Magnetic stars. (Frerard, Petekey)

Chapter six - vodka stars

// Anatomy. Magnetic stars. //

Chapter six - vodka stars

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Frank clutched his coffee tightly in his hands, lamenting not paying his utility bills, and wondering if he would ever feel warmth again. It was probably about minus sixty seven degrees, and he was on the brink of turning to a solid human-shaped block of ice. He was trying to mark his lower classes' papers, but his tired eyes kept wandering back to his bed, and all he could focus on was how easy it would be just to abandon the half-assed essays and go to sleep. Forever.

Frank sighed, leaning forwards to rest his head on the table, face down. Then again, he thought, maybe just a few hours of sleep would suffice, rather than forever. Forever was a bit extreme, and his mom would probably miss him. He pushed a few papers around on his desk to give a vague semblance of neatness and stumbled through the dimly lit room to his bed. At this point, he was rather unwilling to get changed, and it wasn't like the suit he was wearing was an expensive one, so he slumped down onto the mattress in his clothes, and curled up.

The sharp corner of a piece of photocopy paper caught his hand, and that was when he remembered the neatly folded sheet in his pocket and how he had promised Gerard he would read it. Frank sighed and huddled up smaller under his blankets to keep most of his body warm while his hands slowly turned to ice out in the open air. Gerard had insisted that if Mr Iero had wanted to read his work he would have to photocopy it– Gerard was very unhappy with the mere idea of another human touching his notebook, so he was under no circumstances going to allow Mr Iero to take it out of school to his home.

The content was far from what Frank had been expecting. It was disturbing and surreal, but fucking good; despite the fact that half of it was just nonsense to Frank and he struggled to interpret the meaning, it made him feel something– he wasn't sure what, but at least it was something. Not many kids seemed to have the ability to do that these days: stir emotion in people, incite feelings other than frustration. Frank hated generalising, hated stereotyping, but enlightened and passionate kids were rarer in Generation X than clean cut guys in Frank's life who were willing to go further with him than a fuck in a club bathroom. And, to be brutally honest and vaguely self depreciating, that was pretty fucking rare.

Frank had thought Gerard's work had been about him briefly– he was always circling back to the stars and the sky and the way he found little neurological threads to link everything together, and Frank had recalled Gerard saying he looked like the stars when they first met, and wondered if this was what he had meant. Not that he literally looked like the stars, but that all his senses and memories and feelings had linked together in a mesh canvas that painted the stars under his eyes. Or maybe Gerard really did see him as the stars, and not just figuratively. He could never imagine getting in the kid's head; he would never know.

Gerard was a special kid, Frank had seen enough to know that– but not in the way that everybody else thought. Gerard lived metaphors. Gerard was a fucking metaphor. The kid was incredible, and Frank couldn't wrap his head around the way he expressed such horrendous and sickening things through such beautiful prose. Gerard lived words. Gerard was words, and it was fucking gorgeous. Frank wanted to cling to him. Frank wanted to scrap the curriculum and just fucking teach what Gerard had been doing. It would do more than get the kids through exams, it would teach them to fucking live, and to appreciate it. Nobody appreciated anything anymore. (Nobody had appreciated anything in the first place.)

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Gerard hated the inter-house singing competition his school held annually. Belleville High was the only state school in Jersey that was sorted into houses, like it was fucking Hogwarts. As if the kids at his school actually had some personality. Christ.

The whole thing was an abysmal ordeal, pretending that the kids had some sort of talent. It was rather painful to endure, to be honest. It was all just bullshit to justify forced teamwork– 'We're bringing out all your talents!'

Gerard loved music, he did. He loved to sing; he loved to push his voice to breaking point; he loved to turn the bass up on his iPod until the guitar would go heady and deep, and soften the sharp corners of his mind, and his shattered neurones became fragments of glitter fluttering through his lungs. Gerard liked control. He did not like having two clueless seniors who studied Geography tentatively poking their fingers at random children and announcing that the harmonies were clashing, when there clearly were no harmonies at all. They would then proceed to warble an arbitrary string of notes and declare that that was the way it should be done.

Gerard tried to speak over the cornered and static chattering and insistences, but his voice was soft, only loud when he was alone, and only clear when there was nothing to slice through. His harmonies blossomed like dewy webs in the morning; inevitable, but breakable by any self-proclaimed authority.

Nobody would listen to Gerard. The 'conductor' got annoyed with him, the house got pissed at the conductor, Mr Williamson got pissed at the house. It happened every year. Every year it would be the same. Everyone would turn feral with a violent determination to win, despite an extreme reluctance to put in any more effort than the absolute bare minimum. It never went any differently.

Except this year, Grenville House had Mr Iero. That shouldn't have made a difference– but Mr Iero wasn't like everyone else. Most teachers were useless and essentially harmless– they were fucking cunts, but they couldn't help it, they'd been conditioned to be that way– yet Mr Iero wasn't a cunt, and he actually cared. He actually gave a shit about his job, even though the kids were assholes. Even though Gerard was an asshole. And Gerard could see how he adored his subject, how he wanted to share it, and show other people what he saw and what he felt.

Gerard was honestly a little in awe. He couldn't quite wrap his head around the fact that Mr Iero cared. He recalled filing a rather distinct memory dangerously close to his emotions folder: Mr Iero catching sight of him crying under the table one lesson and genuinely asking him if he was alright. Of course, Gerard had replied that he was most decidedly fine through his weak sobs, as per the social norm and therefore school law. But he couldn't forget the way Mr Iero had looked closer, knelt down beside him, and told him that Gerard didn't have to lie. That Gerard could trust him.

Gerard didn't lie again; he didn't speak again that lesson. And he trusted Mr Iero, whether the man knew it or not– Gerard decided that Mr Iero didn't really need to know, though. Not until the time came. Anyway, it would have been tedious to extend the conversation any further when Gerard hadn't actually known why he was crying. There had just been this bleak sense of suffocation in his head, in his life, and he'd sort of lost his grasp on everything. His teardrops were stardust, and Mr Iero was his star, and the hot streaks of hurt and affection in his English teacher's eyes were the most beautiful thing he had seen since that bird corpse he'd found on the sidewalk on the way to school last year. (It had been very beautiful.)

Mr Iero didn't need to know what Gerard thought about his eyes though. Gerard told himself that Mr Iero wouldn't need to know until the time came, and he ignored his subconscious telling him the time was never going to come and he was essentially being immoral through omission.

It was okay though, to neglect to tell people things. It was okay. On a technicality.

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o man it was my grampa's funeral today i cried it was all in all not a good day but i think it'll be better now cos both of us had reduced mobility and meeting with him was a bit difficult but now he's in heaven or in the sky or as a happy spirit in nature i can talk 2 him more often :-)