you only live forever in the light you make

I like to think that if something happened and I had nothing, I would still have my voice and my hands. They're the only part of me that holds any value, and I can't deny that. If my life hadn't taken the turn it did with the band, if I had gotten no where with my life but a starving artist, those two things would literally be all I had. They make up for the fact that I'm a negligent sibling, an angsty drunk, and an unimpressed individual.

“Glad to see you're back!” Mike slaps me on the back. He's been appointed to help us record lately in the studio, running the sound board and making sure the coffee's always on and such.

When I smile forcefully, my teeth have a way of clenching together, force my cheeks up. I only noticed because when I look at pictures taken of me when I don't want it to be taken—like by paparazzi or pushy fans—my face gets contorted like that. I know I'm smiling like that now, teeth bared and happy, happy smile lines around my eyes.

“Only ten minutes late!” Ray gives me a thumbs up, looking up briefly from tuning his guitar.

“You ready to sing, faggot?” Frank asks.

I sit in the same stool I've sat on during recording sessions for the past four years, hook my feet on the rungs and bounce my knees up and down. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, knees bumping and head pumping. “I think I got it.” I breathe deeply. “I definitely got this.”

The best way for me to sing is to close my eyes, let it come over me while I focus on my breath again. It's sort of like meditating I suppose, but it helps block out all the things cluttering my mind.

But my head is full of a girl and missing lighters, hidden orange bottles and a whole week spent alone. Full of guilt over not being able to be the older brother I should be, not being as protective as I feel I am inside.

I open my eyes, a devious smile twists the corners of my mouth.

“Ready, Matt?”

“Hella.”

The drums start, I tap my toes with the beat. Focus, breath, focus.

“Well, are you ready, Ray?” I drawl out my words, amusing myself with my own voice.

“Yeah.”

“How about you, Frank?”

“Oh, I'm there, baby.” He winks at me.

“How about you, Mikey?”

“Fucking ready...”

“Well, I think I'm alright.” I grin, begin to feel all the things I had been visualizing a moment earlier dissolve as soon as I feel the lyrics form in my mouth.

“Three, two, one, we came to fuck.” I make a gun out of my index finger, bend the rest of my fingers beneath it. “Everybody party till the gasman comes, sparkle like Bowie in the morning sun and get a parking violation on La Brea till it's done.” I shoot my gun off at Ray, run my hand down my thigh and shudder underneath the music. “Hair back, collar up, jet black, so cool! Sing it like the kids that are mean to you! C'mon!”

By the end of the song my hands are clenching the microphone, forehead covered in perspiration.

“I got it!” Matt is beaming, playing it back to himself in sheer excitement. “Gerard, wow.”

“You better have.” I peel off my leather bomber jacket, suddenly hot. I feel exhilarated, happy; and I haven't felt this good in a long time. I think—no, I know—that I can do this.

The night is off to a good start.

Over the next few hours, we do two more songs. We record the more upbeat ones, because I don't feel like I'm ready or even able to sing my more serious ones off the track. Singing the loud, brash lyrics brighten my mood and keep my feet hopping which is what I need right now. It breaks the facade I'd been under, helps me temporarily forget about the day before yesterday with Lindsey and Frank in my apartment (which no one but us three know about.)

Matt is ecstatic about it all and everyone else it too, if in a less animated way. I know everyone's relieved that I'm back, and we're finally all able to share smiles and breathe more freely.

“I think we've done all we need to for today.” Matt tells us, looking at us for some input which we don't give him since we're all drained but happy.

I'd been downing a cold water bottle to help ease my vocal cords and clear my throat when he said that. For some reason, I felt like we weren't done.

I'd always been the type of person who wasn't good at handling difficult situations; more liable to run from them rather than face them like a man. Which was maybe why when she went to the hospital, my fear held me back. I talked the situation down in my head, made her out to be better and healthier than she really was. Because I was afraid to see her, afraid to face up to how bad her condition actually is.

And I'd hurt my bestfriend and her terribly.

My voice catches unintentionally when I speak. “I feel like we should do Bulletproof Heart. I'm still feeling up for another song, don't want to waste it while I think I got it.”

“You sure?”

