather hoping that the music would let me clear my head a bit and I would be able to walk into school on Monday without completely obliterating everything in sight thanks to one gorgeous, beautiful raven-haired boy that happened to be my best friend’s cousin.
To my delight, Kayleigh didn’t turn up with Gerard in tow to ruin my entire weekend. She instead turned up only for a couple of hours on Saturday with the other cousin, the one I hadn’t met yet because he was always with Riley and her friends; Mikey. He wasn’t knee-meltingly gorgeous in the amazing brain-melting style that his older was - but he was kinda cute, too. However, as I was already far to obsessed for my own good with Gerard, I decided not to let myself think in that direction and kept my brain firmly on playing guitar for the weekend.
Friday night was movie night. All of Saturday and Sunday mornings we had band practice. Sunday night would be another movie night. Unless we all had studying or shit to do, or one of us were away, my weekends were pretty awesome. Sunday night was also the night when all our friends were actually allowed into Josh’s fucking mansion.
We’d just finished up on Sunday evening and the band, all five of us were lazing around outside in his backyard. It was only 4:00pm so it was still warm, and the sun was still high in the clear blue skies, and the smell of barbecue drifted across the grass from the patio where Josh’s parents were cooking.
Josh Thompson was, as I’ve said, the lead singer of our band, three years older than me. He looked normal enough in average clothes; shaggy brown hair in a grey beanie, blue eyes, tall, nothing too out of the ordinary. But his brain worked in beautifully bizarre ways for the sort of guy he was; he was actually quite gentle and hated blood and gore but you wouldn’t know it from the way our band worked. It was called ‘Anaconda’ (because Phoenix has this weird obsession with snakes) and we liked to put on a show.
Let me explain. You’d take a look at us this one Sunday afternoon, the five members sprawled out across the grass, soft rock playing from Josh’s parents’ stereo, and you’d think ‘If these guys were in a band, they’d be a pop punk band’. You’d also be very wrong.
Josh was wild - he had slight ADHD but what with the adrenaline on stage he’d go absolutely nuts. His voice was positively orgasmic when he sang and we didn’t dress up; skinny jeans, shirts and ties were usually the way we went; but the songs he wrote kind of had such an edge to them that by the end of the night he’d be screaming and thrashing and losing his mind on stage. A bit like me, in that respect, only he had to control himself a bit so he didn’t become so breathless he couldn’t sing.
Pretty much every girl in the next three counties was in love with him.
Between me and Josh breaking everything in sight when we played, the other members didn’t have to do much work to make every show simply the best we could be. Marcy Lynn was the lead guitarist, just a year younger than Josh, and simply very pretty. She didn’t need to run around or jump or scream to make herself seen on stage; she could stand at the front with the stage lights gleaming off her curly caramel and rainbow hair, fingers dancing up and down her guitar, and that’s all she needed to knock people out.
The most visually striking person was the bass player, Zoey. Again, she was startlingly pretty like Marcy (Of course I’d say that, they were two of my best friends) but in a sort of very shocking way. Like, her hair was bright blue. As in such a shocking blue, she must have permanently dyed her hair follicles or something because it never changed colour or shade. There’d been some speculation that it was a wig, but we tested that theory and found out that her hair is 100%... well, hair.
“Josh?” Mrs Thompson called across the grass to her son. Josh looked up from where he was plaiting Marcy’s hair.
“Yeah?”
“Will you come and give me a hand here, sweetie?” Josh sighed and scrambled to his feet.
“Coming,” he said, and jogged across to his parents. I chuckled and watched him go, eyes half-closed in the sun, exhausted from the two day’s nonstop band practice. Josh drove us to do about a hundred goes of each song we’d written before he seemed it suitable that we finally finish up. If we were working on something new, sometimes we wouldn’t finish until ten and only then because that’s when I left to go back home.
“Frankie?”
“Mmmmm?” I looked up at Marcy.
