Some Other Way to Continue

I’m not really sure what happened. In school you catch corners of gossip. I have no access to phone or internet. All I know is my Gerard and Bert haven’t been in school for three days now and I saw a cop down the street for me. As is my nature, I assume the worst. The guys act distant. The teachers give less homework, which for the first time ever, I hate. I finish my work early and then get to spend the evening sitting in my room brooding on the possibilities, shouting “You fucking bastard” out my window when I’m pretty sure there’s no old ladies to be horrified, and let the window carry my voice off to the deserving.
I ask Gabe about the whereabouts of my boyfriend and friend but he just uncomfortably says, “Shit, I don’t know Frank,” and then hangs out with his other friends. I ask Pete but he gets whisked away by somebody before he answers every time. I ask Mikey and he’s pulled away by Pete. It’s a loop and I’m not in on it.
I spend an increasing amount of time with Patrick. Choose a partner and I’m left with no one if Patrick doesn’t choose me. I’d forgotten how horrible this feels.
By this morning, Friday I’m just pissed off. I get group work with Gabe and two dim girls that could be twins, in English and for the first time in my life I refuse to engage with the subject and topic. I just sit, glaring. Gabe who is usually good humoured never tries to get me to talk, just looks concerned and nervous. Like he has something he could say to make one thing better and another thing worse. Probably because that’s it.
But fuck it, Gerard can deal all he wants. He can be a huge druggie. Fuck, he can run an LSD factory where he enslaves children to work for him. He can get in trouble all he wants, I’m not involved in everything so I guess I’ll be involved in nothing now.

Romantic, the rain. You know the way the wet slicks people’s hair and tightens their clothes. In old movies people would run through the rain to embrace and kiss and tell each other they were wrong. In the rain cutsie couples share umbrellas. In the rain people did all that dancing and singing and proposing. In the rain people kiss passionately as their camera makeup miraculously stays intact. In the rain people see their lover through the grey drizzle and think “damn I would” or “that’s the person I want to marry”. All these are beautiful rainy day romantic experiences that probably end in someone getting laid. The scenarios race through my head as I walk, hood up, through the rain to ballet. My mom is working late so I have to walk there myself on a beautiful shower welcoming us to April.
I would have loved a romantic scenario but instead I nearly got hit by a car.
In the heavy rain it’s hard to see you know. You take a look down the street and unless they have lights on you won’t see a car until you’re kissing the bumper.
I’m at the end of my street. My tracksuit is so stuck to me so tightly I feel like a twelve year old girl. My hair is slowly becoming a new layer of skin. My bag on my shoulder is heavy with rain and my coat is so water-laden it’s virtually useless.
I look left and right like we’re thought to since childhood. I take a step out and I hear a car screech and swerve before I get yanked back onto the path. “What the fuck! Did you want to get hit by a fucking car?!”
I turn around and look up to see Gerard. What the fuck… I blink rain out of my eyes, making sure it’s actually him and not my romantic fantasies making me see and hear things. When I confirm he’s real I shrug out of his grip. “Fuck off,” I growl.
He drops his hand and takes a step back, eyebrows raised. “Sorry for just pulling you out of the way of a car. I’ll let you go back to bouncing off fucking steel.”
I make a weird strangled sound. Gerard’s eyebrows raise a further inch, an expression of what the fuck splayed on his face. I throw my arms up in exasperation and turn away. This time I walk up farther to a possibly safer crossing point. Gerard follows behind me, eyeliner dripping down his face and all black outfit stuck to him. “What’s your problem?” he calls after me.
I stop and spin around. “What the fuck do you mean my problem? You weren’t in school all week you dickhead! No explanation. Nothing! I see the cops at your house. I hear rumours you might get time? What the fuck is your problem!” he opens his mouth but I’m not done, “I heard you make phone calls and shit and I saw you in alley ways. I decided to wait till you explained it yourself but you never fucking did! You never explained anything! It’s like I’m separated from your day job or something you fucking asshole. People told my mom bad things about you guys but I cover up and get a whole load of shit. People at parties say stuff about you and everything, so what is it Gerard? What part do you and fucking Bert have in the massive fucking drug industry in this town?”
I would have continued but something about his expression seemed so hurt. “Drugs?” he squeaks.
“Yes! Fucking drugs!” I spit and wipe so much rain off my face I could water an African village. “Why didn’t you even tell me you bastard?!”
“What… Frank… It wasn’t drugs!” he spits the last word.
“Stop fucking lying Gerard!” I turn away and start walking off towards ballet. Behind me Gerard makes an anxious, awkward noise.
“I did take drugs as a sophomore. A lot okay. I was going out with Bert and we started going to drug filled parties.” I turn around in the rain. My whole body is now shaking with the cold. Or maybe it’s not just the cold. “One got crashed and everyone was taken in and we have an “underage drinking” on our records but elsewise we just got away clean. Except now we’re known by the cops to be affiliated with the people who are dealing. So there was a massive bust on Sunday and we had to give statements and shit.”
I turn this over in my mind. True or not I take any possible relief.
“Then what about the lane? Probably more than once! That’s a pretty fucking suspicious place to just, like, chill. The phone calls, the randomly leaving me while we make out, after you asked me to skip school? What about getting “the stuff” and all that fucking shit?” I demand. I’m going to be so fucking late for ballet.
His face drops. Caught. “Um. This is… Okay… You know the way it’s illegal to drink and smoke at our age. Yea well myself and Bert got into a kinda bad business supplying people fifteen and older with it,” he scratches the back of his head. “Bert has an ID and I handle the uh customers. Making sure they pay. They’d usually call and order like fifty dollars of vodka for a party and I make sure they pay… We take a cut, so like if they give us fifty dollars, we’ll get them as much for that and keep the change. Sometimes I then put them, um, in the way of the drug dealers, if they want. I’m like that uh bridge or something. I didn’t tell you because… well…” he looks really uncomfortable in the rain with black-grey waterfalls pouring from his eyelids. “It’s not an okay thing but it’s how I afford shit. Like clothes and food and cigarettes and drink for all the parties. And um drugs…”
I don’t know what to say. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s better than dealing though.”
“It’s still kind of dealing, only to like, younger people than I expected.”
“Would you rather it was fucking pills?”
“I rather you told me, straight away. None of this sneaking around bullshit where I get paranoid and worried to death you’d get locked up.”
“You were that worried?” he half smirks, what an ass.
“Oh fuck off I’m late for ballet.”
“I’ll walk you there.”
“No you won’t.”
So Gerard and I walk through the driving rain. He tries to make his “source of income” seem better by calling it a public service and saying things like “don’t tell me you didn’t drink when you went to parties, age fifteen” and “I don’t tell them to, I don’t even offer to, they come to me!” The more he talks the more I realise how fucking ashamed he is and I realise why he was embarrassed to say anything,
Doesn’t excuse him though.
I turn up to ballet twenty minutes late.

