I'm not Okay

“What makes you say this,” Mr. Corgan says, steepling his fingers and leaning forward over his desk. It’s mid-November and I have been subjected to three counselling sessions a week. The other two days have been spent Frank-free and I’m worried that everything that has happened is just a figment of my imagination and that I may have passed out for those ten thousand eight hundred and fifty one seconds I thought I spent surrounded by the dead. And the yew trees, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the weird breathing yew trees and how I knew they were yews.
Maybe I just inhale too many chemicals in science.
“Just… I don’t know,” I sit back in my chair.
“What have your dreams been like recently then, Gerard,” Mr Corgan says, determined to make me admit to some sort of depression.
“I don’t know, varied?”
“Do you ever dream about someone dying?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Who?”
“Either me or someone I know. Can I ask you a question, Mr Corgan?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Since the school opened.”
“And do you remember a student called Frank Iero?”
Mr. Corgan’s eyes widen and he takes a sudden sharp breath. When he breathes it out again it’s shaky. I’m guessing he did then. After wiping his palms on his pants and re-steepling them he confirms this. “I even was his councillor. This was all twenty three years ago though, Gerard, and he was one of the school’s first students. Why do you ask?”
“What can you tell me about him?” so I’m not completely making this up. At least not all of it.
“Um. He was a very troubled person inside, Gerard. Frank, Frank was very badly bullied and not just by the students, a lot of the teachers treated him very badly. This was back when homosexuality was just made legal in this state and a lot of people were still sour to it. And he did indeed have a reputation for it… This is also a very religious school and it was seen as a sin. Still is.”
“What happened to him, Sir?”
“He… He committed suicide, Gerard. It was a very nasty affair. He was found hanging from rafters in the old gym hall. He hung himself in the school. A cleaning lady found him. They tore down that hall and built on the west wing now with those new lockers and classrooms. It was a terrible, terrible thing. And my greatest failure.” He frowns deeply.
I feel sick. I think Mr. Corgan notices. “I’m sorry if this frightens you Gerard, it is the truth. The very horrible truth. The greatest tragedy our school has ever had, and ever will have. And I never want a repeat. Gerard, please don’t make a repeat of this.”
I stare up at him shocked. He must believe that I am to follow Frank’s path out of life.
“Is he the other person who dies in your dreams Gerard?” he asks gently, as if he could startle me like a fucking deer.
I nod. “And sometimes we die together.”

Mr. Corgan officially thinks I’m depressed. Maybe I shouldn’t of brought up Frank but I had to know. I had to know if he ever was real or if I’m completely out of my mind.
I enter in the library at lunch on Thursday. The halls are pretty safe but the library is even safer.
I get directions from the woman stamping books at the front desk to a dusty series of shelves in the back containing a shit ton of year books. I search through for the year that Frank was likely to be a junior. I wonder what happened in 2004 because there are way more from then than any other year. Maybe they printed way too many. Maybe nobody wanted them. I pick up one random one and flick through the pages. Blank, every page is blank except inside this particular one some kind of symbol is written on every other page. The symbol resembles one you’d see written in blood in some old asylum movie. I shut the book and shove it back on the shelf. Part of me hopes I didn’t unleash some demon and another part of me is angry that I’m getting so distracted.
I find a year book from the year I was born. Flipping through the faces of people who are twice my age and read some of the bullshit statements made by the seniors. “Never let life crush your dreams”, “You can do anything you want to”, “You only have one life,” blah, blah, blah, these are terrible. I better think up of something inspirational for mine.
I’m getting distracted again. I continue to the last shelf until I find the correct year. I skim over the faces of freshmen and sophomores and then I slow down for juniors. Sure enough Frank Iero is poised with an uncomfortable smile and a bust up lip. It is him though, that’s what his face looks like. I definitely didn’t make him up completely.

