Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Perfectly Imperfect
Like the Past But Better
9 reviews“Only babies cry in school.” Read, review, rate and feel my love! :P
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Disclaimer: The events of this story never happened, never will happen and never came close to happening; I thought them up. Which is extremely worrying…. I own none of the famous people mentioned in this story… yet. This is a sequel to my other story (“Fate’s Cruel if Life’s Great”), so I don’t know if this’ll make sense unless you read that first, but I’ll try my hardest to make it easy to understand. I own nothing.
Chapter One – Like the Past But Better
Mikey’s POV
Two months ago my life was, for lack of a better analogy, a train wreck.
No, that’s sugar-coating it; my life wasn’t even a life, more like a living death. Just wishing for everything to stop like a broken DVD remote trying to pause some hideously boring documentary. I was a pathetic, useless little shit who never did anything but wallow in misery. I thought that my life wasn’t worth living purely because I had yet to find something worth living for; I didn’t understand that in order to have something worth living for you have to actually go out into the world and find that thing. I suppose I didn’t so much as go looking for something worth living for as have that something come crashing in to me, nearly knock me to the ground and then catch me like that thing’s smile catches my heart when it’s falling. That something stopped me from physically falling and has since then, two months ago to the day, saved me from falling to the demons of life.
My something worth living for is Pete Wentz; the first school kid in a very long time to actually want to be my friend, to pick me up instead of push me down, to make me smile and laugh rather than yelp and cry. I’ve known Pete for two months and not once have I ever felt alone or unwanted, he’s forever texting me and asking me around his like every second he isn’t with me he wishes that he was. I think that he only asks me round so much because he gets lonely too; his parents are never at home and I can see how much that hurts him.
I can see it because I feel it every day; his parents may as well be as dead as mine are for the amount of support they give my bass buddy.
Bass buddy. That’s a name that he came up with since we first played our precious instruments together. He really is incredible at bass; if I’m ever half as good as he is, I’ll be more than happy. When he plays it’s like everything just stops, all of the microorganisms and particles in the surrounding air just come to a complete halt in order to admire the pure auditory alchemy of his lightning-fast fingers; he really is that good. Not good; enchantingly amazing. He told me that I could be in band playing bass, but I know he was only trying to be nice. I barely have the confidence and skill to play in front of him, let alone play in front of a crowd.
That’s the thing I just don’t get about Pete; he always sees ugly things, things that everyone else hates, in a beautiful light. Myself, for example; he seems to think that I’m actually worthy of his time and cutely lop-sided smirks, not deserving of the sniggers and sly trip-ups that everyone else understands I deserve. Don’t get me wrong, I thrive and adore his admiration, his friendship, his company, I just don’t understand what the hell someone as pathetic as me did to deserve it.
Apart from I’m not pathetic. Not anymore. No one worthy of having someone as unadulteratedly amazing as Pete Wentz for a friend can be pathetic.
That’s another thing I don’t get; he doesn’t seem to have many friends. Sure, he has one or two people he’s quite matey with, but I’m the only one he hangs around with at break and lunch. I wouldn’t have it any other way though, I’m perfectly happy with the way things are; he does all the talking, understanding that I just can’t pluck up the courage within my echoic heart to speak at school, and I seem to be able to convey my thoughts purely through my eyes. Occasionally he’ll be able to relax me enough to get me to speak, but I know that he’ll never hold my somewhat involuntary silence against me; we’ve grown to be as close as brothers over the last two months and I know him well enough to be confident in the fact that he really does like me for me. After all, we’re friends.
Friends that should be something more.
No. I can’t start thinking like that, it ended horrendously the last time I let that sort of thought infest my mind; horrendous enough to make me jump in front of a bus. I still have scars from that, will do for the rest of my life, and I still have mental scars too; some nights I wake up screaming, nothing but the searing burning of being dragged along a road piercing my senses. That’s why I always decline Pete’s invitations for sleeping around at his, as much as I’d love to spend more time with him, not that I’d ever tell him the truth behind the flimsy excuses I give him; I don’t want him to think that I’m some sort of freak, I really like being his friend and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost that.
I know exactly what I’d do. Find a bus and do exactly what I did last time, but better.
No. I couldn’t do that, never again. I wouldn’t just be hurting myself if I did that; I’d be hurting Gerard too. And Frankie. I would rather be cursed in an eternity of hell than make my big brother and my best friend hurt. Partly because I know how much feeling hurt can ruin a person, but mainly because they’ve both done so much for me and it would be evil of me to throw it back in their faces by doing that which they are working to prevent.