My mom hears all the news off Debby that night.
Ellie comes over and we complain and bitch in my sitting room as our mom’s gossip over wine. “You’ll never guess who was busted!” Ellie grins as she rolls the die. For some reason we ended up playing monopoly. “Harris Davies, you know the senior? Big guy? On the baseball team? Yea well apparently he was a big dealer, dealing to all the smaller dealers and he’s getting proper time because he’s eighteen. Chance: bank error in your favour collect £50. Yay!”
“I think I remember him. Did the main person get in trouble?” I ask paying her £11 pounds for landing on her property.
She shrugs, “Doubt it. The ring leader never gots caught. No one high up in the “chain” ever does. Only the little guys. That’s why it’s really shocking Harris got caught. A lot of people didn’t know he was dealing at all and that’s because he’s so high up. He wasn’t working for one group though. The pills are from here and distributed like nationally. People in the town know this but the FBI and government don’t.”
“The FBI are involved?” I gasp. Not what I expected at all.
“No,” she shakes her head, “”No, no, they are looking for the big group but this town is too small to be considered. Anyway the cops wouldn’t put two and two together after getting Harris. Especially because he had other stuff to deal too. Not just pills but heavy stuff.”
“Like…?”
“Cocaine, Heroin and Pot.” My eyebrows raise at this. “Like he had a little but more pills really. Don’t look so shocked you could get Cocaine and Heroin on every street corner in America and Pot in every other kids back pocket.”
I didn’t expect Ellie to speak so bluntly. I guess she’s just really put out considering half her senior friends are fucking locked up.
Ellie has to drive her and her mom home after two hours. No one had officially won the game but if it had gone on Ellie would have crippled me.

The next morning my mom is making pancakes for breakfast. Immediately I recognise this as a sign of either of two things; she’s hung over or she’s apologising. It could be both.
I sit at the table and stare at the Nutella jar. It’s too early for me to even think about which it could be.
“So I was talking to Debby last night,” she says dropping a pancake on my plate.
“I know,” I say cautiously and begin smothering my pancake in Nutella.
“Well she told me there was a big drug bust in town. And a lot of kids got in a lot of trouble.”
“Yes?”
“And none of them were those boys you skate with, were they?”
“No they weren’t, they’re not in the drugs ring!” I can say this with conviction now.
“I see. That leaves a big hole in the story then, doesn’t it? How did those drugs get in my bathroom? If it wasn’t those boys were they yours?”
“Mom, no! It wasn’t just me and the guys some other people I don’t know too!” I bite defiantly into my pancake, “I don’t know who they are but it must have been them.”
My mom obviously doesn’t believe me. “I knew one boy, Harris. The others were with him. He’s locked up now,” I lie. This is a good lie I hope, because what could falter? My mom is hardly going to ask him if he left drugs in her bathroom,
“Harris Davies?” she asks handing me another pancake.
I nod. “Why on earth did you invite him?!” she exclaims.
“I didn’t, I think he heard I had a free house and came over with some other people who might have known my friends!” Lies, lies, lies, lies.
My mom mulls this over. “I don’t know what to say to you Frank. Why didn’t you tell me in the first place?”
“I didn’t want to get Harris in any serious trouble,” I lie. I don’t know Harris but I can’t turn back now. I’m going to have to write the details down so I don’t forget who I’m blaming.
My mom turns this over in her mind and hands me another few pancakes. When I get out of the car at the ballet school I hope I’m leaving my mom to rethink the punishment. Maybe not unground me because I did throw a party and she can’t think I wasn’t drinking, but maybe she’ll stop thinking of my friends as bad people.
I spend the time in the big mirror lined hall practising a movement which I wasn’t fully explained to me because I was so late.

Notes

So coming to the end now feels really weird. Like I'm literally about to write what happens in the end and it not be a spoiler, you don't understand the relief :)) thanks everyone who read and rated, means soooooooooo much. I know the original is always better but i hope this sequel wasn't too shit and I hope the end isn't the opposite to what you hoped and stuff