Frank runs up behind me and grabs my left arm, dragging me from the barely conscious body of Bert.

I could clearly see the damage I had caused to him. There was blood gushing from his nose, which seemed to be squashed at a weird angle – probably broken. His right eye was swelling and turning a black-purple colour. Actually, most of him seemed to be doing that.

“What the fuck,” I hear Frank whisper to himself as he starts helping Bert up.

“I don’t need your help faggot,” Bert shouts at Frank, elbowing him in the face.

“I was just-“

“No, get away from me!” and with that Bert stand up and walks away; well I wouldn’t call it walking, it was more leaning into the wall while hobbling, tripping over every so often.

“Look, I’m sorry that I-“

There’s no point in finishing my sentence, as Frank has already gone.

There’s something seriously wrong with me.

The next week passes as a blur. I just go through the days getting on with what I must, somehow managing to avoid any contact with Bert - mostly by skipping various lessons and being careful who I am with. Frank has been ignoring me which sucks. I thought we were getting somewhere.

It’s now Saturday, and I am on my way to our ‘band’’s first practise.

Lindsey’s band had recently split, so her, Ray, Bob and me had decided to start a new band, I needed something to distract me from Frank anyway. It was agreed at Bob would play drums, Lindsey wold play bass, Ray would play lead guitar and I would sing. We still needed a rhythm guitarist, but that didn’t matter too much right now.

I enter the music practise rooms to find that everyone is already there.
“Hey Gerard,” Ray says, dropping the electric guitar he appeared to be tuning.

“Hey there,” I return.

We start off by discussing each other’s levels of experience with our instruments and testing what we could do. After an hour or so, we start playing American Idiot by Green Day.

Don't want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's calling out to idiot America.

We get through a couple more songs, including: Nervous Breakdown by Black Flag, I Don’t Care by Fall Out Boy, You Know Who’s Seatbelt by The Bled and, my personal favourite, Dust to Dust by Misfits.

We stop when Bob check’s his phone and realises that we’ve gone two hours over the practise time we asked for, and someone was meant to have been in here 15 minutes ago.

Lindsey says that she asked the music department to put a flyer up requesting a rhythm guitarist for the band. They probably won’t do it. Since I started the school, I’ve realised that the teachers don’t actually care about what you do. You’ve skipped all my lessons this term? Cool, I’ll give you a B+.

We decide to go to the canteen and get dinner before returning to our dorms to discuss a name for our band. It never really hit me that I’d have to think too much about anything like that, ideas usually came naturally to me. I was seriously struggling with this though.

Eventually, Ray comes up with ‘The Hormones.’ It’s pretty cool, I guess.

We finish our food and agree that we practise at the same time on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

I’m back at Frank and I’s dorm room. I guess that Frank has gone out because he isn’t in here, so I decide to take a bath.

“OH MY FUCKING GOD!” I scream at what I see in the bath.

Notes

Yay! Band! (+bonus points if you know where I got the name from)

Sorry for cliffhanger, I'm not very kind. I promise to upload the next chapter tomorrow though.

The next chapters gonna have a trigger warning - just a heads up.

Shout out to Amay and her guides group thing that she read this too.

~Sovay♥