I'm not Okay

Jack and Alex are hyper as fucking ever on the walk home, shoving and laughing and walking on walls beside the sidewalk like children. Zack is walking with us too and at one point Alex jumps down from the wall singing “Catch me, fair night!” and landing in Zack’s arms. It’s amazing that Zack could catch him, I’d never manage to pick up that adult sized idiot let alone catch one falling from the sky.
Mikey was quiet and gloomy for most of the walk. His girlfriend dumped him and he failed a math test. After his millionth sigh Jack and Alex stand right in his path, hands on hips. “Michael James Way. I think that this turn of events can only work to your benefit,” Alex says.
“What?” Mikey says incredulously. How could failing math ever be a benefit.
“You should now realise that these girls aren’t worth it,” Jack says.
“You should consider the life of Gay,” Alex says.
Jack answers everyone’s raised eyebrows, “It can get hard.”
“But it always perks up after a while,” Alex says. Oh god I see where this is going.
“With someone there to give you a hand.”
“It’d blow you… away.”
“And pull you off your feet.”
“They can be such a pain in the ass, though.”
“Sometimes it really sucks, actually.”
“But sometimes things that suck help you get back up.”
“A gay relationship is one that keeps giving and giving and giving and-”
“Oh my fucking god!” Mikey says through laughter, “For fuck sake!” We all laugh as we continue down the road. Mikey doesn’t sigh again the rest of the day.

I sit opposite Frank. Neither of us speak at all really. He said hi, I reciprocate. When I’m finished my sandwich he sits on the same desk. “Gerard. You can’t do this.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“True.”
“So…”
“I can’t stop you but I can advise you. As your only fucking friend let me give you this piece of advice,” he looks really serious.
“Yesterday you told me I have friends to try and stay for.”
“There not strictly yours.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“I’m not, Gerard. Your family and your friends want you to stay alive,” he puts so much emphasis on those two words.
“Why can’t I tell them about the locker?”
“Because then you’ll be in purgatory too.”
“With you.”
“Not with me, that place is solitude, dude.”
“I’ll get used to it. Besides, I can stay this young and beautiful then forever.”
“Now you’re being an asshole.”
“Sorry. But seriously, you can’t say that you wouldn’t like me to be there with you. So you wouldn’t be alone and I wouldn’t be fucking here.”
“Gerard,” Frank looks troubled. “I obviously want to be with you, I just know that I’m not the only one who does.”
“You literally are,” I sigh, “I have been told so often to kill myself I’ll just be doing what I’m told.”
“You’re not going to kill yourself,” Frank says.
“I am.”
“No-”
“My mind is so made up about this,” I say, crossing my arms.
“Don’t be an asshole.” He walks over to the teacher’s desk and picks up a permanent marker.
“What are you doing, Frank?”
He walks to the white board and quickly scrawls large GERARD WAY WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF, STOP HIM!
“Frank!” I shout jumping up and running over to him, “That is permanent! That won’t come off!” I try to run at him and grab it but when I touch him he’s only the vaguest bit solid and it weirds me out so much I step backwards so he can run over to the window and again scrawl THIS IS SERIOUS STOP HIM. When I finally grab him and grab the marker he’s shaking with rage. I didn’t know he could still do that.
“I just can’t let you do this,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do this.”

