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Assistant: Title: The Anatomy of a Fall
        Author: novembersmith novembersmith 
        Chapter: 1/12 
        Summary: The unholy union of a high school AU and a ghost story. Gerard's life takes a strange turn when his family moves to a small town in Vermont and he discovers the locals aren't all what they seem to be. Also includes: unexpected nature walks, murder, pining, improper treatment of crime scenes, a number of bone-related puns, high school bullies, and a short-range shrub named Ferdinand.
        Contents: Chapter 1
    

    


  

  
  
    
    
  
art by apocalypse_meWho You Gonna Call by galaxyaway & What Else Is There To Say by queen_of_goat***“What?” Gerard said incredulously, and slumped over at the kitchen table with a moan. “F@ck@ng… what, seriously?”It  was way too early. The sky had just the faintest hint of light, and his  mother and brother were somehow dressed and showered and clearly had  already been caffeinated. It wasn’t fair. Gerard had been dragged out of  bed, still in his pajamas, and hadn’t even had his first cup of coffee.  He wasn’t able to make the very rational, vehement protest to his  mother’s request that he felt was necessary. Mikey quirked an eyebrow at  him and took another sip of coffee. His mom was bent over the kitchen  sink, rubbing her temples.“It’s just a few blocks, Gerard. Don’t  be a b@tch, we don’t have time,” she said, and checked her watch again.  “You can walk a few blocks, it won’t kill you.”“It might,”  Gerard said very earnestly to the tabletop. He could smell the coffee,  but it was so far away. He made a noise of distress.“Okay, let  me put it this way. You walk a few blocks to school at 8 AM, or you get  up two hours earlier every day and wait in the parking lot until school  opens. Your choice.”Gerard made a disgruntled noise in response,  and his mom nodded, like it was some form of binding agreement. He  wanted a do-over, but his mom was already shrugging into her coat and  pouring some coffee into a travel mug and asking Mikey if he’d gotten  everything, his iPod and shoes and overnight bag.Mikey was  hiding his face behind his coffee mug, but Gerard could tell he was  smirking. Gerard scowled and flipped him off half-heartedly before  staggering to his feet and lurching towards the coffee pot. Gerard  f@ck@ng hated high school, and the only thing worse than high school in  general was starting a new high school his senior year, when school had  already been in session for four weeks, and then having to walk there. He hadn’t even been in this town a day and he already hated it.They’d  rolled into Glen Fell, Vermont, late yesterday afternoon with the sun  sinking orange behind the hills and casting long, thin shadows on the  streets. The town was forty-five minutes off the interstate, along a  labyrinthine path of two-lane roads, and they’d gotten turned around at  least three times, his mother getting increasingly pissy as Gerard  squinted at the printout from Google Maps and offered helpful advice.The  plan had been to move in to their new home on a Saturday morning and  have the weekend to get situated. This was doomed to fail for a number  of reasons, but mainly because his mom had somehow been under the  delusion that Mikey and Gerard were going to do anything but wait until  the last minute to pack, to say nothing of cleaning their rooms for the  renters. That and a flat tire and Mikey’s sheepish voice halfway through  Delaware announcing that he might have left the toaster on back home,  and Gerard figured they were lucky to have gotten there by Sunday.The  fact that Glen Fell was so far off the beaten path hadn’t helped  matters. It felt like they were driving in circles, the same pattern of  farmland-forest-hills-forest scrolling past like an especially dreary  screensaver. There weren’t many other cars on the road; they’d passed a  grey station wagon headed the other direction, but no one else. Gerard  had been growing increasingly convinced that there was no Glen Fell and  the whole thing was an elaborate hoax, but then they came to a ridge  overlooking a river, and beyond it was the town.It was f@ck@ng  small, smaller even than he’d expected. They’d seen the whole of it from  the hilltop, laying in wait amidst rolling farmland and stands of maple  wood, backed against a dark stretch of forest. There was a white church  steeple complete with bell, a main street called Main Street, a general  store –a f@ck@ng general store—and, thank Christ, a coffee shop.  Everything was edged in late afternoon shadow, and people on the  sidewalks turned their heads and watched as the car went past. And then  that was it. That was the town. Gerard could still see the church  steeple and bell from the front yard of their new house.It  would have been nice, he supposed, if they had actually gotten there on  Saturday, because now everything was happening too quickly. They’d  tumbled out of the car into their rented home, barking their shins on  the unfamiliar furnishings in the growing dark, before his mom realized  they needed to trip a circuit breaker or something equally arcane. Even  afterwards, half the lights in the house seemed to be dead.Mikey  had fallen asleep almost immediately after dinner, pale and obviously  exhausted, but Gerard couldn’t get settled. He spent his first night  there staring glumly out the window, listening to the absence of sirens  and traffic white-noise. He normally fell asleep to talk shows and  infomercials, but his new bedroom had no TV, just an empty bookshelf and  a mirrored dresser. All he could hear were creepy countryside sounds  and the hum of his brain running in mad loops.It was somehow  insanely quiet and impossibly noisy at the same time. The tree branches  scratched like zombie hands at the window, which was, okay, kind of  cool, but loud as f@ck in the still room. The house itself creaked and  moaned constantly, and the staircase groaned from time to time, like  someone was slowly creeping up to the second floor. Maybe all houses  shifted and sighed like this, but only in the eerie silence of small  towns could you actually hear it.It wasn’t just a creepy  soundtrack, though. There was actual physical creepiness: flickering  hall lights and drifting cobwebs, dark moldy patches on the living room  walls. Gerard’d already tripped on three loose floorboards, slammed his  thumb in a drawer, and scalded his hand in the bathroom—the faucet  apparently had only two settings: cold as death and fiery hellwater.  