“Next weekend can we cut out Sunday afternoon and go back to your place? I need you to do my hair again,” she said, curling a lock in her fingers. I yawned and nodded.
“Sure thing.”
“Mine needs doing too. And you look like you could do with sorting out your own,” said Zoey, stroking the bleached sides of my hair.
“Sure, sure. Hair salon Sunday,” I drawled, looking over at them with my eyebrow raised. Zoey and Marcy rolled their eyes at each other.
“Come on Frankie, you did promise,” said Marcy, lying down on her stomach and looking at me with wide brown eyes. “Frankkiiieeeeee!”
“Marccccyyyyy!” I said back, rolling over to imitate her. “I said sure, okay? I’ve done your hair for like, two years now, I wouldn’t dare trust someone else to do it for you, let alone you do it yourself.”
Marcy’s hair was naturally light brown, but for a year and half or so she’d been trusting her hair’s life in my hands; I’d done a couple of different things and then in about November last year I’d decided to put rainbow highlights all throughout and she fell in love. I had to redo them every other week but she didn’t seem to mind. Zoey had soon decided to use my house as a salon too and update her hair colour, and sometimes Auriaco came around too.
“Thanks Frankie,” said Marcy, grinning. “You da man.”
“Never say that again,” I said, rolling back onto my back and rubbing my hands into my eyes. I felt Marcy crawl over and rest her head on my stomach so I could play with her hair again.
“If Frank was straight, you two would be such an adorable couple,” said Phoenix’s voice. I laughed.
“In your dreams, cupid.”
“Oh, Frank, do you know where Dakota was this weekend?” asked Marcy, as Phoenix opened his mouth to retaliate.
“Yeah, I think she said she had to visit her grandparents or something? I don’t really know. She’ll be here next week, though, she did check.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Dakota helped out with technical stuff and played backup instruments if we needed. But we couldn’t do a few songs that weekend because she’d been away.
“As I was saying,” said Phoenix. I looked up at him,
“Oh, you weren’t finished speaking?”
“No. You two would be cute but I suppose what this the new guy’s arrival you’re a bit preoccupied, aren’t you, Frankie?” he said. I felt my face heat up. Marcy sat up and looked at me.
“Oh? Something you forgot to tell us, Frank?”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, shuffling up to lean against the tree. Phoenix laughed.
“Not a big deal?! He’s been falling over his feet and bright red for a whole week!”
“Phoenix...”
“Who is he? Is he cute?” asked Zoey, her eyes bright. I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“Leave it out.”
“Aww, you totally fancy him.”
“Ditching me for some guy, Frankie?! Ru-ude!” said Marcy, holding her hand up in front of my face.
“Aww, come on baby, I didn't mean it like that...” I tried to keep my face straight but I couldn’t.
“Nuh-uh! You gon’ go betray me like that... my feelings, man...”
“I’ll make it up to you, promise!”
“No, you just.... you have to give me a minute... gosh,” said Marcy, rolling her eyes and standing up, but she was grinning as she strode away from me.
“What, you not gonna forgive me? It’s yoooou I loovvveeeee!” I sang, running after her. She giggled and pranced away but I sprinted after her and caught her, wrapping my arms around her and swinging her in the air.
“Fraank! Gettoff me!”
“Noooo! Not until you forgive me!”
“What are you two doing?” I spun around, still holding Marcy in my arms (which was a bit awkward seeing as she was taller than me) and saw the rest of my friends standing with Josh on the patio by the barbecue. It was Kayleigh who’d spoken, her hand on her hips. I grinned.
“She’s bullying me,” I said.
“He’s cheating on me!” called Marcy. I laughed and dumped her on the floor. “Bully.”
“Okay, I’m so so so so sorry and I’ll never do it again and I’ll do your hair extra special, okay?” I said, putting on puppy-dog eyes. Marcy giggled and climbed to her feet.
“You’re a fool,” she said, hitting me gently in the stomach. Ray groaned.
