FicWad

Gerard’s POV

I felt better this morning, but I still didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t think I could take seeing Frank, or Eric, or anyone.

“Grandma?” I called from my bed, trying to sound weak.

“You’re fine, Gerard. Go to school today,” she said, laughing. Damn.

“No…” I replied, and she chuckled to herself some more.

“I’ll make you pancakes if you get up,” she said. Damn again, she always knew. I got out of bed and trudged into the kitchen.

“’Morning,” I said, rubbing my sleepy eyes awake.

“Hello, dear,” she replied, putting a pancake on my plate. I eyed it suspiciously, trying to see if there were any beets or other unknown substances concealed inside it.

“I don’t know, Grandma… can I trust it?”

She laughed. “Yes, you can. There’s nothing in it except for your grandmother’s love. Now let’s see if you can eat it and keep it in your stomach.”

“Ha, ‘grandmother’s love.’ That’s a good one. Now I’m worried,” I joked, rolling my eyes. I took a bite, and it was good. I figured that if she’d poisoned it with carrots or something, I’d be dead by now, so I finished the rest of the pancake in a matter of seconds. When Grandma was content that I wouldn’t throw it back up again, she dismissed me to get ready for school, which I still didn’t want to do.

I put on a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, since they were the most comfy items of clothing I had. I was about to skip a whole day of school; might as well be comfortable.

Running a comb through my hair and brushing my teeth, I was ready to go to “school.” I slipped some money in my pocket, took my bookbag to make it look like I was going to school, kissed Grandma on the cheek, and left the house.

Once I got off my street, I stopped to think about where I could go. There weren’t many places I knew to go to; I’d only lived in this neighborhood for about a week. I guessed now would be a good time to see what was around. I took a right and walked down the long sidewalk past some houses. It would be useful to know who lived around here, I thought. That way I would know who to stay away from at school.

I kept walking until I found myself getting close to the school. I took a turn to avoid it, so I wouldn’t get caught by any teachers. As I looked at the street I was turning onto, I realized it was Frank's. So this was how to get there the long way; I’d never taken the long way to his house. Funny.

I walked past his house, not daring to look at it. I felt as though I was blaming the house for my suffering, but that wasn’t the case at all. When I got off his street, I made another turn onto a major road, stumbling across a small shopping center.

Oh, how convenient—an old, beat-up gas station that looked out of place amongst a bunch of little stores. I couldn’t help but feel empathetic for the gas station; I too was out of place. I walked over to it and went in, using the little bit of money I had to buy some Skittles—that was Frank's favorite candy, I remembered him telling me—and then some beef jerky just to take my mind off Frank, since he was vegetarian. And I definitely was not.

I paid for my snacks and left the gas station, observing the rest of the shopping center. There was a hair place, a place where people get their nails done, and a wedding dress store. Clearly, men weren’t welcome here. The only place that looked halfway interesting was a library, so I went in to look around. I browsed the books for a minute, looking around at the few comic books the library had in stock. Nothing good was there; I had already read most of them.

I turned down another aisle when another book caught my eye. It was called A Rose for Emily, and reading the back cover, I learned that it was about a woman who killed a man she loved with poison because he wouldn’t marry her. It sounded pretty good to me, so I got a library card and borrowed the book.

I left the library with the book and my snacks, so I was content. I kept walking down the street to see what else there was in my neighborhood, and I eventually came across a small park. This place looked peaceful, I thought. As I made my way to a small park bench, I realized I’d been here before. This was the park Frank and I went to the first day we met, and right here was where I stupidly spilled my guts about my past. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

I turned away from the park in attempt to forget about Frank. Continuing down the street, I wondered what time it was. What a beautiful day to forget my phone.

I kept walking down the sidewalk back towards my house, and I stumbled across a baseball field. No one was there, so I decided to go in. I didn’t know this was there, and it was so close to my house. That’s pathetic, I thought as I walked across the field, making my way to the dugout. I was dying to have some quiet from the city sounds of New Jersey.

I stretched out on the dugout benches, taking out my jerky and the library book. I opened it to the first page and took a bite of jerky. The sun was shining into the dugout, and the warmth of its rays was making me sleepy. Within minutes, my eyes grew heavy, and I rested them for a few minutes.

I was awakened by a loud noise: metal hitting metal. I shot up, alarmed, and saw a kid my age holding an old metal bat. He was hitting it on the chain-link fence that enclosed my area. I blinked my eyes, and he started speaking to me.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked me, resting the bat over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” I said, ready to get up and leave.

“Hey, I know you,” he said, leaning up against the fence. “Aren’t you in my English class?”

I rubbed my eyes awake, feeling awkward that I was actually talking to somebody other than Grandma. “Uh, I don’t know,” I replied sleepily. “Maybe.”

“Sorry I woke you up,” he replied, picking up his bat again.

“It’s fine,” I yawned, finally starting to take in my surroundings. “What time is it?”

