Assistant: You are a summarizer for a FanFiction Reader App (AO3). Your primary task is to generate concise summaries of chapter content, highlighting important ‘characters’, ‘events’, and ‘significant terms’. Ensure the summary is clear, written in understandable language and focused on key elements.
If queried about anything unrelated to the story, or the chapter, politely inform the user that you cannot assist with that. Maintain a friendly tone throughout, don't make things up, stay factual. 
Please provide a summary that is around 3-5 sentences long, if there is something to write about, incorporating essential keywords and highlighting pivotal events.
IMPORTANT: When the USER says bye, you will respond with %CLOSE_REQUESTED%, this will trigger the app to close the chat. This is very important, so don't forget it!
Assistant: Title: The Anatomy of a Fall
        Author: novembersmith novembersmith 
        Chapter: 4/12 
        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 4
    

    


  

  
  
    
    That night, Gerard stayed up late and pondered running away, like Frank,  maybe. Then his mom could live at the hospital, and Mikey would have  company. But that’d make Mikey upset, and his mom, probably. Not to  mention Gerard would probably die if he tried to go all caveman hermit  in the woods. He couldn’t figure it out, how to fix things, and wound upignoring his earlier plan to try and stay sober, tonight; he just  wanted to stop thinking about Mikey in that stairwell, about Mikey lying  alone in the dark hospital, wheezing in his sleep.The next day at school, he was in a sh@t-awful mood, and he still didn’t have his own bag, just Mikey’s borrowed knapsack, disproportionately heavy on his shoulders and filled with dead pens.He  knew he was being a d@ck, scowling at everyone and answering everything  in monosyllables. He was probably freaking out Ray and annoying Bob,  but he couldn’t quite help himself. Each heartbeat throbbed in his  temples, like mutant Athenan elves were trying to drill out of his  skull, and f@ck@ng Ted had spent all of History flicking white-out all  over his Bowie hoodie, and Isaac had tripped him so that he fell down  the stairs on the way to lunch and everyone f@ck@ng laughed. It was a  f@ck@ng horrible, terrible, day and Gerard would rather chew his own  face off than stay in Vermont another three seconds.He didn’t  want to whine, though, not out loud, so he just sat quietly at lunch and  stared at his plate of wilted lettuce and tried not to give into the  urge to just lay his head on the rough wooden table and go to sleep  forever. Patrick looked at him a little funny and broke off in the  middle of a conversation about zithers to offer him some extra-dark  chocolate and a handful of Excedrin.“You sort of look like you  want to die,” he said sympathetically, and Gerard didn’t think some  candy and pills was going to make him feel any differently, really, but  it was a nice thought. It was good to remember there were decent people  here, that it wasn’t all Ted and his goons and the high school staff  from hell.He even managed to perk up a little in Biology, where  they were taking a break from dissection to watch a NOVA special on the  “Missing Link,” which was, by all reports, pretty cute. Like a  shell-less ninja turtle with a fishy tail.“He seems like a  Michelangelo to me,” Ray commented after Gerard shared this profound  insight. “Maybe that giant bug can be Splinter?”Gerard was about  to hypothesize what Shredder would be—one of those armored fish with  giant teeth, maybe?—but then the teacher shushed them both. Without a  good conversation going, it was hard to stay awake. It was a gray gloomy  day, the sun sulking behind the clouds, and the narrator was droning  soothingly about lobes and lungs. Most of the cl@ss was asleep, slumped  motionless over their lab benches, shadowed and faceless. Gerard thought  Ray had passed out too, head lolling in one hand, but then he poked  Gerard in the shoulder, making him jump.“So, seriously,” Ray  whispered. The kid behind them twitched briefly, snorting in his sleep,  and Ray lowered his voice even more. Well, as low as Ray’s voice could get, anyway. “Tomorrow’s Friday. You have to come to Bob’s, okay? We’re  all gonna spend the night and play video games until we puke. You in?”Gerard  had been a f@ck@ng b@tch all day, he knew he had been, and Ray was  still grinning at him hopefully, still making conversation, inviting him  to hang out. It was uncanny. Ray was seriously the nicest person Gerard  had ever met, ever. Gerard bit his lip. He wasn’t—he liked Ray, he did.  It was just, he was cr@p with parties. Pete and Gabe had kept dragging  him out to parties back in Jersey, but he’d always wound up that weird  kid in the corner that picked over the bookshelves and drank all the  tequila and couldn’t keep up a conversation.“Aww, c’mon, Gee.  