Some Other Way to Continue

The following week I ace all pop quizzes. Probably because the only pop quizzes I have are in math and English. I decide to meet the Patrick guy every second lunch for half an hour to go over parts of the maths course I can’t understand. Patrick is patient and probably good at teaching but I just don’t understand what the fuck x, y, c, and m have to do with each other and how I’m supposed to draw a curved line when they only give me two points. Patrick calmly walks me through it all. I stay at home two nights just working on maths trying to catch up.
Ballet is back this evening after a Christmas break. I have been stretching and practising as often as I can so I can go straight back with strong legs. My dad was quite disappointed to see me stretching my calves Christmas morning and practising my pliés across his kitchen. He never approved of me doing ballet. While the other dads drove their kids to soccer, baseball and football my dad drove me to the local dance school. He never said it out loud but you can see it in his eyes, he wishes he had a straight son who acted like a straight son. Sucks for him.
I follow Gabe into English. I’m so tired. I stayed up late trying to figure out a math problem that I still don’t get. Before my ass even hits the chair the teacher is handing out essays that we wrote on “an injustice”. I thought I was being very uncreative my talking about the injustice of gay marriage being illegal but apparently my “creative use of language” and “insight into the subject matter” gained me a big red A+.
I see a guy called Dave look over at my score. “Of course Iero got an A. What did you write, some weird shit about an injustice that isn’t really an injustice or something?” the class laughs. The teacher doesn’t seem to have heard what he said.
I look at Dave unable to reply. Like what the fuck do you say to that? Gabe pipes up beside me, “I hope he fucking did because that sounds better than anything you could write fuckbrain.” He says this without his gaze leaving the window. The class laughs again. The teacher still doesn’t hear.
Dave rolls his eyes, “Do you write that weird shit too? No, that’s because you’re not always trying to be better than everyone else like our little A student.”
The teacher silences the class before Gabe can retort. I just sink in my chair. This time I didn’t even try to write something alternative.
I spend the rest of the class silently pissed off. I don’t answer any questions or put up my hand at all. I literally don’t raise my gaze off the desk.
French is okay. I pass Gerard notes en Français as we learn the words for love and whatnot. We just say things like “I would like to kiss you” and I would like to kiss your” with an arrow to crude drawings. It was all funny until our teacher took a note I’d written about losing your Virgin Mary. The teacher read it but by the confused expression didn’t get it and threw it in the recycling then writing the French for “rude” really largely on the board. Bert just laughed at us.
Religion with Gabe and Gerard is just so funny. Why Gerard takes that class is a wonder to me. I think he believed it would be an easy A or something. On Monday we were given the task of writing a six page essay on religions trying to convert people to be done by today. Gerard wrote one entitled “If we’re not careful we’ll turn into Catholics”. The class sniggered as he read it aloud. The teacher was less impressed. Though his essay contained a lot more facts than anyone expected the teacher sent him to the principal’s office and refused to correct his essay. Our teacher is a devout catholic from the west of Ireland. I got a B for my essay on missionaries.
Patrick explained the problem I didn’t get at lunch. It made me feel really dumb but Patrick didn’t seem to mind terribly. I thanked him and complimented him on his fedora, making him blush deeply. I don’t particularly like fedoras but the kid wears them a lot. When I finish with Patrick I still have fifteen minutes of lunch so go outside in search of the guys. I spot Pete surrounded in girls. I decide to leave him like that.
I walk along the back of the tennis court. I hear Gerard before I see him but he’s whispering “… don’t worry I’ll get it. Hold on I think someone’s coming…” I dip into the shadows. I don’t know why but I feel like I should let him finish the call. “Is someone there?” he says louder. I stay silent. “Never mind sorry, meet me tonight and I’ll sort you out. Thirty days okay? Thirty days or we’re never doing business again and you could find yourself in trouble. I mean it this time…”
I feel like I’m seriously intruding. I have no idea what he means but I know waiting around till he finds me listening is a bad fucking idea so I start walking quickly and quietly back toward the school. Maybe I’ll disturb Pete and all the emo girls after all.

