The Kids From Yesterday
Or Every Person That You Need to Be.
March 12th, 2005
Iero home
Belleview, New Jersey
2:34am
Ellie lied awake in the dark; she had woken up and now started the ever present cycle of her not sleeping at all. She shifted to her back and stared at the ceiling. Frank’s door was cracked just the slightest so light from the bathroom light that Linda kept on at night flooded into Frank’s room just a little bit. Ellie moved to leave the bed thinking if she went pee, she would be able to go back to sleep.
After she finished her nonexistent business—she didn’t even have to go—she went to the kitchen to get some water before heading back to Frank’s room.
She walked into the kitchen and flipped on the light.
“Hello, Elliot,” A voice grumbled.
Ellie jumped in her place next to the light switch and looked up to see The Man standing near the sink holding a glass of water, grinning at her manically.
I thought I saw the last of this ass in Europe.
“I heard that,” He said and set the glass down in the sink, “Would you like some water?” He asked, which Ellie nodded to, “Of course you would, you do this every night around two thirty am, you go to the bathroom even though you go before bed, then you come down to the kitchen and get some water and then head back to bed with Frank and just lie there till Linda gets up, sounds very boring,” He hands Ellie the glass of water which she sips timidly from.
“What’re you doing tomorrow or rather later today, because you and I both know you should go see Elias,” The Man pointed out.
“We leave for tour technically tomorrow,” Ellie mumbles and looks down.
“It wasn’t a request,” The Man was standing in front of her again and looking down at her. Intimidating her, “You’re going later today, I’m sure Frank wouldn’t mind, and speak of the devil…”
“Ellie?” Frank’s sleepy voice penetrates the silent house, “Who’re you talking to?” he asks walking into the kitchen.
He was staring right at The Man, right at him, and he didn’t notice him. How could you not notice a six foot man with fucking white hair standing in your kitchen at nearly three o’clock in the morning? Then it dawned on Ellie. She turned her head to see the man was grinning manically before he disappeared into the thin air. She nearly dropped her glass of water.
She turned to look at Frank who was giving her an interesting facial expression. He rubbed his eyes. His pajama pants had shifted in the night and now they were low on his hips and his drawstring was more near his left hip rather between the both of his hips. His shirt was crumpled around the arms and his hair was an atrocity. But Ellie thought he still looked cute.
“Ellie?” Ellie heard again from Frank, “Who were you talking to?”
“Nobody, I wasn’t talking to anybody,” She takes a sip of water, “I might’ve been thinking out loud…”
“You sounded scared,” He presses.
“I think you were hearing things, Frank,” She says. The irony of the sentence almost made her laugh.
“Maybe,” he sighs out, the look on his face was a little distant, “Let’s go back to bed, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Ellie agrees and gulps down the rest of the water before letting Frank grab her hand and lead her back upstairs.
When she was finally back under the covers with Frank, she actually felt tired and ready for sleep again. Maybe she would get some sleep tonight.
Of course, the night before I start tour again. Maybe I should stay home… nope; I gotta go with the guys.
Ellie argues with herself till she feels herself relax and finally for the first time in two weeks, she was able to sleep.
The next morning, rather afternoon Ellie woke up around one. She woke up having to pee really bad, her hair and face were a little greasy and she was extremely thirsty; the kind of thirsty you get when you pass out for thirteen hours without any water.
Frank was on his side of the bed, except he was awake just lying there his little T.V. at a low volume as some cartoon played. Ellie was sure it was Courage the Cowardly Dog.
“You slept like a fucking rock baby,” Frank laughs when he notices Ellie was awake and sitting up, “I tried waking you at ten thirty when I woke up, but you slapped me away and fell back to sleep.”
Ellie has a vague memory—what she thought was a dream—of someone trying to pull her from a cloud and her getting mad and pushing them off the cloud. She must’ve been in between dreams and reality when he tried to wake her.