This house was just f@ck@ng unfriendly.He wondered if their old  house missed them, leaning a little forward and peering down the street  with its window eyes, lonely, waiting for the Ways to come home. Maybe  it rattled the cabinets sullenly at the new tenants, or refused to drain  the shower, or…And then apparently he’d fallen asleep, since  his mom was suddenly pounding on his door and f@ck, life was obviously  not worth living. It was early, and he had to walk to school, and Mikey  was going away, again, and Gerard couldn’t even complain properly  because it made him feel like a complete @ssh@l@.This should  have been Mikey’s sophomore year at Belleville, and instead he was here,  pulled out of school to spend the semester at a specialist asthma  center, being poked and tested each week by a legion of creepy  researchers. He’d left behind all his friends—Pete, and Gabe, and that  weird hyper band kid that kept skulking around their house and babbling  to Mikey about their pirated Disney DVD empire. So f@ck it, Gerard would  just be a cheerful little soldier. He’d f@ck@ng walk to school, and  like it. Hell.“F@ck,” he muttered, and resisted the urge to rub his eyes again. “Alright, whatever. Maybe it won’t be so bad?”Mikey stared at him and Gerard managed an approximation of a smile. “Good luck with that new doctor, man. Xavier, right?”“Ha ha,” said Mikey, still looking suspicious. “Funny.”“I’m  just saying,” Gerard said. “They said there’d be side effects of the  new medicine, right? Side effects could include, I dunno, psionic  blades.”“Lame,” Mikey scoffed, but Gerard counted it as a win,  because Mikey was smiling, just a little. Gerard shuffled over and  leaned into him, careful not to spill his coffee. Mikey smelled warm and  familiar, sleep and soap and bitter caffeine, and Gerard closed his  eyes for just a second. Outside, the horn of their car blared, which,  wow, the neighbors were going to love that this early in the morning. Mikey shoved him gently away and the coffee in his mug sloshed threateningly.“Go back to bed, Gee,” he said, and then smirked. “Have fun walking.”“F@ck  you too,” Gerard said, and retreated into the kitchen. The door closed,  and he watched through the window as the car pulled away down the  street. The sky was still a dark, deep blue, and he figured he had  another hour or two to sleep before Marche f@ck@ng Slav to the gulag. He  laid down a few minutes, uneasy and jittery, but he couldn’t sleep, not  now.He unpacked and set up his bookshelves and posters and  fiddled with the supremely obnoxious drawers of the antique dresser,  which only opened if he heaved with both hands, and afterwards tended to  fall out and squash his toes. By the time daylight started bleeding  into the room, he was in an even worse mood than before.And  just in case he’d been thinking the day wasn’t totally f@ck@d up from  the start, he managed to do that terrible thing with the eyeliner pencil  where he got distracted and stabbed himself. It was at least a billion  years before it was remotely possible to even pry the lids back open,  and then his eye was all watery and bloodshot and crazy. He’d even  thought about not wearing eyeliner today, he really had. But when he’d  looked in the mirror his face had looked young and unfamiliar, fragile,  and he’d wound up just smearing coal-black around his eyes as usual.  Which obviously had been the wrong choice, since now he looked like he  had some undead disease—zombie pink eye, maybe.And his day was only going to get worse, because he still had to walk to school. That was f@ck@ng inhumane, no matter what his mom said.He  sighed loudly to announce his general displeasure with the world—it  didn’t count as complaining if no one could hear it, right?—and then set  off on foot towards the high school, clutching his thermos of coffee.He  contemplated pretending he’d gotten lost and doubling back to the  house, but it really was only three blocks. The school was just ahead,  looming in the morning sun, squat and malevolent. There was a steady  stream of cars being funneled in its direction, belching black smoke,  mufflers rattling in the cold morning air.The parking lot was  filled with pick-up trucks and rusting sedans; a few Volvos and station  wagons were scattered here and there. One spotless white truck was in a  place of pride at the front, parked next to the school entrance, and  Gerard had to stop and stare, because he’d never, in his entire life,  seen anyone actually decorate a truck with dead animals. There were deer  antlers prancing along the front b@mper, a tattered foxtail flying from  the elongated radio antenna, and a humongous rack of horns blocking  most of the rear window. Gerard could feel his jaw drop open, and he  reeled a few involuntary steps backward.“Holy f@ck@ng sh@t,” he  said, tilting his head to better take it in. Someone standing next to  him made a threatening, throat-clearing noise.