FicWad

It was raining. This sort of thing always seemed to happen when Gerard’s depression was at its zenith. It would rain or his car would break down or his parents would start fighting again or something little and stupid that brought his mood to an even lower low would happen and he just couldn’t understand why.

The drops of moisture pitter-pattered on the dirty windshield of his car, the beads leaving their tails of water trailing down the glass. He sat there, hands clutching the worn and peeling material on the steering wheel, watching and listening to the rain as it came down almost delicately from the faded grey sky. The sounds, like the sound of tiny feet scattering across the hood of his car, were calm and soothing, the air sticky and warm. But his insides were tied and hot, his stomach nauseas and twisting around like some sort of frightened animal. He didn’t want to get out. He didn’t want to leave the safety of his car, where nobody taunted him with their suspicions about his sexuality or forced him into walls because God knows how scared he was to fight back. He didn’t want to walk into the walls where he knew he would be getting stares and whispers and giggles all day because he couldn’t find a glove to put over his now purple and black right hand. As he clenched the steering wheel the pain in that hand became more prominent, pulsing and throbbing, the wound still fresh.

He wanted to go back home. Gerard just wanted to take his wounds and his problems and sneak down into the gloom of his dark and musky bedroom, curl beneath his bed’s thick blanket and either wait until he gained enough courage to get up and do something productive or hope sleep would consume him before he was exposed to something too painful.

A shudder rolled over his body and he stared at the students moving into the front doors of the school. They looked like an infestation of ants to him. Or rats. Moving all as one, sickening body into that place he was so afraid of. It took all his courage to pull himself of bed that morning, and when he called Finch like he did every morning before he picked her up he was nearly sobbing into the phone that he couldn’t go because he was so afraid that Frank would see the bruises and the cuts and the scars.

Gerard suddenly realized the strange irony in his behavior, the way each compulsive action contradicted the last. He sliced open his arm because he was sure Frank didn’t love him, but then he promptly carved the boy’s name into his skin to show his undying affection. If he was so sure that Frank didn’t love him (he thought that maybe the way he hung around him was probably out of pity- it was obvious Gerard didn’t have any other friends) then it wouldn’t matter if he saw the self-inflicted wounds. Despite this, he still craved Frank’s approval, still wanted to appear perfect to this person he loved so much.

There was emptiness in his chest, an exhausted, fed-up emptiness. Gerard heard Finch let out a deep sigh and felt her place her hand gently on his shoulder. The gesture was meant to be gentle, but Gerard felt indescribably numb. It didn’t affect his mood either way; rather, it just made him aware of how little he could feel outside of the drowning despondency in his stomach.

“Just make it through today,” Finch whispered. “If you keep your hand…in your jacket or under your desk nobody will be able to see…And if they ask, just say you…you closed it on a door or something.” Even she looked unsure of herself, as if she knew the lie was thin and frail and unbelievable.

“Finch,” Gerard choked out feebly, his voice delicate and thin like new ice. He glanced at his hand. In additional to being heavily bruised, the places where his teeth had punctured the skin were scabbed over. His whole hand was swollen. “Finch, I’m right-handed. I have…I have to use it /all day./” He bit down gently on his bottom lip. What he really wanted to do was bite down until he bled, but he held back. If Finch saw him hurting himself again she might intervene…and he didn’t want to know what she would do then. Finch gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Just…just try to make it through today,” she repeated. Gerard could feel her strain, feel her trying to think of something else to say but unable to come up with something substantial. The stress was almost palpable enough to be cut with a knife.

Gerard didn’t want to leave his car. But he had no choice but to step directly into the insecurity and fear he was trying so hard to escape.

---

“Oh, /shit,/” Finch cursed quietly to herself. Gerard turned and looked at Finch. She was sifting through her heavy black backpack, kicking her legs as they hung over the table. She pulled her arm out of her bag and looked up at Gerard. There was an unusual expression on her face. It was a strange mixture of pity and regret.

“I left my book in my locker,” she explained, her voice quiet. It was surprising that he could hear her over the rumble of students. It was as though the two of them were in their own separate reality, cut apart from the rest of the world where only the two of them existed. “I guess…you could come with me…” She looked up at the clock on the wall. “…But then you might be late for…study hall I think you have. I have to run down to my locker and get it.” She appeared to be chewing on her tongue again. “You’ll have to be here alone.”

