The End WC

“Frank! Frank?” I cried aloud with an intense desperation as I looked around for him. My eyes were blurry from the tears that were spilling over their edges. In fact, everything was blurry; my memory had gone, and my words were fuzzy at the ends. The last thing I remember were several loud pops – no – bangs. It sounded as though someone had thrown a mortar firework right outside the doors of my third period English class. Followed by another. And another. And another. And still more after that.

I remember clear as day looking to Frank, my dearest Frankie, immediately after the first boom. His face was always clear in my mind, but now I couldn’t see it. He wasn’t with me. He was always with me, but he had gone somewhere else. I needed to find him. I needed to know he was okay.

“Sir,” a commanding voice said into my ear. “Sir!” I struggled to focus on my vision on the man that was in front of me. He was tall and husky. He had a mustache. Just look at the mustache, Gerard.

“Sir, I need you to follow me,” he said in a very systematic voice. It sounded as though he was a nurse or a police officer or something. “Please, Sir, you need to come this way to the checkpoint. It’s not safe for you to be this close.” What wasn’t safe about my school? Someone had just lit off a silly firework, right?

“No!” I screamed involuntarily. I didn’t mean to scream at him. He didn’t do anything wrong. That kid did, whoever it was. “I have to find him!” I yelled again, looking around frantically. I really did need to find Frank, he was so nervous all the time – I needed to make sure he was okay. He usually didn’t like to be by himself. I needed to find him so he felt safe again.

“Sir, I know this is difficult,” I looked down to notice the man’s brown uniform and gold badge. He was a police officer. Why was there a police officer here? What happened? Calm down, Gerard, he’s talking to you. “I need you to come with me past the barricades and check in with the other students. Then you can look for your friend.”

“But, I don’t have time to check in,” I asserted. I had no idea where these words were even coming from. I couldn’t even tell if my mouth was moving. I almost didn’t remember where I was. I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t remembered seeing Frank’s face in English class. He looked so scared. I don’t remember why, but I knew that I needed to make it better.

“I’m sorry. I know this is hard,” he soothed almost impatiently. “But you have to check in.”

“I have to find Frank,” I cried aloud. “I have to find Frank. He’s probably so scared.” I felt grooves of wetness on either side of my face. I think I had started crying, but I don’t really remember when. Everything was hazy.

“Sir, you can look for him once you’re past the check-in.” He ordered. He began to pull me along, and I came back to myself. I felt my legs again, which were aching from all the running I had done. I felt my lungs again, which were burning from the exertion. I felt my heart again, which was aching for my beloved Frank. I felt my body again, which was on the verge of collapsing. Before then, I had been locked in a state of unconscious consciousness. All I knew was Frank’s face, scared and alone. Where the hell is frank?

“Name?” I snapped back to attention as a different police officer spoke while forcefully spreading my arms and legs apart and patting me down.

“G-Gerard. Gerard W-Way.” I couldn’t help but stumble over the words. I didn’t really feel like I was who I was; my vocal chords sounded and even felt different from the ones that I was used to. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but somehow I had ended up at the front of a line, in front of a cop who was patting me down for weapons. My mind could not process anything.

I looked at another unfamiliar face that was hidden behind a police hat and a badge, who took my name down on a sheet of paper. Only after I had watched him put my name at the bottom of a two-columned list, did I look up, and when I did, I noticed everything. And I mean everything.

This was tragic. It was truly horrifying. There were faces that I knew and faces I didn’t, but they were all the same. They were all afraid. They were all sad. For once in my life there were no illusions. Girls’ makeup was running and smeared, the jocks didn’t care that people were seeing them cry; there were no stereotypes. We were all just a crowd: students, parents and spectators alike. The only thing that existed was desolation. Pure desolation.

And then I remembered Frank. He fell behind me as we were running. We were running from that awful noise that seemed to be coming from every direction. Why didn’t you make him run in front of you? I began searching through the crowd for him. I was calm at first, since I had partially regained my senses, but after about five minutes of searching, I began to panic a little bit. I started to push past the ever-thickening crowd in frantic search for my boyfriend, my Frank.

My vision began to blur with tears once more, and I was unable to control my own actions; I needed to get to him, to save him. I needed to protect my Frank. I began to call out his name once more as I heard another shot resonate through the crowd. Everyone went silent. No one could tell who fired the shot, whether it was the police or the same fucking kid that had been firing shots all morning. And so they just listened. They listened while holding their breath. People as young as fourteen were as silent as people as old as eighty.

