FicWad

The sun was still well behind the horizon when Gerard Way’s alarm began to go off, alerting the seventeen-year-old that it was time to begin the day. He sat up quickly, glancing out the window, where the darkness was still sitting heavily on the early morning. He reached out and smacked his alarm clock, hitting the button to shut it off. As he slid off the mattress, Gerard noted the large, digital letters that told him it was a quarter past four in the morning. He had just gone to bed three hours ago, but he knew that sleeping in for an extra few minutes was out of the question; there were things to be done, and the day wouldn’t wait for him.

Gerard made sure to keep quiet as he hurriedly dressed, not wanting to wake Mikey, his sleeping brother, in the next room. He reached blindly into his closet, grabbing whatever his fist closed on first and pulling it over his head. Gerard noticed, with a sinking feeling, that the shirt was getting a bit small. This wasn’t a first, and Gerard knew that he probably needed new clothes, but shopping took money, something that they didn’t have a lot of…

He finished dressing, ignoring the too-tight garment and racing downstairs, where he had already prepared a pot of coffee the previous night. The boy heated up the caffeinated drink, rubbing his face sleepily, then slapping his own cheeks in an attempt to wake up. There was no room to be drowsy. He had to get out, get there, get back, wake Mikey, get them both to school on time…

While waiting for the coffee, Gerard happened to glance at the kitchen table, glad he had, for there was a white sheet of paper sitting on it. Upon further inspection, Gerard found that it was a permission slip for a class field trip. At the top of the page, in big letters, a due date was written. After a moment of thought, Gerard realized that the date was that day, and made a note to himself to remind Mikey not to leave important things until last minute. While skimming the little legal paragraph at the bottom, Gerard couldn’t help but linger on the phrase “Parent/Guardian signature.” The boy shook his head, finding a pen on the counter and scribbling his name on the line provided, then dated the paper for the day before, so the teacher wouldn’t think Mikey was a procrastinator.

The coffee-machine beeped loudly, causing Gerard to jump out of his reverie. He quickly turned it off, lest it should wake his sleeping little brother, and poured himself a steaming cup. He downed the whole thing in one go, while it was still as piping hot as possible. After setting the cup in the sink and grabbing the welfare check that he’d left on the counter the night before, along with his car keys, Gerard was racing to the front door, trying to get the caffeine working as quickly as possible; he certainly needed it.

Just as he reached the front door, Gerard tripped over something. It turned out to be a small pair of sneakers, no doubt belonging to Mikey. As the older brother picked up the offending objects to move them to the closet, where they should have been in the first place, he noticed that the rubber soles were separating from the leather shoes, and there was a hole making it’s way on the left toe. Gerard tried to think back to the last time he’d bought Mikey new shoes, but couldn’t recall. Had he bought him new sneakers yet since he’d gotten custody? Gerard was drawing a blank.

He shook his head and tossed the decrepit tennis shoes into the hall closet, breaking into another run out the front door and to his car. The sun wasn’t even attempting to make its presence known as of yet, and Gerard’s eyes were straining to adjust to the dawn-dark. He turned on the brights once inside his car, peeling out of the driveway with a squeal and tearing off down the long, narrow road that led away from his house and towards the Trenton Mental Hospital And Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Center.

Name: Gerard Way
Relationship to patient: Son
Reason for before/after hours visit: Special circumstance

Gerard never knew what to put for his reason. He wished he could just get some sort of special, permanent pass so that he wouldn’t have to fill out a form every time he came here. They knew the circumstance, and they were going to admit him to see his mother, so why bother with this? “Standard procedure, sir…” droned the clerk behind the desk every time he broached the subject. He scribbled his typical answers and handed the sheet to the clerk, who waved him through the door to the left of the lobby without even glancing at the paper. Gerard cursed under his breath as he walked away. What a waste of time he didn’t have.

The teenage boy took a deep breath as he approached room 221B, his pace quickening with nerves. He didn’t know what reasons he had to be nervous; the woman barely knew what year it was, let alone remembered that Gerard had deemed her an unfit parent for himself almost three years ago, and walked out, never to be seen by them again until…

Gerard pushed open the door and walked inside, seeing his mother with her back to him, staring out the window, where the sun was still refusing to peek out over the horizon. Her long, dark hair ran down her back, greasy and uncared for in the seven or eight months that she’d resided in the facility. She seemed to be much more frail, and the ridges of her backbone showed through the thin, white material of her nightgown. Gerard cleared his throat.