Come. Cooomme.” And then Ray seemed to realize he was saying something  potentially vulgar and waggled his eyebrows in delight, making a  ridiculous leering face and an obscene hand gesture.“What the  f@ck kind of slumber party is this?” Gerard retorted, unable to hide his  grin. He turned back to the TV, though, because if Ray kept making that  face, Gerard was probably going to lose it, bust up laughing into the  echoing quiet of the room. Even Mrs. Stroble would notice that, he  figured.On the television screen, a bunch of fish were standing  on their heads on the bottom of the ocean. What the f@ck—fish were  awesome. The sleeping kids were totally missing out.“It’s the  best kind of party,” Ray said, in this super sleazy voice, forcing  Gerard to smother a sudden fit of giggles into his sleeve, because wow,  Ray was the exact opposite of sleazy. Then, as though to prove Gerard’s  point, Ray said in wondering tones, “Dude, what are those fish doing?”“Headstands,”  Gerard said knowingly, and the girl in front of them turned and shushed  them, scowling, and Ray rolled his eyes and mimed zipping his lips. A  few minutes later—the fish were apparently eating some sort of rock  squid while they did headstands, and also they glowed blue, it was  nuts—Ray shoved a notepad in front of Gerard. There was a sketch on the  blue-lined paper. A fish with a fro said, “OMG GERARD WE WILL HAVE SO  MUCH FUN.” Underneath in smaller letters, “GERARD WHY YOU GOTTA HATE THE  FUN.” Gerard glanced down at it, then looked back up at the screen,  then back down, at his vibrating phone. Pete had just sent him a series  of pictures: an empty desk, a pink Converse shoe, that hyper band kid in  a pink tiara. Gerard sent him one back of the Rayfish and then another  of Ray himself making a puzzled face. Ray tolerated the picture-taking,  then shoved the notebook back in front of Gerard and wiggled it.Gerard  gave in. He drew a Gerardsquid hiding under a rock and pondered a long  time what to have it say. “I’m not really a party person,” he finally  wrote in a drippy speech bubble, and shoved the notebook back.***art by apocalypse_me***“But  it’s just going to be me and Bob and maybe Patrick,” Ray said out of  the corner of his mouth. “It’s not a party, dude.” Gerard looked down,  away from Ray’s hangdog face, noticed his phone flashing again. ONE NEW  MESSAGE. who’s the man with the luxurious locks and can I pet him. Gabe. Gerard shook his head, smiling at the phone.“So are you coming?” Ray whispered, and Gerard shoved the phone hastily back in his pocket.“Well.  I don’t get home until late,” Gerard said finally, stared at a dead  catfish in a nearby specimen jar instead. Fish everywhere today, this  one smiling with a thin, lipless mouth and cloudy eyes, stubby whiskers.  Ray bumped his shoulder and Gerard startled, looked up into Ray’s  cheerful face. “It’s just… I don’t get back from seeing Mikey until,  like, midnight.”One of the things that he liked about Ray was  that he’d never actually asked what was wrong with Mikey, even though he  had to know it something pretty serious. It was still nice not being  poked and prodded, nice not having sympathetic, knowing eyes aimed at  him.“Oh, what the f@ck ever, dude,” Ray said, shaking his head.  “Like any of us get to bed before f@ck@ng 6 am anyway. It’ll be fun.  I’ll pick you up from your house at midnight, it’s no big deal. Give in,  Gerard! Resistance is futile.”So somehow Gerard had a slumber  party arranged for that weekend. Bizarre. He’d never been to a sleepover  type party before. He’d passed out at some kid’s house once, some  friend of Pete’s, and woke up with raw egg all over himself the next  morning—f@ck@ng parties. That probably didn’t count as a sleepover,  anyway. Pete and Gabe had sometimes crashed at the Way house, and wound  up in Gerard’s room, but that seemed more like an invasion than a  slumber party, really. Though Gabe did like to paint fingernails on  occasion, but Gerard suspected that probably wasn’t going to go on with  Bob and Ray. Too bad, really. Ray would look awesome in sparkly teal.Maybe  he should bring beer or something, though. But did Ray drink? Gerard’d  never asked, but he got the feeling Ray was sort of wholesome and would  be horrified by even being asked about it. But Gerard wasn’t, like,  positive about that. He spent the rest of biology and most of art  worrying about it, and being glad Ray hadn’t asked him what bug had  crawled up his ass earlier, and wondering whether to even bother  stopping by the path to look for Frank again. But maybe Frank had been  sick, and, well. No one at school mentioned him, and when Gerard  tentatively asked Bob in history if he knew a guy named Frank, Bob just  looked at him blankly, and then they got served a pop quiz and the  conversation was dropped.So maybe Frank was a runaway.Or maybe he was just avoiding Gerard.Either  way, if Frank didn’t show up today… well, Gerard knew what that meant.  