“You got a  problem with my truck, freak?” Oh, that just figured. The guy next to  him was scowling down at Gerard from under the brim of his ballcap.  “What the f@ck@n’ hell you wearing, anyway? Is that make-up?”Gerard  didn’t really feel he had to justify his sartorial choices to someone  who used antlers as fashion accessories, so he just turned away to go  into the school. He had to get his schedule, figure out where all his  classes were, and somehow manage to avoid interacting with any of the  denizens of this hellhole. Just seven hours, and then he could go home,  visit Mikey, work on his comic strips. Barricade himself in his room and  never come out. He was about to head up the stairs when a huge hand  settled on his shoulder and yanked him backward.“I asked you a  question,” the guy said, getting in Gerard’s space and looming,  practically bumping chests with him. The f@ck@r was tall, at  least six feet, with bulging biceps, and his cheap cologne was making  Gerard’s eyes water. “You don’t just walk away when someone’s talking to  you, f@gg@t.”It was f@ck@ng cold out, and Gerard just wanted to  get inside and hunker down and not talk to anyone, especially not  anyone wearing camouflage pants and a letter jacket. He wanted to go home,  but he couldn’t, so he just shrugged noncommittally and tried to edge  around the guy. But the @ssh@l@ kept doing that annoying thing where he  matched Gerard step for step, blocking his escape and grinning meanly.“Fine,  your truck is f@ck@ng ugly, that answer your question?” Gerard snapped,  and the guy sucked in a breath and narrowed his eyes. There was already  a sizable crowd of high school sadists forming around them, jostling to  get a better whiff of schadenfreude. Great f@ck@ng way to start the  day. God, Gerard had the worst f@ck@ng luck.“It is not,”  the guy snarled, and Gerard knew, just knew, that the f@ck@r was an inch  away from patting his truck comfortingly and cooing that he wouldn’t  let the nasty f@g get gay cooties all over his baby. “What the f@ck do  you know? You’re wearing pink shoes.”“Pink shoelaces,”  Gerard corrected him, crossing his arms over his chest and hunching his  shoulders. F@ck, he really needed to learn to just shut his mouth.“You need to learn some f@ck@ng manners, freak,” another guy sneered,  and Antlers McBigot grunted in agreement, lip still curled in outrage  over the insult to his vehicle. He reached out and shoved Gerard, a  solid painful blow that left him staggering back on his heels and sent  his coffee over his shoes in a wave of wasted caffeine. Laughter echoed  though the surrounding crowd.“I don’t think you understand how  this town works,” the guy scowled, hanging over Gerard, face inches away  like he was waiting for Gerard to back down. Oh, f@ck this.“Gosh,”  Gerard drawled, looking up from under his lashes at the @ssh@l@ and  making a sarcastic moue with his mouth. “How lucky I’ve got a big strong  man like you to teach me. You’re a sweetheart.” He batted his eyes for  good measure, and Antlers promptly reeled backwards with a dumbfounded  look, as though Gerard had just stuck a hand down his pants and grabbed  his package.“Oh, sh@t!” one guy in the crowd said, and  another guy in a letter jacket had his eyebrows raised nearly to his  hairline. Everyone was looking at the lead jock, who was still staring  at Gerard as though Gerard might, at any moment, attack him with  eyeliner and dye his shoelaces pink. Gerard managed to coolly raise an  eyebrow, but inwardly he was already in a state of stark, pants-sh@tt@ng  panic. They were going to f@ck@ng crucify him. And then maybe set him  on fire. And then, f@ck, Gerard didn’t even know what they did out here.  Probably beat him to death with a deer skull.“What—what the  f@ck@ng f@ck do you think—” Antlers said, voice rising precariously, and  then the bell rang, interrupting whatever threat of imminent death was  about to be spluttered. In the rush of the rest of the student body to  the door, Gerard was able to scuttle past him and his cronies and up  into the school before anyone could really react. This was going to be  the worst day ever. Gerard could already tell.Once  inside, Gerard was basically a Sesame Street episode on non-conformity.  One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is  wearing eyeliner and all black and has a bookbag embroidered with skulls  and the others are all wearing denim and plaid and John Deere t-shirts  and camouflage. Gerard kept his head down, but he could sense the brazen  staring and raised eyebrows anyway. F@ck. He was so doomed.Trying  to navigate the crowded hallways and find the main office somewhere was  basically impossible—there were absolutely no signs, just identical  bleak doors and grayish walls, like a f@ck@ng labyrinth. The plaque next  to the main office was almost maliciously small. He’d made three passes  down the halls before he finally spotted it, although at least after  the bell for first period had rung, the halls were clear and he didn’t  have to dodge the crowds. Inside, there was a student working the front  desk and a sleepy-looking secretary in the corner filing her nails and  watching The Days of Our Lives, that weird episode with the Russian ballerina and the cross-dressing.The student said in an unexpectedly perky voice, “You must be Gerard Way!”“Yeah,  that’s me,” Gerard said cautiously. The guy looked surprisingly  un-evil. He was wearing a Ramones t-shirt and smiling, and he had a  truly impressive head of hair.