My gaze falls on Frank, listlessly running his fingertips over the strings of his guitar. No sign of recognition.

“I'm sure.”

I had written this song months ago, but of recently I had been almost sure I wanted to take it out of the album completely. It's not that I didn't like singing it, didn't think it was good enough...it was simply hard for me to sing. I put all my thoughts and efforts into singing, get engulfed by it. Bulletproof Heart was a song I didn't like thinking about, felt like when I read the lyrics or ran them through my mind I was reliving something I wanted to push out.

That I shouldn't push out.

When she first got sick and I went to see her the night she was rushed into the hospital. When I saw her hooked up to a machine with all those tubes stuck in her nose, and the needle in her hand I knew she was going to die. It didn't feel like a question anymore, it was a statement instead. I denied it.

I asked her if she was okay with it, because I wasn't okay with it.

Jenny said gravity didn't mean much to her, said she had found who she had to be at a young age and that was all we really had to do in life. Which I knew meant she had found peace with something as taboo as death. I went home and stayed up all that night, writing down lyrics in letters as harsh and angry looking as my feelings at the world.

Still, I don't know why bad things happen to good people. It had never truly occurred to me that death could happen to a brave, young person. Not like this, not when she had so much put out for her in the future. She said they were going to get married one day, that she had an incredible job opening and she thought she was ready for it. And then—

I reposition my microphone, squint at the ground and try to summon the strength to sing one last song for the night. For Jenny and Frank, because this was really their song and their story; not mine.

One, two, three.

“Gravity...don't mean too much to me. I'm who I've got to be; these pigs are after me, after you.” I open my eyes, stare at the ceiling. “Run away, like it was yesterday, and we could run away, if we could run away...run away from here!”

So maybe it was my time to accept what was happening to her.

The song—and knowing I wasn't going to take it off the record—made me realize.

I could do this.

*

As I'm sitting in my car that night, lighting up before I drive away, someone raps on my window. I glance up, then put the cigarette between my lips and roll down the window.

“Hey.”

“Listen—”

I interrupt. “You want me to light you one?”

Frank shakes his head, small smile. “Nah, I'm trying not to smoke every time I leave a building.”

“Alright.” I shrug.

“I just needed to say thanks.”

My vision blurs as I exhale, steady stare out the windshield window wavers. “It's okay, man.”

“No, I'm serious. I'm glad you made it out here, and that you sang Jenny's song.”

“You make her so happy, and if it wasn't for you going to see her I don't think she'd be around right now.” I shake my head, while my cigarette burns forgotten between my fingers. “I owe you a lot.”

“I think it'll be alright.”

“I think you're right.” I look up at him. “I think you're definitely right.”

“Drive safe.” He drums his hand on the roof of my car, nods. “See ya.”

“Wait, Frank—”

He turns around a few feet away, waits.

“I'm going to go see her tomorrow. This time I actually am.”

“Good. Now get outta here.” He turns back nonchalantly, waving over his shoulder. Before he turned, I saw the sad/happy smile that broke his face and I think it sums up what my life is like.

*

I have a dream the night before I visit her—

About a girl with a hollow smile and scars inside, terrified of leaving.

Him covering his ears every time she told him the fears drilled in her, saying it wasn't true, wasn't true, isn't true. Asking why they didn't just blow a hole in this fucking town she'd been trapped in, run away. Forget her parents, forget the way she'd grown up.

How he'd tried to convince her to come for a long time, saying that if she did they wouldn't have to pretend to be strangers. Begging her to let him save her, that if she didn't run away who would save us? Telling her he couldn't fake for much longer, couldn't climb through her window like it was a crime, that he didn't care if it was.

The way they escape, gunning out of the house to a motor that had been hot because he'd been in there for so long, trying to convince her to come. Asking if it wasn't getting cramped up in her head, since she'd been hiding in there behind the fascist beliefs they'd installed in her.

I wake up with their names on my lips.

Frank. Jenny.

Notes

this is obviously based on the lyrics to Bulletproof Heart and sort of a filler chapter to get down Frank and Jenny's story...I'm going to pick up the Gerard and Lindsey stuff soon! I promise it'll be getting more exciting and dramatic and fanfictiony