It wasn’t like it was that surprising, and he had people to hang out  with that weren’t Frank, anyway. He didn’t need Frank as a friend. It  was totally fine. Except maybe if Frank didn’t show up, Gerard was going  to get a little freaked out and possibly stage a man-hunt, or at least  babble worriedly at Ray and Bob and make them scour the woods with him.  Living in the woods couldn’t be safe, not really. What if Frank had  gotten hurt? F@ck.The bell rang, and he lingered in the art room  until the halls cleared out, cleaning up the scrap paper and  re-ordering the charcoal pencils while Mr. Felts watched him  suspiciously. He managed to escape the school without being stopped by  anyone, and made a beeline for the woods.He stood at the  forest’s edge, annoyed with himself for being hopeful. “Frank?” he said,  as though Frank might be hiding behind a random tree or bush, or  something. He looked around uneasily—nothing. No one. More trees. The  parking lot was still half-full with the cars of kids trapped in band  practice, or of f@ck@ng @ssh@l@ jocks lying in wait for their next  victim. Settling against the trunk of a maple, he fumbled in his bag for  cigarettes—he was just waiting for everyone to leave, he wasn’t waiting  for anyone—when there was sudden movement, right next to him, just out of his range of vision. Gerard froze.“Boo!” someone said in his ear, breath ghosting on the nape of his neck.F@ck@ng  ninja f@ck@r, Christ. Gerard clutched at his chest and maybe, just  maybe, shrieked a little. He dropped his cigarettes and Frank retrieved  them, giggling and smug and pleased with himself. One second there had  only been dead leaves and stolid trunks of trees, wind and distant  high-school sound, and now there was abruptly, in the midst of the empty  woods, this human presence, shifting from foot to foot, stealing his  cigarettes, talking a mile a minute about who knew what. Gerard was  obnoxiously relieved, at first, and then slowly indignation started  seeping in. He folded his arms over his chest, scowling.“Where were you yesterday?” And despite his best efforts, his voice came out plaintive instead of nonchalant.Frank  paused, stopping mid-speech on whatever topic he’d stumbled on while  Gerard was busy glaring—Gerard thought it might involve Silly Putty.“Yesterday?” Frank said slowly, looking worried. “I was here yesterday. Like always.”“No,”  Gerard replied after a moment, a little bewildered. Frank looked  confused; he was staring at Gerard with his brow furrowed. It wasn’t  exactly the response Gerard had expected. “I was here, right here. I  waited. You weren’t in school, either,” he said pointedly. In fact,  unless Frank had been incredibly stealthy, Gerard hadn’t seen him in  school at all, ever.Gerard was gearing up to confront Frank  about it when suddenly Frank’s face cleared, and the look of confusion  was replaced with a look of dawning horror.“Oh,” Frank said,  eyes going huge. “Oh, f@ck. Gee. I’m so sorry. I’m just, f@ck, I’m not  in school anymore, and I’m really bad with time, now. I swear I didn’t  mean to stand you up, I f@ck@ng swear.”“So, what, you just  forgot about me?” Gerard said, feeling a sinking, terrible sensation in  his chest. He stuffed his hands in his hoodie pocket and stared over  Frank’s shoulder. There was a bird’s nest in the crook of a tree, all  ragged unraveling twigs, its tenants flown south for winter to warmth  and sunshine and leaves that stayed green.“It’s not like that,”  he said quickly, words tripping over each other, running together. And  it wasn’t fair that he could do the giant eyes and wounded expression  that well. It made Gerard want to cave instantly. “You don’t understand,  I didn’t forget, I just… I just lost track of myself. You know? When  you’re doing something and you lose track of time?” Frank looked  frantic, almost, biting his lip and hugging himself. “You know, I have  really awesome hearing, if I ever don’t show again you can just call for  me and I’ll show up. I’ll find you, honest.”“Call for you?”  Gerard said incredulously, tricked into meeting Frank’s eyes again.  F@ck, he was doomed. The @ssh@l@ was so f@ck@ng cute and plaintive.  Unfair. “Like, what, like a duck call?”“A Frank call,” Frank agreed, eyes big and pleading. Gerard melted. “But you can quack if you want.”Gerard put on a show of rolling his eyes hugely and huffing, because he didn’t want to look easy. “You’re so f@ck@ng weird, seriously. You have a cell phone? I mean, I could just call call you next time.” Frank beamed at him and hell, he’d said next time,  hadn’t he? “I’m not forgiving you,” Gerard said stubbornly, but f@ck,  did Frank have to have such a f@ck@ng bright smile? He could feel his  pulse picking up, and even though he was still kind of mad at Frank, he  still wanted, with a hot painful rush, and it sucked.“Please  forgive me, Gee,” Frank said leaning forward and pressing a hand to  Gerard’s heart, oddly solemn. It should have been a joking tone of  voice, but it wasn’t somehow. Gerard forgot to breathe for a second. “I  don’t have a phone, but I promise it won’t happen again. I’ll be  careful, honest. Forgive me?”