Not that they have any work to do that anymore; now that I’ve got Pete, someone genuinely nice to me through liking who I am and not through some blind sense of adult obligation, I don’t think I’ll ever be that totally hopeless again.
With Pete here looking out for me hardly anyone’s messed with me. I think it’s because Pete’s eighteen, strong and almost as protective as Gerard when it comes to me. Apart from with Pete the protectiveness feels reassuring, not a threat within itself like it does with Gerard. Like as long as Pete’s around nothing can hurt me purely because the thing that could dare to hurt me will already be obliterated because Pete would have destroyed it before it could even contemplate hurting me. He really is extremely protective of me, treats me like I’m worth more than his toned, tanned body is even though I’m just some weak, skinny kid with nothing to show for himself other than a scarred face through my own thoughtless actions.
He asked me about the scar once; the scar that runs in a thin, faded line from the left corner of my mouth right back to the base of my left ear like a wisp of smoke from the exhaust pipe of the bus that inflicted it. He asked me where it came from as though he wanted to teach the perpetrator a lesson or two just because it caused me pain and that really got me; I never thought about how I’d explain the scars to someone, purely because I thought that nobody would ever care enough to ask. But Pete did ask and I had to remember how that smudge of my past self ended up on my pale skin in the first place, had to remember that which still gives me screaming nightmares. So, me being the weak little bastard that I am, I just burst into tears and tried to get up from the lunch table. I say ‘tried’ because Pete grabbed my hand, hauled me back down and told me to just forget that he ever asked; that he didn’t mind if I didn’t want to tell him, but did mind if he’d upset me. So of course I sat back down, staring at my still full lunch bag in somewhat pleasant surprise that someone actually wanted to be around me, and tried to hide my scar self-consciously behind my hair. And this, for some incomprehensible reason, doused Pete’s angelically sinful face in pure guilt, so pure in fact that it couldn’t have possibly been mistaken for any other shade of misery, before he reached a tentative hand out to brush the hair away. When I’d shot him a scared, confused look he’d simply smiled and told me that my face is too beautiful to hide behind my hair.
He’d called me beautiful. Not ugly or a freak or worthless, but beautiful. If I’m his idea of beautiful then his idea of ugly must be ten times more hideous than Medusa. If I’m his idea of beautiful then he must find himself a billion times more gorgeous than an archaeologist finds a perfect-condition mummified corpse. But he still called me beautiful and, even though I know it to be a friendly lie, it made my insides melt like honey in warm milk; he genuinely does like me if he can bring himself to tell such an anti-truth just to make me feel more happy with myself. What he doesn’t understand is that I’m already happy with myself, more than happy, purely because me as myself got me Pete as a friend; got me that wide-eyed, black haired perfection of a human.
No. A human always has imperfections; he must be an angel. To me he is. My bass-playing, cheeky-smiled, soft-touched angel. My guardian angel. Well, even if he isn’t literally an angel, he is definitely my guard; always making sure that nothing’s bothering me, doing absolutely anything to make me smile even if I’ve been miserable all day. I try not to be miserable, really I do, but sometimes my heart feels so weighted that it’s as though it can’t even beat properly without breaking. On those days Pete always notices, even if my own big brother doesn’t, and always somehow manages to lighten the weight with his naturally happy and caring nature. Always makes me laugh in the end, and if he doesn’t he at least manages to make me smile a little, just for him.
But everything comes with a price; Pete’s in the grade above me and can’t protect me in class.
In classes which promised to be strict on bullies.
In classes that lied.
Yeah, this school is definitely better than the one that helped shove me under a bus, but the kids are almost exactly the same. Or rather, they were the same until Pete gave them a ‘talking to’, as he put it. They still laugh at me whenever I talk in class which isn’t very often at all, but at least they’re too scared of Pete to beat me up like they tried to do on my first day. Tried to beat me up for being too pathetically anxious to apologize to them when they walked into me in the corridor; they only got one punch in before Pete noticed and sent them packing.
More like sent them fleeing from the sight of a growling, narrow-eyed guy with tightly clenched fists. I think that if it had been any one else standing there, fierce fury painting their scrunched features, I’d have run too. But not with Pete, with Pete his whole body just exuded some inexplicable desire to protect me. And he has done. I hope that he always will do because without him I will die; taking him away from me would be like taking water away from a fish, like taking oxygen from a human, like taking food from a malnourished child. Without Pete by my side I will die.
