Some Other Way to Continue

Eight dollars can go a long way if you make it. Like after collecting eight dollars a day for five days I’m able to afford a bottle of bourbon for me and Gerard to share in his basement Friday night as well as have some money for other things like food whenever I feel like food. Being forty dollars richer just for doing someone else’s triangle work for a week was a good trade off.
Gerard and I cuddle and make out in his basement while drinking an entire bottle of bourbon when I get back from a tiring ballet lesson. It was all bar work and trying to strengthen legs again which included me picking up a lot of girls who are taller than me. I feel so weak and tired that a weekend of not doing math is ideal.
Gerard snuggles closer into me after taking a swig. He nudges his head into my neck and starts kissing up under my chin and toward my ear. I sit there and take another swig from the bottle. I’m never sure what’s right to do in these situations. “Just going with it” only works when I’m very drunk so I think continuing to down the bottle is the best course of action.
After a while my vision becomes super blurry and I find myself going with it. Gerard lifts the bottle to his mouth forcing me away from his mouth and down to his neck and collar bones. He drops the bottle aside and presses down on my shoulders, forcing me to lie down on the couch, half off. He lies half on me and slowly starts grind into me. I move back against him only because if I don’t he’ll push me off the floor.
We kiss hungrily and at some point I take Gerard’s shirt off and he takes off mine. I didn’t even realise he’d unbuttoned my jeans and they were down at my knees until a knock came at the door and all of a sudden Gee is unsteadily jumping to his feet and I’m struggling to sit up straight and pull my pants up.
“Fuck guys,” Mikey says walking in. He seems to lift his hand up to his eyes. Gerard laughs and I grin. “Did you drink the whole fucking bottle?” he groans.
“I think so,” I grin, “or else I’m this fucking drunk on air.” Gerard grins and falls on the couch as he tries to walk over. I laugh at him. He laughs at himself.
Mikey makes a distressed noise. “Frank your mom is here,” he hisses.
All laughter stops. My heart stops. “Shit,” I slur. “Shit,” I say again, trying this time to control the slurring, “Moikey you gotta help me… will you make my mom go home.”
Gerard starts sniggering, “you called him Moikey!”
Mikey rolls his eyes. “I’ll send her home and tell her you’ll be there in a while she’s talking to my mom and said she wants you to go home.”
“Can’t he have a sleep over?” Gee grins and pushes himself closer to me.
Mikey sighs, exasperated. “No, Gee.”
“Awww,” Gerard moans and then starts kissing me.
Mikey makes an annoyed sound and mumbles, “Be ready to leave in less than ten minutes, Frank, I’ll walk you home.”
Gerard grins to me as his brother leaves. “Maybe not tonight but would you like to sleep over?” he asks grinning.
Even fuzzed to fuck and drunk my mind panics at this. I’m a virgin. I don’t want to be a virgin. I feel really not manly so I laugh and say “Yes!”
Gerard smiles widely at me even though his eyes are drooping and his matted greasy hair is falling in front of his face. He’s recently re-dyed it but not cut it so it hangs over his eyes in a jet black mop.
When he is finished grinning down at me he nudges me over and we lie awkwardly intertwined for eleven minutes before Mikey comes in again to walk me home. He has to really hold me up as I slip and stumble down the deathly icy path. I land on my ass in fits of laughter twice in the short distance between the houses.
Mikey opens my front door with my key when I fail to. I stumble up the stairs and hear Mikey shout something like “I’m just getting something Frank loaned from me, good night Ms Iero!” and my mom reply something I can’t hear properly. I strip completely and sleep naked.

