We're All Born Losers

Everyone hates high school; it’s almost a given. You sit there in 8th grade and your teachers basically tell you that next year you’ll be going to hell on earth. And if you don’t survive, you’ll be stuck in limbo forever. High school sucks. At least for kids like Gerard it does.

What the teachers don’t tell you is that, while you’ll go into your freshman year expecting it to be fun, you’ll end up losing all of your friends. Freshman year is supposed to be the year where you’re still allowed to be a kid but are on the verge of adulthood, of responsibility and cars and later curfews.

It hadn’t happened that way for Gerard.

His friends had abandoned him pretty early on for people with no personality; had abandoned him to endure puberty alone, sitting in the corner of the lunchroom next to the teachers’ table. He became a loner, a loser, a speck of chalk dust to be swept aside.

As he got older, he grew into his skin, lost some weight, and wore his freakness like a badge of honor. By the end of junior year he had accumulated a handful of no-good friends and casual acquaintances and a reputation for being a devil worshipper. And that was how he liked it.

Then his parents had decided to move. And not to another state, but five hours from their previous home; too far to run to and too close to fully escape.

Gerard was about to start his senior year in a new high school, with a whole bunch of new assholes to deal with and his sophomore brother as his only companion. In a year he’d be gone.

So why did he suddenly feel like a freshman again?

1. 1: A Fresh Start

2. 2: Mikey Meets His Future Lover

3. 3: Asthma Inhalers and Majestic Frank Ieros