Gerard felt his insides clench together. The thought of being alone was similar to drowning: the fear filled his lungs, drenched his brain, made it hard to see and breathe. He looked at her. Her eyes appeared large, thoughtful, afraid. They were both scared. He was scared to death of the ugly purple and black on his hand (he’d withdrawn the appendage into the sleeve of his faux-leather jacket). She was scared of what he would do to himself now that his stress was at its peak. It wasn’t fair. He realized that now. It wasn’t fair that she should be so afraid for him- of him. He ran his hand through his hair (he suddenly noticed how long and shaggy it was getting), and averted his eyes.

“N-no…” he muttered. “It’s okay. I’ll…be fine.” He winced slightly. The words sounded plastic. Finch gave a weak smile before slinging her bag over her shoulder and hopping off the table.

“It’s gonna be okay, Gee-Gee,” she said. He watched her walk down the long hallway until she disappeared in the sea of students. A cold hole settled itself where Gerard’s stomach used to be. And whether it meant he was wallowing in self-pity or just unable to shake himself of the consuming depression lingering on the aching organ that was his brain, the only thought in his head was that he didn’t want to be there. He hated that place so much, he was so afraid and so lost that the fear caused every muscle to tense and every nerve to cry out in protest. He could get away now if he wanted, could grab his bag and stand up from the table and just walk out.

There was a brief moment’s indecision, a moment where he stared at the front doors and silently debated with himself, before his body seemed to act without his brain’s full consent. He slung his bag over one shoulder, rose from his spot at the table, and attempted to inconspicuously make his way through the tightly packed foyer. Getting out unnoticed wasn’t exactly difficult. There were easily two dozen students who came into school every morning to chat with their friends before ditching the rest of the day. Some even came in, attended one or two class periods before returning home. And, regardless, the people around him- teachers or otherwise- were too immersed in their own business to notice (or care) if one student left a little early.

Gerard kept his head down, hiding his face behind the unbrushed raven hair. The door was close, very close. He was almost to salvation…

“Hey, queer.”

Gerard winced as Meghan’s-or Emmie or whatever she was calling herself now- white puff of hair appeared in front of him. He felt someone push into his shoulder (he thought it was one of her androgynous friends), and his fingers clenched tightly around the strap of his backpack. He looked away from her, starring at her leopard print shoes as she loudly smacked her gum. He saw more feet join hers and, judging by the number, assumed there were probably three or four people standing in front of him. He glanced up. There were four.

Gerard swallowed audibly. He stepped backwards.

“I have to…” He started, trying to regain control of his voice. It didn’t work. Emmie looked up at him with her raccoon-esque eyes. Gerard became aware that he was afraid of something six inches shorter than himself. She poked him on the shoulder with one of her long, thin fingers, almost playfully.

“Where’re ya goin’?” She asked. “School’s starting.” She grinned up at him like a Cheshire cat and he felt a tremor of terror occur in his belly. Her mouth seemed too large for her face, her teeth enormous, her eyes like the eyes of an animal.

“I’m…” Gerard swallowed and tried to think up some sort of excuse. “I’m, uh…sick. I’m going home.” Even to himself, he sounded stupid, although that sensation wasn’t new. Emmie muttered something that sounded like, /”Oh, really…?”/. He couldn’t really hear her. His heart was pounding loudly in his ears. Gerard honestly didn’t understand what the whole act was about. There wasn’t any clear incentive. Well, except that maybe she liked to feel as though she had power of him. The feeling of power was one he was unfamiliar with. Emmie poked his shoulder again, and then her eyes drifted. His heart seemed to fall into his stomach.

She was looking at his hand. Her smile grew even further. She gave smug sideways glances at the kids standing on both sides of her and brought her long fingernail down his hand. It was the one he was using to hold the strap of his backpack. Gerard’s entire arm began to tremble and he prayed to whatever God there was that she didn’t notice.

“How’d ya do that?” Emmie asked smugly. Gerard wanted to pull his hand away, to hide it, but he was using it to hold his backpack in place.

“I…” He remembered what Finch had told him. “…slammed it in a door. It-It was an accident.” Emmie’s finger didn’t leave his hand.