“I was on a really comfortable cloud,” She says her voice so thick with sleep, she sounded like a man, it didn’t help that her mouth was as dry as a highlighter that wasn’t capped and was sitting out in the sun for three years, “Sorry for pushing you off.” She rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms, her back making sickening cracking noises. She lets out a relieved sigh and starts to clamber out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” Frank asks.
“I’ve been asleep for nearly thirteen hours, I gotta pee, drink something, maybe shower,” she grumbles as she strutted out of his room. She stumbles down the hallway into the bathroom and does her business. She brushes her teeth quickly then drinks greedily from her hands after she rinses. She looks into the mirror; her face was shiny with the oil from her night of dead-like sleep. She was okay with that because she didn’t feel dead anymore. Her eyes looked like she hadn’t slept right in over a month, because up until last night she really hadn’t.
She hums a tune as she walked back into Frank’s room and goes to her suitcase to get some clothes to change into and a towel.
“I’m going to shower,” she mumbles still trying to wake up.
“Can I join you?” Frank asks somewhat seriously.
“Um…” Ellie thinks about it, “No,” she laughs and struts out of the room again, making sure she swung her hips noticeably.
“Mean,” Frank yells from his bedroom.
Ellie rolls her eyes and prays to God that she doesn’t have another episode in the shower. It seems The Man only comes every once in a while. When she thinks she’s rid of him, she’ll see him. She shook the idea out of her head and took her shower.
An hour later after much pleading and a lot of ass kissing in the form of g-rated foreplay (if there was such a thing of g-rated foreplay) Elliot managed to get Frank showered and was driving her to Boston to Elias’ and her Dad’s cemetery to see them.
“I know this isn’t your ideal way to spend the last day of your break, but I don’t know when I’m going to be home again,” she tells Frank when they turned onto the turnpike.
“No, it’s fine Ellie, I get it, you want to see them and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Frank says and takes her hand from its place of her lap and intertwines their fingers.
The three hour drive is somewhat silent; they were just listening to music as they raced down the highway. Ellie was content with that, she hadn’t done that with Frank before, sat in completely silent car and drove to the music playing off his iPod.
When they arrive to the cemetery, Elliot felt that feeling in her stomach when she went to go see her mom. It was dread. She hadn’t been back to their resting places since Elias was buried. And once again, she found herself frozen to her seat not wanting to get out and face the music.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she mumbles and hugs her knees to her chest in the passenger seat, “This is never going to get easier. Why do I keep thinking it will ever be easier?” she asks herself.
“Because you’re human, Elliot,” Frank says as he turns off the car, “As much as you don’t want to admit it: you feel. You have emotions and while you keep them bottled up and just put up this wall of abrasiveness, I know that under all of it, there is a free spirited eighteen year old girl, I saw it the day Gerard and I took you to the hospital when you were drugged up on painkillers, you want to be happy, you want to laugh, and you want to get over all of this, now, you can just cower in the car, or you can go get some closure that you so desperately need.”
Frank made a lot of sense. So Elliot kicked her legs out from where they were folded, unbuckled her seat belt and was out of the car in less than five seconds. She was doing this, she was getting closure. She waited for Frank to meet her on her side of the car and took his hand, so she could lead him to the spots.
The walk to their grave sites was also silent as Elliot tried to keep composed demeanor.
Their tombstone was connected when Elias died, so Ellie’s Father and Elias essentially shared one. It was polished granite that stood around two feet tall.
Elias “Eli” Jude Webster
Born: October 31st, 1986
Died: May 4th, 2004
Beloved son, friend, womb-mate, and percussionist. Keep marching in heaven. Tobias “Toby” Keaton Webster JR.
Born: July 8th, 1952
Died: April 29th, 2003
Beloved father, husband, and son. See you soon, love.
“I had to plan Elias’ funeral, so I got to choose what went his tombstone, I hadn’t seen it till now, and don’t regret any of it,” Elliot says to Frank as she goes to her knees to put a bouquet of flowers near both of their names: blue Tulips for her father and red and white carnations for Elias as they were the colors of their high school alma mater.
