We'll dance again

I do all my homework swiftly that night. I have ballet tomorrow and practice all day Saturday so I want to actually see Gerard at some point. We’re not a couple but we aren’t single either. I know I sound like a middle school girl “oh yea we have a thing” but that’s literally it. Since the guys found out we have thing we’ve been spending much less time alone. It’s like they’re really afraid one of us will get pregnant.
“I’ll be back later,” I call swinging dinnerless out the door, board in hand. I skate down the road and meet Gerard and Mikey on the street. Mikey shakes his head and skates ahead, almost falling off when he hits a curb a little awkwardly.
Gerard starts talking about something but I for some reason can’t concentrate on what he’s saying. It’s a concept for a cartoon or a comic but his words aren’t computing. My mind won’t let me focus in on anything now because it’s just remembered that tomorrow I have to try ruin the lives of two popular people without, like, dying.
We skate through the park as I continue to try hear Gerard over the sound of my brain screaming YOU’RE FUCKED. I nod and smile at something Gerard just said to make himself laugh.
I force a laugh that sounds like a mauled cat. “Frank you okay?” Gerard mouths, well says but it’s not really passing the block of panic in my ears.
I nod and start shaking like mad. Okay I’m not okay.
Gerard stops skating and pulls me off my board. I stumble off a bit and Gerard pulls me into him. My lack of balance knocks me and him unto the grass where I continue to shake violently. Gerard might be saying something, he might be saying nothing. I can’t hear anything still but my breath is becoming restricted. I always get nervous or panicked before doing one of Alison’s tasks but man this one…
Carl could probably kill me. Very easily just punch me hard enough. Madison, other than Alison, is the most influential person in the school. Not only do all the girls, almost, revere her but all the guys drool over her and would do anything for her because she would then sleep with them. And then if I fail Alison has amo and some. She also has a photo of me holding girls legs and videos of me poking them to check their stability. Of course I look like a sexual predator but I was really just helping them with positions that are too hard. I said this to her and she slapped me giggling “pervert”.
My ballet life is just screwing me over. I got the male lead in the Christmas performance but what good is that if you’ve died of shame prior to the show.
Gerard strokes my hair. He might be saying something soothing or cooing but I can’t hear him still. My body continues to shake violently but very slowly my breath returns to my own realm of control. I concentrate on each shaky breath coming in and out being full. I don’t really see anything I don’t think. I’m not even terribly aware of the fact I’m lying on Gerard.
A length of time passes and my breath is almost fully in my power again. I’m shaking but its more tremors than dangerously strong quakes. I can hear Gerard now. He’s muttering “It’s okay Frankie,” in different tones and at different speeds with different length intervals.
After a while I push myself upright and stare down at Gee who’s still lying down. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay now,” I say, a little shaky.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he sits up. And that’s it. He doesn’t ask again but tosses a few worried glances at me every now and again. We skate toward the library then in silence.

The weekend drags on painfully. I dance all Saturday and then go out to dinner with my mom in a “fancy” restaurant that had a dress code of no shorts. I wasn’t aloud out that night because we had a fight in the way home, not my fault, and got to spend my Saturday night drinking bourbon on my own in my room. Yummy.
I woke up with a hangover Sunday and had to clean the house because my mom’s co-workers were coming. I then had to wait around in weird ass clothes and be uncomfortably polite around men and women with stern expressions. When they left I had to clean again. By the time I could leave the house I was beginning to panic again and went to bed instead.
Monday mornings are torturous. Not just because it signifies the beginning of another work week. Nor is it because they signify the end of a weekend. They suck because Mondays are days everyone hates them for their own reasons leaving the worst possible atmosphere dancing about and making it impossible to do anything.
My reason to hate Monday is because I have two people to “ruin” and very limited time and resources to do so.
I decide to not actually go to school today. Mom buys my feeling sick and leaves for work. I spend the rest of the morning sitting on the edge of my kitchen counter nervously waiting for it to be nine o clock. I throw my backpack over my shoulder and slip out the door.
Thanks to Alison’s errands I know the school inside out. I know all the halls, all the back entries and all the cameras. I walk to school then when the clock strikes nine. It’s raining heavily just to add to the pleasure of my job.
I slip in the school gates and take a wide birth of the main building, slinking instead around the pitches. I know no one will be training or doing PE right now because of the rain. I know also that every door will be unlocked around the back of the building. I climb in to the girls changing rooms, one of the parts of the school you can enter by low window and will have no cameras on you. I search the gym lockers until I find the one that belongs to Madison. I know it from accidentally opening it instead of some other girl who pissed Alison off. The girl is fucking vindictive. I take her bottle of 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner colour protect expensive bullshit and squeeze a lot into the bin. I twist the bottle open and pour in a shit ton of black hair dye. It cost barely anything, no wonder all the skaters bar Mikey have dyed black hair. I close the lid and shake it well before putting it back in the locker. I know this will be enough to basically ruin Madison. She’s one of those girls who loves how they look and consider it to be their only good feature. I know it’s not true, I’m sure she has better qualities than blond locks but Alison doesn’t think that and neither does Madison which is what matters right now.
I shove the dye into my bag and hope to god this will be enough. I hate messing with people that haven’t done anything to me. It was easy to screw with Geoff and some of the others but Madison had not only never done anything bad to me but was actually kind of nice. She apologised for skipping me at lunch once and insisted I go first. She lent me a pen in another class and picked up one of my books when Geoff slammed them out of my hands. Little things that make “ruining her life” a little harder.
I walk into the guys changing rooms next. It’s much easier to screw with this asshole. I cut a massive hole in the crotch of all the pants in his locker. Then I get out a black sharpie and write I SUPPORT LGBT RIGHTS WITH ALL MY HEART across the back of one of his jerseys. On the other, paler jersey I artfully paint a rainbow and write I wish I was gay just so I could piss off the homophobes a quote by Kurt Cobain I know no one will get. I shove the things into the locker and run for the squash halls. My class has PE now so it’s not particularly safe to be out sick and in the locker room.
I wait for about fifteen minutes after the bell. Anyone not in class… well they should really be in class. I sneak out of the squash room and up a back stair way no one seems to take. My school is a squat two story building with a labyrinth of halls. It’s like someone designed it so that rooms 111-119 are would contain a secret treasure only reachable from a staircase that sits between the squash courts. I’m so fucking glad that only one class takes place in room 111 every week and its advanced physics. I walk into the room and cross it to its other door that leads to a slightly more populated corridor, the one where Carl’s locker is situated.
I’m so used to opening his locker and putting his homework in that nothing feels wrong.
Out of my bag I pull pages of an English short story we had for homework. I replace Carl’s own one with my modified one. Carl’s would have been embarrassing enough but it won’t ruin him quite like this. This part of the “ruining” is probably the safest because there’s not a hope in hell that Carl looks over his essays before handing them up. Also the handwriting is the same awkward copied version I’ve been using on most of his essays. He can’t say that someone else wrote it. I feel quite proud of how that bit worked out to be honest.
Eye on the time, I run straight from the main locker hall and out the front door, leaping gracefully past posters of Brendon’s head and even bigger ones of Alison’s. I jump over an over-turned trash can and dash out of the school. I don’t look back until I’m out the gate. It seems I haven’t been seen and if I was the person wasn’t bothered to chase me.
With an exhilarating mix of guilt and adrenaline I walk home to spend the rest of day on the sofa.

