The death of Frank Iero.

“It took you forever to turn the pages of the book last time.” Frank frowned again, and Gerard frowned back apologetically. “I’m not meaning to make you feel bad. This is just an important test, you know? I fail this thing and I don’t graduate.”

“Sorry,” Frank frowned, lowering his head, his long bangs swooping down over his face, shielding his eyes. “I know I’m acting kinda annoying, but it’s just that you were gone all day and night yesterday and most of today.. I just get lonely. You don’t know what it was like before you could talk to me. To have people all around you but to be so alone. To just one day out of the blue have this feeling that you’re trapped. I didn’t understand, and I was so scared. And then people come and go, and you try to ask them what’s going on, but they can’t hear you, and they can’t see you. And when you touch them you go right through them. And then you’re yelling and screaming and doing anything that you can to get them to notice you, but it’s like you don’t exist. You’re just alone and afraid and you don’t know what happened or what’s going on. I was so scared, Gerard. But then you could see me.”

Gerard felt his heart ache for Frank. He couldn’t imagine what it truly must have been like to go through something like that, especially for a sixteen year old kid. Gerard got up from his chair and took a seat on his bed next to Frank. He wrapped a comforting arm around him, the sense of actually being able to feel Frank’s body barely there as always.

“This has got to be torture for you. Like.. living in limbo. I’m sorry. I’ll stay home more often.”

“What about when you move away?” Frank looked up to Gerard, his eyes big, sorrowful, and tear-filled.

Gerard sighed, feeling his heart knot up even more. Gerard was attached to the kid, felt this older brother-like need to protect Frank and keep him happy. But how do you protect a ghost? How do you make a poor soul that’s seemingly miserably trapped to his earth happy? Help them move on was all Gerard could come up with. And he had been meaning to try, but his life had been extremely busy these days, what with college ending and his impending graduation. Helping Frank had been put on the back burner. Plus there was the problem of Gerard not having a clue in the slightest how the hell to help Frank move on. Was there even anything to move on to? There has to be, Gerard thought. Frank had been here miserable for who knows how long, and he deserved to be somewhere where he could be happy. Gerard was determined to figure out someway he could help Frank. He’d have to wait a bit more though before he could devote his time to it, at least until after his graduation and he transitioned to life in the workforce. He’d be working forty hour weeks, but the rest of that time would be all Frank’s.

“As much as I’d missed you, I’ll help you leave this place somehow, I promise.” Gerard showed Frank a comforting smile and gave him a squeeze. “Now maybe how about we try out you helping me study one more time, huh?”

“Yeah, I’ll help,” Frank smiled. The simplest things could make Frank beam. Gerard knew Frank loved finally having interaction with someone, being included. “What’s the subject?” Frank got up from the bed to sit at Gerard’s desk chair. “I can quiz you.”

“Geology..” Gerard groaned.

“The study of dirt,” Frank giggled and let his eyes roam over the open textbook and notebook of Gerard’s class notes. “I know this stuff. It’s the last thing I remember we were being taught in science class.”

“Yeah? But this is college level, and the test is only on volcanoes and fucking being able to identify rocks. The rock shit was on the midterm, which I failed.” Gerard sighed. “At least the professor isn’t making the final exam be on everything we learned throughout the whole semester.”

“Cinder cones, stratovolcanoes, shield volcanoes, and calderas,” Frank recited as he looked to Gerard and smiled smugly. “And then there’s sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous.”

Gerard’s jaw dropped a little. If he was remembering correctly those were the four different types of volcanoes he needed to memorize as well as the three different classifications of rocks. Frank couldn’t have memorized all that with just glancing at his notebook for a few seconds. “Well damn, looks like I’m about to be taught by a high-schooler,” Gerard laughed.

“I’m a straight A student, you know? Well.. was,” Frank corrected with a bit of a lopsided frown. “I didn’t really want to go to college, though,” he went on to say.

“What did you want to do then?” Gerard asked, almost cautiously, nervous that making Frank talk about his dreams of what he wanted to do with his life would make him upset.

“I wanted to make music. I was going to make a band and everything. My friends were going to play with me. I can play the drums. My dad taught me how.” Frank was smiling softly as he reminisced. “He used to play for bands, and he’d take me to see him play when I was little. I wanted to be just like him. He died, though, when I was thirteen.”

“I’m sorry, Frank,” was all Gerard could think to say. Silence crept over the room after that. Gerard seemed to forget about studying for the time being as he just watched Frank sadly. It was killing Gerard more and more that Frank had his life taken away from him.

“Do you think there’s a heaven, Gerard?” Frank’s question suddenly broke the silence.

“I think there’s somewhere special you’re meant to go to.”

“How come I’m not there?”

Gerard frowned. He and Frank never really talked about these things. Gerard never wanted to bring it up, fearing he’d make Frank upset. “I don’t know, but you’ll get there. I don’t know why, but for some reason you’re just.. being delayed, I think. You’ll get there,” Gerard assured.

“I wanna see my dad again. I know he’s in heaven,” Frank smiled. “I could see my dad, and I could play music. That would be my paradise, and isn’t that what heaven’s supposed to be?”

There was a spark of hope in Frank’s eyes that touched Gerard’s heart and made him have to get up and move to Frank. Gerard knelt before him and grabbed a hold of Frank’s hand assuredly. “You’ll get you’re paradise, Frank. I promise.” Gerard didn’t know how. Hell, didn’t know if heaven existed. But no one really knows, they just believe or they don’t. Gerard kind of fell away from the religion he was raised with as a child, but he still clung to the ideas of some kind of afterlife and there being some kind of greater power behind life in the universe. There was a better place Frank was supposed to be. Gerard was sure if it. He didn’t know how, but he’d get Frank there. He would fucking find a way.

Notes

opinions?