“Oh will you two just hurry up and start dating each other, already?” he said, sitting down on one of the patio chairs and grabbing a bread roll from the basket on the table. Marcy poked out her tongue and flung her arm around my shoulder.
“That’s exactly what Phoenix said.”
“What did I said?”
“That Frank and I should date.”
“Well you should.”
“Look, don’t let’s make this awkward for both of us, okay? She's totally the wrong gender,” I said, scratching the back of Marcy’s head. She looked at me.
“What are you doing?”
“... Scratching your head?”
“I’m not a fucking dog.”
“That’s what you think.” She elbowed me in the stomach. “Ow! Okay, I’m sorry!”
“Oh good god, please stop flirting,” groaned Phoenix. “You’ll just make Gerard jealous.”
“What?” I asked, my heart dropping like a stone, looking around the people who were milling around stealing food off the table and barbecue. Sure enough, Gerard was standing next to Kayleigh, that trademark smirk on his face, eyebrow raised into his black hairline, eyes flickering between me and Marcy. I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.
“Yeah sorry dude, I might just have to steal him off you,” said Marcy, throwing her arm around my shoulders again.
“You’re too possessive, Marcy,” I said, poking her cheek. She stuck her tongue out at me and pranced off, leaving me facing Gerard for the first time since Friday. I blushed, but thankfully he didn’t seem to notice the ruby-red shade my cheeks decided to turn.
“Hey Frank,” he said quietly.
“Heya!” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, a nervous habit, but grinning to cover it up. “You have a good weekend? Ready to die at school tomorrow?” Gerard laughed.
“Yeah, it’s been fine. You?”
“You know, hanging out with these lot, band stuff,” I said, removing my hand from the back of my neck and slipping it into my pocket.
“Oh, neat. You do this every weekend?”
“Yeah, it’s cool. Kitty’s been working on getting us some gigs soon, but you could come along sometime next weekend... no, hang on...”
“What’s happening next weekend?”
“Uh, Marcy’s asked me to dye her hair for hair,” I said. “And I should probably do mine, too. Hey, you know what would be cool, if you dyed the roots of your hair like, red or blue or something?”
“I usually stick with plain black...”
“Yeah, but it’d look so cool!” I bounced forward and stood on my toes to lift a few strands of his hair up. “Yeah man, and it looks like you were ready to re-dye anyway. Look, come along with Marcy and Zoey next weekend, can I do it for you?” Gerard raised his eyebrow.
“You want to do my hair?”
“Yeah!” He looked at me for a moment, a tiny smile on his bewildered face.
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad.” I grinned.
“Wicked.”
____________________
Oh, I said earlier about how it just got worse? Well, evidently the weekend wasn’t the ‘worse’ bit. The weekend was pretty good. I didn’t make a complete fool of myself in front of the sexiest man in the school. Man, person, boy, guy, whatever. But you know, I was looking forward to Monday. Until something Kayleigh told me on the way to school in the morning.
“He what?!” I said, staring at her. Kayleigh nodded sadly.
“Sorry, Frankie, I know you like him. But, I heard him on the phone, and I asked him, and he met her at the bus stop this morning instead of walking with us again.” I kept quiet. “Frank...?”
“He’s only been in the school for a week,” I said. “How on earth did she...”
“I don’t know, Frankie, I’m sorry,” said Kayleigh. I looked at her. She did look genuinely upset. I snuck a glance over my shoulder to where Mikey and Riley were walking together, both with gameboys out, probably both playing Pokemon. I sighed.
“Well, I guess I didn’t have much of a change, anyway,” I said, shoving my hands into my pocket and kicking a pebble.
“You would have tried, Frank. And who knows, maybe...”
“Don’t, okay, Kitty? It’s... ugh,” I groaned kicking another pebble. “God knows I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Okay.” We walked along the cobbled path for another minute in total quiet, the only sound of the cars rushing past in the distance and the 8-bit electronic music coming from Riley and Mikey’s games. “Oh, I know something that may cheer you up!” I looked at Kayleigh.
