FicWad

The Wave
by ~heroiero

‎FLASHBACK

"Ray... Ray, look!" Mikey gasps, shaking me.
"What is it?! Jeez!" I say, getting up. It was a quarter past three and I was absolutely exhausted.
"Look at the tree..." He whispers, looking out the windows, eyes wide.
"Yeah.. And..?" I ask, looking out, bleary eyed.
"There's a person. A person in the tree!" Mikey squeals.
"Move for a sec Mikey..." I murmur, pushing him away to get a full view.
He was right. There definitely was a figure in the tree.
"Right, you wake the others and I'll go down and check it out okay?" I ask, sounding a lot braver than I felt. I hate the dark.
"You sure..?" He asks. It was more of a statement really
I tiptoed down the stars and opened the door to the back yard. I shivered as the cold January breeze swept over me. I stepped forward, quietly shutting the door behind me. As I got closer to the tree I saw that the person sitting in the high branches was a boy. He had blonde hair, swept to one side and a cherub like face.
"What are you doing?" I called up. I startled the boy and he rolled off his branch, landing on the soft grass with a thud.
‎"Trying to get somewhere to sleep." He responded, aggressively.
"You don't have a home to go to?" I asked, confused.
"If I did, do you think I'd be sleeping in your tree?" He snapped.
"What's with the attitude?" I asked, raising my hands above my head in mock fear.
"I'm not exactly in the best mood, okay? I left my parents and siblings in Chicago only to come up here, walk around for a week looking for a good spot to sleep and just when I find one and I'm settling down, some little twerp comes and scares the life out of me, making me fall out of the tree and wreck my back!" the blonde boy snarled. He didn't scare me as much as he intrigued me. Something about him made me want to spend more time talking to him.
"Who are you?" I asked, realising he hadn't said his name.
"I'm Bob. Bob Bryar."

I sat on the bed, my eyes closed, thinking about that day. The day my life turned hectic and transformed me into the person I am now. The person I was until last week. Until the Tsunami.
I felt like it was my fault, despite what my friends and family told me. Bob was my best friend, and whatever happened to him, I felt responsible for it.
Of course the Tsunami wasn't my doing; I would have to be spawn of the devil to even think about that kind of thing without cringing with guilt for not being able to prevent it.
I glanced to my left at the photo on the bedside table that had once been his, Bob's.
It was of me, Gerard, Frank, Mikey and him in the summer of 1989 in the tree out the back of my old house which was now my parents' house.
FLASHBACK
I lay back on the grass, smiling into the blue sky, the white-yellow sun as it warmed my pale skin.
"Hey Ray!" Bob called over the fence. I rolled over and saw his face peering over the white wooden picket that separated my lawn and the Ieros'.
"Hello, Roberto!" I said, keeping up the rhyming, "You stayed at Frankie's last night, huh? Thanks for inviting me." I sniffled, dramatically and jokingly. It didn't matter to me; Bob stayed over at everyone's houses – he had to, he had no place of his own. Of course, why would he? He was only fifteen. I wasn't bothered by the sleepover. Until I heard another voice that was familiar to me.
"Ray!" Gerard yelled, his round face popping up over the fence to the left of Bob's, his raven hair sweeping over his hazel green eyes.
"Gee…" So this must mean that…
"MIKEY, GET OVER HERE!" Gerard bellowed, and no more than a minute later, his younger brother, looking exactly the same, only with lighter hair and slightly younger, popped up beside him at the fence.
"So, Frank invited… All of you?"
"Y-…Yeah, but we weren't... Excluding you. It was just… You were at lunch and we were all in the common room. So Frankie invited us over. I was meant to ask you but… But we both got detentions and Dr Devlin wouldn't let us talk and… I'm sorry, man…"
"It's fine." I grunted, "Fine. I don't even care." But of course I cared. I rolled back over to look at the sky and the sun again, but I was less peaceful, less happy. Until, that is, Bob appeared. Not next to me; on top of me.
"Ow!" I groaned, "What are you… What're you doing?!"
"Eh, I was meant to land there, but you know how bad my estimating is." He said, pointing a metre away and grinning sheepishly.
"Thanks for comin' over. But you know I'm not bothered by it, so…"
"Oh Ray cut it out. Of course you care; I would care, and I'm the iron man of the group. So how 'bout we hang out? Just us. Don't let the others know." He said, winking at me.
"It sounds great!" I said, and it did. I missed hanging out with Bob, just me and him, and I was glad things would be back to normal. Bob was my best friend, and that was all I really cared about.
Within the hour the others were here and it was well over forty degrees. And that's when my mom came out and took the photo of all of us up the tree, smiling, eating the sandwiches mom made for us, and throwing each other back to the ground. Because we were friends. And that's all I really cared about.