“I’m Ray Toro! I’ve got you a  schedule and a map of the school here.” Ray handed over the crisp  printed sheets and beamed at Gerard. “Your first period is Geometry with  Mrs. Hall, room 205 upstairs. Just go up the staircase on the left when  you leave here and once you’re upstairs it’s the first door on your  right.”“Thanks?” Gerard said uncertainly. The guy kept smiling.  Gerard was at a loss. Also, f@ck@ng hell, his first class was math, and  he was going to have to walk in late and all those eyes would be glaring  right at him. Okay, f@ck. Fine. Mikey had been right. Possibly the pink  shoelaces and Iron Maiden hoodie had been a poor choice today.“I’m a senior, too,” Ray said, oblivious to Gerard’s complete despair  and hopelessness, leaning back in his chair and bouncing one foot on his  knee. He was still grinning. It was entirely unnatural for 8:30 AM.  Gerard squinted at him suspiciously. “I placed out of Geometry last  year, so I get to work the front desk this period instead. But I’ll see  you afterwards in English. It’s room 207, by the way. Hey, have you  considered joining the marching band? We totally lost like half the band  last year when they graduated so we really need some new blood.”“Hah,”  Gerard laughed inadvertently with a terrible honking noise that he  resolved not to make again for the rest of the day. “No, uh, you’d  probably pay me not to join band.”“Well, f@ck,” Ray said sadly,  and then froze, looking warily at the secretary in the corner, who  according to the gold-embossed nameplate was aptly named Gertrude Hawthorne. But she was in a soap-opera coma and oblivious to swearing  students and the world in general, so Ray turned back to Gerard and  beamed again.“Well, I’ll see you later, Gerard! Nice to meet you!” he chirped, and waved.“Bye,” Gerard said, eyebrow raised—seriously, that kid had to be on something—and  felt marginally more hopeful about the rest of the day. At least one  person in this town wasn’t a total @ssh@l@, even if he was bordering on  Stepford cheeriness.Turned out, though, that his optimism had  been premature, because soon as he entered room 205, the class erupted  into whispers and one douchebag in the back of the room whistled and  said, loud enough to be heard three rows of desks away, “D@mn, what the  hell, we taking in she-males now?” Awesome. Then Mrs. Hall made him stand at the front of the room and introduce himself.  Gerard was forced to downgrade her from ‘sweet little old lady’ to ‘the  dark lord Mephistopheles.’ And then she immediately proved this  decision to be correct by making him complete the problem on the chalk  board, because she hadn’t reached her quotient of evil for 8 AM yet, or  something.Then he had to take the only seat open in the class,  which of course was in front of f@ck@ng Antlers McJockstrap, who was  staring up at him with loathing. The rest of the class period passed  with Jocko flicking spitballs in his hair and hissing “Oh, pretty and smart too, city boy? Ain’t you special,”  and other gems each time Mrs. Hall looked away. Gerard tried to ignore  it and focus on doodling some dueling demon unicorns for Mikey in his  notebook. In retrospect, a bad idea, since the @ssh@l@ next to him  spotted it and hooted with delight and called him Princess for the rest  of the period.At least the next class had Ray Toro, he thought,  but unfortunately Mrs. Hall (tomorrow he was bringing a crucifix to  class, seriously) kept him after the bell rang to discuss Gerard joining  the math team and to give him his textbook and the homework assignments  he’d missed. By the time he escaped, all the seats in his English class  were full. Except, mysteriously, the seat in front of Jocko.The  rest of the day followed suit; most of the other students left him  alone, but there were a few @ssh@l@s in every class that shoved his desk  and called out the requisite unimaginative insults. It wasn’t like he  hadn’t heard this sh@t before, but at least he’d been home, then, in  familiar territory. In Belleville he even had friends, sort of. Mikey’s  friends Pete and Gabe had started sitting with him at lunch last year,  and then they’d progressed to stealing his phone and invading his  basement and watching movies with him and Mikey on the weekends. It had  been nice. He was actually going to miss them, especially now that he  was stuck here, in the high school from hell.Luckily, the last  class of the day was Art, with only four other students in the room—four  girls set on ignoring him completely, which was fine by Gerard. He  spent the time sketching the still life the teacher had set up and  adding in tiny vampires and rabid monkeys clinging to the spokes of the  bicycle wheel. Mr. Felts apparently wasn’t impressed.“Unacceptable,”  he said darkly, waving his pencil at the totally awesome vampire  bicycle monkeys. “Draw it again, please. And stick to the assignment  this time.” Because nothing beat art class with all the actual art and  fun sucked out of it.When the school day had finally, finally  ended, Gerard found himself surrounded by a gang of guys with letter  jackets in the parking lot, having decided, apparently, that the best  way to re-establish their heteronormative masculinity was to knock  around the new f@g and steal his bookbag.The lead jerk from  that morning started off on some rambling monologue on respect and  b@tch@s and the baseball team, or something. His name was Ted Sikowski,  apparently, and Gerard’d ‘better not forget it, f@gg@t’— which, hey, no  points for originality, there. Which possibly hadn’t been the brightest  thing for Gerard to say out loud. Ted slammed him up against a truck,  shoved his face against the hot paint hard enough that Gerard’s vision  went crackly and dim. So that sucked, but once Gerard spit out blood  onto the sidewalk, Ted apparently felt his honor was satisfied