“Mom,” he said, knowing better than to call her by her first name. The first time he’d been to visit, he’d made that mistake. Donna Way had erupted into hysterics, yelling for him to get out, that he wasn’t her son, that he should have never been born, etc… “Mom, it’s me: Gerard.”

The woman turned, and it took every ounce of Gerard’s self-control not to flinch away from her stare. Her dull, gray eyes were cold and unseeing for a moment; then she saw Gerard.

“Gerard! Honey! My baby! My little boy! Come here, and hug Mama!” The woman’s face cracked into a wide smile, too wide for her wan face. The skin of her cheeks stretched taught over her bones, giving her a ghoulish appearance. The boy hesitantly approached his mother, allowing her to wrap her bony arms tightly around his waist, before stepping back and placing one hand on the woman’s shoulder, holding her at a good distance.

“Mom, I can’t stay long.” Somehow, there had been a lot of back-up on the turnpike, and Gerard had had to sit in congested traffic for almost a half-hour before making it back to the state road. He was painfully aware of how the proverbial sand was trickling down from one bulb to the other, leaving him with a smaller and smaller window of time in which to get Mikey to school on time for the field trip that he apparently had that day. “Can you sign this welfare check? Mikey needs new shoes, and I need to go grocery shopping.”

“Have you paid any attention to your little brother lately, Gerard? You know, his concert is on Friday, and you promised you’d go!” Donna scolded. Gerard closed his eyes, for fear that he’d roll them to the ceiling if he kept them open. Mikey hadn’t done any type of chorus or choir since kindergarten, and he was in second grade, now. When the delusions set in, Gerard may as well have been talking to a brick wall, for all the progress he made. He’d thought that getting off the drugs would help keep his mother lucid, but the rehabilitation seemed to just be making the hallucinations worse.

“Yeah, Mom, I’ll go,” Gerard said, desperate for his mother to sign the check so he could leave. “Just, please, sign this…it’s for Mikey,” he added, holding the check out, along with a pen. “For a school trip that he has today.”

“Of course, honey!” she said, cheerily, mood swinging from one extreme to the other in a split-second. “You take such good care of your brother, did you know that?”

“Well, someone has to,” Gerard said dryly, once she’d handed back the check with her signature on the back, allowing Gerard to cash it in his name. “I’ll see you soon, Ma. Be good,” he added, quickly kissing the top of her head, before walking out, breaking into a run once he had shut the door. He ran all the way back to the parking lot, jumped in his car, and peeled down the road, back home.

Gerard had made it in record time, bursting through the door just in time to pound up the stairs to where his little brother still lay sleeping, not having to worry about electric bills, rent, groceries, or new shoes for growing boys. Gerard didn’t even consider new clothes for himself; that was out of the question. That money had to be used for more important things, and Gerard just couldn’t give himself top priority over Mikey.

“Mikes,” Gerard panted, out of breath by the time he’d reached the boy’s room. The walls were papered with cut-outs of his favorite comics, the ones he had multiple copies of, and toy rocket-ships and racecars littered the floor here and there. Gerard was unlucky enough to have stepped on one of those little green, plastic soldiers, one of the ones with a long, sharp rifle. Fortunately, he stifled the swear that was on the tip of his tongue and stumbled toward the sleeping boy. “It’s time to get up, Mikey. Come on, you have a field trip today.” The little boy groaned and rolled over, mumbling about more time. “Come one, Mikes. If you’re late, you can’t go. You wouldn’t want to miss a class trip, would you?” Gerard asked enticingly.

“Why can’t me and you spend the day together, Gee? Just the two of us?” Mikey was pulling his best cute-card, trying to worm his way out of school. Gerard raised an eyebrow and spoke sternly.

“We both have to go to school, Mike. The things we have to do aren’t always the things we want to do, but they still need to be done, regardless. You and I can hang out this weekend, okay? Now, get up,” he said when the little brother nodded. “And get ready for school. Be downstairs in ten minutes. And don’t forget to brush your teeth, either. I can see some green moss growing in.”

