English is actually on of my better lessons. I mean, I'm useless at story-writing, but I can write a mean poem when needed. (And by "mean", I mean AWESOME.)
Sadly, poetry isn't on the course. I pray that we're not doing studying informal texts. The hopelessly long words go completely over my head.
As I enter the classroom I notice that there is something different about our teacher. Instead of the usual old, evil, bitter Mrs McDonald sitting at her desk there's a supply teacher. But not one of those last minute never-taught-a-class-in-my-whole-life supply teachers that we usually get, this one was a very cool, very young, leather-clad substitute who looked like he'd been through a lot in his life. He looked like a story-teller. The type of guy who rides an expensive motor cycle but has no-one to ride it with. I hope that's not true, everyone deserves someone to theoretically ride a motorcycle with. Even just a friend, right?
"Uh, " he mumbles in a broad L.A accent, fiddling with his long blonde hair, "Er, right, so, you guys know what you're doing, right?"
Half of us nod, half of us shake our heads.
"Pfft. Just do it. Do whatever." he says, leaning back in his chair and pulling out 'Motor Weekly' (I knew it!) "Go!"
"Er, sir." cries a girl whose name escapes me, "You haven't even told us your name yet."
"Keehl. Mr Keehl. But you can call me.. Er...Sir." he answers, sounding almost confused over what name to give her. It sounded like a failed chat-up line to me.
So I begin writing. Nothing in particular. Just words. Simple.
As the bell rings I slip the scrap of note-paper with my writing on into my pocket so Mr Keehl doesn't collect it in. Thankfully, he is absorbed in reading something-or-rather and doesn't even glance in my direction.
I bid him a silent goodbye. He's quiet, but I like that guy.
Anyway, lunch. Lunch. Lunch.
My mind, for once, is on something with no relavence to Frank.
Food.
As I enter the cafeteria I am hit by a pang of nostalgia. I remember my first year, and how much the simple placement of a person at a table meant. Scanning the room, I spot the cliques straight away. If you were on the table directly to my left you were a popular girl who, no matter how badly behaved you were or how cruelly you treated those around you, could get anything or anyone you wanted so long as you stayed in that crowd. On the other hand, if you were directly to my right you were a strict gamer, whose only place in the social crowd was to be the guy at the back of the house party playing on the X-box.
I sigh.
How can society be so shallow?
I smile at the dinner lady as I pick up my selection and place it neatly on my tray. I take the usual: a tuna sandwich and an apple, and then I make my way towards the first empty table I can find. But, as luck may have it, something stands in my way.
"Hey!" says Frank cheerfully, "Hey, Gerard."
I smile subconsciously.
"So, mind explaining the table cliques to me?" he giggles.
Echoing my thoughts aloud, I explain to him how it works around here.
"So, the days been good?" I ask, setting myself down at a table nearby, ignoring the stares of the students around me who'd never seen me speak before. Their stares bare into my skull but I don't care - I'm with him so nothing else matters.
Oh ho, I'm so cheesy.
"Well, I mean, it's been all right and I think people are warming to me. Don't think much of the teachers, though. Are any of them actually qualified?" he jokes.
I laugh loudly, just to show people that I do have friends, and I can have fun. I can still feel them staring right through me, analysing me is if I were a puzzle yet to be solved but still, I do not care.
"So, you've got friends?" I smile- happy for him.
"Yes!" he squeals, joining me "I met these guys." He gestures towards a group of 5 or so guys on the table to my left.
The jocks.
"Frank, they're not -" I start, before being interrupted rudely.
"OI, FRANK, you're with us, right?" the jock-leader calls, bounding over to rest his hand on Frank's shoulder.
I recognise the guy immediately. Shaun Simons. He taunted me all the way through lower school. The toughest, meanest guy in the whole school. My age, but kept back a couple of years due to lack of brain cells. This guy is a total nutcase.
"I can't believe you're even talking to this LOSER. Don't talk to the Genderslut. We don't talk to the Genderslut." he spits, glaring angrily at Frank.
Genderslut.
A name.
A nickname.
A derogatory nickname.
My name.
Frank looks from me to Shaun with a look of frustration. He knows sitting with me would be social suicide. He knows that he'd never live down sitting next to someone... Like me. Uncool. But that's how it is in a high school like this. You're either uncool, or you pick on the uncool kids. You kill or be killed.
"...Stay..." I choke out, just loud enough for someone with super-human hearing to hear. (Smooth...)
But then I change my mind.
"Go, Frank, go. I'm just... I... There's no point in talking to me. I've been alone and I can do it again, right?"
"... Not here." Frank says, hanging his head low.
"Not here? Either listen to Shaun and leave this washed up slut alone," I gesture towards myself, "or commit social suicide and stay..."