I seem to have hit two birds with one stone with the hair dye, only one of the stones had just gotten in the way. The next day I see Madison’s golden locks had turned a dull black-grey where she’d obviously attempted to wash the dye out. She looks sad all day and wears loose fitting grey and navy clothes as if it wasn’t even worth dressing like herself anymore. Another girl, Ellie, who had never done a single thing wrong to Alison or myself had her strawberry blond hair dyed black too. She seems terribly distraught every time I see her and I feel full on terrible.
Carl is a ball of fury. He glares at everyone all day. At lunch I see him training in the I SUPPORT LGBT RIGHTS WITH ALL MY HEART jersey. The coach keeps him after training I see as I walk back toward the school with Ray and Bob and he looks so ashamed. “Even the coaches here are homophobic?” I ask incredulously as the coach pokes my words and shouts something.
Ray nods. “Yea. Alison really knew exactly what to write on his shirt,” Ray laughs.
Alison has taken every inch of credit. People seem to think that they’re either brilliant or cruel and those who think its cruel keep silent. Well except for Madison.
“Really, Ali, Really?!” she screamed in the canteen. “I thought there was some good in you! Attacking everyone! Poor Ellie! You must know that I share my shampoo you mean, mean person. It’s like you’re at so paranoid that people might actually like you so you go and be a total bitch! Well guess what you have bad eyebrows! Oh yes you do, and you call me a whore but we all know you can be just as big a slut! You are a bitch, a whore, and a cow with bad eyebrows and no friends. I hope you lose the class president thing because you don’t deserve to win anything!” After this she ran, tears pouring, out the main door with Ellie in her wake.
Alison just tosses her hair and continues to eat her salad. How could she be so calm? I’d be crying for fuck sake. I notice everyone at her table sneaking glances at her eyebrows. I’ll never get why girls are so protective over lines of hair over their eyes. I mean how can some people have nicer shapes there than others?
English class though was the best. Our English teacher is pretty cool. “So I’ve corrected all the stories. Some very interesting plot twists, well done,” the task was to write a story about something unexpected, I’m pretty sure Carl aced it. “An interesting one on American football. Another good one set in the Spanish revolution, was that historically accurate?” a head shakes to my left. “Oh well it was nicely written. All of you followed the task very well. Though unfortunately not all the subject matter was appropriate for class, Carl. No doubt was it… not what I’d expect you to write… Indeed Carl the way you know when something is inappropriate for class is when you would be embarrassed to read it aloud.”
“I wouldn’t be embarrassed to read it aloud Miss,” Carl says indignantly from the back. There’s some nervous laughter.
“Carl… it is a highly inappropriate topic to write and possibly read aloud.”
“Why is it Miss?”
“Carl, as expressive as it was, porn is not appropriate for class.” The whole room bursts out laughing.
“What?” Carl blurts standing up.
“Sit down, Carl.”
“I didn’t write that miss!”
“I said sit down Carl!”
The whole class is writhing with laughter. Alison catches my eye and nods approvingly through her laughter.
“Is it a memoir?!” someone calls from the back.
“I highly doubt it is,” the teacher says sitting down at the edge of her desk, “Carl has always expressed homophobic views, no?”
With that the class laughs even harder. I knew gay porn would be a hit. Besides the combination of the gay rights gym clothes and the gay porn short story would really ruin his credibility. I find a note in my locker as I get ready to go home Thanks.

Notes

Long ass chapter here. I, uh, didn't really mean to give Frank a panic attack... I don't know it kind of happened... I hope I didn't offend anyone or cause anyone harm or anything.... Thanks for reading this far guys it means the world. I'll write even more tonight xxx