enough to  let him go. Gerard bent gingerly to grab his bookbag, and f@ck, his  shoulder hurt, too. Fantastic.He edged his way past the ring of  self-righteous onlookers, then closed his eyes for a moment. He didn’t  want to go home. His mom would fuss over him, the corner of her mouth  pulling down and the skin around her eyes tight and upset. She made that  face too often, lately. And he sure as hell didn’t want to wait around  in the parking lot for those @ssh@l@s to leave, and they were blocking  off his exit anyway.He wound up shuffling off through the few  remaining cars, head down, towards the woods bordering the school  grounds. The faint impression of a path wound through the tall grass,  and he followed it absently, trying to staunch his bl@@dy lip with the  sleeve of his hoodie. He could hear laughter and raised voices from the  parking lot behind him. He tried not to listen too closely, but he could  feel his shoulders hunching miserably.The grass rustled  hollowly as he followed the overgrown path, shuffling his feet, head  down and mouth dripping red from a busted lip. He was sure he made an  epically tragic figure, sloping monstrous towards the shelter of the  woods and away from civilization, the blue sky arcing overhead.The  bright, end-of-summer sun was hot enough now that his shirt had gone  all sticky and damp, even though the wind had an October chill. Past the  edge of the woods, though, it was actually pretty pleasant, and  although he’d intended to collapse in the shade and watch the parking  lot trolls mill around until they got bored and left, something made him  want to keep plodding onward. Head down, trudging through the leaf  litter to wander lost for all eternity. Dante’s wood of suicides, the  Black Forest level for high-school misfits in make-up. Maybe there would  be werewolves.An ancient-looking flat stone wall bordered one  side of the path, crooked and half-toppled. He had to grudgingly admit  there was something appealing about the autumn woods, something  intangible and deliciously spooky. When he looked up, the trees  stretched overhead, arching like the bones of cathedral walls against  the blue vault of the sky. The leaves were all red and gold, curling  dryly at the edges, rattling when the wind blew.He kept  worrying his lip as he walked, re-opening the cut on his mouth. That was  going to be a problem, probably—he was bad about about picking at scabs  and prodding bruises. He held his sleeve against his mouth again until  it clotted, then fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes, stumbling now and  then over random tree roots poking up maliciously from the ground.First cigarette of the afternoon—it almost, almost calmed his nerves. At least it gave him something to do with his hands.  The smoke hung heavy in the air. Maybe if he got lost, he could follow  the trail out; a modern-day Hansel, complete with lung cancer. He  supposed he should turn back soon, before he actually did get  lost. He took a last drag of the cigarette, and the cut on his mouth  must have reopened because the paper stuck to his bleeding lip, clung  sticky to his skin.“F@ck,” he said ruefully to the empty woods, prodding his mouth with ragged, black-painted nails. “Smoking my own blood.”“Kinky,”  the empty woods said back, and Gerard jumped backward, windmilled his  arms frantically, and fell on his ass into some intensely spiky  unfriendly bush. He made an embarrassing tea-kettle-like noise,  flailing.“Holy sh@t!” the guy standing behind him on the path  said, sounding alarmed and amused. “I didn’t mean to freak you out that  bad, man.”“Gnnaaahh,” Gerard wheezed, trying and failing to stand up. “What the f@ck—what is your—where did you even come from!”The  random stealth guy stared at him as Gerard glared witheringly, or  attempted to, and then burst into delighted giggles—which, whatever, it  wasn’t funny, okay. The f@ck@ng bush was possessed or something.  Gerard yanked his arm again and yelped as thorns dug into his shoulder,  and then suddenly a cool hand was on his wrist, confidently lifting away  branches and untangling things from Gerard’s hair and hauling him to  his feet.Gerard shook the dead leaves from his hair and spit  out a twig, edging away from the bush just in case it decided to leap  out at him again. F@ck, his heart was still going eleven billion miles a  minute.“So, uh… you okay, dude?” the guy asked, rocking back  on his heels. “Still breathing? I’m Frank, by the way. These are my  woods.”“Your woods?” asked Gerard as he brushed  hopelessly at the giant muddy stain on his jeans. Oh, his day just kept  getting better. At least his pulse was slowly normalizing. Probably his  heart wasn’t going to explode, but it had been a close thing. He slanted  an accusing look in Frank’s direction.Frank didn’t so much seem  to notice, picking at a nail and staring at it intently. He flicked a  glance at Gerard and looked back down again immediately. “I mean, uh,  sorta? They are now. People… tend not to come here. You did, though!” he  said, perking up. “Which is awesome. Clearly, you are awesome.”Gerard  was still picking thorns and twigs and other random forest  paraphernalia out of his hair—what had he been thinking, coming into a  forest, nature was f@ck@ng red in tooth and claw and leaf—but at  this he looked back up. That… that was generally not the response he got  from people. And now that he wasn’t dying of heart failure or premature  death-by-tree, it was dawning on him that Frank was actually sort of  attractive. Okay, really attractive.Frank grinned at him,  flicking his lip ring with his tongue. He was even paler than  Gerard—pale like a china plate, almost luminous. Tattoos curled beneath  the holes in Frank’s shirt and down the insides of his arms, and Gerard  itched again for his sketchpad and ink. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t  noticed this guy at school, Jesus.“F@ck,” Gerard laughed in  surprise, wincing as his lip cracked open even more. “I thought everyone  in this town wore polo shirts and plaid, man.”“Nothing wrong  with plaid,” Frank said, waggling his eyebrows, and then he laughed,  high and delighted, and threw an arm around Gerard’s shoulders,  squeezing. “This is so awesome! No one cool ever comes out here.”“Um,”  Gerard said, eyes popping open. He wanted to surreptitiously pinch  himself, but no, he couldn’t, because his hands were pinned to his side  by some random hot guy—who thought Gerard was cool—hugging him. He struggled to get his brain to reboot. “Uh. What?”“Dude,”  Frank said, leaning back and letting go of Gerard’s shoulders but still  bizarrely and brain-numbingly close. Frank’s face was achieving  Ray-Toro-levels of cheer; he looked like someone had just offered him  the Nobel Prize or a backstage pass to Bonnaroo. Gerard shivered,  rubbing his arms absently. “Seriously, so f@ck@ng awesome! C’mon, you  have to hang out with me, you wanna walk a bit? You got a name?” Frank  said, bouncing and beaming. “And oh, oh, can I bum a smoke?”Maybe  that was all Frank’s excitement was, a guy jonesing for a cigarette. If  so, Gerard could definitely sympathize. Back home he knew all the best  places to sneak a smoke on the school grounds—here, not so much. Waiting  all day for a cigarette was definitely torture. He fumbled out his pack  of Marlboros and his lighter, handed them over gingerly.“So,  yeah,” Gerard said, eyeing Frank warily as he somehow managed to bounce  and light a cigarette at the same time. “I’m Gerard? Gerard Way.”“Nice  to meet you, Gerard Way!” Frank said, beaming. He was still leaning  into Gerard as he lit up, and he took his first drag with his shoulder  bumping into Gerard’s arm and his hair brushing Gerard’s cheek, which,  okay, probably wasn’t like a come-on or flirting or anything—Gerard knew  better than that, there was no way—but then Frank’s eyes fluttered  closed.“God, Gerard,” he said hoarsely, and Gerard stared at him. “I owe you one, it’s been ages.”“You  can, uh, keep the pack if you want?” Gerard offered weakly. He guessed  Frank’s parents were anti-smoking Nazis or something. “I’ve got an extra  in my bag, anyway.”“Dude,” Frank said, face lit up. “You’re  f@ck@ng awesome, Gee—can I call you Gee?—it’s so f@ck@ng fantastic that  you’re here. I mean, the forest, not Glen Fell, Glen Fell f@ck@ng blows  c@cks. Are you new here? Why’d you move out to the middle of f@ck@ng  nowhere, dude?”Gerard took a moment to parse that. He was having  a hard time gathering his thoughts when Frank was still making happy  little sounds around his cigarette.“Gee’s fine,” he finally  managed, ducking his head. “And, uh, yeah, we just got here last  weekend.” Frank seemed to be waiting for more of an explanation than  that, and for some reason Gerard found himself going on. “You know the  Trumbull Medical Institute? We couldn’t, um. Afford to rent a house in  the city, and this is the closest town to it, so.” He paused, and waited  for the question, but Frank was just puffing away at his cigarette,  looking bright and quizzical. “It’s my brother, Mikey,” Gerard got out  finally. “He’s got asthma. They’ve got some experimental stuff they can  try him on, so, uh. That’s why we’re here.”Gerard could  actually rattle off a list of totally boring stats about jet nebulizers  and long-acting beta-2-agonists, but he figured Frank didn’t want to  hear all that. He didn’t particularly feel like saying anything else,  anyway. It was way too easy to remember how his brother had choked for  air last fall, collapsed in the stairwell, not breathing, Gerard  pounding on his chest and swearing. Then the ambulance had arrived and  Gerard didn’t remember too much of that part, of the CPR and the  defibrillator. Just Mikey in the ER later. The only sign his heart had  restarted had been a steady beeping from the machines, and otherwise,  Mikey had been motionless. Pale and intubated, lifeless, snaky lines of  plastic weaving their way around and up inside his nostrils and lungs.  He’d been like that for days. If Gerard let his mind wander, it always  went back there, to that place, to how close it’d been. How close it  still could be.“Sorry, man.” Gerard jumped, startled, and looked up. Frank was staring at him, solemn for once, his eyes dark. “That’s rough.”“He’s going to be okay,” Gerard clarified. He bit the inside of his cheek. “Mikey, I mean. He’s gonna be fine.”Frank  didn’t say anything, just sort of squeezed Gerard’s shoulder and Gerard  leaned into it before he realized what he was doing. He should have  backed away, he didn’t even know this kid, but Frank was playing with the strings of Gerard’s hoodie and humming something quiet, and Gerard just—couldn’t.Anyway,  Frank was just wearing a t-shirt, and it was f@ck@ng freezing, so maybe  he was trying to steal Gerard’s body warmth or something, and it would  be wrong to push him away, right? Although, f@ck, for all he knew Frank  was a crazy serial killer, living in the woods and collecting the scalps  of loser kids to make into a coat. Except he was a little short to be a  serial killer.Frank had already gone through one cigarette and  was blissfully lighting another. “Really, I mean, even if it sucks being  here, I can’t lie, I’m glad you came. I’ve been bored for f@ck@ng ever.  I haven’t had anyone to actually talk to in years,” he said out of the  corner of his mouth, and then bit his lip and looked at Gerard with wide  eyes, like maybe he’d said too much. Gerard snorted. Like anyone could  confess to being more of a loner than Gerard himself was.