Is it strange that I feel this deeply about him and yet he hasn’t even met Gerard or Frank?
No, I don’t think so. I like that Pete is just someone for me, my own friend and guardian angel. I know that that’s a horribly selfish way of thinking, but it is nice to have a special thing that only I know about. It’s kind of like the same principle as having that special toy that you want none of your friends to play with when you’re a kid; mindlessly selfish, but it kind of makes sense. Besides, I don’t want Gerard to not like him because if he decides that he doesn’t like Pete the odds are that I’ll never see my bass buddy again.
Gerard is still aggravatingly overprotective of me, to the point where he just won’t listen to what anyone else (including myself) says regarding me, and not in the nice way that Pete is. Gerard doesn’t even give me a chance anymore, just immediately assumes that because of all we went through together a few months ago that he understands me. He does understand me a hell of a lot better than he did, he’s a lot gentler with me than he was, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all fake; that this whole ‘happy family’ thing is just a front because of what I tried to do.
Of course it’s a motherfucking charade. He’s not happy with having to be the strong one even though I thought I made it clear to him that I don’t want him to be, that I just want him to be my big brother, and I know that it’s only a matter of time before he explodes again, before history repeats itself. Apart from with him having Frank and me having Pete I can’t help but want to let a seed of hope blossom into a beautiful rose, telling me that everything will be fine.
But things are never fine. Not for me. Not for the freaky little scar-faced mute with not enough self-confidence to even have a proper conversation with his bass buddy when in school. Everything will find a way to fall to shit. It always does.
Like today, for example, today Mom should be turning forty-three.
Should be.
But she can’t because she’s six feet under with no pulse and no skin left to show the signs of aging another year. She’s fucking gone and never coming back, never going to give me a hug before bed again, never going to look after me and my big brother.
Because she’s dead.
I know that better than anyone. I can still see her crumpled, barely recognizable body splayed out on the operating table like it’s playing constantly in my head. And it is. Always will be. Because I was stupid enough to think that, just maybe, she’d hear me crying and spring back to life or that she wasn’t even dead in the first place. She couldn’t be, she’s my mom; this happens to other people, not to my mom and dad. But it did. She’s dead and will never celebrate another birthday with me again.
I miss her.
How stupid does that sound, how childish?
I don’t care. It’s her birthday and I want to be able to give her the card I’ve bought directly rather than leave it next to some cold, clinical piece of stone. I want to be able to hug her like I can treat her like a teddy bear and she not mind, not just have her photo to cry over like the weak little shit that I still am when I’m alone. I want her to not be dead, to be here with me and Gerard, having fun and lighting the house with her billion-watt smile. All of those things aren’t wants; they’re primitive needs.
Needs that will never be fulfilled because she is dead, because she is just some photograph that I keep under my pillow for when I need to talk to her.
And Gerard hasn’t even remembered.
No, he does remember. He just doesn’t think that I can take it, can take being reminded of the one person that I can’t be without but will never again have. He doesn’t trust me enough to say anything about what today is. He thinks that I’m still suicidal, that I’m the lost cause I hoped I’d never prove myself to be no matter how much I (and everyone else) believed I was.
I think that hurts almost as much as the fact that she’s not here; I can’t even halve my grief by mourning with the one other person who’s experiencing the same feelings that I am. I can’t even cry it out to my big brother because he doesn’t want to talk about it and it would be unfair of me to bring it up.
It’s unfair of him to just assume that I can’t take it, to assume that I don’t know what today is without him reminding me.
I didn’t even have Pete here to cheer me up at break or lunch; he was in detention for not doing his biology homework for the fifth week in a row. So I just sat in the back of the library with all of the music books, just like I always do when I’m sad or alone. Sad and alone, at school I’m never one without the other. But every time that the tears start and just won’t stop, reading about the history of music, about how instruments work, always calms me down. Like I’m reading about something that’s a part of me, a part of me that actually works and everyone loves. So that’s what I did today, just spent my free time immersed in some book about the evolution of guitars.
But it didn’t work. The words didn’t soothe me or make me feel normal. Largely because I couldn’t make out the words through my tears. Stupid tears that shouldn’t even be falling; only babies cry in school.
Speaking of which, I need to find Pete so that he can give me a lift home in his shiny red sports car. A car that, whilst lovely to ride in, makes me furious in the same way that people picking on me makes him angry; his crimson Ferrari is his parents’ way of buying his love, love that they lost all rights to a long time ago. If I ever meet Pete’s parents I’m going to tell them exactly what I think of them. I know that I don’t speak well with strangers, but for Pete I could. Would. Will do when I meet them. After all, I know for a fact that he’d do the same for me.