“Uhh, about one-thirty,” the kid said, checking his cell phone. Shit, I’d been asleep for nearly four hours!

“Damn,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

“Don’t worry about it. I used to come over here and just bat for hours when I had something on my mind,” he shrugged at his bat. I shielded the sun with my hand and got a closer look at him: he had blond hair that fell into his face, was wearing pants that showed his ankles and half of his calves, he had a lip ring—just like Frank, only on the other side—and his eyes reminded me of the sky, they were so blue.

“You play baseball?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“Used to. I kind of dropped it when I entered high school.” He dropped his bat to the ground for verification.

“What do you do now?”

“Now? All I seem to do now is get into trouble and play drums.”

I laughed. That seemed to be the way to go in Belleville. “That’s cool, man. Are you any good?”

I watched him as he shrugged and walked out of the dugout to the edge of the fence near some woods. He pulled two sticks from a tree branch and made his way back to me, drumming on the fence until he got to my dugout. He sat down and kept a beat going on the metal wall of the dugout and another beat going on the bench where I had been sitting. The two different metal sounds—the bench sounding a little higher-pitched—was just enough to keep my foot tapping, just as his was on the dirt ground like he was kicking the bass drum pedal. Damn, he was good.

“Dude, you’re amazing. Have you ever thought about joining a band or anything?”

He shrugged again, throwing the sticks through the chain-link fence. “Never really thought about it. Probably won’t, though. Hate being in front of a camera or audience.”

I smiled. “I’m Gerard,” I said. “Gerard Way.”

He nodded. “Bob Bryar.” Then, more quietly, he added, “I knew your brother.”

This took me by surprise. I groaned; I didn’t want this shit to happen again. “Great. Not you, too,” I said to myself.

He looked briefly confused for a second about what I said, then shrugged it off. “Yeah, I moved here from Chicago a few years ago,” he explained. “Mikey went to my school. We had a lot of the same classes.”

“Shit,” I said under my breath. It was nice knowing this kid; God knew he would probably find out about my homosexuality and kill me later. If Eric, Frank, or Mikey didn’t first.

“You know he’s moving here soon?” I asked, suddenly uncomfortable again. I saw Bob’s eyes squint.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Wait, if Mikey lives in Chicago, why don’t you live with him?”

I hesitated. Nice try; I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. “To make a long story short… it’s a long story,” I said, and his mouth subtly curled into a half-smile. “Listen, it was good meeting you, Bob, but I have to go…”

“Go where? You’re supposed to be at school,” he smirked, sitting down next to me on the metal bench. He got me there.

“So are you,” I argued, smirking just as much. He laughed and looked toward the entrance gate.

We sat in silence for a minute, and then he said, “You know, Mikey said a lot about you.”

I didn’t say anything. No doubt he meant Mikey said something about me being gay. I waited for Bob to either yell at me or beat me up, which was the general first reaction of most people when they found out I was gay. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bob reach for his baseball bat, and I shifted uncomfortably, waiting for a punch or hit of some sort. It never came.

“I never got along with Mikey,” he continued.

I blinked. “What?”

He fiddled with the bat, doodling in the dirt with it. “Mikey and me. We never got along,” Bob repeated.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah, we had completely different views on things.”

“Oh?” I asked, half-listening, half-thanking whoever gave me this good luck that I wasn’t getting the living shit kicked out of me right then.

“Yeah, he used to be best friends with this guy, before his best friend moved over here. Eric, I think his name was. They used to go around school tormenting people that were different than they were. You know, like gay people or people of a different race, or whatever. It sucked to watch them treating other people like shit just because they weren’t like Mikey or Eric,” Bob said. “So I kinda punched Mikey in the face one time in eighth grade. Think I broke Eric’s finger once, too. Oops.”

I blinked at him; was he serious, or was he just trying to pull another prank, like Frank did? Bob seemed trustworthy enough, but then again, that’s exactly what I thought about Frank, too. And since when did I make two friends in one week? I made a silent oath never to trust anyone again, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the fact that I had no other friends. I decided I would give Bob a chance without fully trusting him. Seemed like a plan to me.

“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to find something to say. “Nicely said. Now you know why I don’t live with him?”

He nodded. “Yeah. That takes guts.”

“So why did you move here?” I asked him.

“Parents,” he said, but that was all. I didn’t know if he meant they divorced, or got a different job, or what, but I didn’t want to ask, just in case. So we sat in comfortable silence—we could both handle that.

“Well,” he said after the sun looked like it was mid-afternoon. “Looks like school’s about to let out soon. I should get going.”

“Yeah, me too,” I replied, even though I had nowhere to go until school actually let out. “It was good meeting you, Bob.”

“You too, man. See you in English,” he grinned, and with that, he walked across the field and jumped the chain-link into the patch of trees where he pulled his ‘drumsticks’ from.

Looked like I would have a friend after all.