Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > 10 Theorems of Calculus and Relationships
A week after his arrival, Mae noticed that Frank had already adjusted himself as part of the highschool heartthrobs. During the first few minutes of Calc, underclassmen girls of all sorts would peek into the room as they passed the hallways to giggle and blush at Frank's mere presence. She couldn't tell whether Frank even noticed because he never paid any attention to the girls. He ignored them as if he was unaware that their gestures were directed toward him. Frank had even begun to hang out with Bob Bryar, the blond hair boy with piercing blue eyes or, in other words, every highschool girl's dream beau. But Frank didn't exactly hit popularity status, he was close, but not close enough. The football, basketball, and baseball players constantly ridiculed him for his height. That is, until they found out in gym class that Frank proved to be a very decent athlete despite hovering just above 5'4. So they used his class schedule of AP courses as an excuse to brand him as a nerd. Still, he was among the higher echelons of the highschool hierarchy. Higher than Mae could ever hope to be.
"Will you be in the art room at lunch, again?" Frank asked Mae during the beginning of class.
"Aren't I always?" Mae grinned.
"Good because I think I might just get stuck during one of these problems," Frank said, watching Mr. Betterby trying to figure out why his answer didn't match the one in the answer booklet.
Mae wasn't exactly sure why Frank bothered to meet with her during lunch. He always knew what he was doing and he always ended up tutoring her instead. She was skeptical of his claim of 'getting stuck' on the homework only because she hardly ever saw him make a mistake and when he did, he caught himself before he had to throw the problem out and start over. So unlike herself.
Truthfully, they hardly ever spoke about math during lunch at all. He would come in the room and watch whatever project she was working on and they would have random conversations about anything and everything that was on their minds. She learned that he had been playing in bands since he was 11, that he loved eggplant and pears, and that he had suffered from Bronchitis as a child. He learned that she had been drawing since she was 3, that she hated eggplant and pears, and that she had a scar from a wild dog that bit her as a child. They shared the same phobia of spiders and they often complained about their lack of height.
"At least you're not 4'11," Mae muttered at her own misfortune.
"Yeah, but at least you don't have to worry about liking a girl who's taller than you," Frank added.
"Who do you like?" Mae asked.
Frank immediately blushed at the question,"No one. I didn't say I liked anyone."
"I assumed you were implying something," Mae teased.
"That's why you should never assume," Frank said, matter-of-factly.
Like you should never assume that just because everyone approved of him and knew his past that he wouldn't betray you. Mae shook the words out of her head. It was so unreal that she had formed some kind of friendship with a seemingly untouchable guy like Frank. Those type of guys never gave the time of day to Mae unless they were after her answers to the homework. Then again, Frank may have shared the same charm and level of good looks as those guys but he didn't act like them. She was the outcast of the outcasts and he was possibly the outcast of the heartthrobs?
Mae turned her Calculus book to the page where the night's homework resided and couldn't help but to smirk at what they were doing.
"You're gonna have fun with this," she joked. "The limits of integration."
"Niiice," he feigned excitement as he scribbled down the first few problems. "So the integral is the area underneath the curve?"
"Right," Mae nodded.
"And the limits of integration are sort of like the start and end of the measurement," Frank finished.
"Couldn't have put it better myself," Mae agreed as she erased her already mistaken problem.
She reached for her calculator and began plugging in the given numbers. She stared at the figure in front of her, a curve with two vertical lines cutting through its corners. The area within the two lines were shaded in a pinkish purple indicating the measurement she was supposed to be calculating. Did everything in life have a set beginning and end? Was there some sort of fateful plan or blue print deciding the approximate date and time of a dream being crushed or a heart being broken and the exact date and time when dreams would be realized and hearts mended? Or was everything revolved around the chaos theory where a flap of a butterfly's wing could mean a tornado on the opposite side of the world?
"Did you get 26.783?" Frank asked.
"Yeah," Mae lied as she pressed the ENTER button.
Her graphing calculator came up with 685.431. Mae surreptitiously pressed CLEAR as she wrote down Frank's answer on her paper.
*
The clear blue sky seemed appropriate when the silver 1988 Subaru pulled up into the driveway. The sun shone brightly down against the sidewalk which may have seemed beautiful and cheerful to some, but was only a blinding nuisance for Gerard Way, who sported his large black shades as he slammed the car door shut. His eyes still squinted behind the shield from plain irritation. He nearly fell forward as an unexpected weight fell on his back. He staggered in surprise, but was soon bursting into laughter for what he should have seen coming.