The bell signalling the end of the day cried it’s hymn of freedom three minutes ago and I still can’t see Pete anywhere. I need him. I know I sound pathetic and clingy, but I really do. I don’t want to bring him down with my own problems, but just being in his presence seems to cheer me up. But being in his presence means that he’ll be able to tell that something’s wrong. Maybe I should just go, walk home and not have to bring him down.
No. I promised Pete that I’d wait, even if it does mean standing in the crowded corridors of curious eyes glaring at the trembling and scarred boy, so I will. He won’t be much longer, he never likes to keep me waiting; especially now that he fully appreciates how much the other kids frighten me.
I look down to my Converse, wanting nothing more than to be invisible to everyone other than Pete, and try to rinse the images of the person who should be here celebrating her forty-third birthday from my racing mind. It’s not fair; every time I think of Mom I see her mangled body, not her soft smile.
And I hate it; hate myself for ruining my own memories of my mommy.
I want my mommy.
“Ha! Look, it’s that creepy kid that never speaks. What’s wrong, Scarface, Pete finally get sick of you?”
I snap my head up at the loud guffaws coming from across the corridor and can do nothing to stop the tears from leaking out of my eyes.
What if they’re right; what if Pete is sick of me? I would be too if I were him, who wants to hang around with some weirdo that refuses to speak in public? Not me. And probably not someone as amazing and lively as Pete. The idea terrifies me, terrifies me even more than when Gerard gets angry and Frank has to remind him to keep calm.
I don’t want to lose Pete; I just can’t lose him like I seem to lose everyone else. I can’t. I don’t want to die.
The guy who just sneered that at me, some lanky skater-boy from Pete’s grade, is smirking as though he knows that his knife-twisting words have had the desired effect. Smirking at me and advancing towards me along with two other skater-boys, all three of them looking like lions closing in on some abandoned baby animal that’s been cast out from it’s herd for being a worthless runt.
They’re going to hurt me. They’re going to hit me and kick me and push me and spit on me and yell at me and I’m frightened. I don’t want to be hurt. Not again. Not today.
Please.
“I heard that he moved here because his old school kicked him out for being an attention-seeking little freak!” A second boy, a huge daunting guy, spits the final word straight into my wincing face. “Is that true, Scarface?”
I hate being called that, it’s almost as bad as when the other kids used to call me mute all of the time.
No, this is worse.
Because the scar’s my fault, my stutter and silence aren’t.
I shake my head even though I know that I could perform a merry song and dance and this would still have the same outcome; bruised skin and a lot of ice-packs.
“So why didja come here, Scarface? Can’t you go back to where you came from rather than freaking us out all the time? Or do you enjoy being Pete’s little lapdog too much?” It’s the first one again, the one with that terrifying smirk of pure malevolence, and he’s pushing me back into the lockers.
I can’t breathe; I’m far too scared to be able to function like the normal person they’re telling me I most certainly am not. And I know I’m not; a normal person can speak, a normal person has more than one school friend, a normal person doesn’t have a scar running down their face, a normal person doesn’t get bullied for not being normal because they are hence the lack of bullying.
I want my mom.
I want my Pete.
Before I can gather the presence of mind to stop it, I let out a sob.
And one of them punches me.
Hard.
In the gut.
“Shut up, Scarface. Don’t want to draw attention now, do we?” I somehow manage to shake my head through the crippling pain. “Oh, so you aren’t as stupid as you look then.”
“Aaron…” The third one, the one that’s been silent so far, mumbles nervously with fear almost matching my own igniting his eyes.
“Not now Steve, I’m busy with Scarface.”
As if to punctuate, he slams the solid train of his fist into my skinny stomach once more and I react by dropping my head down. I don’t want them to see me cry; they’ll laugh at me more if they do see.
“With who?”
Wait. That’s no bully.
“Scarface.”
“His name is Mikey and unless you leave him alone right now, you’ll be the one people call Scarface.”
Pete!
Angry Pete.
But he’s not angry with me.
Angry because of me. What if he hurts me too?
He won’t. He never would. He promised me that when he first realised how truly frightened of others I am.
Frank promised that I wouldn’t get bullied at this school.
What the fuck do promises mean in a world full of nothing but bitter disappointment?
Fuck all.