"With me." I say, spitting the words out cold and harsh from the back of my throat.
"Fine."
Fine.
Fine.
Fine.
The words hit me like a final blow to the head.
Or the heart.
Suddenly, after only seconds of silence, Shaun grabs ahold of Frank and literally pulls him back to the table.
It should be enough for me to sympathise with him, but Frank isn't resisting. He's not even trying to stay here with me.
And I don't blame him.
Frank neither struggles nor calls as I walk away and he is dragged back to the jock's table.
My head hurts from the weight of their words and my voice cracks from the strain of my own cruel ones and I turn to look back. Frank smiles, but not at me. He's staring into his food with the arm of a jock resting firmly around his shoulders. Whoever the guy is, clearly he's more important than myself, at least to Frank.
I sigh and ponder thier relationship.
Is he a friend? A good friend? A really good friend? Someone he likes? Or someone he like likes?
I want to tell him how bad they made me feel. I want to tell him how it feels to be bullied, victimised, wronged. To feel wronged. To feel wrong. Would he have reacted differently if he'd known that they were the very guys that taunt me constantly for nothing else but being myself? For being bi, for wearing black, for reading comics. For being lonely. For being "emo". For the deep scars on my wrists. For existing.
Maybe he is better off with out me? I mean, who am I but a loser?
With that thought ringing in my ears, I throw my lunch dramatically into the waste bin and head off to my next lesson.
I arrive 20 minutes early, settle down at my desk and stare out of the window. I stare out at the world and think about him. Have I left him for good, or has he abandoned me? We weren't anything in the first place, but now we were less than nothing.
It's as if we hadn't even met.
Okay, that's a bit melodramatic, I can, thankfully (or perhaps not) remember him, and I still long to be with him, but, for what it's worth, does he deserve me? Does he deserve all the angst, depression and fear of rejection that come with the "Gerard" package? Is it egocentric for me to thing that I can ever make him happy? Am I crazy to think that one day that coy curve of his pierced lips could be down to me, or a product of thinking of me?
A loud bang shoves me out of my daydream.
"What are you doing?" asks the stranger who sits next to me, unintentionally slamming his folder down onto the table.
"Um. Ah. I was just... Thinking." I reply, taking in the details of this valiant stranger, prepared to sit with me until the end of the semester. This particular stranger smiles, and twirls a lock of this curly brown hair. He's taller than me - and standing up - so I have to bend my neck in order to see him clearly. His eyes are deep brown and I can tell he keeps secrets, but his smile leaves him so vunerable that it's hard not to trust him.
"About what?" he ponders, but on seeing my face quickly corrects himself. "About whom?"
Damn, if I thought I'd spend the lesson telling someone whose name I didn't know all of my secrets then I wouldn't have arrived so early. Sighing, I decide to bite the bullet and tell him.
"A guy."
He thinks for a minute, gazing at the ceiling and waiting for more information.
"Your boyfriend?"
"No." I snap, frustrated. I don't usually talk about my feelings. For me, it looks like, feelings are forever things to be bottled up and dragged out in bouts of alcholic anger or in long nights of self harm and depression.
"But you want him to be?"
Fuck, can this guy read my mind?
"How...?" I inquire, bemused by the fact that he may know more about me than I do myself.
I wait for his answer, desperately reaching for some rational conclusion of how this guy can read me like a book. It's hard to imagine that anyone can see through the blood, sweat and tear stains on the torn, frayed pages of the book documenting life so far.
"I know." he says passively, grinning at me and sitting down in the seat next to me.
"What the fuck?" I ask myself internally.
After a few moments, the silence is broken by his high-pitched voice once again.
"That's why I took phsychology, you know."
"... Wow, I guess. Then, er, yeah, well done. You've read me well." I admit, attempting to compliment him.
"I can also tell, by your eyes, that your name begins with a G, and you like to be alone. In solitary."
"Really? You can tell that from my eyes?"
He laughs, his voice breaking a little.
"No, dude, I looked at the seating plan. There are 29 people in this class - 30 now I'm here - and you're the only one sitting alone. You could've easily just plonked onto the edge of someone else's table, but no, you chose the spot right at the back, next to the window. You must be a dreamer."
This guy...?
"I - I don't know what to say." I say, obviously having thought of something to say.
"Then say nothing." he says, before extending his hand out for me to shake. "I'm Ray, Ray Toro. Guitar player. Nice to meet you, solitary Gerard."
I shake his hand firmly, before turning to stare out of the window again.
I wonder if Frank is thinking of me? I wonder what he's thi-
THRIIIING!
"There's the bell." Ray states as if I can't hear it. I shoot him a sarcastic look, but I make sure he doesn't take it too seriously.