“Yeah?” “Well, Mikey and Gee’s dad, my uncle, he’s kinda of a big deal from where he lives - sorry, lived - like, he knew all these people in charge of clubs and stuff, and he knows people down here too...”
“What are you getting at, Kayleigh?”
“Like, he says that he can get you and the band loads of gigs and shows in all these really cool clubs...”
“Really?!”
“Yeah! Only, due with like money and shit, it’ll take like a month, so from the middle of October I think, you guys can have pretty much any date you want.”
“Really?! That’s awesome!” I squealed, launching myself towards Kayleigh and picking her up. “That’s so cool!”
“You’re welcome,” she said, laughing. “I thought it’d cheer you up. I was gonna tell you on Saturday but I forgot about. And you know, what with... you know, her, I thought you could do with some good news.”
“You are awesome, Kitty,” I said, grinning.
“And that’s not the best bit. Uncle knows people up north as well, so you don’t have to stick to this area.”
“Seriously?!”
“Seriously.”
“Oh my god...” I felt a grin spreading across my face. “That’s... shit. Oh wow. That’s awesome.” Kayleigh smiled and nodded.
“It really is.”
The rest of the walk to school was done in silence. I was too busy mulling over the amazing possibility of real shows and not just sports we could snag in spare openings for other little bands. We’d played some shows for about 80 people at the most, I think. But with we hadn’t with really big clubs, because I knew exactly the sort of club Kayleigh was talking about. One of my favourites that had live shows, a venue simply called ‘Silver’ which held up to 500 people at one time. There were others too that I went too on weekends when I wasn’t rehearsing or playing, but I’d never really tried to get to the really big, important clubs. Well, they were important for baby bands like Anaconda. We’d been quite lax when it came to actually finding shows to play, I normally relied on Kayleigh who usually forgot. But this, this was big.
“I can’t actually believe that,” I said finally, when school was coming into our sight. Kayleigh looked at me. “With all the clubs that you’re talking about.”
“Hey, you did make me the one to sort the gigs and stuff out.”
“Great job you do, Kitty, forgetting all the time.”
“Hey, it’s been the holidays! I did fine in the spring term.”
“Yeah, and then when we actually had the time to play shows in the summer, you forgot everything.”
“You shouldn’t be so reliant on my not-so-amazing skills, then,” she said, bumping me with her shoulder. I rolled my eyes at her.
Then I saw Gerard leaning against the basketball hoops in the outdoor court. His black hair hung in his pale face, hand tucked casually into his soft black school-pants pocket, head titled to one side. Normally I’d feel my stomach fall into my boots; but as I remembered what Kayleigh told me that morning, I just felt cold disappointment.
Because you wanna know what Kayleigh told me?
And what Gerard had proved by who it was he was talking to?
Well.
Apparently....
Okay, I’ll stop beating about the bush.
Somehow, and I have no idea how she got in there so quickly...
Mikyla and Gerard starting dating on Saturday.
OOOHHHHH. DOn't hate me, now, this is ALL part of the plan. Okay? Okay! Good. Anyway. I hope you liked this chapter! I actually have a plan for this story that I'm gonna follow... unlike the others I've written. But anyway. Please do Rate and Review my loves!
I was wrong.
It just kept on getting worse and worse.
You see, I was rather looking forward to the weekend after that disastrous Friday. Mr Harthan kept up his usual relentless teasing all through History and R.S, too, and Gerard just kept smirking like the evil sexy smirking motherfucker that he is. In the last lesson, music, I made a mini vow to myself that I would not be so pathetic the week after. So on Saturday, I was quite glad that I’d have that day and the next to sort my head out, without just seeing Gerard absolutely everywhere.
I spent all my weekend at band practice instead, and it was usually closed so none of my other friends could come along and fuck about - Michelle had been a fan of coming in and lazing around over all of the equipment so we couldn’t actually get anything done. Kayleigh was usually the only one that I trusted not to completely make a nuisance of herself. Usually.
