It was around 3 am by the time I stumbled into the woods, cold and hungry, grinding my last cigarette into dust beneath my shoe. The air was biting into my skin and I snuggled deeper into my hoodie. My bones were numb and ached through every step, just mindlessly walking deeper into the black.

I could see my breath in front of me in little white puffs, circling in front of me and then dissapearing.

It was nice out here. Really, it was. I usually didn't venture off this far from home at night, but It didn't seem like anyone was missing me at the moment. i kept trudging through damp leaves that crunched and branches that howled, whistling through the dark and wondering how long it would be until dawn.

I counted the seconds, into minutes into segments of an hour, just letting my feet carry me while I meditated and drowned in the repetition of numbers. But my concentration was broken only 352 seconds later.

"Fuck!" My big toe ached from inside my converse. I had slammed it against something. But what the fuck would be out here in the forest that was worthy or handicapping my foot?

The answer was the cold metal box sitting in the leaves at the bottom of a tree, partly submerged in the foliage but still shining in the moonlight. It was a light metallic color that bounced up at me, searing my eyes and beckoning me to look inside.

I picked it up and brushed off the leaves and dirt. The box had no combination lock or latch, it just slid right open to show its contents.

Contents that made my stomach lurch.

Piles and piles of white, red and black stacked one side of the box. They were drawings. Curedly sketched out figures in pen and hastily colored in. They were all the same. White skin, red eyes, black hair and bleeding lips...it was the girl Gerard had drawn in class. The exact same one. Fifty fucking pages of her in various poses and situations. In one, her clothes are tight and leathery, hugging at her curves and accentuating the dips below her ribcage and above her waist. In another, she's skinny and flatchested, with a loose black veil draped over her, her eyes wide and scratched out with pencil. I brought each one up to meet my eyes, expecting it to make more sense if it was closer to my face, but nothing seemed to make sense. why the fuck were there dozens of these pictures hidden ina tiny box in the woods?

The second half of the box was the worst, though. Hidden in the small compartment on the left was a heap of bones. I picked them up and examined, deciding they were from a chicken.

Maybe Gerard liked to draw and eat chicken in the woods? But what's with all the pictures of this vampire chick?

I kept flipping through the drawings until I found the sketch Gerard had made in class. He had added some shading since I'd last seen it, around her eyes and on her lips, making her darker and more haunting. She was beautiful, she really was. In each picture, her eyes were piercing and real. It was like they could see through the ink and paper right into my own fucked up head and it freaked me the fuck out.

Something moved behind me. I spun around so fast my neck screamed at me while my eyes scanned for something, anything. Some leaves were swirling above the ground and a little cloud of dust was puffed up from the dirt, but no one was there. To be sure, I did a 360 only to see the dark woods and the smell of damp tree bark. I suddenly felt cold and put the drawings back, shutting the lid and sliding it back under the leaves. Gerard's secret safe and secure.

The walk back was peaceful and my eyelids grew heavy and refused to stay open. The time passed quickly, all I heard was the crunching under my feet and all I saw was the dark empty road ahead of me that was slowly brought to light by the morning dawn. It warmed me to the bone and chased out the swelling in my chest that had been aching since my little moment at Gerard's house. It was a new day. A new day to make new mistakes and fuck up more situations for myself.

My Dad was probably stumbling back home soaked in alcohol while Mom was crawling broken and exhausted into bed. Not exactly a situation I wanted to get in the middle of. The longer I stayed away from home, the less stressed out they seemed to be. Or maybe that was just my ignorance at work. Closed eyes, happy family.

The morning commuters were beginning to fill the streets and make me feel even more tired. Today was going to be living hell. I could catch up on the missed sleep in class I guess. The thought of facing Gerard's face in a few hours made me sick to my stomach, despite it being empty and growling from lack of food. My whole body seemed to be lacking in general. Not lacking anything specific, just left high and dry and wanting.

I let my mind wander as I turned onto the street I lived on, the sidewalks glimmering in the growing sun. Maybe someone was stealing Gerard's drawings and putting them in the forest for safe keeping. Maybe he had a stalker who did weird voodoo spells with his art using chicken bones. But who? It took two seconds of me going through a mental checklist of the kids at my school before I realized that I was the most reasonable candidate for Gerard's stalker. My chest began to ache again.

He was probably asleep in his bed, tucked under blankets and sheets, his greasy hair spread out on a pillow. I wonder what he did after I left his place. Did he go back to singing? What did Gerard do in his free time besides draw? If he was anything like me, he looked up porn and jacked it until the voice in his head calling him pathetic got loud enough to make him close the computer and sleep. Gerard jacking off? He's too dainty, I told myself as a stubborn warmth started growing in my stomach. I had to mentally slap myself to stop the warmth from spreading to other places.

I finally came up to my house and thought about just crashing on the front porch, so I wouldn't have to listen to my parents pretend to be mad at me for disappearing. Or I could just walk to school and take a nap behind a dumpster until it was school.

But the warmth in my gut had died down (thankfully), and I was shaking from the cold. Hesitantly, I got the key from under the mat and opened the door slowly, hoping I wouldn't find a drunk and sloppy father on the other side to scold me.

But all I found was a silent living room. Seeing as there wasn't any broken glass on the floor, I took it that Dad was still God Knows Where and Mom was enjoying her time alone. So I slipped into my bedroom and climbed under the covers, falling asleep to the image of Gerard's head resting on a pillow, eyes shut and covered by messy black hair.