"Best friend!" Mae giggled, having just literally jumped onto his back.
"Hey!" He laughed, as he carried her over a few more steps before helping her down.
"You said you'd call the minute you got back," Mae pouted.
"Well, I'm sure you just jumped me less than a minute before I barely got out of my car," Gerard replied, playfully scattering her bangs with his hand.
"I'm sorry. I just missed having someone sane to talk to," Mae sighed. "Or having someone just as insane as I am to talk to."
"I missed you, too," Gerard said as he lifted the car trunk open. "Help me take my stuff inside and we'll catch up."
*
Small basements with a single tiny window that barely let the smallest bit of sunshine through isn't exactly what most people would call a hang out spot. But Gerard and Mae obviously weren't part of that 'most people' population.
"Beautiful," Mae sighed, flipping through Gerard's always growing art portfolio.
"I could say the same for you," Gerard replied, looking through Mae's folder. "And you're not even in college, yet."
"Thanks. But it's nothing compared to your's," Mae shook her head as she gently placed the portfolio on the corner desk.
"Hey, a couple more months and it's all over," Gerard murmured.
"And then you're officially a college graduate," Mae teased.
"Can you make me feel any older?!" Gerard exclaimed dramatically.
"You know I'm just kidding. I love you, you idiot," Mae laughed, playfully shoving his shoulder.
Mae had been friends with the Way brothers since she moved across the street from them during her 3rd grade year. Gerard was already in middle school by that time and Mikey was a year apart from her. Once upon a time, Mikey had been her "bestest friend in the whole world" and she could recall every playdate they've ever had. Mainly because each one was a new adventure. They would play house, dress up as super heroes, or just sit around and watch Disney movies all day. Gerard acted as an older brother to her since she was an only child. He would help her build dollhouses out of cardboard boxes and gave her advice on painting. They were practically family.
"Hey Ge--," was all Mikey managed to get out as he immediately made his way back out of the basement, avoiding Mae's eyes at all costs.
"Okay," Gerard chuckled. "I missed you, too, Mikey."
"Pathetic," Mae blurted out.
"He's still my brother and he made a mistake," Gerard went to Mikey's defense. "But you have a right to hate him. I just hope that one day you'll forgive him."
"I hate him," Mae made clear. "And I can't imagine ever letting it go."
"He's not with Ashley, you know," Gerard tried.
"That's only because Ashley turned him down," Mae countered. "She never liked him in the first place. She just wanted to dangle him in front of my eyes."
"I'm sorry it had to end up like this."
"Don't be. It's not your fault."
Gerard could already see the annoyance in Mae's eyes. He couldn't help but to sympathize with her because he had been cheated on during his senior year of highschool, too. But, at the same time, he had to face the reality that it was his own brother that hurt his best friend. He didn't want to choose sides, but he did give Mikey a lecture to remember the night he found out. He decided that it was finally time to change subjects.
"So anything new going on at your school?" he asked.
"Nothing really," Mae shrugged. "There's a new kid in my Calculus class and I've been talking to him a lot."
"Talk is cheap, Mae," Gerard grinned. "Sounds like you're ready to move on."
"Shut up. He just moved in a week ago. That's not nearly enough time to decide whether you like someone or not," Mae explained.
"What about 'love at first sight?'"Gerard teased.
"You know I don't believe in that shit," Mae scoffed as Gerard pretended to be shocked by her comment. "What's going on with you?"
"Oh . . . I figured out something."
"Yeah? What?"
"I'm gay."
"YOU'RE WHAT?!" Mae exclaimed.
"Just kidding," Gerard burst into a fit of laughter. "Oh . . . I've been waiting to do that to someone."
"Asshole," Mae cursed as she gave him a small push.
Mae was slightly relieved to hear that joke coming from Gerard. It made things still feel the same as if time had given her a moment to go back and enjoy the past. When your childhood is gone, it seems as if you just let it slip through your fingers. And when you look into your palm for some kind of compensation you find nothing but the burning redness of your skin. Heating up in outrage of what had to be sacrificed.