I had said already how Phoenix played drums for my band, hadn’t I? Yeah, all the other people in my band attended other schools so we often didn’t see each other over the week. We’d all convene at our lead singer - Josh’s - house for the weekend. He lived on the other side of town in one of those giant, posh, amazing, fancy houses and he had a giant basement that we camped out in from Friday to Sunday.
I arrived on Friday in my Mum’s car after the half-hour drive with my usual two guitar cases and a rucksack full of sweets and chips, my cheeks still a perfectly bright red after all the times I made a complete and utter fool of myself since Tuesday. I was rather hoping that the music would let me clear my head a bit and I would be able to walk into school on Monday without completely obliterating everything in sight thanks to one gorgeous, beautiful raven-haired boy that happened to be my best friend’s cousin.
To my delight, Kayleigh didn’t turn up with Gerard in tow to ruin my entire weekend. She instead turned up only for a couple of hours on Saturday with the other cousin, the one I hadn’t met yet because he was always with Riley and her friends; Mikey. He wasn’t knee-meltingly gorgeous in the amazing brain-melting style that his older was - but he was kinda cute, too. However, as I was already far to obsessed for my own good with Gerard, I decided not to let myself think in that direction and kept my brain firmly on playing guitar for the weekend.
Friday night was movie night. All of Saturday and Sunday mornings we had band practice. Sunday night would be another movie night. Unless we all had studying or shit to do, or one of us were away, my weekends were pretty awesome. Sunday night was also the night when all our friends were actually allowed into Josh’s fucking mansion.
We’d just finished up on Sunday evening and the band, all five of us were lazing around outside in his backyard. It was only 4:00pm so it was still warm, and the sun was still high in the clear blue skies, and the smell of barbecue drifted across the grass from the patio where Josh’s parents were cooking.
Josh Thompson was, as I’ve said, the lead singer of our band, three years older than me. He looked normal enough in average clothes; shaggy brown hair in a grey beanie, blue eyes, tall, nothing too out of the ordinary. But his brain worked in beautifully bizarre ways for the sort of guy he was; he was actually quite gentle and hated blood and gore but you wouldn’t know it from the way our band worked. It was called ‘Anaconda’ (because Phoenix has this weird obsession with snakes) and we liked to put on a show.
Let me explain. You’d take a look at us this one Sunday afternoon, the five members sprawled out across the grass, soft rock playing from Josh’s parents’ stereo, and you’d think ‘If these guys were in a band, they’d be a pop punk band’. You’d also be very wrong.
Josh was wild - he had slight ADHD but what with the adrenaline on stage he’d go absolutely nuts. His voice was positively orgasmic when he sang and we didn’t dress up; skinny jeans, shirts and ties were usually the way we went; but the songs he wrote kind of had such an edge to them that by the end of the night he’d be screaming and thrashing and losing his mind on stage. A bit like me, in that respect, only he had to control himself a bit so he didn’t become so breathless he couldn’t sing.
Pretty much every girl in the next three counties was in love with him.
Between me and Josh breaking everything in sight when we played, the other members didn’t have to do much work to make every show simply the best we could be. Marcy Lynn was the lead guitarist, just a year younger than Josh, and simply very pretty. She didn’t need to run around or jump or scream to make herself seen on stage; she could stand at the front with the stage lights gleaming off her curly caramel and rainbow hair, fingers dancing up and down her guitar, and that’s all she needed to knock people out.
The most visually striking person was the bass player, Zoey. Again, she was startlingly pretty like Marcy (Of course I’d say that, they were two of my best friends) but in a sort of very shocking way. Like, her hair was bright blue. As in such a shocking blue, she must have permanently dyed her hair follicles or something because it never changed colour or shade. There’d been some speculation that it was a wig, but we tested that theory and found out that her hair is 100%... well, hair.