“No kidding,” Gerard said heavily. “I have no idea how I’m gonna survive Glen Fell. It’s, like, absent of humanity.”“You  stick with me, obviously,” Frank said, eyes crinkling as he beamed at  Gerard. He wrapped an arm around Gerard’s shoulders and squeezed.  Gerard’s stomach did a completely stupid, unnecessary swooping movement.  “We can keep each other company. F@ck all those tools. Hey, you like  the Misfits, right?”“Yeah,” Gerard admitted, and okay, it was sort of awesome that Frank knew the Misfits. “Danzig’s f@ck@ng raw.”“D@mn  straight,” Frank agreed. “You have rocking taste in music, too! See,  this is f@ck@ng awesome. This is, like, fate. You should totally walk  with me a while, Gee.” He waggled his eyebrows invitingly. “I know all  the best shortcuts and sh@t. We could go see some ruins, you like ruins?Gerard  scuffed his boot against the ground, and weighed Frank’s ginormous  smile against straying out into the woods with the ticks and spiders or  whatever with some guy he barely knew. It wasn’t like he had anything  else to do. Sit at home and drink and wait for his mom to take him to  the hospital. And he totally did like the Misfits, but. F@ck. It’d been a  really long f@ck@ng day, and he wasn’t sure he was up for possibly  getting murdered, or lost in the woods, or whatever.“Um, look, I  actually have to go. I was just, um.” Escaping from a bunch of @ssh@l@s  in letter jackets. “Just exploring,” he finished lamely.Frank’s face fell. “You have to leave already?”“Yeah?” Gerard said, eyeing him uncertainly. Frank let go of Gerard’s shoulders and shuffled back a few feet.“Oh,” he said, and he looked so unhappy, hunched in on himself and face twisted. “Oh, um. Okay.”Gerard  felt like a tool. Like he’d kicked a puppy and then stolen its ball.  And then set its ball on fire. “We could hang out tomorrow?” Gerard  offered hesitantly, and stuck his hands in the kangaroo pouch of his  hoodie to keep from fiddling impatiently.“Yeah?” Frank said, a  small smile creeping back on his face. “F@ck yeah! I mean, only if you  want to. But that would be cool. Meet you here, same time tomorrow?”“Or I could just see you in school,” Gerard said hopefully.“No,  here is better,” said Frank, not meeting Gerard’s eyes. Maybe Frank  didn’t want to be seen with Gerard in public. Gerard could sympathize—he  didn’t want to be seen in public, either.“Uh, okay,” he said,  and f@ck, he was bleeding again. He sucked his lower lip in his mouth  and pressed his tongue to the cut. Probably his should ice it when he  got home, he guessed.“You sure you can’t stay a bit later?”  Frank wheedled, peered out from under his bangs, looking hopeful and  even more puppy-like than before. An adorable punk puppy with tattoos  and dimples, which surely was breaking some sort of UN law for  weaponized cuteness.And weirdly, even without the hot  Misfits-loving guy, Gerard really did want to stay. These woods weren’t  so bad, atmospheric in a way he’d never appreciated before: the falling  leaves skittering by on the breeze, the trees stretching upwards,  vibrantly orange and red, and Frank standing incongruously cheerful  amidst the grey trunks and fallen leaves.But his shoulder hurt,  and his head hurt, and really, it had been the longest, sh@ttiest day  ever. Gerard, more than almost anything, just wanted a g@dd@mn beer and  to hide in his room until it got dark, and then to crawl into bed with  Mikey, listen to him breathe.“Yeah, I gotta go home,” Gerard said, and Frank frowned.“But you’ll be back, right?” Frank said, voice oddly young and solemn. “You promise?”Gerard  raised an eyebrow, but Frank just kept looking at him and so Gerard  wound up nodding uncertainly. Frank lit up, and Gerard couldn’t help but  grin back“Sure,” he said. “I promise.” Then he turned to go,  leaving Frank standing on the path behind him. “I’ll see you tomorrow,”  he called over his shoulder after a moment. He looked back, but Frank  must have disappeared around one of the trail’s bends or something. He  had to be close, though; Gerard could still hear him.“Tomorrow,” Frank called back, and Gerard felt the wind blow chilly and October-cool against his cheek.Okay,  so the day hadn’t been a total loss, he thought, and smiled into the  collar of his hoodie as he left the forest and walked homeward.***It  wasn’t until later that night, chair tucked up close to Mikey’s  hospital bed and telling Mikey about his day, that Gerard abruptly  realized he was, maybe, a little more excited about seeing Frank  tomorrow than he’d thought he was. He’d started telling Mikey about  Frank, about his tattoos and bizarre personal space issues, how he’d  apparently explored the woods and found ruins, how Frank was the only  really friendly person he’d met all day, besides the hyper  receptionist-student guy. He caught himself gushing about Frank’s smile  mid-sentence and stopped, slightly horrified.Mikey cocked an eyebrow knowingly.“Look, he’s totally weird!” Gerard said, backpedaling. “I mean, not that that’s a bad thing. I just. I don’t know, he’s weird. I don’t like him or anything.”Mikey’s mouth twitched.“Oh,  shut up,” Gerard huffed. “He’s just…interesting, okay? He likes the  Misfits!” The eyebrow stayed up. Stupid little brothers and their  all-knowing eyebrows.