The silence was deafening, I had expected screaming and panic, but I think the entire community was simply on the edge of their seats. It’s like when you’re a kid and you know your parents are in the other room talking about how they’re going to ground you for burying your brother’s glasses in the ground and then forgetting where you put them. You just sit outside their closed bedroom door, put your ear up against its polished grain and hold your breath in anticipation for the inevitable. You know you’re going to be grounded, but you still have hope that it won’t be so bad.

That’s what this was like. Everyone was hoping and praying to whatever deity they believed in that the body count would be low and leave out all the people that they just so happened to know. I was there with them in a sense, but instead of waiting for someone to find my Frankie for me or hoping that he wouldn’t be escorted outside on a stretcher, I was searching for him. I needed to find him. I needed to find him alive.

“Gerard?” I heard a voice penetrate the already dissipating silence. It was the voice of an angel. The voice of the most beautiful boy on the face of the planet. It was the voice of the one person I needed; it was Frank. I whipped my head around to find the source.

“Frank? Frankie?!” I screamed, still desperate. Nothing was okay until he was in my arms.

“Gerard, I’m here,” he replied meekly. I turned around once more and saw him. I couldn’t believe that he was really there, that he was really alright. Of course I ran to him then. As soon as I recognized that soft black hair and beautiful shining eyes, I ran to him and enveloped him in my arms. I could smell the sweat on the back of his neck; it clouded him normal, cologne-y smell, but it didn’t really matter in that moment. He was safe then.

“I’m never letting go of you again, Frankie, darling,” I mumbled into his hair. He was the only thing that mattered in my life. I pulled out of the hug in order to look at him properly, to drink in his beautiful features and take a moment to acknowledge them and be thankful that they were still there for me to look at. Frank’s eyes were wet with tears, but he was truly beautiful, by nearly any standard. The way his lip ring glinted in the sun, or the way that his hair fell over his beautiful hazel eyes, or the way he blushed when I called him beautiful. Those were all attributes that made him incomparably lovely.

I leaned down to him after a few moments of simply admiring him, and pressed my lips against his. It was the kiss that movie producers could only dream of; it was needy and passionate. I could taste his saltwater tears on his lips, and I’m sure he could taste mine. But they were all for him; I cried for him and no one else. He was the only person in the entire world that I cared about. I didn’t even care about my parents or my brother, though I didn’t know why I wasn’t worried about them. Our lips worked together in the most perfect way. It was as though our bodies were made for each other, because they worked so well in every way possible.

“I love you Frank Iero,” I proclaimed after breaking our kiss. “I’m sorry I lost you, sugar. I was so worried. I was so scared.”

“It’s okay, Gee,” he replied into my chest where he nuzzled his head. “I was scared too. I was scared without you.”

“I’ll never let you go again.”

“Thank you, Gee. Thank you for saving me.”

“But I didn’t save you, Frankie, you got out on your own.” He looked up at me, but kept his arms wrapped tightly around my torso, as though he would never let go.

“Yes you did, Gerard. I didn’t get shot because of you.”

“What on earth are you talking about, darling?” I asked, clearly befuddled.

“You heard the shots coming from the science block of the school. You knew. You knew where the gunman was, and you made me run the other way. You made me run the long way around the school because the shots were being fired from the science block.” I had no recollection of any of this. I had just lost him in the masses of people crying and running.

“You ran toward the gun though, even though I screamed for you. But you did, you ran for wherever the shots were coming from. I don’t know why though.”

“I was looking for Mikey,” I said, suddenly remembering. Mikey, my poor little, misunderstood kid brother. I loved him so much. I would have died for that boy, until I turned the corner to the science block of the school and watched him as he shot a girl from my Trig class.

“Well, did you find him?” Frank asked innocently, still ignorant of the truth, just like everyone else who survived.

Suddenly there was a flurry of shooting, and the crowd of people grew silent once more, until the police scanner came alive with a scratchy “all clear”. That was the end of my brother, and I knew it. I suppose the real Mikey died whenever he got it in his mind to shoot up a school, because my kid brother was the sweetest, most genuine person the world had to offer, but the “all clear” signified too that his eyes had gone dull and his skin had turned cold. Mikey would never return.

“Gee, did you find him?” Frank persisted.

“No, sugar,” I said plainly, “I didn’t find my brother.”

I knew, however, that any moment, the police would bring the corpse that once held the soul of my beloved younger brother in its cage, and the nation would look at me and my mom and my dad, and even my beautiful, innocent boyfriend and speculate about what we did wrong. They would make assumptions about how we could have figured that a quite kid who played bass guitar and loved comic books snapped and then prevented him from killing several teenagers. They would, but they could never know what it was like to be him or to be me or Frank or anyone but themselves.

So I put it out of my mind for a moment and lifted Frank off the ground, held him safely in my arms, and I kissed him as though I would never kiss him again.

Notes