.ŵēłçømē tø bēłłēvīłłē hīgh. // frerard [DISCONTINUED]

3

Maybe it's not my weekend,

But it's gonna be my year,

And I'm so sick of watching all the minutes pass,

As I go nowhere.

Wednesday 23rd March 2007

I had no money. Fuck, I needed money. So bad. Money for band merch and music and concert tickets and, ew, school textbooks.

"But how?" I asked myself.

Dog walking? No, I'd end up keeping them all to myself.

Paperboy? Boring!

Pizza delivery guy? Hell no, I'd eat all the food!

Care home volunteer? Anxiety = TrIgGeReD

Babysitter? I guess.... I like kids so maybe...

I explained this to my mom and she said that it was a great idea. We then spent the next hour on the family computer, designing the perfect banners to put up.

In the end, we decided on a tie-dye background with bold, black font. We printed about 30 copies and split them equally between us.

Then we walked around the local streets that surrounded Cemetery Drive, taping the banners to lampposts and shop windows in the hope that someone will actually take notice of the wildly-coloured posters and contact me.

----------

Around two weeks passed and I had already done around 9 babysitting jobs. I was completely exhausted by the time I had gotten home. From the minute I locked the front door and walked upstairs, I just slept.

That was, until my phone rang, startling me and causing me to fall out of bed only to scramble back up and steady myself the best that I could. I checked the screen for who it was that was calling at 7:35 at night.

No caller ID.

"Hello? Yeah. Of course! Ok. What time? Yup! Ok bye!" I hung up.

Another babysitting job for tomorrow. The woman's last name, if I heard correctly, was "Way". It sounded familiar but I couldn't quite figure out how. I decided to just forget about it and go back to sleep.

The next day went by quickly. I think I fell asleep in history? I can vaguely remember during lunch break that Gerard was hitting on Hayley again.

Ugh.

G: "Hayley, my parents aren't home tonight if u wanna come over and hang out. Just me and you, babe."

H: "Not in a million years, Way. What about your brother anyway?"

G: "Oh, sweetie, you won't have to worry about him! Some stupid babysitter is taking care of him tonight. What do you say then? Wanna come over?"

H: "Dream on, Gerard."

I'm sure that was how it went but, as I said, I can only vaguely remember.

"...stupid babysitter..."

Did he mean me? Maybe I was just hearing things. The address of the family's home is right next door to my house and I think that I probably would have noticed Gerard walking to or from school by now... and maybe "Way" was a popular surname. Surely multiple families within New Jersey had "Way" as their family name.

Right?