“I mean, at first I thought he might be a  serial killer, but he’s probably not. Pete’s got personal space issues,  and he’s not a serial killer, right? I guess I might go hang out with  him tomorrow. Just because of the ruins, you know. And now you know  where I’m going, so if Frank kills me and hides the body, you know where  to look.”If Mikey kept rolling his eyes like that he was going  to strain something, Christ. Gerard was a little offended Mikey wasn’t  more concerned for his brother’s safety.Mikey eventually drifted  off, exhausted and pale, without ever saying one word out loud—he’d  apparently had a pretty bad attack earlier that afternoon. Random nurses  kept poking their heads in to coo worriedly over his limp form. Nurses  tended to fawn over Mikey. Gerard had a theory that it was probably a  combination of the stoic silence, the big brown eyes, and the fact that  the kid weighed a hundred pounds, max. It was like nurse catnip.His  mom had been in the hospital with Mikey all afternoon, so after kissing  Mikey’s forehead, she’d stormed out and left the two boys alone.  Probably she was off terrorizing the doctors again, who seemed fairly  inexperienced at dealing with a Jersey mom in high dudgeon. Gerard  almost felt bad for them.While Mikey slept, Gerard passed the  time drawing a totally awesome scene of himself and Mikey with Bruce  Campbell chins and chainsaws, patrolling a ghoul-ridden graveyard. If  Frank was lurking behind a tombstone with a half-moon grin, then no one  had to know. Well. Okay, Mikey would probably notice when he found the  drawing on his nightstand in the morning, but that didn’t count. Mikey  noticed everything; it was at once awesome and totally annoying.Gerard  tried his best not to snarl at the night nurse, a hefty brunette whose  stern expression melted like butter when she gazed at her sleeping  patient but turned steely with alarming speed when Gerard protested  being kicked out. It wasn’t as though Gerard was disturbing Mikey or  keeping him awake or anything. Visiting hours were such b@llsh@t. He  hated leaving Mikey there.On the way home his mom started  fussing over Gerard’s bruised mouth, which he could have really done  without. He did his best to ignore her as she went off again on how  maybe he should try a little harder to fit in at school. That was rich  coming from Donna Way, who’d gone to work at the hair salon that morning  wearing jeans with giant roses embroidered on the ass and a sparkly  black t-shirt that read ‘Queen B@tch’ across the b@@bs. Gerard was  finally forced to distract her by casually letting it drop that he’d  been asked to join the math team.“What?” his mom said, eyes bugging out. “You have to be f@ck@ng joking, Gerard. You failed your last three math tests back home!”“Yeah,  but that was Calculus. That shit is impossible,” Gerard said  defensively, and then clutched the dashboard in terror. “Holy f@ck, eyes  on the road, Mom!” he squealed.The near-death experience was  worth it, though, because his mom started laughing and looked a little  calmer. Gerard relaxed; he felt sh@tty worrying her when she had so many  other things to deal with. Apparently she’d spent the evening yelling  at Mikey’s physician, Dr. Costa, who wanted to keep Mikey checked into  the hospital longer than expected by, like, a month. Mikey’d had a bad  reaction to the new bronchodilator they’d started him on that morning,  and Dr. Costa wanted to keep him on oxygen for a while before even beginning the experimental treatments.Apparently  Mikey wasn’t getting worse, but he wasn’t getting better, either. It’d  been a rough year for all of them. Gerard’s mom had lost about  twenty-five pounds in the last five months and quit smoking  entirely—Gerard knew he should, too, but it was hard enough just making  sure not to do it anywhere around Mikey, or where Mikey might be. His  mom had managed, though. She’d suddenly gone from a relaxed, casual  hairdresser who would chill with Gerard in the TV room, watching  cartoons and late night monster movies, to a near-stranger, brittle and  constantly busy. It was nice to see her joking, just a little, even if  it only lasted for a moment.At home, though, his mother  immediately disappeared into her room. Gerard knocked on her door  tentatively to see if she wanted a Hot Pocket, or cinnamon toast, or an  Irish coffee. She didn’t. Gerard retreated to his room, slamming the  door just to hear the noise reverberate around the house.His  new room wasn’t a basement, got too much sun in the morning, and was  f@ck@ng drafty as hell, but it was the only place in the entire town  that felt remotely familiar. It was strewn with stacks of comics and  DVDs. The smell of paint and charcoals and socks already wafted out into  the hall when he opened the door.It wasn’t home, but it was  what he had, even if it was eerily quiet and creaky. He wound up digging  his old TV set out of the stack of unpacked boxes in the living room,  something to drown out the silence. He hauled it upstairs awkwardly and  only caught his elbow against the banister once. Success.After a  drawn-out battle with all the evil cords and plugs and random buttons,  he finally flopped onto his bed and triumphantly pointed the remote at  the screen, cueing up an episode of Mystery Science Theater. He  drifted on the edge of sleep for a long while, watching with half-lidded  eyes, but he kept being jolted awake. It was windy tonight, and every  few minutes branches scratched against the window. It sounded almost  like a cat pawing at the door, like something wanted his attention,  wanted to get inside. He kept expecting Mikey to chime in with Tom  Servo, and his stupid tired brain kept getting confused and thinking it  was Mikey scratching at the window, asking to be let in. Gerard wrapped  up in his ugly old quilt and turned up the volume, but it still took two  discs to finally fall into an uneasy sleep.'
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
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