“Fluidity!” Adrienne shouts for not the first time. “It’s as if all that Christmas food has given you the grace of a turkey. Chin UP Leanne! Frank try get your left leg straighter! Maisie what are you doing?!” And so it continues. We’re doing bar work for the next month because apparently everyone forgot how to move over the Christmas break. A lot of girl’s legs have completely weakened and they collapse when on one leg or even some on two en pointe. Adrienne is so fucking pissed off. “I expect to see you all here tomorrow! Build back up your strength or none of you will make your grading in April!”
The class ends in exhaustion. Everyone is tired and frustrated and a lot of girl’s toes bleed. It’s sort of gruesome to be honest. I seem to be the only one not complaining of leg pain. I want to rub it in that I at least kept stretched. I even had a Gerard style comment “I was stretching my calves while you girls were stretching your clothes.” I decide not to say this just so I don’t get beaten up by some fourteen year old girl in a leotard.
My mom picks me up and I tell her all about how none of the others practised. Only to my mom to I brag like this.
I shower and dress to go skating straight away. I’ve ditched the guys after school a lot and I want to make out with Gee.
I leave as fast as I can so my mom doesn’t realise I haven’t eaten. I call up to Way’s but the guys have left already. I’ll probably find them at the library, if not I’ll just go home.
I skate toward the park when I see Gerard’s skate board poking out of an alley’s shadows. My heart fills with worry. I park my board beside his and sneak down the alley in the shadows. Unarmed and short this could have been better thought through.
I turn a corner in the alley and hear voices. In the shadows I see two hooded figures talking to a guy in a beanie. I duck to the right, behind a pile of black bags. A piece of plastic crunches under my foot. I wince. One of the hoodie guys is definitely Gerard because it’s his Iron Maiden hoodie. I can’t quite make out what they’re saying. Their voices are hushed and they’re about twelve feet away on the other side of a wall of trash.
I barely have to crouch which is quite pathetic. Looking up I see Gerard hand the beanie guy a bag out of his backpack. He then shakes his hands with the guy and says “Thirty days.”
And then the hooded figures start walking toward me. Fuck. The other one is Bert. They walk at an average pace. Fuck. I crouch and run around the corner, “Hey is someone there!” Bert calls.
Nope, no. No one here. I run as fast as I can down the straight of the alley, kicking a cat in my effort to get to my board. Just as I get to it I hear Bert and Gerard turn the corner. I skate then as fast as I can toward the library.

Sunday Pete and I have a very stupid idea that we very stupidly go through with. We’re standing in the waiting room of the town’s only tattoo parlour. A girl covered in tattoos and Piercing stands at the counter and tells us to wait a minute before the tattoo artist is ready. We sit down and talk about what we want to get. “I think I’ll get a flame and the word hope on my chest. I dunno I’ve just wanted it for a while,” I say.
Pete nods grinning. He shows me a picture of what he wants. I have no idea what it is so I just nod and say, “where do you want it?” Pete grins wider and dramatically drops his head.
I laugh, “Nice man, classy. I hope it’s a fucking old man who does it for you. Makes you pull your pants right off and feels you right up.”
Pete is about to reply when the girl pipes up, “I’m not an old man and feeling you down there will cost you extra. I’ll take one of you now.”
I look guiltily at Pete who is still grinning. “After you brother,” he says.
I didn’t want to go first but I find myself taking my shirt off in a little curtained off room before I can think about it. First she shaves what little hair I have off my chest. “So what do you want?” she says swabbing my chest with antiseptic.
“Uh if you could do like a flame and the word hope?” I say. I don’t really know what a good thing to say is.
She smirks, “Yea I could do that. How big? What colour?”
I feel strangely flustered. “Um about this size,” I draw a circle on my chest with my finger, “and in black please.”
She nods, “cool.” Firstly she draws on my chest with a black sharpie. It’s cold and damp and feels really weird. Yea I’ve drawn on my skin before just not there. I snort a laugh at the thought of Pete getting his. “Hold still” the woman says.
When she has it drawn on she asks if that’s what I want, holding up a mirror so I can see it. “Yea,” I say, rather quietly, so I nod vigorously too. She smirks and takes out a clean needle and fills it with black ink.
“If you think about something other than the needle it won’t hurt as bad. If you think about the needle it’ll sting like a bitch. Oh you and your friend are over 18 yea?” She says squirting a bit of ink as a test. I nod. “Great, don’t cry.”
In an effort to not think about the black ink piercing my skin so it can live forever on my chest, I accidentally end up thinking about Gerard and Bert in the alley. I don’t want to think about what they were doing but I’m pretty sure I know. There’s always lots of drugs at Pete’s parties…
You can’t assume that you’ve only been to two I try tell myself but come on that was fucking suspicious, seeing that in the alley and hearing Gee on the phone.
No matter what it is what the fuck am I to do? Confront him? Pretend I don’t know? Maybe ask him if he knows someone who can get me cocaine to see if he says “Yea I’ll give you some after Math”?
I leave the parlour with a bandage over my new tattoo and a pain that feels like I’ve had a chest skin transplant. I don’t think that’s even a thing. Pete grins up at me from his seat. “Can I see it?”
“Later” I assure him as he walks off to get tattooed under his belly button.
I sit on a chair and flick through an outdated issue of Alternative Press rock magazine. Looking at an article on Möterhead I have only decided three things; I’m not allowing myself to regret this tattoo ever, I’m not letting myself get fat and grow man boobs that will stretch this, and I’m not asking Gerard about his dealings I’m going to wait till he tells me.

Notes

Okay so here's an update! I have the whole fic plotted out now so hopefully there'll be no more writers block to slow it down :3 thanks for reading & rating guys it means an awful lot :3