She wasn’t all that shaky, she surprised herself really. She thought she would be a sobbing mess of a girl, crying all over Frank and yelling at the two who were currently six feet under the dirt beneath her knees. Instead, she felt the early spring breeze flow through her hair like little kisses from springs past that were keeping her calm, that were saying she wasn’t alone, that she didn’t have to hurt anymore. So she smiled and started telling her dad and brother about all the things she had done since she graduated high school. All the things she had seen. The people—bad or not—she had met. That the Red Sox finally won the World Series against the Cardinals in St. Louis. That she got to watch that in Kansas. She introduced them to Frank who had mimicked Ellie by sitting on his knees next her. She told them that he was taking good care of her, that she was touring with his band, and that Elias to not be jealous of her because of the fact she was touring with one of his favorite bands ever.
“It’s a funny story how I ended up in Frank’s lap here,” she says to them as if they were sitting right in front of her, “That’s a story for another time, but um—I miss you two, I miss you two a lot, it’s easy to just go off the grid and distract myself from the fact that there are two huge holes in me, but I think coming here and spilling my guts out to you might help in stitching up those wounds. They won’t ever be completely closed, but they’ll stop bleeding,” Elliot takes a deep breath before continuing, “I don’t know when I’ll be back to see you guys again, I leave for tour tomorrow night, so this is goodbye again, just for a little while, I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
“You okay, babe?” Frank asked quietly after Ellie was silent for a bit and wasn’t planning on moving.
“Yeah, I’m just thinking about the last day I had with the both of them,” she unravels her knees and sinks to her bottom, “I remember when my dad left for the bank that day, it was also a Tuesday…” She gulped down the lump in her throat, Frank pressed a hand on her back, rubbing it up and down, “When we got the call, I don’t think I’d ever heard my mom scream so loud, I had to take the phone because my mom was totally unresponsive.
“Frank? Do you think that I’ll ever be okay again?” she asks, reminiscing once again on their first ever conversation.
“Yes, I think you will be one day, okay,” he grins and gives her a quick peck on the lips, before helping her off the ground and leading her back to the car.
The drive back to NJ was just as silent as it was when they ventured out around 2:30, it was now almost seven so they decided to stop somewhere to get some dinner before heading home.
The drive home was once again a comfortable silence, Elliot was thinking about her next few months on the road. The stories she’ll be able to tell her mom and two grave stones once she’s home in August. She beings to imagine Warped Tour, even though it’s nearly a season away, the shit she’ll get to fuck up while being out on the road for that. She recalls her time at Warped 2003 and the hundreds of times she crowd surfed that day. Her and Marigold go absolutely insane during the sets they watched and screamed and jumped for. Then coming home sweaty, sunburnt, no voices, and absolutely exhausted.
She grins inwardly thinking that this summer was going to be a fucking shit storm, but a good one: a summer better than last.
Iero home
Belleview, New Jersey
2:34am
Ellie lied awake in the dark; she had woken up and now started the ever present cycle of her not sleeping at all. She shifted to her back and stared at the ceiling. Frank’s door was cracked just the slightest so light from the bathroom light that Linda kept on at night flooded into Frank’s room just a little bit. Ellie moved to leave the bed thinking if she went pee, she would be able to go back to sleep.
After she finished her nonexistent business—she didn’t even have to go—she went to the kitchen to get some water before heading back to Frank’s room.
She walked into the kitchen and flipped on the light.
“Hello, Elliot,” A voice grumbled.
Ellie jumped in her place next to the light switch and looked up to see The Man standing near the sink holding a glass of water, grinning at her manically.
I thought I saw the last of this ass in Europe.