A/N: Thanks for reading. I’ve got a plan for what’ll happen next, but I’m not sure if I like this. I think that I will continue with this, so please tell me how to improve! I know that I said that this would be happier than it’s prequel, but that idea was put on hold until later chapters. It will get happier though, I promise. Anyway, thank you very much for reading and please review! :)
Chapter One – Like the Past But Better
Mikey’s POV
Two months ago my life was, for lack of a better analogy, a train wreck.
No, that’s sugar-coating it; my life wasn’t even a life, more like a living death. Just wishing for everything to stop like a broken DVD remote trying to pause some hideously boring documentary. I was a pathetic, useless little shit who never did anything but wallow in misery. I thought that my life wasn’t worth living purely because I had yet to find something worth living for; I didn’t understand that in order to have something worth living for you have to actually go out into the world and find that thing. I suppose I didn’t so much as go looking for something worth living for as have that something come crashing in to me, nearly knock me to the ground and then catch me like that thing’s smile catches my heart when it’s falling. That something stopped me from physically falling and has since then, two months ago to the day, saved me from falling to the demons of life.
My something worth living for is Pete Wentz; the first school kid in a very long time to actually want to be my friend, to pick me up instead of push me down, to make me smile and laugh rather than yelp and cry. I’ve known Pete for two months and not once have I ever felt alone or unwanted, he’s forever texting me and asking me around his like every second he isn’t with me he wishes that he was. I think that he only asks me round so much because he gets lonely too; his parents are never at home and I can see how much that hurts him.
I can see it because I feel it every day; his parents may as well be as dead as mine are for the amount of support they give my bass buddy.
Bass buddy. That’s a name that he came up with since we first played our precious instruments together. He really is incredible at bass; if I’m ever half as good as he is, I’ll be more than happy. When he plays it’s like everything just stops, all of the microorganisms and particles in the surrounding air just come to a complete halt in order to admire the pure auditory alchemy of his lightning-fast fingers; he really is that good. Not good; enchantingly amazing. He told me that I could be in band playing bass, but I know he was only trying to be nice. I barely have the confidence and skill to play in front of him, let alone play in front of a crowd.
That’s the thing I just don’t get about Pete; he always sees ugly things, things that everyone else hates, in a beautiful light. Myself, for example; he seems to think that I’m actually worthy of his time and cutely lop-sided smirks, not deserving of the sniggers and sly trip-ups that everyone else understands I deserve. Don’t get me wrong, I thrive and adore his admiration, his friendship, his company, I just don’t understand what the hell someone as pathetic as me did to deserve it.
Apart from I’m not pathetic. Not anymore. No one worthy of having someone as unadulteratedly amazing as Pete Wentz for a friend can be pathetic.
That’s another thing I don’t get; he doesn’t seem to have many friends. Sure, he has one or two people he’s quite matey with, but I’m the only one he hangs around with at break and lunch. I wouldn’t have it any other way though, I’m perfectly happy with the way things are; he does all the talking, understanding that I just can’t pluck up the courage within my echoic heart to speak at school, and I seem to be able to convey my thoughts purely through my eyes. Occasionally he’ll be able to relax me enough to get me to speak, but I know that he’ll never hold my somewhat involuntary silence against me; we’ve grown to be as close as brothers over the last two months and I know him well enough to be confident in the fact that he really does like me for me. After all, we’re friends.
Friends that should be something more.
No. I can’t start thinking like that, it ended horrendously the last time I let that sort of thought infest my mind; horrendous enough to make me jump in front of a bus. I still have scars from that, will do for the rest of my life, and I still have mental scars too; some nights I wake up screaming, nothing but the searing burning of being dragged along a road piercing my senses. That’s why I always decline Pete’s invitations for sleeping around at his, as much as I’d love to spend more time with him, not that I’d ever tell him the truth behind the flimsy excuses I give him; I don’t want him to think that I’m some sort of freak, I really like being his friend and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost that.
I know exactly what I’d do. Find a bus and do exactly what I did last time, but better.
No. I couldn’t do that, never again. I wouldn’t just be hurting myself if I did that; I’d be hurting Gerard too. And Frankie. I would rather be cursed in an eternity of hell than make my big brother and my best friend hurt. Partly because I know how much feeling hurt can ruin a person, but mainly because they’ve both done so much for me and it would be evil of me to throw it back in their faces by doing that which they are working to prevent.
Not that they have any work to do that anymore; now that I’ve got Pete, someone genuinely nice to me through liking who I am and not through some blind sense of adult obligation, I don’t think I’ll ever be that totally hopeless again.