I hand up the torn sheet of algebra with ink splattered all over it. The teacher sighs and begins correcting. When I return to my seat I take out my calculator and begin doing various sums. Sums I can believe I hadn’t done earlier. I divided the extra time I have left in this world, ten thousand eight hundred and fifty one seconds, be sixty to see how many minutes I would have to live. One hundred and eighty point eighty five. So a little over three hours. Literally very little over three hours. Next twenty three plus eighteen. Forty one. If Frank hadn’t killed himself he would now be forty one.
The thought sends shivers down my spine. My mom is forty six. He would be closer to my mom’s age than mine.
That’s not something I want to think about. It’s just not right. I can’t imagine him that age. I guess I don’t have to because he’ll never be that age.
That lunch Chase takes my fucking lunch money again. “You’re really helping my new diet,” I spit at him while I regain my breath. He could just ask for the money, no need to punch me in the fucking stomach every single fucking time. He begins to walk away. “Hey girls!” I say louder, making him halt, “new fad diet! Get Chase to punch you and take your lunch money, now you’ll have no choice but to not eat! It really works to help you lose those extra few pounds!”
Chase turns to me now, his face red. He walks close and draws his elbow back, “Hey, wanna punch me again? At least this time you have an audience.” I raise an eyebrow at him testily. This could end very badly or very okay. Chase fixes his shirt collar and tosses his hair. The whole hall has turned to stare at us.
“Fuck off,” Chase mumbles before walking off.
I’m in the hall walking toward my private wing of the school when a hand lands on my shoulder. I wince turning around, bracing myself for the imminent punch.
“Here, get some lunch,” a boy from my year says, extending to me five dollars. I think his name is Ray.
“Uh,” I stare at the money, then at his face, then at his hair, “it’s okay. Really.”
“No it’s not. Anyone can see you’re getting scarily thin, even in the uniform. Please get some food,” he shoves the money into my hand and then walks quickly off toward the secretary’s office.
I smile after him meekly before re-entering the lunch hall. Chase is sitting at a table full of the “not terribly smart, not terribly religious but incredibly sporty” guys and several “sometimes smart and religious when it suits, but really self-conscious for someone so far up their own ass” girls. The guys fling several fries at me but I dodge past them into tables occupied by those lower in the pecking order.
“Hey Gerard,” a girl from my art says without looking up as I walk up behind her chair. She’s doodling boobs on the edge of someone else’s math homework while drinking a vegan soup from home. As far as I know she isn’t actually a vegan.
“Hi Carla,” I say as I walk past. The boobs have teeth. That’s kinda weird and kinda cool.
I join the line while it lies finished at a table full of the most pious girls alive today. They’re all incredibly catholic and favourites of the teachers despite having the worldly knowledge equivalent to that of a spoon.
They glare at me while I wait next to them and the second I move up with the queue they dive into a fit of whispers. I can’t hear what they’re saying and to be honest I don’t think I want to.
I get fries and curry sauce and a slice of apple pie, and begin to walk to the physic rooms. They’re still the safest place for me and I want to draw.
I back into the door to open it. “Gerard!” is the greeting and I nearly drop my lunch in shock. Frank is sitting on the desk staring at me.
“Frank! You’re back!” I put down my tray and without thinking, pounce on him. “Fucking hell man!”
“Hi,” he smiles as I hug him. He does that weird hologram thing and I let go.
“Where have you been?”! What happened? What was your part in returning the balance?” he shoves a curried chip in my mouth to shut me up.
“I spent the past ages haunting,” he says, “If a dead person is to be in the world of the living apparently it is only to be fucking haunting so it took like a month of trying not to freak my mother out before fate decided that everything was okay again. I think it was worried that I’d become… solid, again. You know, like if I was to try really hard right now I could probably eat one of those chips and force myself to digest it. Well maybe not, it’d probably get stuck somewhere inside me for eternity and I’d have to make yet another deal with fate to relieve that suffering,” he grins like that’s funny, “fuck it it’s nice to see you. It was good to see my mom too, only I think I scared the shit out of her by accident. I really didn’t mean to but I think my just being there left a bad feeling in the house. She’s old now it’s fucking weird.”
“Frank, you’d be forty one now,” I say and watch his expression change. His face hardens and then falls completely.
“Well that’s fucking weird.”
“Yes but Frank, why are you here now?” I say through a mouthful of curry. This should be disturbing me a lot more than it is.
“Oh yea,” he scratches the side of his chin and then slides his hand down his chin. “I made another deal.”
I raise a quizzical eyebrow. He should really stop making deals with fate. They never seem to be particularly kind. I guess they’re not meant to be kind, they’re meant to be fair. “Eh,” he begins, “I can come any time until my platform fills up. When it does, I have to leave.”
“What?”
“There’s that word again,” he smiles.
“Fuck up, Frank, what?”
“I have to spend the equivalent time I spent out here,” he gestures around the room, “in what Christians call purgatory.”
“That exists?”
“Yea! It’s pretty shit. I was in there for what felt like a very long time. Before fate can deal your hand your spirit remains next to your body. That’s when people get stuck on the way out. Some people choose to stay where they die but that must take some will power. So yea I’ll basically be stuck in full consciousness yet immobile for however long. Not too bad?”
“You’re opting for torture then?” I say, shocked.
“Trust me, I’d rather spend all that time in, as you put it, torture, rather than spend the rest of eternity chilling with those people. You know I’ve been dead for what, twenty three years, and I still haven’t made friends. Fucking bullshit.”
I grin at him. What a fucking idiot. Part of me can’t get over the fact that he’s willing to face purgatory for me. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m dead.”
“You’re still fucking crazy.”
“So are you, you’re talking to the dead.”

Notes

This is beginning to get really weird but then again i guess it was normal. I have a plan and i know how i want this to go generally but their are random parts i just throw in because yea.
One time i had been writing for several hours straight and i got up to go to the bathroom, passed my sister and said "I'm going to the loo, I exclaim needlessly"... My family won't let me live that down...
Anyway thanks for reading and thank you very much voters :))))))) I shall update promptly!