The Chasing of Moons

Earl

It's Thursday morning when Frank finds himself scowling at his reflection in the mirror. A stress zit. He's got a motherfucking stress zit in the middle of his forehead. This always happens too, whenever he's trying to not look like a greasy teenager with acne everywhere, he turns into a greasy teenager with acne right in your fucking face, practically screaming for attention. He can't even part his hair one way or another to hide it.

This is what begins the story of Frank 'borrowing' concealer from his mom's room. She won't notice. At least hopefully. They've got the same skin tone, so it's all good.

Frank wants to look, at the very least, not completely stupid in front of Gerard. He wants to be cool. He wants to be suave and win that son of a bitch over, and he can't do that if he's got a giant fucking pimple on his face.

Frank hates his life, and he does not care if he's being overdramatic, because he has a pimple and sometimes he's allowed to be a drama queen. He does still do his best to make his fringe cover everything, just to be safe.

If he weren't trying to get a boy to like him, honestly he wouldn't care. Frank just wouldn't give a shit, but since he is trying to get a guy to like him, he wants to look like a million bucks. He wants to make straight guys question their sexuality. He wants to stop cars. He can do none of those things, not even on a good day, but at least no one's ever puked after looking at him. Really, that's the best you can ask for.

Frank, because he's apparently deaf is almost surprised to look out the window a few minutes later to see the entire contents of the ocean pouring from the sky. Accompanying the downpour is thunder with a flash or two of lightning. The last time they had a full on thunderstorm, Gee was there. Frank gets this moping feeling in his stomach as he looks out at the rain and remembers that.

He remembers everything too well, and yet he doesn't feel like he remembers enough. He doesn't remember what he was wearing. He doesn't remember what he drank, or what was playing on the small TV above the bar. He doesn't remember what the woman who sat three seats down from him looked like. He remembers precisely what Gee was wearing though. He remembers everything, right down to the last strand of hair.

If Frank could, he would paint that exact image on his bedroom ceiling, but he thinks his mom would probably kill him and also Gerard would probably be freaked the hell out by him, so it's really just not a good idea. But a boy can dream.

Frank neglects to leave the house for as long as he can put it off, but he's going to miss the bell if he stays like this. He just doesn't want to go outside in that weather. There's nothing he can do though, it's too short a walk to his car to grab an umbrella, and you end up getting soaked when you try to close the umbrella in the car, and you can't open the umbrella inside the house either because that's insanely bad luck, so he just puts his hood up and runs for it. Frank isn't superstitious, but he already has a stress zit, so he shan't test the fates.

Frank ends up being extraordinarily late for school, but that's fine because everyone else is late too. The doors are open which is fortunate, but the parking lot is crammed with basically everyone at school, their cousin, their cousins best friend, their cousins best friends aunt's entire bingo group, and the entire country of Canada. It actually takes him nearly ten minutes to get a parking spot which is nearly a football field away from the actual school, and Frank's whole umbrella dilemma led him to have forgotten it at home.

Frank wants into school about twenty minutes after the first bell rang completely drenched. He would be dryer if he'd swam in a pool for three hours. Frank could not weigh any more than he does right now, he's sure the weight of his clothes could sink a large ship. He's basically miserable and any attempt to hide the gigantic skin mutant on his forehead is now down the drain. His hair is plastered to his forehead though, possibly hiding it from view, so maybe it's not all bad.