The sun streams through my open curtains as I roll over. My clock says it’s eight am. Way too early for a Saturday. I roll over and I can literally feel all the pain in the world that lives there roll with me. I think I’m going to cry. I’ve had hangovers but man this is special. I haven’t even sat up yet and it feels like I have miners in my brain, chiselling at the edges of my head. I think I drank too much too fast and with no water.
I close my eyes to let the pain behind my eyes ease, it’s like the light has targeted the sore part of my brain there. I didn’t think light could even reach there.
When I wake again its thirteen minutes to midday. I guess it’s too late to go for ballet. Oh what a shame I think sarcastically. The white pain returns, no more thinking.
When I find the will to move I walk over to close the curtains in blinding pain. It’s only when I’m at the window looking down at horrified joggers do I realise I’m completely naked. I close the curtains quickly and go in search of clothes. Every time I move a new landslide of pain tumbles through my head.
When I get to the kitchen there’s a not from my mom telling me to get myself to ballet and that she is gone to join the gym. Well that was unexpected. I make myself brunch and take pain killers with enough water to drown a fish.
I’m flicking through channels when the doorbell loudly interrupts a programme on humming birds I switched on to.
I push my way blindly to the door, my head pounding with the sudden effort of walking. I swing the door open to see Ray standing smiley in the doorway. Behind him Bob stands with his arms folded and a no more happy expression than ever.
I’d forgotten I was going to hang out with them today. “Bob said you’d be at ballet, but said you’d be finished,” Ray explains sidling past me into my sitting room.
I rub my temples, “Hey guys, how’s it going?”
“Okay,” Ray chirps as I close the door behind Bob. “Miss you in chemistry.”
Bob grunts and says, “Yea, miss having you around the school Iero.”
I smile despite the muscles in my face hurting, compliments from Bob Bryar, or any niceties are rare as happy memories with my dad. “So how’s the school been coping without me?”
“Brendon is ruling the school, literally,” Ray says, smiling. “It’s weird. Alison has been literally fighting everyone yet people still like her. Well, fear her. Madison is still super against her and asked Brendon to a dance tonight as like a hot poker in the eye to Alison who has been waging war on him. I don’t get what her hate for him is. I think it’s because people genuinely like him. He’s a good guy. We’re also winning in the baseball league and two teachers got fired for making out in the school.”
Oh well that was unexpected. “Which teachers?”
“Mr. Andrews and Mr. Carter,” Bob says, “Brendon is running a campaign to get them back. He thinks they wouldn’t have lost their jobs if they were straight.”
“I think they would still have lost their jobs,” Ray says looking sad.
“Maybe they wouldn’t have lost their jobs, just, like, got the teacher equivalent of getting suspended,” I offer. They both nod contemplatively.
The next three hours is spent with us talking and complaining about school and the people in it. Apparently we all agree that Ellie is very nice. Just as we agree this, scarily, my mom comes home red faced with Ellie’s mom and Ellie. My mom takes me aside and asks for me to entertain Ellie as she has a conversation with her mom.
The four of us sit uncomfortably in my living room. “Sorry again about your hair. Actually I don’t think I ever properly apologised,” I say trying to break the silence but only getting more uncomfortable.
“It’s okay. I actually like the black, I’ve been keeping it this colour,” she says.
So the following hour passes not with playing Halo like I’d envisioned when I invited the guys over but with a collective bitching session about Alison. At first it was very light but it ended with us all very pissed off and complain about every little thing. “And she thinks she’s so good at art but I got an A and she got a B and then wouldn’t talk to me for a month. It’s not my fault that she isn’t as good as she thought.”
Ellie’s mom comes in and tells her they’re going home now. It was their new year’s resolution to join a gym together to “tackle the tummies together” and to spend more time together. Ellie says she had no idea my mom was joining in but she doesn’t mind. Only she says she wished she could go home and take a nap sooner. Ray, Bob and I agree Ellie is the only popular girl in our school we like.
It isn’t long before the guys go home too.

I’ve never been sent to the principal’s office before. I mean I’ve done my fair bit of bad things, in Riverside especially, but never got in trouble. The most I got was detention for constant tardiness or not having homework done or once for shoving back a guy who shoved my down a stairs. I was seriously hurt but he was the quarter back so I got detention and he got to continue shoving short kids down stairs.
Now I sit in absolute terror next to Alec. I’m not sure how the teacher found out. Maybe it was Alec’s perfectly correct homework and D on his quiz. Maybe it’s me being seen at two lockers every day. Maybe someone told on us. Who knows, and at the moment who cares? I just hope the principal doesn’t ring my mom because she’s still super happy about me getting As.
“This is not okay boys,” the principal says sitting down opposite us. “In fact this is very wrong. Alec, how are you supposed to learn if you pay people to do your work? You’re getting yourself into a very bad habit later in life. Frank, you must know that this is bad. It’s against school rules to do anyone else’s work.” He seems to struggle then to think of more things to say. He says another few sentences but I zone out. All I get from them are the words “bad”, “not right” and “detention at lunch and after school for a week, starting tomorrow”. Fab. Starting Wednesday I’ll be kept in the delinquents room.
We both apologise and the principal writes something on official paper and slips it into two files. Fuck, those must be our permanent records. “You can go now,” the principal says and waves us away.
Outside the door Alec sighs, “Sorry man, here’s ten bucks for taking half the shit,” he says and then walks off. I’m not going to complain.
There is one minute left before the lunch bell rings so I decide to run to the cafeteria and get lunch before everyone else comes. I order just as the bell rings and sit down facing the door so I can see the guys as they come in.
The only thing is, they don’t. I’m finished eating and now just sitting alone on a bench for six people. Out of the corner of my eye I see Patrick go to sit on a four person lunch bench by himself. I feel a sudden pang of “that guy is too nice to sit alone all the time” and call him over. He seems very grateful and eats as I tell him what happened. I feel like he’s a very trust worthy guy, like he can hold everyone’s secrets in his fedora.
“Oh,” he says taking a bite from his sandwich, “Alec asked me to do his geography homework before. I did it for a week and he paid me but I felt wrong so I stopped.”
I turn this over in my mind. Alec is really very generous with his abundance of money. I wonder what his family does.
“His dad’s in some risky business,” Patrick mutters, answering a question I hadn’t posed.
“Oh yea?”
“Yea. This town is worryingly into drugs,” he whispers the last word. “I’m not saying that’s what his dad does I’m just saying that that’s a possibility since he doesn’t seem to work but has a big house, nice cars, and a lot of dealings with the youth of the town.” Patrick dusts off his palms. “You seem like a nice guy, Frank,” he’s gone all shy and bashful again, “just be careful who you hang out with because there’s a lot of underground shit here and a lot of people involved.” With that he takes a final drink from his water bottle and walks off to throw his sandwich bag in the bin. That was all very unsettling.

Notes

whoop another chapter! And the next one almost ready so I will probably update tomorrow too! Thanks for reading and let me know in the comments what you think! :*