With Pete here looking out for me hardly anyone’s messed with me. I think it’s because Pete’s eighteen, strong and almost as protective as Gerard when it comes to me. Apart from with Pete the protectiveness feels reassuring, not a threat within itself like it does with Gerard. Like as long as Pete’s around nothing can hurt me purely because the thing that could dare to hurt me will already be obliterated because Pete would have destroyed it before it could even contemplate hurting me. He really is extremely protective of me, treats me like I’m worth more than his toned, tanned body is even though I’m just some weak, skinny kid with nothing to show for himself other than a scarred face through my own thoughtless actions.
He asked me about the scar once; the scar that runs in a thin, faded line from the left corner of my mouth right back to the base of my left ear like a wisp of smoke from the exhaust pipe of the bus that inflicted it. He asked me where it came from as though he wanted to teach the perpetrator a lesson or two just because it caused me pain and that really got me; I never thought about how I’d explain the scars to someone, purely because I thought that nobody would ever care enough to ask. But Pete did ask and I had to remember how that smudge of my past self ended up on my pale skin in the first place, had to remember that which still gives me screaming nightmares. So, me being the weak little bastard that I am, I just burst into tears and tried to get up from the lunch table. I say ‘tried’ because Pete grabbed my hand, hauled me back down and told me to just forget that he ever asked; that he didn’t mind if I didn’t want to tell him, but did mind if he’d upset me. So of course I sat back down, staring at my still full lunch bag in somewhat pleasant surprise that someone actually wanted to be around me, and tried to hide my scar self-consciously behind my hair. And this, for some incomprehensible reason, doused Pete’s angelically sinful face in pure guilt, so pure in fact that it couldn’t have possibly been mistaken for any other shade of misery, before he reached a tentative hand out to brush the hair away. When I’d shot him a scared, confused look he’d simply smiled and told me that my face is too beautiful to hide behind my hair.
He’d called me beautiful. Not ugly or a freak or worthless, but beautiful. If I’m his idea of beautiful then his idea of ugly must be ten times more hideous than Medusa. If I’m his idea of beautiful then he must find himself a billion times more gorgeous than an archaeologist finds a perfect-condition mummified corpse. But he still called me beautiful and, even though I know it to be a friendly lie, it made my insides melt like honey in warm milk; he genuinely does like me if he can bring himself to tell such an anti-truth just to make me feel more happy with myself. What he doesn’t understand is that I’m already happy with myself, more than happy, purely because me as myself got me Pete as a friend; got me that wide-eyed, black haired perfection of a human.
No. A human always has imperfections; he must be an angel. To me he is. My bass-playing, cheeky-smiled, soft-touched angel. My guardian angel. Well, even if he isn’t literally an angel, he is definitely my guard; always making sure that nothing’s bothering me, doing absolutely anything to make me smile even if I’ve been miserable all day. I try not to be miserable, really I do, but sometimes my heart feels so weighted that it’s as though it can’t even beat properly without breaking. On those days Pete always notices, even if my own big brother doesn’t, and always somehow manages to lighten the weight with his naturally happy and caring nature. Always makes me laugh in the end, and if he doesn’t he at least manages to make me smile a little, just for him.
But everything comes with a price; Pete’s in the grade above me and can’t protect me in class.
In classes which promised to be strict on bullies.
In classes that lied.
Yeah, this school is definitely better than the one that helped shove me under a bus, but the kids are almost exactly the same. Or rather, they were the same until Pete gave them a ‘talking to’, as he put it. They still laugh at me whenever I talk in class which isn’t very often at all, but at least they’re too scared of Pete to beat me up like they tried to do on my first day. Tried to beat me up for being too pathetically anxious to apologize to them when they walked into me in the corridor; they only got one punch in before Pete noticed and sent them packing.
More like sent them fleeing from the sight of a growling, narrow-eyed guy with tightly clenched fists. I think that if it had been any one else standing there, fierce fury painting their scrunched features, I’d have run too. But not with Pete, with Pete his whole body just exuded some inexplicable desire to protect me. And he has done. I hope that he always will do because without him I will die; taking him away from me would be like taking water away from a fish, like taking oxygen from a human, like taking food from a malnourished child. Without Pete by my side I will die.
Is it strange that I feel this deeply about him and yet he hasn’t even met Gerard or Frank?
