Early Sunsets Over Belleville

With fourteen days until her first college class, Sam was busy doing her best to not do anything mildly related to school. No one liked an overachiever, especially after high school. Nobody liked overachievers even during high school.

Beth had an overnight shift at the hospital leaving Sam to wander the halls of their new house alone. It creaked when the wind blew too hard against the shingles and she was sure she would sink through the floor if she stayed in one place too long. In reality, it was a nice house.
She just couldn’t bring herself to like anything about the move because that would be giving the universe satisfaction. Instead, Sam resolved to hate everything. She was sure her mother appreciated that.

Episode after episode of a cartoon flicked by on their large television in the sunken living room. Shadows danced on the walls behind where Sam sat on the couch straining her eyes against the unnatural bright light. Her thoughts wandered to the boy she had met in the forest and she wondered if he had waited for her somewhere in there before giving up and going back to wherever he lived. A quick glance at the clock confirmed it was only a half past five in the evening; the sun had just disappeared early with the fall time change.

Her boots crunched on the undergrowth sprouting from the brick path that led from their back door to the fields just in front of the forest. The long foxtails tickled the tips of her fingers as she made her way slowly through them. She was following a path that had been previously worn down, only to be covered by arching weeds over time.

“It’s pretty dark out. What’re you doing out here so late?” Sam jumped, her heart threatening to go on strike and stop. She spun around to face a raven haired boy with an impish smile dancing on his lips.

“It’s pretty dark out, so let’s sneak up on the new girl,” she hissed at him, narrowing her eyes. He rolled his, shoving his hands in his front pockets.

“I’m sorry. I’ve had a boring day today.” Gerard stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels as she contemplated her next snarky remark. But there was no snarkiness left in her.

“I’ve had a day today,” she decided on.

“Just a day? That sounds just as boring. Were you headed to the woods?”

“I was going to see if you were there. So now I don’t have to head to the woods,” she smirked. “It’s too cold out, anyway.”

“Is that your house over there?” Gerard jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards her wooden prison looming ominously in the distance.

“Yeah. You’re not going to come murder me now, right?” She half joked. She wasn’t sure if she needed strange boys like Gerard knowing where she lived.

“Eh, probably not. Not unless I’m bored again,” he shrugged, giving her a quick wink. Sam felt something flutter inside her chest. Most of the butterflies in her stomach had died when her and Cameron broke up. Maybe this was a moth, trying to kill itself on the shining light that was this boy named Gerard.

“We actually have heat inside if you’d rather hang out in there than freeze to death out here,” Sam invited Gerard over without realizing it before the words left her lips. She’d only met him just yesterday, why was she feeling compelled to be social? Maybe because she was craving human interaction in any form, even if it was with a slightly spooky, off kilter boy.

“Are you saying you’re inviting me into your home?” Gerard asked, his eyes glinting in the setting sunlight.

“I guess you could say that.”

“Say what?”

“That I’m inviting you into my home.”

“Cool.”



Cartoons were still haunting her house when they walked in through the back door. “Do you want something to drink? Coffee? Wine? Water?”

“I would kill to be able to drink coffee again,” Gerard moaned. “It hypes me up way too much now,” he explained hurriedly at Sam’s confusion. She simply brushed it off.

“That narrows it down to wine or water. Or skim milk, but skim milk is disgusting,” she wrinkled her nose as she dug through her refrigerator.

“It’s like white water,” he agreed with her. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Sam poured two paper cups of wine for them and they sat on her back porch, watching the moonlight pierce the tree branches with its brilliance. “We haven’t unpacked our wine glasses yet, so we get paper cups.”

“That’s fine with me. So you’re twenty one?” Gerard hadn’t touched his cup of wine, which made Sam feel like she had made the wrong choice in drink.

“Hardly. I turned nineteen in June,” she admitted. Gerard chuckled.

“What a baby. Can’t say I condone underage drinking. Not saying I didn’t used to do it, though,” he said, winking over at her. Her heart skipped in her chest, falling over a crack in the sidewalk it hadn’t seen before. A crack named Gerard.

“How old are you?” Sam traced the rim of her paper cup with her index finger, wishing she was twenty-one and not a baby in Gerard’s eyes. But why did she care?

“Damn, I think I’ve lost track by now,” he joked. “Somewhere around twenty-two, I want to say. It’s been a long day,” he said with a shrug.