Our teacher, Mrs Rogers, wanders in, saying as she does "Your task is to complete your study of the person of your choice. This is an assessed task, and you've had it for 3 weeks already. If you don't hand this in next lesson you'll be-"
I zone out, hoping Ray actually listens, and try to think back to my studies. I remember now. We had to study either someone we were very close to or an interesting/famous person. I never did choose one. I didn't want to choose Mikey, as I know all about him anyway, and I didn't much want to dig deep into the private lives of the people I admired, either. But now... Now I realise... I do have someone to study. Someone new, complex, beautiful, lovable, loathable, eccentric, different... And you know full well who it is.
Frank.
I smile at his name. But after the smile comes the sense of rejection I have been so afraid of feeling. But this hurts more. I didn't know I was capable of such emotion, but it turns out I am. I sigh inwardly, groaning at the fact that it feels like I've lost someone before I've even had the chance to find them.
"So, what did he do?" Ray asks, the curiosity evident in his tone of voice.
"He sat on the wrong table." I say, almost laughing at how trivial it sounds. "I mean, he chose his friends over me. I'm a loser, and it feels like he knows it."
Ray laughs.
'Why is he laughing?'
Confused, I lean forward and ask him why he's laughing. He stops immediately and looks seriously towards me.
"A relationship isn't staying together all the time, you know." he states matter-of-factly, raising his thick eyebrows at me.
"Huh?" I say, thinking aloud. I know a relationship isn't constant togetherness, but what does he mean? Does he think I'm stupid and is just stating the obvious, or is there more meaning in his words than the words themselves? I shiver, fearing it's the latter.
"Well, a relationship isn't about being together, it's making people feel better even when you're apart. Only someone who really loves you would choose their friends over you, as it shows not their denial of you, but their commitment to you, and the fact that they believe that you can do just as well without them. You see? This one ti-"
He has a point. In fact, I think he understands love to an in-human level, and certainly more than me, but I have to tell him anyway. Maybe he'll see the situation differently.
"I've only known him for a few days..." I interrupt, cringing a bit in admittal.
His passionate look does not change. In fact, he looks a little happier at that fact.
"Well, that's even better!" he squeals. "Because that means-"
"RAYMOND TORO!" the classroom assistant yells, stumbling over various items of stationary before arriving at our desk.
Our desk. It looks like I've gained a friend! I smile internally, feeling a sudden warmth to counteract the chill I've been left with after the argument at lunch.
"You're needed." the assistant looks sombre as he says it, but Ray seems to understand the situation.
Forgetting all about me and his advice, he picks up his things and stands up to leave.
"Ray...!" I demand, tugging his sleeve as he attempts to walk away.
"Not now, Gerard. See you, solitary Gerard." he brushes my hand off of his arm and walks out in a hurry, glancing quickly back to throw me a sad smile.
"Fuck you, Raymond." I whisper sharply under my breath, but regret immediately afterwards. It's not his fault. It's not his fault I'm confused. Confused and hopelessly enamoured by a not-so tall, ever-so dark, handsome not-quite stranger.
I like Ray. He's a decent enough guy. Absolutely mad, but a wholesome guy. I hope I see him again. And I hope whatever he's been called out for isn't a bad thing. I think I'm going to enjoy Psychology now that he's here. I won't get peace and quiet by any means, but the conversation will be great. I wonder if he'll teach me some guitar?
My first friend, eh? Well, by friend I mean the first guy whose acted half-decent to me and whom I don't fancy (well, he's a handsome guy, and fuck, he's got charm, but I have my eyes elsewhere, you know?).
Disregarding the voices in my head, I put pen to paper and begin to write my study.
'My subject is a boy I once met. He's young, much younger than me, and I have chosen to study him because-' I argue in my head over what excuse to use '-he intrigues me. From his innocent smile to his dirty-joke laugh, he intrigues me. I've never met someone so open and yet so strong. Open people tend to be vulnerable, but not him. Not Frank.'
I ponder for a few moments over what to write next. Should I have put his name in it? What if I get really famous and we get married and then it comes out in some newspaper that I'd focused some dumb high school project about him? Would he leave? What if I'm walking down the corridor and the jocks come down the other way with him and then they knock into me, the paper falls out of my bag, they pick it up and laugh at me?
I shake my paranoia away and continue writing.
'He's a beautiful lie. A perfect imperfection. An enigma. Not that I don't think he's perfect. I do. I think he's the most perfect person in body and in mind (though I know him so little) I've ever met. '
My pen shakes with anger as I write the next sentence.
'The subject, however, shows no signs of mutual feelings. I can't figure him out and I wonder if I ever will.'
...
Author's Note: I don't have anything else to say. I want to leave you hanging.
Stay beautiful!