“I heard that,” He said and set the glass down in the sink, “Would you like some water?” He asked, which Ellie nodded to, “Of course you would, you do this every night around two thirty am, you go to the bathroom even though you go before bed, then you come down to the kitchen and get some water and then head back to bed with Frank and just lie there till Linda gets up, sounds very boring,” He hands Ellie the glass of water which she sips timidly from.
“What’re you doing tomorrow or rather later today, because you and I both know you should go see Elias,” The Man pointed out.
“We leave for tour technically tomorrow,” Ellie mumbles and looks down.
“It wasn’t a request,” The Man was standing in front of her again and looking down at her. Intimidating her, “You’re going later today, I’m sure Frank wouldn’t mind, and speak of the devil…”
“Ellie?” Frank’s sleepy voice penetrates the silent house, “Who’re you talking to?” he asks walking into the kitchen.
He was staring right at The Man, right at him, and he didn’t notice him. How could you not notice a six foot man with fucking white hair standing in your kitchen at nearly three o’clock in the morning? Then it dawned on Ellie. She turned her head to see the man was grinning manically before he disappeared into the thin air. She nearly dropped her glass of water.
She turned to look at Frank who was giving her an interesting facial expression. He rubbed his eyes. His pajama pants had shifted in the night and now they were low on his hips and his drawstring was more near his left hip rather between the both of his hips. His shirt was crumpled around the arms and his hair was an atrocity. But Ellie thought he still looked cute.
“Ellie?” Ellie heard again from Frank, “Who were you talking to?”
“Nobody, I wasn’t talking to anybody,” She takes a sip of water, “I might’ve been thinking out loud…”
“You sounded scared,” He presses.
“I think you were hearing things, Frank,” She says. The irony of the sentence almost made her laugh.
“Maybe,” he sighs out, the look on his face was a little distant, “Let’s go back to bed, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Ellie agrees and gulps down the rest of the water before letting Frank grab her hand and lead her back upstairs.
When she was finally back under the covers with Frank, she actually felt tired and ready for sleep again. Maybe she would get some sleep tonight.
Of course, the night before I start tour again. Maybe I should stay home… nope; I gotta go with the guys.
Ellie argues with herself till she feels herself relax and finally for the first time in two weeks, she was able to sleep.
The next morning, rather afternoon Ellie woke up around one. She woke up having to pee really bad, her hair and face were a little greasy and she was extremely thirsty; the kind of thirsty you get when you pass out for thirteen hours without any water.
Frank was on his side of the bed, except he was awake just lying there his little T.V. at a low volume as some cartoon played. Ellie was sure it was Courage the Cowardly Dog.
“You slept like a fucking rock baby,” Frank laughs when he notices Ellie was awake and sitting up, “I tried waking you at ten thirty when I woke up, but you slapped me away and fell back to sleep.”
Ellie has a vague memory—what she thought was a dream—of someone trying to pull her from a cloud and her getting mad and pushing them off the cloud. She must’ve been in between dreams and reality when he tried to wake her.
“I was on a really comfortable cloud,” She says her voice so thick with sleep, she sounded like a man, it didn’t help that her mouth was as dry as a highlighter that wasn’t capped and was sitting out in the sun for three years, “Sorry for pushing you off.” She rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms, her back making sickening cracking noises. She lets out a relieved sigh and starts to clamber out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” Frank asks.
“I’ve been asleep for nearly thirteen hours, I gotta pee, drink something, maybe shower,” she grumbles as she strutted out of his room. She stumbles down the hallway into the bathroom and does her business. She brushes her teeth quickly then drinks greedily from her hands after she rinses. She looks into the mirror; her face was shiny with the oil from her night of dead-like sleep. She was okay with that because she didn’t feel dead anymore. Her eyes looked like she hadn’t slept right in over a month, because up until last night she really hadn’t.
She hums a tune as she walked back into Frank’s room and goes to her suitcase to get some clothes to change into and a towel.
“I’m going to shower,” she mumbles still trying to wake up.
“Can I join you?” Frank asks somewhat seriously.