“Josh?” Mrs Thompson called across the grass to her son. Josh looked up from where he was plaiting Marcy’s hair.
“Yeah?”
“Will you come and give me a hand here, sweetie?” Josh sighed and scrambled to his feet.
“Coming,” he said, and jogged across to his parents. I chuckled and watched him go, eyes half-closed in the sun, exhausted from the two day’s nonstop band practice. Josh drove us to do about a hundred goes of each song we’d written before he seemed it suitable that we finally finish up. If we were working on something new, sometimes we wouldn’t finish until ten and only then because that’s when I left to go back home.
“Frankie?”
“Mmmmm?” I looked up at Marcy.
“Next weekend can we cut out Sunday afternoon and go back to your place? I need you to do my hair again,” she said, curling a lock in her fingers. I yawned and nodded.
“Sure thing.”
“Mine needs doing too. And you look like you could do with sorting out your own,” said Zoey, stroking the bleached sides of my hair.
“Sure, sure. Hair salon Sunday,” I drawled, looking over at them with my eyebrow raised. Zoey and Marcy rolled their eyes at each other.
“Come on Frankie, you did promise,” said Marcy, lying down on her stomach and looking at me with wide brown eyes. “Frankkiiieeeeee!”
“Marccccyyyyy!” I said back, rolling over to imitate her. “I said sure, okay? I’ve done your hair for like, two years now, I wouldn’t dare trust someone else to do it for you, let alone you do it yourself.”
Marcy’s hair was naturally light brown, but for a year and half or so she’d been trusting her hair’s life in my hands; I’d done a couple of different things and then in about November last year I’d decided to put rainbow highlights all throughout and she fell in love. I had to redo them every other week but she didn’t seem to mind. Zoey had soon decided to use my house as a salon too and update her hair colour, and sometimes Auriaco came around too.
“Thanks Frankie,” said Marcy, grinning. “You da man.”
“Never say that again,” I said, rolling back onto my back and rubbing my hands into my eyes. I felt Marcy crawl over and rest her head on my stomach so I could play with her hair again.
“If Frank was straight, you two would be such an adorable couple,” said Phoenix’s voice. I laughed.
“In your dreams, cupid.”
“Oh, Frank, do you know where Dakota was this weekend?” asked Marcy, as Phoenix opened his mouth to retaliate.
“Yeah, I think she said she had to visit her grandparents or something? I don’t really know. She’ll be here next week, though, she did check.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Dakota helped out with technical stuff and played backup instruments if we needed. But we couldn’t do a few songs that weekend because she’d been away.
“As I was saying,” said Phoenix. I looked up at him,
“Oh, you weren’t finished speaking?”
“No. You two would be cute but I suppose what this the new guy’s arrival you’re a bit preoccupied, aren’t you, Frankie?” he said. I felt my face heat up. Marcy sat up and looked at me.
“Oh? Something you forgot to tell us, Frank?”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, shuffling up to lean against the tree. Phoenix laughed.
“Not a big deal?! He’s been falling over his feet and bright red for a whole week!”
“Phoenix...”
“Who is he? Is he cute?” asked Zoey, her eyes bright. I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“Leave it out.”
“Aww, you totally fancy him.”
“Ditching me for some guy, Frankie?! Ru-ude!” said Marcy, holding her hand up in front of my face.
“Aww, come on baby, I didn't mean it like that...” I tried to keep my face straight but I couldn’t.
“Nuh-uh! You gon’ go betray me like that... my feelings, man...”
“I’ll make it up to you, promise!”
“No, you just.... you have to give me a minute... gosh,” said Marcy, rolling her eyes and standing up, but she was grinning as she strode away from me.
“What, you not gonna forgive me? It’s yoooou I loovvveeeee!” I sang, running after her. She giggled and pranced away but I sprinted after her and caught her, wrapping my arms around her and swinging her in the air.
“Fraank! Gettoff me!”
“Noooo! Not until you forgive me!”