“Long enough that you forgot how old you were?”

“Exactly.”



Sam thought she must have been getting tired, because the edges of everything were getting blurred. She wasn’t even that drunk. A sip of wine with Gerard on her back patio while her mom was gone, along with alternating sips of water, couldn’t produce this effect. Gerard seemed to be glowing, no matter how many times she rubbed her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Gerard asked, glancing over at her.

“You look...you look interesting,” Sam said, for the first time in a long time feeling uncertain of what she was seeing. Gerard seemed to visibly panic at those words, reaching a hand out to her thigh reassuringly.

“Are you okay?” He asked. Sam looked down at his hand.

“You’re so cold. We should go inside,” she said, narrowing her eyes at his hand. Maybe she had some fluff in her eyes, because she could not seem to focus on his hand. It was maybe a foot or two from her eyes and it looked grainy, like a charcoal drawing someone had half blended into cheap newsprint paper. Gerard quickly withdrew his hand, shoving it in his jacket pockets. “You look weird.”

“Gee, thanks!” He let out a quick laugh, the pitch of his voice rising.

“Not like that. You look blurry.” Sam frowned down at her empty cup of wine. “Guess I should stop drinking. I promise I’m not a lightweight.”

“That’s what all the babies say.”

“How long have you lived here?” Sam decided to change the conversation topic away from her shortcomings in regard to alcohol.

“Fifteen years? We moved here when I was ten.”

“I thought you said you were twenty-one.” Gerard just looked at Sam blankly when she pointed out his mathematical error.

“Right. I meant twelve years. We moved here twelve years ago,” he said.

“So you live with your parents?”

“I used to. Moved out when I was eighteen to the apartment complex right down the street.”

“Are you going to college? I’m starting at Stonebrook College in two weeks,” Sam said.

“I was going to college. I moved out and enrolled, thinking I’d be a real adult. It was too hard. Too soon. I dropped out,” he admitted, looking down at his black converse.

“No shame in that. I took a year off after high school.” Sam glanced over at Gerard who was mid-way through an impressive yawn. “I’m sorry I’m so boring.”

“You’re not! You’re not. I just am exhausted,” he waved his hands quickly. “Sorry.” He was no longer out of focus, Sam noted. Just incredibly pale under the moonlight.

“I’ll let you get going. We should hang out again sometime. Do you have a phone?” She asked, immediately wondering if that was too forward of her.

“Ha, I actually don’t. I know,” he ran a hand through his hair nervously, “it’s weird for someone our age to not have a phone. I dropped it off a bridge in the woods a while ago and haven’t been able to get a new one. But I’ll be around.”

“You still live in the apartments down the street?”

“Sometimes. I’m sure we’ll run into each other again,” he said before stepping up and off the back porch. “Have a nice night!”

Sam watched Gerard wander through the field around her house back to the main street. She glanced over at his lonely paper cup; it was still filled with wine. She knocked it back, coughing suddenly when the liquid was so frigid it burned the back of her throat. She clutched at her neck, rubbing it as if that would help ease the pain. Deciding to not drink the rest of it, she dumped it off the back porch before heading inside up the wooden stairs to her room.

He had to have a facebook profile, or something like that. As her hands hovered over her keyboard thoughtfully, she realized she didn’t know his last name. Instead, she typed in “Gerard Belleville New Jersey” into the search bar. The internet at the new house inched along like an elderly snail, giving her plenty of time to react to the first few results that came up.

Local Student Gerard Way Dead After Tragic Accident
Teen Killed in Own Backyard
Gerard Way, 19, Belleville Honor Student Dies
Forest Closed Off for Safety Inspection After Death of Student

Sam scrolled faster and faster, being met with headlines detailing similar fates of Gerard. This had to be a different ‘Gerard from Belleville, New Jersey’ who had attended Stonebrook College. Unless Sam had just stumbled upon a kid who had faked his own death and lied about his age to cover it up.

She hardly slept that night as she printed out article after article about this mysterious disappearance. It had to have been a hoax, because she had definitely clinked glasses with this kid hours earlier. It was all the more confirmed when one of the articles featured Gerard’s senior year student ID picture.

It was definitely him. He had the same dark, shoulder length hair, curiously arched eyebrows and brandy-colored eyes. There was no doubt about it.

Notes