“Um…” Ellie thinks about it, “No,” she laughs and struts out of the room again, making sure she swung her hips noticeably.
“Mean,” Frank yells from his bedroom.
Ellie rolls her eyes and prays to God that she doesn’t have another episode in the shower. It seems The Man only comes every once in a while. When she thinks she’s rid of him, she’ll see him. She shook the idea out of her head and took her shower.
An hour later after much pleading and a lot of ass kissing in the form of g-rated foreplay (if there was such a thing of g-rated foreplay) Elliot managed to get Frank showered and was driving her to Boston to Elias’ and her Dad’s cemetery to see them.
“I know this isn’t your ideal way to spend the last day of your break, but I don’t know when I’m going to be home again,” she tells Frank when they turned onto the turnpike.
“No, it’s fine Ellie, I get it, you want to see them and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Frank says and takes her hand from its place of her lap and intertwines their fingers.
The three hour drive is somewhat silent; they were just listening to music as they raced down the highway. Ellie was content with that, she hadn’t done that with Frank before, sat in completely silent car and drove to the music playing off his iPod.
When they arrive to the cemetery, Elliot felt that feeling in her stomach when she went to go see her mom. It was dread. She hadn’t been back to their resting places since Elias was buried. And once again, she found herself frozen to her seat not wanting to get out and face the music.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she mumbles and hugs her knees to her chest in the passenger seat, “This is never going to get easier. Why do I keep thinking it will ever be easier?” she asks herself.
“Because you’re human, Elliot,” Frank says as he turns off the car, “As much as you don’t want to admit it: you feel. You have emotions and while you keep them bottled up and just put up this wall of abrasiveness, I know that under all of it, there is a free spirited eighteen year old girl, I saw it the day Gerard and I took you to the hospital when you were drugged up on painkillers, you want to be happy, you want to laugh, and you want to get over all of this, now, you can just cower in the car, or you can go get some closure that you so desperately need.”
Frank made a lot of sense. So Elliot kicked her legs out from where they were folded, unbuckled her seat belt and was out of the car in less than five seconds. She was doing this, she was getting closure. She waited for Frank to meet her on her side of the car and took his hand, so she could lead him to the spots.
The walk to their grave sites was also silent as Elliot tried to keep composed demeanor.
Their tombstone was connected when Elias died, so Ellie’s Father and Elias essentially shared one. It was polished granite that stood around two feet tall.
Elias “Eli” Jude Webster
Born: October 31st, 1986
Died: May 4th, 2004
Beloved son, friend, womb-mate, and percussionist. Keep marching in heaven. Tobias “Toby” Keaton Webster JR.
Born: July 8th, 1952
Died: April 29th, 2003
Beloved father, husband, and son. See you soon, love.
“I had to plan Elias’ funeral, so I got to choose what went his tombstone, I hadn’t seen it till now, and don’t regret any of it,” Elliot says to Frank as she goes to her knees to put a bouquet of flowers near both of their names: blue Tulips for her father and red and white carnations for Elias as they were the colors of their high school alma mater.
She wasn’t all that shaky, she surprised herself really. She thought she would be a sobbing mess of a girl, crying all over Frank and yelling at the two who were currently six feet under the dirt beneath her knees. Instead, she felt the early spring breeze flow through her hair like little kisses from springs past that were keeping her calm, that were saying she wasn’t alone, that she didn’t have to hurt anymore. So she smiled and started telling her dad and brother about all the things she had done since she graduated high school. All the things she had seen. The people—bad or not—she had met. That the Red Sox finally won the World Series against the Cardinals in St. Louis. That she got to watch that in Kansas. She introduced them to Frank who had mimicked Ellie by sitting on his knees next her. She told them that he was taking good care of her, that she was touring with his band, and that Elias to not be jealous of her because of the fact she was touring with one of his favorite bands ever.