“What are you two doing?” I spun around, still holding Marcy in my arms (which was a bit awkward seeing as she was taller than me) and saw the rest of my friends standing with Josh on the patio by the barbecue. It was Kayleigh who’d spoken, her hand on her hips. I grinned.
“She’s bullying me,” I said.
“He’s cheating on me!” called Marcy. I laughed and dumped her on the floor. “Bully.”
“Okay, I’m so so so so sorry and I’ll never do it again and I’ll do your hair extra special, okay?” I said, putting on puppy-dog eyes. Marcy giggled and climbed to her feet.
“You’re a fool,” she said, hitting me gently in the stomach. Ray groaned.
“Oh will you two just hurry up and start dating each other, already?” he said, sitting down on one of the patio chairs and grabbing a bread roll from the basket on the table. Marcy poked out her tongue and flung her arm around my shoulder.
“That’s exactly what Phoenix said.”
“What did I said?”
“That Frank and I should date.”
“Well you should.”
“Look, don’t let’s make this awkward for both of us, okay? She's totally the wrong gender,” I said, scratching the back of Marcy’s head. She looked at me.
“What are you doing?”
“... Scratching your head?”
“I’m not a fucking dog.”
“That’s what you think.” She elbowed me in the stomach. “Ow! Okay, I’m sorry!”
“Oh good god, please stop flirting,” groaned Phoenix. “You’ll just make Gerard jealous.”
“What?” I asked, my heart dropping like a stone, looking around the people who were milling around stealing food off the table and barbecue. Sure enough, Gerard was standing next to Kayleigh, that trademark smirk on his face, eyebrow raised into his black hairline, eyes flickering between me and Marcy. I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.
“Yeah sorry dude, I might just have to steal him off you,” said Marcy, throwing her arm around my shoulders again.
“You’re too possessive, Marcy,” I said, poking her cheek. She stuck her tongue out at me and pranced off, leaving me facing Gerard for the first time since Friday. I blushed, but thankfully he didn’t seem to notice the ruby-red shade my cheeks decided to turn.
“Hey Frank,” he said quietly.
“Heya!” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, a nervous habit, but grinning to cover it up. “You have a good weekend? Ready to die at school tomorrow?” Gerard laughed.
“Yeah, it’s been fine. You?”
“You know, hanging out with these lot, band stuff,” I said, removing my hand from the back of my neck and slipping it into my pocket.
“Oh, neat. You do this every weekend?”
“Yeah, it’s cool. Kitty’s been working on getting us some gigs soon, but you could come along sometime next weekend... no, hang on...”
“What’s happening next weekend?”
“Uh, Marcy’s asked me to dye her hair for hair,” I said. “And I should probably do mine, too. Hey, you know what would be cool, if you dyed the roots of your hair like, red or blue or something?”
“I usually stick with plain black...”
“Yeah, but it’d look so cool!” I bounced forward and stood on my toes to lift a few strands of his hair up. “Yeah man, and it looks like you were ready to re-dye anyway. Look, come along with Marcy and Zoey next weekend, can I do it for you?” Gerard raised his eyebrow.
“You want to do my hair?”
“Yeah!” He looked at me for a moment, a tiny smile on his bewildered face.
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad.” I grinned.
“Wicked.”
____________________
Oh, I said earlier about how it just got worse? Well, evidently the weekend wasn’t the ‘worse’ bit. The weekend was pretty good. I didn’t make a complete fool of myself in front of the sexiest man in the school. Man, person, boy, guy, whatever. But you know, I was looking forward to Monday. Until something Kayleigh told me on the way to school in the morning.
“He what?!” I said, staring at her. Kayleigh nodded sadly.
“Sorry, Frankie, I know you like him. But, I heard him on the phone, and I asked him, and he met her at the bus stop this morning instead of walking with us again.” I kept quiet. “Frank...?”
“He’s only been in the school for a week,” I said. “How on earth did she...”