*
Ashley was wearing her long, baggy black and blue bondage pants with a band shirt of some underground heavy metal European band. Her eyebrow and lip ring shone from the classroom's bright lights. Her thickly coated black lipstick had faded into a gloomy gray and her light brown hair hung down her shoulders in messy, oily tangles. Mae could still hear Ashley's annoying voice taunting her about her Green Day CDs and preaching to anyone who would listen that the only music worth listening to were black, gothic, and death metal bands from Europe. Everyone else, Ashley claimed, were sellouts or posers. But Mae had much more things to think about than stereotyping music genres.
Mae couldn't help but to feel a tinge of jealousy as Frank conversed to Ashley about piercings and tattoos.
"I want to get my lip and nose done," Frank told her. "And I want to get a tattoo on the back of my neck on my birthday."
"That's cool," Ashley replied. "I'm gonna get full sleeves on both of my arms and get more piercings."
"Really? What else are you getting done?" Frank asked, apparently interested in the topic.
"My nose, more on my lip, I want one on my cheek, and other places," Ashley implied as she scooted closer to him.
Mae turned away from them. She couldn't take seeing it replay again over in her mind and, for once, she became interested in what Ms. Belle was lecturing about. Usually, she spent all of her time in AP Literature making random doodles on her paper rather than actually listening to the novel being read out loud, but today she just couldn't focus without having to witness Ashley manipulating someone else into thinking that she was the poster child for "hardcore."
"I only listen to hardcore and up!" Ashley declared about her taste in music.
"And up?" she heard the voice of Bob Bryar cut in.
"Yeah. You know, anything heavier than that," Ashley explained.
Mae turned around to see the unimpressed expressions of Bob and Frank and instantly felt the uneasiness in her stomach melt away. She saw Frank make a shrugging motion toward Bob when Ashley couldn't see and Mae let out a silent giggle inside.
"Mae!" Frank called her out.
"Yeah?" Mae responded, a little startled by his voice.
"Can I call you tonight--" Frank began.
"Ooooh," Bob teased.
"--for homework?" Frank finished with a blush.
"Of course," Mae nodded, thankful for her dark skin tone hiding her own blood rushed cheeks.
She folded a piece of paper and wrote down her cell number and name and handed it to Frank. Bob made some kind of comment about including her address and the time she's available, too, but Frank immediately sneered at him, telling him to cut it out. Bob, of course, was only more amused by his humility and continued on with his taunts. When class ended, Frank looked as if he were ready to punch Bob in the face despite the fact that Bob was three times stronger than him and could probably kick his ass blindfolded. Still, he smiled at Mae and promised that he would call that night.
"I'll talk to you later then," he said in shy tone, his face a rosy shade of red.
"Okay. Later," Mae said with a smile.
She tried to deny inside that she was excited and nervous at the same time about picking up the phone to hear his smooth voice. She was too caught up in anticipation that she didn't realize that Mr. Betterby had been sick that day and there was no homework assigned.
"Will you be in the art room at lunch, again?" Frank asked Mae during the beginning of class.
"Aren't I always?" Mae grinned.
"Good because I think I might just get stuck during one of these problems," Frank said, watching Mr. Betterby trying to figure out why his answer didn't match the one in the answer booklet.
Mae wasn't exactly sure why Frank bothered to meet with her during lunch. He always knew what he was doing and he always ended up tutoring her instead. She was skeptical of his claim of 'getting stuck' on the homework only because she hardly ever saw him make a mistake and when he did, he caught himself before he had to throw the problem out and start over. So unlike herself.
Truthfully, they hardly ever spoke about math during lunch at all. He would come in the room and watch whatever project she was working on and they would have random conversations about anything and everything that was on their minds. She learned that he had been playing in bands since he was 11, that he loved eggplant and pears, and that he had suffered from Bronchitis as a child. He learned that she had been drawing since she was 3, that she hated eggplant and pears, and that she had a scar from a wild dog that bit her as a child. They shared the same phobia of spiders and they often complained about their lack of height.
"At least you're not 4'11," Mae muttered at her own misfortune.
"Yeah, but at least you don't have to worry about liking a girl who's taller than you," Frank added.
"Who do you like?" Mae asked.
Frank immediately blushed at the question,"No one. I didn't say I liked anyone."
"I assumed you were implying something," Mae teased.
"That's why you should never assume," Frank said, matter-of-factly.
Like you should never assume that just because everyone approved of him and knew his past that he wouldn't betray you. Mae shook the words out of her head. It was so unreal that she had formed some kind of friendship with a seemingly untouchable guy like Frank. Those type of guys never gave the time of day to Mae unless they were after her answers to the homework. Then again, Frank may have shared the same charm and level of good looks as those guys but he didn't act like them. She was the outcast of the outcasts and he was possibly the outcast of the heartthrobs?