I got off the bed and walked across the room, laying my hand gently on the door knob, looking around me before I left. Today was a very important day, which I'd been dreading since the news. Today we were going to make our final goodbyes. Today was the wake.
As I opened the door I was met by the three faces I knew best, besides Bob's. Mikey's face broke out into a childish grin as the gang was completed by me stepping into the circle.
"Ready?" Gerard asked with a sigh.
We nodded in answer and made our way down the stairs. As we passed the living room I stopped dead (no pun intended) at the sight of my best friend, lying in the middle of the floor in a band shirt and black skinny jeans. Not the most formal of attires, but his favourite. I suddenly felt bad for wearing a suit. He was looking a little worse for wear, to put it lightly. After all, he had been killed in a Tsunami no more than seven days ago. His face was paler than it usually had been, and it was bruised slightly. It was obvious that somebody had tried to hide them with makeup, but they had done it roughly and had managed to stain his blonde stubble with foundation. As mad as I was to think that somebody had tried to alter his appearance, his perfect, brilliant appearance, my eyes welled up with tears at the sight of him. It had been well over three months since I'd seen him, and, cringing, I remembered the last time I had seen him before Japan.
FLASHBACK
I stared at him scornfully as he walked into the room. Look at him, I thought, an ignorant, petty person without a care in the world. If only he knew. If only he knew what it felt like to be hated, unwanted and purposefully repelled by the people who meant the most to him in the world. If only he knew.
"Hey Ray!" He said, grinning. We'd kept up the rhyming talk for eighteen years. Every time we saw each other it was "Hey Ray!" and "Hello, Roberto!" Well, things were about to change.
"'Lo." I murmured, my eyes on the magazine in front of me, completely unfocused.
"Uh…" Bob hesitated, slightly thrown off. "So, how are you?" His words were rushed, and it was plain that he was catching on to my anger, my annoyance and my upset.
"Oh, fine. In fact, I've never been better." I said, sarcasm and volume seeping from every pore of my body.
"No need to be so…" He motioned with his hands, searching for the right word to describe my attitude. "So… Childish." He said, frowning.
"Well sorry if I'm not happy for you and the others in your successful attempts at making me feel completely insignificant and unwanted."
"Wow, take it out on me the day before I leave for Japan. You do realise you won't see me for three months? Who am I kidding; you'll be having a ball without me. You make out that we're weighing you down, but in reality it's you who slows us down. I hate to disturb your little fantasies, but somebody needed to get through to you and now is as good a time as any." Had it been me saying this, I would have been yelling, spittle flying from my mouth, my face red with rage. But it was Bob. He didn't look angry, annoyed, frustrated. He looked disappointed. And that was what disturbed me the most. The fact that he looked like he cared, when I really know that he didn't care, nobody cared, because I'm the dead weight of the group. I'm the one nobody really likes. I'm known for my hair. That's it. My hair.
"I know I slow you down, I know you hate me, I know you don't want me around anymore, so what are you doing here? Why are you trying to convince me of the hatred you all feel towards me? I already know!" I yelled, tears streaming down my red cheeks. This wasn't how I'd wanted it to go. I'd wanted to be dignified; I'd wanted Bob to cry. But it the other way round, and I wasn't the only one aware of this. Bob stared at me.
"You make me sick sometimes, Ray. What has been up with you the last few months? We used to be best friends! But now we're like this…" He motioned to the whole room; the tension could have been cut with a spoon.
"Then GO! LEAVE! I DON'T NEED YOU HERE, AND I DON'T WANT YOU HERE, SO GO!" I screamed at him, my throat aching with every syllable, as the words scratched at the lump in my throat that had developed from my tears.
"Fine. I'm going. I don't want to be here any more than you want me to." He turned around and walked back across the room, the way he had come in. As he opened the door he turned to face me again, a look of finality on his face. "I'm sorry. About everything. You'll always be my best friend. Goodbye, Ray." And then he was gone, and I was left alone in the room, my head buried in my hands and tears seeping through the gaps in between my fingers and a feeling of self-hatred and guilt, rising from my stomach to my throat, hot, like bile, rising, rising, rising, until…
There was a loud clang from the kitchen as Mikey dropped a large frying pan to the floor, displaying his extreme clumsiness. As well as scaring the life out of me, the noise brought me back to the present, away from the moment that made me feel completely disgusted with my own behaviour. Bob was right; we were supposedly best friends. So what had happened? What had lead me to believe that he hated me with the kind of burning passion that I had loved him with? And why had I expressed myself like that the day he was due to leave? But then again, that was the past and now was my chance to say goodbye, to say sorry.