“It’s a funny story how I ended up in Frank’s lap here,” she says to them as if they were sitting right in front of her, “That’s a story for another time, but um—I miss you two, I miss you two a lot, it’s easy to just go off the grid and distract myself from the fact that there are two huge holes in me, but I think coming here and spilling my guts out to you might help in stitching up those wounds. They won’t ever be completely closed, but they’ll stop bleeding,” Elliot takes a deep breath before continuing, “I don’t know when I’ll be back to see you guys again, I leave for tour tomorrow night, so this is goodbye again, just for a little while, I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
“You okay, babe?” Frank asked quietly after Ellie was silent for a bit and wasn’t planning on moving.
“Yeah, I’m just thinking about the last day I had with the both of them,” she unravels her knees and sinks to her bottom, “I remember when my dad left for the bank that day, it was also a Tuesday…” She gulped down the lump in her throat, Frank pressed a hand on her back, rubbing it up and down, “When we got the call, I don’t think I’d ever heard my mom scream so loud, I had to take the phone because my mom was totally unresponsive.
“Frank? Do you think that I’ll ever be okay again?” she asks, reminiscing once again on their first ever conversation.
“Yes, I think you will be one day, okay,” he grins and gives her a quick peck on the lips, before helping her off the ground and leading her back to the car.
The drive back to NJ was just as silent as it was when they ventured out around 2:30, it was now almost seven so they decided to stop somewhere to get some dinner before heading home.
The drive home was once again a comfortable silence, Elliot was thinking about her next few months on the road. The stories she’ll be able to tell her mom and two grave stones once she’s home in August. She beings to imagine Warped Tour, even though it’s nearly a season away, the shit she’ll get to fuck up while being out on the road for that. She recalls her time at Warped 2003 and the hundreds of times she crowd surfed that day. Her and Marigold go absolutely insane during the sets they watched and screamed and jumped for. Then coming home sweaty, sunburnt, no voices, and absolutely exhausted.
She grins inwardly thinking that this summer was going to be a fucking shit storm, but a good one: a summer better than last.
Notes
I really have absolutely no excuse as to why this took two months. I know I was supposed to write over my winter break, but that didn't happen as I was abnormally really active during my winter break, and then by the time January rolled around I was starting a new semester of classes that are a lot more involved than the ones that I took last semester.
I also do Winter Guard on the weekends and--- basically i've been a hot mess these past two months. And I'll probably be a hot mess till I get out of school in May.
So I'm very upset to say that I'll be taking a short hiatus from this story. My goal was to finish before the summer but that is not happening. I have recharge for this story, forget about it for a cool minute, let the ideas simmer because I tried starting the next chapter last night and I was like what the fuck am I doing?
I don't want to become bitter with this story because it's probably one the best things I've ever written and for me and all my self-deprecating woes, that's like a milestone for me to even admit.
So... I'll be back I PROMISE. I will not leave you guys hanging. But in the mean time here's some stories for you lovelies to check out and read if you haven't already while I'm gone. THEY'RE ALL FRERARD. I HAVE NO REGRETS
A Splitting of the Mind (ASOTM, if you've already read this, I'm sorry.)
Anatomy of a Fall (I read this one right after I finished ASOTM and regretted it... but it's super cute btw Frank's a ghost.)
The Unholy Verse (This one is weird and cool and is probably my favorite Frerard ever and it has a happy ending...in which Gerard is a priest.)
Now, I'm not going to be the asshole who puts The Dove Keeper because honestly... I didn't like it all that much. She's a good writer! No doubt. And I should finish it, but that is one obstacle of a book that I cannot read on a computer screen.
Those are the big guys that I'd read first, if you want something else to read, message me on tumblr or here and I'll get back to you ASAP.
i'm where-did-taye-go.tumblr.com (i know i fucking changed it again)
and if you want to stalk me on twitter EarthToTaye is my name.
I think this was longer than the actual chapter...
-Love you guys!
xo Taye.
@Jackie
Thank you Jackie, that really means a lot to me <3
4/6/18