Mae turned her Calculus book to the page where the night's homework resided and couldn't help but to smirk at what they were doing.
"You're gonna have fun with this," she joked. "The limits of integration."
"Niiice," he feigned excitement as he scribbled down the first few problems. "So the integral is the area underneath the curve?"
"Right," Mae nodded.
"And the limits of integration are sort of like the start and end of the measurement," Frank finished.
"Couldn't have put it better myself," Mae agreed as she erased her already mistaken problem.
She reached for her calculator and began plugging in the given numbers. She stared at the figure in front of her, a curve with two vertical lines cutting through its corners. The area within the two lines were shaded in a pinkish purple indicating the measurement she was supposed to be calculating. Did everything in life have a set beginning and end? Was there some sort of fateful plan or blue print deciding the approximate date and time of a dream being crushed or a heart being broken and the exact date and time when dreams would be realized and hearts mended? Or was everything revolved around the chaos theory where a flap of a butterfly's wing could mean a tornado on the opposite side of the world?
"Did you get 26.783?" Frank asked.
"Yeah," Mae lied as she pressed the ENTER button.
Her graphing calculator came up with 685.431. Mae surreptitiously pressed CLEAR as she wrote down Frank's answer on her paper.
*
The clear blue sky seemed appropriate when the silver 1988 Subaru pulled up into the driveway. The sun shone brightly down against the sidewalk which may have seemed beautiful and cheerful to some, but was only a blinding nuisance for Gerard Way, who sported his large black shades as he slammed the car door shut. His eyes still squinted behind the shield from plain irritation. He nearly fell forward as an unexpected weight fell on his back. He staggered in surprise, but was soon bursting into laughter for what he should have seen coming.
"Best friend!" Mae giggled, having just literally jumped onto his back.
"Hey!" He laughed, as he carried her over a few more steps before helping her down.
"You said you'd call the minute you got back," Mae pouted.
"Well, I'm sure you just jumped me less than a minute before I barely got out of my car," Gerard replied, playfully scattering her bangs with his hand.
"I'm sorry. I just missed having someone sane to talk to," Mae sighed. "Or having someone just as insane as I am to talk to."
"I missed you, too," Gerard said as he lifted the car trunk open. "Help me take my stuff inside and we'll catch up."
*
Small basements with a single tiny window that barely let the smallest bit of sunshine through isn't exactly what most people would call a hang out spot. But Gerard and Mae obviously weren't part of that 'most people' population.
"Beautiful," Mae sighed, flipping through Gerard's always growing art portfolio.
"I could say the same for you," Gerard replied, looking through Mae's folder. "And you're not even in college, yet."
"Thanks. But it's nothing compared to your's," Mae shook her head as she gently placed the portfolio on the corner desk.
"Hey, a couple more months and it's all over," Gerard murmured.
"And then you're officially a college graduate," Mae teased.
"Can you make me feel any older?!" Gerard exclaimed dramatically.
"You know I'm just kidding. I love you, you idiot," Mae laughed, playfully shoving his shoulder.
Mae had been friends with the Way brothers since she moved across the street from them during her 3rd grade year. Gerard was already in middle school by that time and Mikey was a year apart from her. Once upon a time, Mikey had been her "bestest friend in the whole world" and she could recall every playdate they've ever had. Mainly because each one was a new adventure. They would play house, dress up as super heroes, or just sit around and watch Disney movies all day. Gerard acted as an older brother to her since she was an only child. He would help her build dollhouses out of cardboard boxes and gave her advice on painting. They were practically family.
"Hey Ge--," was all Mikey managed to get out as he immediately made his way back out of the basement, avoiding Mae's eyes at all costs.
"Okay," Gerard chuckled. "I missed you, too, Mikey."
"Pathetic," Mae blurted out.
"He's still my brother and he made a mistake," Gerard went to Mikey's defense. "But you have a right to hate him. I just hope that one day you'll forgive him."
"I hate him," Mae made clear. "And I can't imagine ever letting it go."
"He's not with Ashley, you know," Gerard tried.
"That's only because Ashley turned him down," Mae countered. "She never liked him in the first place. She just wanted to dangle him in front of my eyes."
"I'm sorry it had to end up like this."
"Don't be. It's not your fault."