No, I don’t think so. I like that Pete is just someone for me, my own friend and guardian angel. I know that that’s a horribly selfish way of thinking, but it is nice to have a special thing that only I know about. It’s kind of like the same principle as having that special toy that you want none of your friends to play with when you’re a kid; mindlessly selfish, but it kind of makes sense. Besides, I don’t want Gerard to not like him because if he decides that he doesn’t like Pete the odds are that I’ll never see my bass buddy again.
Gerard is still aggravatingly overprotective of me, to the point where he just won’t listen to what anyone else (including myself) says regarding me, and not in the nice way that Pete is. Gerard doesn’t even give me a chance anymore, just immediately assumes that because of all we went through together a few months ago that he understands me. He does understand me a hell of a lot better than he did, he’s a lot gentler with me than he was, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all fake; that this whole ‘happy family’ thing is just a front because of what I tried to do.
Of course it’s a motherfucking charade. He’s not happy with having to be the strong one even though I thought I made it clear to him that I don’t want him to be, that I just want him to be my big brother, and I know that it’s only a matter of time before he explodes again, before history repeats itself. Apart from with him having Frank and me having Pete I can’t help but want to let a seed of hope blossom into a beautiful rose, telling me that everything will be fine.
But things are never fine. Not for me. Not for the freaky little scar-faced mute with not enough self-confidence to even have a proper conversation with his bass buddy when in school. Everything will find a way to fall to shit. It always does.
Like today, for example, today Mom should be turning forty-three.
Should be.
But she can’t because she’s six feet under with no pulse and no skin left to show the signs of aging another year. She’s fucking gone and never coming back, never going to give me a hug before bed again, never going to look after me and my big brother.
Because she’s dead.
I know that better than anyone. I can still see her crumpled, barely recognizable body splayed out on the operating table like it’s playing constantly in my head. And it is. Always will be. Because I was stupid enough to think that, just maybe, she’d hear me crying and spring back to life or that she wasn’t even dead in the first place. She couldn’t be, she’s my mom; this happens to other people, not to my mom and dad. But it did. She’s dead and will never celebrate another birthday with me again.
I miss her.
How stupid does that sound, how childish?
I don’t care. It’s her birthday and I want to be able to give her the card I’ve bought directly rather than leave it next to some cold, clinical piece of stone. I want to be able to hug her like I can treat her like a teddy bear and she not mind, not just have her photo to cry over like the weak little shit that I still am when I’m alone. I want her to not be dead, to be here with me and Gerard, having fun and lighting the house with her billion-watt smile. All of those things aren’t wants; they’re primitive needs.
Needs that will never be fulfilled because she is dead, because she is just some photograph that I keep under my pillow for when I need to talk to her.
And Gerard hasn’t even remembered.
No, he does remember. He just doesn’t think that I can take it, can take being reminded of the one person that I can’t be without but will never again have. He doesn’t trust me enough to say anything about what today is. He thinks that I’m still suicidal, that I’m the lost cause I hoped I’d never prove myself to be no matter how much I (and everyone else) believed I was.
I think that hurts almost as much as the fact that she’s not here; I can’t even halve my grief by mourning with the one other person who’s experiencing the same feelings that I am. I can’t even cry it out to my big brother because he doesn’t want to talk about it and it would be unfair of me to bring it up.
It’s unfair of him to just assume that I can’t take it, to assume that I don’t know what today is without him reminding me.
I didn’t even have Pete here to cheer me up at break or lunch; he was in detention for not doing his biology homework for the fifth week in a row. So I just sat in the back of the library with all of the music books, just like I always do when I’m sad or alone. Sad and alone, at school I’m never one without the other. But every time that the tears start and just won’t stop, reading about the history of music, about how instruments work, always calms me down. Like I’m reading about something that’s a part of me, a part of me that actually works and everyone loves. So that’s what I did today, just spent my free time immersed in some book about the evolution of guitars.
But it didn’t work. The words didn’t soothe me or make me feel normal. Largely because I couldn’t make out the words through my tears. Stupid tears that shouldn’t even be falling; only babies cry in school.
Speaking of which, I need to find Pete so that he can give me a lift home in his shiny red sports car. A car that, whilst lovely to ride in, makes me furious in the same way that people picking on me makes him angry; his crimson Ferrari is his parents’ way of buying his love, love that they lost all rights to a long time ago. If I ever meet Pete’s parents I’m going to tell them exactly what I think of them. I know that I don’t speak well with strangers, but for Pete I could. Would. Will do when I meet them. After all, I know for a fact that he’d do the same for me.