“Really?” She licked her lips and placed her nail just above the scabbed over puncture wound. “…Did the door…/bite you/ too?” Gerard opened his mouth to lie but his throat suddenly closed. All he managed to do was make a quiet choking sound and shake his head. Emmie chuckled to herself, the sound low but feminine.

He hated her. He hated how afraid of her he was. She was small and frail looking and even though she was surrounded by people, they too were weak and thin and if he wanted to run or even sock them in the face and really black their eyes he could have. But it wasn’t that he was outnumbered or even that she teased him, it was that she pointed out the flaws he knew were true. She even made things he didn’t mind about himself flaws and things he hated.

”Hey, fag, you reading comic books again?”

“Oh, Gee-Gee, you know that guy you like? Yeah, he’s a great kisser. And he’s not too bad in bed either.”

“I can see why nobody would want to date you, you look like a fucking chick.”

“Nobody fucking wants you here. You and your faggot girlfriend/should just go and kill yourselves…Actually go/ through/ with it this time.” /

He tried to walk around her, to get away from the words and the taunting and the smug laughs and conceit. She stopped him. Or rather, she got her friends to stand behind him and block his way. One of the boys (or girl…girl? No, no it was a boy) pushed him foreword again. Emmie grabbed his hand by the wrist and looked at the bruises and the cuts.

“What the fuck is your problem?/” She scowled. “What the fuck did you /do? Did you fucking bite yourse-?” She stopped. She had seen the beginning scars and cuts on the inside of his wrist, the ones that were still red and healing and fresh. She looked up at him with a mixture of irrational hate and irritation and started to lift up the sleeve of his jacket. Gerard felt a spasm of terror shake his body. He pulled his arm back, crying out the word “/NO!/” Emmie scowled at him and reached for his arm again. One of the kids behind him grabbed him by the shoulders and attempted to hold him still. He felt the rest of Emmie’s friends held him in place while the girl attempted to roll up his sleeve. Gerard writhed beneath their grip as his skin became exposed. He could see the E/, then the /I/, she was pulling and pulling and now he could see the /K and he wanted her to stop but she wouldn’t and he could feel the tears coming and- and…

“G-Gerard?”

Gerard twisted his neck to look in the direction of the voice. His arm was outstretched, Emmie grasping his wrist so painfully tight that his hand was now tingling with numbness, the last three letters of the name he’d carved into himself red and exposed. With the kids holding him in place, his body was in a very odd position: He was bending back in order to try and get himself away, his legs stretched foreword, his spine bowed.

Frank blinked at him. He had obviously just come inside as his hair was dark and matted down with rainwater. He looked from Gerard to his scarred arm to Emmie (whose eyes seemed extraordinarily large with surprise) to the kids holding Gerard in place back to Gerard, whose eyes were large and round and sad. They all stood there for a moment, frozen, starring at one another in the midst of the students coming in and out of the building. Frank suddenly stepped forward, moved towards them with a look anger and confusion on his face.

“What the fucking are you /doing?!/” he cried. Emmie released her grip on Gerard and her friends mimicked her. She flipped her long, white hair over her shoulder.

“Frankie!” Emmie smiled and Gerard felt a bang of disdain hit him as she used the nickname he did. “We…Gerard had something on his arm and we wanted to make sure he was okay.” Frank stopped in front of her and looked at Gerard who hid his face. He didn’t want Frank to see that he was about the burst into tears. Frank pushed passed her and stood next to Gerard.

“Leave him the fuck alone,” Frank growled. Emmie stopped, frozen in place. She looked as though Frank has just slapped her in the face. Nobody-/nobody/- not teachers or parents or peers or authority talked to her that way. She clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes at him. At all once she seemed to lose some sort of control and she stopped her foot and pointed at Gerard’s arm.

“He-He’s a freak!/” she cried. Gerard stepped back. “He…he /cuts himself! Look at his fucking hand! He like, carved a word into his arm or something! He’s so fucking-!”

“Gerard, go,” Frank said, his voice unusually low and frightening. “Go home or go to class or wherever you were going. Just…get out of here.” Gerard adjusted his bag and walked as quickly as he could without running away from the group of kids. He could feel them starring at him, his vulnerability at an all-time high. He felt as if any second he could break, shatter. When he got to his car, the urge to do something-anything- to hurt himself was almost irresistible. He remembered what he’d done yesterday and all at once felt the shame of his actions and the need to repeat them.

He didn’t. Because Frank was at his window.