“Nuh-uh!” Mikey pouted, crossing his arms. “Where?”

“Well,” Gerard said, beginning to poke his little brother in the sides, eliciting boyish giggles. “There. And there. And there! And there!” They continued this game for a minute, until Gerard stood up, ruffled Mikey’s messy, brown hair, and left the room, telling the boy, once again, to get up and get ready.

Close to fifteen minutes later, Mikey came slumping down the stairs, dragging his feet and looking groggy. Gerard set a buttered piece of toast on the table and motioned for his brother to sit down, filling a glass with water from the tap.

“I want Frankenberry,” Mikey said grumpily.

“Well, I haven’t gone shopping, yet, so you’ll have to settle for buttered toast. Ed loves buttered toast, right? Pretend you’re Ed,” Gerard referenced one of Mikey’s favorite cartoons, “Ed, Edd, ’n Eddy.” The little boy smiled, nodded, and began to munch his breakfast.

“So we don’t forget it,” Gerard said, sliding the permission slip across the table towards his brother. “Fold this up and put it in your pocket. We won’t have time to turn around and come back for it.” Mikey did so.

“I need ten dollars, too,” the younger Way said, swinging his feet under the table.

“It doesn’t say that on the sheet.”

“Yes, it does!” Mikey said, pulling the paper out of his pocket, unfolding it, and finding the incriminating line to show to Gerard. Sure enough, the fee for the kids to get into the museum that they were going to was ten dollars.

“Pain in the ass,” Gerard grumbled under his breath, reaching into his pocket for his wallet.

“Ooh, you said a swear!” Mikey clapped his hands to his mouth, eyes wide as the plate that his toast had been served on.

“Do you want to go to the museum, or not? Okay,” he said when Mikey nodded. “Then I get to swear a little. You don’t, though,” he added hastily. The last thing Gerard needed was a call from Mikey’s teacher, saying that he had been cursing in class. “Here,” he said, handing over his last ten dollars. Mikey wadded the cash up into a ball and shoved it in his pocket, along with the re-folded permission slip.

“Thanks, Gee,” Mikey said, employing his old nickname for his brother, knowing the teenager was now in a bad mood. The older brother softened a bit.

“No problem, Mikes. Listen, when we get home today, I want you to tidy up your room. I stepped on one of the artillery when I went to wake you up, and it took a sizeable amount of self-control not to yell and jump up and down on one foot.” Gerard winked at his brother, who giggled at the thought.

“Okay.”

“Good. Now, let’s go.”

The brothers exited their house, getting into Gerard’s car and backing out of the driveway at a much easier pace than the teenager had earlier that morning. They cruised along the streets of New Jersey until they made it to Belleville Elementary. Gerard pulled to a stop just outside the front doors, calling Mikey back to the car when he was a few feet away.

“Do you need money for lunch?” Gerard cursed himself for not remembering to pack a lunch for the boy. Shit.

“No.” The boy shook his head. “That’s what some of the ten dollars is for.” Gerard felt relieved.

“Okay,” he said, waving from the drivers’ seat of his beat-up Lincoln. “Have fun at the museum. Pay attention, be respectful, don’t get separated from the group, all that good stuff.”

“’Kay, Gee!” Mikey waved one final goodbye, before disappearing into the gray building. Gerard remained a moment longer, watching the doors through which his baby brother had just walked, before pulling around and out of the school parking lot, now rushing to make it to Belleville High School before the bell rang, and he would be late…again.


Oh, dear...So, I started another story, even though I shouldn't have. If you're reading either of my other stories, well...You know...I dunno...I'm not abandoning those, I just...I had this idea, and I was afraid not to get it written, for fear that I'd forget it. One of my teachers was talking about a girl he'd had one year who was doing something like this at home, and I just got this idea. So...yeah. I don't know how frequently I'll be able to update, what with two other active stories that need finishing, but it will be on its way (hopefully). So...yeah. What do you think so far? Go comment, rate, and subscribe, and perhaps the next chapter will be along sooner than I anticipated. So-long. OverAndOutxx