I stepped into the room, every moment that I had spent dreading this building up inside me, making me feel dizzy, light-headed. Approaching the body, a tear escaped from my eye, rolled down my cheek and onto his chest.
"I am… So sorry, Bob. I love you so much. You meant the world to me. You still do. You didn't hate me, and… I think I understand that now, but even if you did, I would never feel that way about you in return. I love you so much, Bob. And I'm so sorry that I let you leave that day… It was my fault. I bet if I hadn't said… Any of that, you would still be here, I wouldn't be crying, and I wouldn't ever doubt our friendship again." I whispered, kneeling over the body. Before I even knew what had happened I was sobbing into his chest, his still, lifeless chest. "I will always remember you for the amazing man you are…" I wailed, my body shaking and heaving, tears soaking my face completely, as well as his t-shirt. It was too much, all of it. Taking a deep breath of his faded scent, I let my mind lapse into one last memory. The most important memory.
FLASHBACK
I sat, shaking and sobbing into the night, the cold air attacking me, letting me know that I was alive, still capable of feeling. I lifted the pill bottle with a shaking hand, looking out over the lights of the city I had never been able to call home, realising how high up I really was, realising that I really was about to do this. I was about to take away all the pain with something so simple. I could have used the razor at home, but it would be messy, far too messy. So I went to the hospital. It was utterly typical of New Jersey; making a seventeen year old pay fifteen bucks to get into the place as opposed to making them show their ID, and then letting them run, sobbing, up the stairs to the fire escape, and finally, let them collapse on the roof, wheezing and crying, just for them to have to clean his body from the street below. Of course, they had no idea that that was my actual plan.
"I'm here for research." I had told them breathlessly when I arrived.
"Mhmm, that's forty dollars." Said the sassy, dark skinned woman at reception.
"Sorry? I'm here on observation, I'm not doing anything…"
"I don't care, forty dollars or I call home to your parents right now Mr Toro."
I cursed under my breathe, remember that I'd spent half of my life at this hospital, just because I was a stupid, clumsy little kid.
"Fifteen. It's all I've got." I said, and I was being honest.
"Fine, but I'll make sure I get the rest of my money the next time I see you." She pursed her lips then glanced around as she ushered me through to the stairwell that would lead me to my own personal treatment centre; the roof.
And that's where I was now, on the roof, moaning to myself as I twisted the bottle open. I was shaking so much that the pills flew out all over the roof, one of them falling off the edge. I cursed again, but picked up the rest of them, pouring the others into my hand.
I stood up, my legs shaking, and followed the pill over the cement that made up the hospital roof. I stood on the edge, my tears falling onto the road that looked like it was a thousand feet below me, but couldn't be any more than eighty, ninety metres, max. I breathed in and out, my stomach churning desperately. I was hopelessly aware that anything, any little blow of wind, a lash of rain, an unexpected movement, could set me off balance and send me toppling to my death. I waited for a moment, thinking, as the pills in my hand moving closer to my mouth, my foot being raised higher and higher from the roof, moving further forward. I was really going to do it. I promised myself that I would stay around as long as I was wanted and needed, and I was no longer either.
"Goodbye mom, dad. Goodbye Mikey, Gerard, Frank… I hope you don't miss me… I'm doing this for me, not just you. Without your care I'm pretty pointless here, aren't I? And… Bob… Bye, Bob. I hope this hurts me more than it hurts you. I love you all so much. I'll always be with you, when you want me…" I called out, leaning forward, about to fall to the ground, fall to my peace. One thing stopped me that night. The voice. The voice of a friend, a friend who meant the world to me and had always been there to help me. Bob's voice.
"Be with me now."
I spun around to face him, falling backwards through the air. I was about the feel the impact, I thought, until something caught my ankle. The hands of a boy I knew well. The hands that had hauled himself over the fence one night and into my garden, the hands that had climbed up my tree, the hands that had held me close, the hands that had curled into fists and punched bullies square in the face for me, the hands that had always held mine when I was scared or alone. The hands that were now saving my life.
"You… You saved me." I sobbed, once I had regained my balance back on the roof.
"No, I saved myself. Ray, you know, if you had… gone through with that, do you know what would have happened to me? I would have killed myself." He said. He looked around feverishly, as if searching for the right words to say. "Ray, what were you… You hold us together, all of us. I don't know why you did that, nearly did that, but for whatever reason, you can tell me about it. I love you. Don't leave me like that. Ever again."
I made a vow that night, on the roof. A vow never to do that again, never to feel that way about myself again, for as long as Bob lived, he'd said. Bob wasn't living anymore, not to the others. But to me, Bob would always be alive. And I would always keep my promise.