“I don’t know, Frankie, I’m sorry,” said Kayleigh. I looked at her. She did look genuinely upset. I snuck a glance over my shoulder to where Mikey and Riley were walking together, both with gameboys out, probably both playing Pokemon. I sighed.
“Well, I guess I didn’t have much of a change, anyway,” I said, shoving my hands into my pocket and kicking a pebble.
“You would have tried, Frank. And who knows, maybe...”
“Don’t, okay, Kitty? It’s... ugh,” I groaned kicking another pebble. “God knows I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Okay.” We walked along the cobbled path for another minute in total quiet, the only sound of the cars rushing past in the distance and the 8-bit electronic music coming from Riley and Mikey’s games. “Oh, I know something that may cheer you up!” I looked at Kayleigh.
“Yeah?” “Well, Mikey and Gee’s dad, my uncle, he’s kinda of a big deal from where he lives - sorry, lived - like, he knew all these people in charge of clubs and stuff, and he knows people down here too...”
“What are you getting at, Kayleigh?”
“Like, he says that he can get you and the band loads of gigs and shows in all these really cool clubs...”
“Really?!”
“Yeah! Only, due with like money and shit, it’ll take like a month, so from the middle of October I think, you guys can have pretty much any date you want.”
“Really?! That’s awesome!” I squealed, launching myself towards Kayleigh and picking her up. “That’s so cool!”
“You’re welcome,” she said, laughing. “I thought it’d cheer you up. I was gonna tell you on Saturday but I forgot about. And you know, what with... you know, her, I thought you could do with some good news.”
“You are awesome, Kitty,” I said, grinning.
“And that’s not the best bit. Uncle knows people up north as well, so you don’t have to stick to this area.”
“Seriously?!”
“Seriously.”
“Oh my god...” I felt a grin spreading across my face. “That’s... shit. Oh wow. That’s awesome.” Kayleigh smiled and nodded.
“It really is.”
The rest of the walk to school was done in silence. I was too busy mulling over the amazing possibility of real shows and not just sports we could snag in spare openings for other little bands. We’d played some shows for about 80 people at the most, I think. But with we hadn’t with really big clubs, because I knew exactly the sort of club Kayleigh was talking about. One of my favourites that had live shows, a venue simply called ‘Silver’ which held up to 500 people at one time. There were others too that I went too on weekends when I wasn’t rehearsing or playing, but I’d never really tried to get to the really big, important clubs. Well, they were important for baby bands like Anaconda. We’d been quite lax when it came to actually finding shows to play, I normally relied on Kayleigh who usually forgot. But this, this was big.
“I can’t actually believe that,” I said finally, when school was coming into our sight. Kayleigh looked at me. “With all the clubs that you’re talking about.”
“Hey, you did make me the one to sort the gigs and stuff out.”
“Great job you do, Kitty, forgetting all the time.”
“Hey, it’s been the holidays! I did fine in the spring term.”
“Yeah, and then when we actually had the time to play shows in the summer, you forgot everything.”
“You shouldn’t be so reliant on my not-so-amazing skills, then,” she said, bumping me with her shoulder. I rolled my eyes at her.
Then I saw Gerard leaning against the basketball hoops in the outdoor court. His black hair hung in his pale face, hand tucked casually into his soft black school-pants pocket, head titled to one side. Normally I’d feel my stomach fall into my boots; but as I remembered what Kayleigh told me that morning, I just felt cold disappointment.
Because you wanna know what Kayleigh told me?
And what Gerard had proved by who it was he was talking to?
Well.
Apparently....
Okay, I’ll stop beating about the bush.
Somehow, and I have no idea how she got in there so quickly...
Mikyla and Gerard starting dating on Saturday.
OOOHHHHH. DOn't hate me, now, this is ALL part of the plan. Okay? Okay! Good. Anyway. I hope you liked this chapter! I actually have a plan for this story that I'm gonna follow... unlike the others I've written. But anyway. Please do Rate and Review my loves!
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