The bell signalling the end of the day cried it’s hymn of freedom three minutes ago and I still can’t see Pete anywhere. I need him. I know I sound pathetic and clingy, but I really do. I don’t want to bring him down with my own problems, but just being in his presence seems to cheer me up. But being in his presence means that he’ll be able to tell that something’s wrong. Maybe I should just go, walk home and not have to bring him down.
No. I promised Pete that I’d wait, even if it does mean standing in the crowded corridors of curious eyes glaring at the trembling and scarred boy, so I will. He won’t be much longer, he never likes to keep me waiting; especially now that he fully appreciates how much the other kids frighten me.
I look down to my Converse, wanting nothing more than to be invisible to everyone other than Pete, and try to rinse the images of the person who should be here celebrating her forty-third birthday from my racing mind. It’s not fair; every time I think of Mom I see her mangled body, not her soft smile.
And I hate it; hate myself for ruining my own memories of my mommy.
I want my mommy.
“Ha! Look, it’s that creepy kid that never speaks. What’s wrong, Scarface, Pete finally get sick of you?”
I snap my head up at the loud guffaws coming from across the corridor and can do nothing to stop the tears from leaking out of my eyes.
What if they’re right; what if Pete is sick of me? I would be too if I were him, who wants to hang around with some weirdo that refuses to speak in public? Not me. And probably not someone as amazing and lively as Pete. The idea terrifies me, terrifies me even more than when Gerard gets angry and Frank has to remind him to keep calm.
I don’t want to lose Pete; I just can’t lose him like I seem to lose everyone else. I can’t. I don’t want to die.
The guy who just sneered that at me, some lanky skater-boy from Pete’s grade, is smirking as though he knows that his knife-twisting words have had the desired effect. Smirking at me and advancing towards me along with two other skater-boys, all three of them looking like lions closing in on some abandoned baby animal that’s been cast out from it’s herd for being a worthless runt.
They’re going to hurt me. They’re going to hit me and kick me and push me and spit on me and yell at me and I’m frightened. I don’t want to be hurt. Not again. Not today.
Please.
“I heard that he moved here because his old school kicked him out for being an attention-seeking little freak!” A second boy, a huge daunting guy, spits the final word straight into my wincing face. “Is that true, Scarface?”
I hate being called that, it’s almost as bad as when the other kids used to call me mute all of the time.
No, this is worse.
Because the scar’s my fault, my stutter and silence aren’t.
I shake my head even though I know that I could perform a merry song and dance and this would still have the same outcome; bruised skin and a lot of ice-packs.
“So why didja come here, Scarface? Can’t you go back to where you came from rather than freaking us out all the time? Or do you enjoy being Pete’s little lapdog too much?” It’s the first one again, the one with that terrifying smirk of pure malevolence, and he’s pushing me back into the lockers.
I can’t breathe; I’m far too scared to be able to function like the normal person they’re telling me I most certainly am not. And I know I’m not; a normal person can speak, a normal person has more than one school friend, a normal person doesn’t have a scar running down their face, a normal person doesn’t get bullied for not being normal because they are hence the lack of bullying.
I want my mom.
I want my Pete.
Before I can gather the presence of mind to stop it, I let out a sob.
And one of them punches me.
Hard.
In the gut.
“Shut up, Scarface. Don’t want to draw attention now, do we?” I somehow manage to shake my head through the crippling pain. “Oh, so you aren’t as stupid as you look then.”
“Aaron…” The third one, the one that’s been silent so far, mumbles nervously with fear almost matching my own igniting his eyes.
“Not now Steve, I’m busy with Scarface.”
As if to punctuate, he slams the solid train of his fist into my skinny stomach once more and I react by dropping my head down. I don’t want them to see me cry; they’ll laugh at me more if they do see.
“With who?”
Wait. That’s no bully.
“Scarface.”
“His name is Mikey and unless you leave him alone right now, you’ll be the one people call Scarface.”
Pete!
Angry Pete.
But he’s not angry with me.
Angry because of me. What if he hurts me too?
He won’t. He never would. He promised me that when he first realised how truly frightened of others I am.
Frank promised that I wouldn’t get bullied at this school.
What the fuck do promises mean in a world full of nothing but bitter disappointment?
Fuck all.
A/N: Thanks for reading. I’ve got a plan for what’ll happen next, but I’m not sure if I like this. I think that I will continue with this, so please tell me how to improve! I know that I said that this would be happier than it’s prequel, but that idea was put on hold until later chapters. It will get happier though, I promise. Anyway, thank you very much for reading and please review! :)
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