My luck that one of the only two physics classes in the whole school is the second one after lunch. Sure enough the teacher gets freaked out and sends for Mr. Corgan while the students flip out completely.
I’m taken out of art to discuss the whole thing. “Gerard. I don’t believe this is just some guys messing around. Everyone in this school knows how serious this is. Suicide… we don’t joke about suicide.”
“Obviously some people do.”
“Gerard. No they don’t.”
The awkward truth of this matter is I ended up crying. I was just so flustered and frustrated and tired and Mr. Corgan knew exactly which buttons to press. I guess that shit’s his job. Like the past few weeks he’s just been finding my weaknesses to fucking dance around them before stabbing them with a fiery iron poker.
It only got worse when my mom came and picked me up from Mr. Corgan’s office to bring me straight to Dr Spelunker. Poor Mikey, he’ll have to walk home in the driving rain, probably with people all around him talking about his suicidal brother he never thought was that bad. The thing is I’m not that bad really, well maybe I am only I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t know what happens on the otherside. If I still thought you were dead and gone when you’re dead and gone then I’d probably stay around a while longer.
“Gerard, hello,” Dr Spelunker says when I walk into her room, the womb painting staring down at me. For some reason the word placenta is in my head now. Placenta. Placenta. Why would anyone think to call something such a gross word? I sit down opposite her disgusted at my own thoughts.
“Hi.”
“How’re you?”
“Okay.”
“No you’re not,” she consults her laptop. “Mr. Corgan emailed me some photographs, who did this Gerard?” she turns around the screen so I can see the words. Frank had added to them after I left. SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, HELP ME SAVE HIM now decorates the teacher’s desk and a poster about some complicated formula on the back wall.
“Oh wow,” I say in general awe, “someone doesn’t want me to die.”
“Who?”
“I could not tell you. No one cares that much.” She folds her arms down on the table, staring at me over her glasses. Her eyes are so blue it’s almost scary.
“Is that what you think?”
“What?”
“That nobody cares.”
“Well, they don’t.”
“I do.”
I smirk at her, “that’s because you’re paid to. You’re paid to try keep me on this side of life. Other people, well nobody cares for free.”
“Is that what you think?”
“You say that like its opinion not fact.”
“Well it’s not opinion, or fact. You’re looking at it wrong.”
“How am I?”
“Billy- Mr Corgan cares for one.”
“Paid.”
“No not exactly, he puts in more time with you than he’s paid to. Second your mom cares very much. And your dad and brother I’m sure.”
“You don’t know my family.”
“I know about families Gerard. I know how suicide effects families,” she stands up and walks over to her bookshelf then. After a minute or so of skimming over titles she stops on a big hardback and drops it down on the table in front of me. “I don’t mean to brag, Gerard, but I have written a lot of books. I’ve dealt with a lot of cases and their families and with every teenager who couldn’t break through their black curtain, I’ve seen a world fall apart. This book here,” she taps it, “I wrote about three cases. Three different teenagers who I tried but just couldn’t help. What each child was able to teach me before they left this world and how each family dealt.”
I pick up the heavy book. The first kid is a very young looking girl called Constance. “Thirteen when she killed herself,” Dr Spelunker said. I wince and flick through to troubled teen number two. A boy who looked about twenty stares up at me accusingly, “Fifteen.” Michael, I wonder if his family called him Mikey. The final boy is all too familiar, “eighteen,” I say at the same time as the therapist.
When I look up she’s staring at me. Measuring me maybe. Possibly just wondering why I recognised someone who died five years before I was ever even born.
“He went to my school,” I explain.
“I am aware. I do believe it’s something they take care not to mention.”
“Yea well they’re hardly proud, homophobic assholes, students and teachers, driving a perfectly great person to suicide.”
She stares at me for a long while, letting the weight of my own words sink in. “Oh.”
“Oh indeed.”
“Can I borrow this book?”
“Of course, as long as you return it.”
“I’d like to read the passages about Frank’s family.”
“Of course.”
Then after a minute she asks, “Do you blame the teachers, for how you feel, Gerard?”
“Some of them. Really they’re only mean because I’m an idiot and suck at everything they try teach me.”
“Is that your theory?”
“It’s not a theory, it’s a fact. Just like the fact that kids in my school are mean because I suck at being cool, normal, social and straight.”
“You can’t suck at being straight, Gerard.”
“Oh no, you totally can. And I do. I suck at being straight.”
“That’s like saying you suck at liking milk if you don’t like milk,” it’s weird to hear her talk like that.
“Well I rock at liking milk. Just like I rock at being a gay loser.”

Notes

One chapter left oh. my. lawd. Well i'll try write it tomorrow, if i can. I don't think I'm busy.
In fact I'm going ice skating with my class so i won't have homework. A brand new way to embarrass myself: ice skating. And then i have a self defence exam, so i won;t be in school all say. It sounds mad but i wish i was because i have a shit ton of assignments i need to give in that i actually put effort into :L whatever. I'm in an unimportant year in school so all Cs isn't bad i don't think
Anyhow, thank you very much for reading and please let me know what you think ^.^