Some Other Way to Continue

February comes in a shower of sleet. February here apparently is colder than January. I walk to school through a sleet storm. Mom offered me a lift but if I took it I’d be standing around for ten minutes before they opened the school gates. Mom has a meeting and no matter the weather Pencey has a strict opening time. Gabe said he was stuck out in the tail of a hurricane while the janitor’s silhouette was visible in the window, drinking coffee while Gabe got hit by branches and slates broke at his feet. So instead of standing around for ten minutes in the sleet alone, waking at like six or sleep a while longer and walk through the sleet alone for twenty five minutes. As a car splashes an icy puddle of I-really-fucking-don’t-want-to-know at me I begin to regret this as my choice.
I arrive in the doors practically frozen. Ice crystals have begun forming on my coat which is soaked through. My black skinny jeans that were already stuck to me have become practically a new layer of skin. Only this one isn’t moveable.
I stomp through a crowd of sophomores, my socks and shoes so wet that they slop and squelch under me as I grumble through younger, taller teenagers. “Frank?” Pete pipes up from the mass of bodies.
“Yes?” I snap, my head shooting up.
“Jeez chill bro,” he mutters pushing past a girl with dyed pastel pink hair. I just wanted to… I actually don’t know, never mind.” He peels back into the cluster of sophomores. I storm off toward my locker. Gerard looks at me as I pass him but I’m so pissed off I don’t stop to talk. I just feel so uncomfortable and cold.
I sit in English completely peeved. The teacher asks me a question and I spit the answers and I feel the whole class’s shock at my venom. Oh what the fuck ever.
I storm angrily through French and the following classes to lunch. I’m still pissed off even though I’m relatively dry now I just feel uncomfortable. I move up in the canteen line as someone skips me “What the fuck! Get behind the queue douchebag,” I growl. Dave and a guy called Troy turn around, eyebrows raised.
“What did you just say Iero,” Dave growls.
“Get over yourselves and get the fuck in line,” I growl. I regret the words as I breathe them. Shut up Frank, I think to myself. Strangely they seem to concede. Troy throws his arms up in sarcastic resigning. He’s a clumsy fuck and while his arms fell again he smacked a tray out of some kid’s hand. The kid sighs and picks it up. Troy skulks off.
I eat lunch on my own at a one person bench. I have no idea whose idea it was to have a one person lunch bench in the canteen, facing a bin. After I eat my lone lunch I decide I should probably find the guys and apologise for being pissed off.
I throw out the last of my spaghetti which has disturbing jellified and turned into a beige paste at the end of my school grade plastic bowl. I walk, hands jammed in my pockets, into the halls. I’m pretty sure I know the school now but I still always get confused between the hall that ends in the music class room and the band room. In an attempt to get to the band room I find myself facing a classroom with a piano shoved in front of the emergency exit. Sighing, I turn myself around only to see Troy and Dave blocking my view of the otherwise empty hallway. Fuck.
“You think you’re the shit don’t you Frank? Think getting an A in everything means you’re so smart. Think you’re so much better than us. But look you can’t even find your friends,” Troy smirks while Dave purrs this probably well practice speech.
“Do you want to stop fucking with us Iero?” Troy smiles, showing perfectly aligned white teeth. I found it! The only good attribute the asshole has, his teeth!
“I’m not fucking with you, now, please stop obstructing my path to the other part of the school?” I say taking a daring step forward.
Dave dramatically sighs. “Frank, you don’t get it,” he shoves me really hard. Way harder than I could have anticipated and I stumble back into the door of the music class room. I slump down against it without thinking. My knees lock and I feel like I’m stuck forever in squat mode. “We’re not bullies or anything Frank. We just hate people who think they’re better than us. They’re the bullies, Frank. We don’t want to hate you but you need to get over yourself and stop acting like your shit don’t stink.”
I have no idea how to retaliate. No smart or sarcastic comebacks. I just stand their dumbfounded. Troy gives me his hand and pulls me forward, cracking my knee joints. “Look Frank just don’t be an asshole and we won’t be assholes,” he says shoving me down the hall. I stumble over my own feet as I make my escape down the hall.

