Homepage › Stories › You Are The Moon › Chapter 2

You Are The Moon

One

*Frank's Journal*

October 13th, 1997

It's weird how you can look at someone and have a whole life play out with them in your mind. It's weird how you can wake up one day and see a friend in a whole new light. I haven't known Gerard that long, but that doesn't matter. When I'm with him life feels right. Maybe I'm too young to be thinking that life isn't alright, but I don't think sadness or darkness is particular about age. I think it just looks for a crack in you somewhere and squeezes in, then it multiplies until all you are is a grey-scale that's expected to be a rainbow.

I wonder if Gerard feels that darkness too, I think he does. Sometimes I'll look at him and he'll have that far away look in his eyes, his mind somewhere else, lost inside of himself. It's like he wants to be anywhere but here and anyone but himself.

We took a walk today after school, the leaves crunching beneath our feet, two pairs of worn out Converse walking in step. I fought the urge to lace my fingers with his. I feel stupid about the way I feel but I don't want to stop feeling it.

That sounds weird, writing the word "feel" in the same sentence that many times makes it look like it isn't even a word anymore. Nothing looks like anything anymore. Whatever it is that I'm feeling for Gerard has given the whole world a fresh coat of paint. Colors are more vibrant. I've been hearing things in my favourite songs that I've never noticed before. And the stars shine brighter. They shine brighter and will away some of that darkness that has always seemed to be an inherent part of me.

We walked along the river for a while until he stopped, pulled his sketchbook from his bag, sat down right on the bank and began to draw. I love that about him. I love how his passion is the first thing in his life, he drops everything when inspiration hits so that it won't get away. Some people let inspiration whiz past them their entire lives, not Gerard. Art is his weapon for dealing with life.

I think it's his shield too, a wall. He shelters himself beneath his art. He'd rather show a stranger his latest drawing than strike up a conversation. And that says something because he rarely shows his work to anyone. But he shows me. He trusts me, and wants my opinion on everything he creates.

I sat beside him as he drew, not looking over his shoulder like most people would but looking off to the other side of the riverbank. Well, I wasn't really looking at anything. I was just trying to wait patiently until Gerard snapped out of his artist mode and remembered that I was there.
The simple sound of pencil on paper weaved into the gentle sounds of the world around us, so much so that the crisp autumn afternoon would've sounded empty without it. I can still hear it now as I'm writing this.

When he finished drawing, he closed the sketch book and returned it and the pencil back to its place within his bag. He looked over at me and smiled, the type of smile that could light up a dark room. It almost hurt how genuine it was, how happy he was to just be sitting there with me on the cold dried mud of the bank.

I don't know exactly how long we sat there. We talked for a while, mostly about school. I still don't know how to delve deeper in conversation than that. Small talk, God how it bores me.

I don't know why I feel the need to write any of this, why I even started this journal. It's not like anything remarkable happened today or in my life any other of the 364 days. I guess I just want to write about being with him, even if I'll probably never actually be with him like I want to be.