Gerard could already see the annoyance in Mae's eyes. He couldn't help but to sympathize with her because he had been cheated on during his senior year of highschool, too. But, at the same time, he had to face the reality that it was his own brother that hurt his best friend. He didn't want to choose sides, but he did give Mikey a lecture to remember the night he found out. He decided that it was finally time to change subjects.
"So anything new going on at your school?" he asked.
"Nothing really," Mae shrugged. "There's a new kid in my Calculus class and I've been talking to him a lot."
"Talk is cheap, Mae," Gerard grinned. "Sounds like you're ready to move on."
"Shut up. He just moved in a week ago. That's not nearly enough time to decide whether you like someone or not," Mae explained.
"What about 'love at first sight?'"Gerard teased.
"You know I don't believe in that shit," Mae scoffed as Gerard pretended to be shocked by her comment. "What's going on with you?"
"Oh . . . I figured out something."
"Yeah? What?"
"I'm gay."
"YOU'RE WHAT?!" Mae exclaimed.
"Just kidding," Gerard burst into a fit of laughter. "Oh . . . I've been waiting to do that to someone."
"Asshole," Mae cursed as she gave him a small push.
Mae was slightly relieved to hear that joke coming from Gerard. It made things still feel the same as if time had given her a moment to go back and enjoy the past. When your childhood is gone, it seems as if you just let it slip through your fingers. And when you look into your palm for some kind of compensation you find nothing but the burning redness of your skin. Heating up in outrage of what had to be sacrificed.
*
Ashley was wearing her long, baggy black and blue bondage pants with a band shirt of some underground heavy metal European band. Her eyebrow and lip ring shone from the classroom's bright lights. Her thickly coated black lipstick had faded into a gloomy gray and her light brown hair hung down her shoulders in messy, oily tangles. Mae could still hear Ashley's annoying voice taunting her about her Green Day CDs and preaching to anyone who would listen that the only music worth listening to were black, gothic, and death metal bands from Europe. Everyone else, Ashley claimed, were sellouts or posers. But Mae had much more things to think about than stereotyping music genres.
Mae couldn't help but to feel a tinge of jealousy as Frank conversed to Ashley about piercings and tattoos.
"I want to get my lip and nose done," Frank told her. "And I want to get a tattoo on the back of my neck on my birthday."
"That's cool," Ashley replied. "I'm gonna get full sleeves on both of my arms and get more piercings."
"Really? What else are you getting done?" Frank asked, apparently interested in the topic.
"My nose, more on my lip, I want one on my cheek, and other places," Ashley implied as she scooted closer to him.
Mae turned away from them. She couldn't take seeing it replay again over in her mind and, for once, she became interested in what Ms. Belle was lecturing about. Usually, she spent all of her time in AP Literature making random doodles on her paper rather than actually listening to the novel being read out loud, but today she just couldn't focus without having to witness Ashley manipulating someone else into thinking that she was the poster child for "hardcore."
"I only listen to hardcore and up!" Ashley declared about her taste in music.
"And up?" she heard the voice of Bob Bryar cut in.
"Yeah. You know, anything heavier than that," Ashley explained.
Mae turned around to see the unimpressed expressions of Bob and Frank and instantly felt the uneasiness in her stomach melt away. She saw Frank make a shrugging motion toward Bob when Ashley couldn't see and Mae let out a silent giggle inside.
"Mae!" Frank called her out.
"Yeah?" Mae responded, a little startled by his voice.
"Can I call you tonight--" Frank began.
"Ooooh," Bob teased.
"--for homework?" Frank finished with a blush.
"Of course," Mae nodded, thankful for her dark skin tone hiding her own blood rushed cheeks.
She folded a piece of paper and wrote down her cell number and name and handed it to Frank. Bob made some kind of comment about including her address and the time she's available, too, but Frank immediately sneered at him, telling him to cut it out. Bob, of course, was only more amused by his humility and continued on with his taunts. When class ended, Frank looked as if he were ready to punch Bob in the face despite the fact that Bob was three times stronger than him and could probably kick his ass blindfolded. Still, he smiled at Mae and promised that he would call that night.
"I'll talk to you later then," he said in shy tone, his face a rosy shade of red.
"Okay. Later," Mae said with a smile.
She tried to deny inside that she was excited and nervous at the same time about picking up the phone to hear his smooth voice. She was too caught up in anticipation that she didn't realize that Mr. Betterby had been sick that day and there was no homework assigned.
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