I get a heap of test results on Thursday. It’s like all the tests they gave us were corrected for the same day.
Maybe they were, Pencey’s teachers are all very chummy.
I get an A in my English essay and in an English quiz she gave us on Tuesday. Dave turns awkwardly in his chair and sees them. His eyes narrow. “What the fuck Iero, I thought I asked you not to act so superior.” He then twists himself back into his seat. I sit up tall and glance over. He got a C in his essay and a D in the quiz. He twists all of a sudden in his seat and catches me looking at his desk. Fuck. Fuck, fuck. He glares at me. “Trying to see what everyone else got? Trying to see how much better everyone else got?”
A few faces turn to me, brows either furrowed or raised. I hear some mumble things like “dickhead” and “that’s so mean”.
I shake my head, “that’s not what I was doing!” I protest.
“No, no. You were just having a peak in. You happy? Better than everyone else yet?” Dave asks looking genuinely hurt.
“Don’t be a tool, that was hardly what he was doing,” Gabe says, his eyes never leaving the window. “Don’t have to flatter yourself, I’m sure Frank gives more fucks about how your chair legs are uneven then about your test. For someone who hates “cocky bastards” you sure like to have all the attention.”
A few of the staring faces relax and turn back to facing the teacher who is sorting through papers on her desk, searching for some student’s essay. The rest of the students laugh along with Gabe.
Confused at how that all just turned on him, Dave hunches his shoulders and turns around to scowl down at his papers. I look over to Gabe and mouth a “thank you” but he can’t see me, he said all that still staring out the window. I glance down at the big red B and C+ on his papers. It baffles me how he does so well without looking in the class room from the beginning to the end. I sit quietly for the rest of the class.
I get all As and Bs in the rest of the tests I get back. English class is repeated in Math, Chemistry and music where I get As that bother Dave and Troy. After school I’m walking toward my locker when Troy shoves me full force into a trash can which knocks over under my weight and spills me and its contents across the hall. When I find my dignity amongst the banana peels and sandwich bags I push myself up onto my feet and see Pete shoving Troy and calling him various things. No one’s laughing but only Pete seems to protest it.
I dust myself off and kick the trash back into its can. I try to calmly lift it up but I’m shaking with shock and anger. When Pete is done giving Troy shit for knocking me over he comes over and asks me if I’m okay. Troy shouts at people who are staring and marches proudly off. He obviously doesn’t take shit from sophomores very well. Pete walks with me back to my locker.
“Look man I can’t have you getting beat up here,” he says. “You’re my friend and it’s not okay. Gee has been telling Mikey how you keep… showing off that you know everything in class. It’s okay I know you don’t mean to but if you could, like, tone it down… You know you don’t need an A in every small class test, only the big ones at the end count. So if you could just cool it you’d make life a lot easier on yourself.” #

My mom is delighted with my results. She “can’t believe how my scores have increased since Jersey” and how “this new school must be nurturing my love for learning and unlocking a whole new level to my knowledge” and such bullshit. She phones my grandparents right in front of me and blatantly brags for a half hour before hanging up and deciding to celebrate my As with wine I’m not aloud. After a glass she promises to make a delicious meal and sends me to Walmart in the sleet with eight fifty to buy some cake. I trudge on through the ice water as it stings the hell out of any exposed skin and soaks my coat and scarf. I don’t know why I bother. Maybe if I walked naked I’d be arrested and get to sit in a nice warm police car. I won’t be skating with the guys today. Or the next day or the next day probably. The sleet soaks the roads and paths and the night freezes it leaving the town a shiny, cold death trap.
I slip at least six times on my way to Walmart and at least eleven on my way back. The cake arrives to my mom unharmed but I’m cold and bruised. I go upstairs to shower and do homework until mom calls me for food; chicken curry that she made from scratch. It tastes miles less salty than the packet ones and a little bit too bitter but as a first attempt my mom seems very pleased. I tell her it’s delicious and I love it and before I know I’m being fed a second portion by an ecstatic Linda Iero.
I get into bed that night freezing cold and trying to sort through my thoughts. I was texting Gerard and he agrees with Pete that I should “tone it down” and maybe not get straight As in English and Math or that I should at least stop speaking in class. Bert tells me that people keep trying to bitch about me to him and that a lot of people like me and think that I’m “quirky” but a lot think I’m just weird. I have a year and a half left in school. I could be a good student, have very few friends and struggle to live outside of the classroom to ensure a good grades and that I’ll get good reports and recommendations into a good college, have my mom delighted and get shoved around by gradually more people. Or I could be a social butterfly and survive school like Gabe, never do any extra work or any effort, get okay grades, have friends and ultimately not get pushed around only to get into an okay college and get an okay job and live the rest of my okay life in an okay way.
I hate that these are my choices.

We have a free math class. Our teacher is in but just, like, forgot to come to class. Everyone is so busy talking and laughing and playing various beat drop songs to notice me and Patrick beginning the next algebra chapter. I understand the last one but if you were to quiz me on it the best I might get is a B. I hope that will be enough because it was a long ass chapter and everyone else had started the last geometry one. Patrick gets frustrated trying to explain something I realise is very simple but I just can’t get my brain around.
When I think I may kind of get it we attempt a question. Patrick works with me but I question his logic, which makes no sense to me, and he questions mine. In the end we have to give up.
“Look, Frank, I just know that this is how you do it okay!” he says loud enough that people in the seats right next turn in surprise to see that the little fedora wearing guy has a voice.
“Oh sorry master of algebra! I didn’t mean to, you know, try answer the fucking question too. I’ll never go against your all knowingness again!” I laugh coldly.
He sighs and groans in frustration. After another quick attempt he slams his pencil down and stomps to his desk where he searches his little messenger bag school bag for a copy with the question in it. He claims they had that question for homework but the way he answered it was fucking stupid. While he’s gone a guy called Alec walks past me on his way back from sharpening a pencil. He drops a note nonchalantly on my desk.
Patrick is still storming through his bag and flicking through copies in the front of the room so I see no reason not to open it now.
I’ll pay you right dollars every day you do my geometry homework. Well that was unexpected. Alec is a quiet kid who seems to be pretty rich. I mean he drives to school in a 2004 bmw and he lives closer than I do. That’s also quite an expensive first car. He doesn’t mean to show off his wealth but some people are just so obviously able to afford things like butcher’s steak for dinner while everyone else eats Walmart’s frozen casseroles. Eight dollars a day is probably nothing to him but to me…
Patrick comes back waving a copy where the problem we were doing is solved using his method. He has a smug smile but proceeds to show me why his way is correct rather than rub it in.

Notes

Sorry for not updating yesterday, I hadn't realised how long it would be and whatnot so here it is anyway! I hope you enjoy it and I hope y'all know how much it means to me that people are reading my fics like wow :3 <3