“Maybe,” Gerard hedged, and he was  absolutely one hundred and ten percent sure Frank could feel Gerard’s  heart beating out of his chest.“I know I’m a f@ck@ng douche.” Frank was in his space, again, biting his lip and looking tragic, like someone had stood him up. Frank sort of was a f@ck@ng douche, but he looked so, well, sincere, that Gerard could feel himself wavering.“You are sort of a douche,” he told Frank resolutely.“I  am a flaming, yeasty, douche,” Frank agreed, and, he apparently took  Gerard’s horrified laugh as his cue to fling himself at Gerard and lock  his arms around Gerard’s neck, dangling there beseechingly. “I am a  fungus-ridden, bl@@dy douche.”“Gross, Frank!” Gerard protested,  but he was giggling, because seriously, gross. Grossss. F@ck, he’d  totally given ground, and Frank was definitely pressing his advantage,  beaming and laughing and tackling Gerard. He squashed their faces  together and wheezed pleadingly into Gerard’s face, unaware that he was  giving Gerard a small aneurysm.“Can you ever forgive me?”  Complete with batting lashes and an admirable attempt at a heaving  bosom—the seriousness of the previous moment had completely fled. “I’ll  do better, I swear, just give me a chance.”“Get off me, oh my  god!” But Gerard couldn’t stop laughing; he probably could have made a  better effort to shove Frank off, but he was so ridiculously relieved  that Frank hadn’t been standing him up, that he still wanted to be  friends. Anyway, Frank was like a f@ck@ng leech. “Fine, I forgive you,  let me go, oh my god.”“I’ll never let go again,” Frank  said dramatically, beaming, and dug his fingers into Gerard’s armpit.  Gerard squawked and writhed free, or tried to—Frank sometimes seemed  like he had twelve arms, and maybe a prehensile tail. And suction cups.“So, um, you’re not in school anymore?” Gerard asked, carefully  offhand, and Frank’s hands immediately let go of him and Frank took a  step back, looking at Gerard like he’d suddenly sucker-punched him.  Whoa. “…did you graduate?” Gerard continued uncertainly, biting his lip.“Yeah, no school for me. I totally graduated,” Frank said,  looking at the ground, hands shoved in his pockets, now, and okay,  Gerard shouldn’t feel hurt that Frank was lying, but it still stung,  that Frank didn’t trust him. He shoved his own hands in his hoodie  glumly. But Frank was clearly uncomfortable, and Gerard didn’t want to  press him, not if he wasn’t ready. Not yet.“So,” he said,  scrambling for a topic change. “Uh, do you still have my bag, with the  comics and my notebooks and whatever? I sort of remember leaving it with  you, but I was… kinda out of it. I should probably—”“Oh!  Sorry, I totally forgot.” Frank grinned at him, visibly relieved, and  started strolling down the path backward, watching Gerard and beaming  when Gerard started shuffling after him. “I actually cleaned the bag up  for you, but I left it in the graveyard. So now you totally have to  come. Plus, you promised me a sketch, you know.”“You cleaned up  the bag,” Gerard said incredulously, catching up. “That bag was totally  dead. Nothing left to salvage. It was covered in at least three  different food groups, all rotting, and also, bile.”“I’m  a master in the art of laundry,” Frank said modestly, and absently  steered Gerard around a mud puddle. “Nothing else to do all day. Dude,  tell me you brought the next copy of Doom Patrol, please.”Gerard  looked over at him guiltily and proffered his pack of Marlboros. “Uh,  cigarette?” he said hopefully. Frank sighed, which shouldn’t have made  Gerard feel so guilty, but it totally did.“Tomorrow!” Gerard  promised. “I totally forgot. I mean, I had it yesterday, but you didn’t  show up, so,” he said pointedly, and Frank had the grace to look  slightly abashed. “I’ll remember to bring them tomorrow, though.  Promise. I’ll sharpie it on my arm.”Appeased, Frank stole the  pack and lit two cigarettes, handing Gerard one magnanimously. He  dragged in a lungful of smoke, sighed blissfully, and grinned wolfishly  at Gerard, all smiles and teeth and twinkling eyes. He led Gerard off  the main path again, and down a thin, twisted route through the trees—a  game trail, Frank had said absently, when Gerard asked. Frank stayed  close, holding back brambles and kicking dead branches out of the way.  Pale sunlight fell against the autumn leaves and cast dancing shadows on  the back of Frank’s shirt.“Short cut,” Frank said when Gerard  finally called b@llsh@t: this was no stinkin’ trail, this was Frank  walking haphazardly through the trees and getting them totally lost.  They’d halted by a shallow, fast-running stream. It was about twenty  feet across, and there was a series of fallen logs wedged in amongst the  rocks in a suspiciously linear pattern. The logs were shifting visibly  in the current and covered in lichen and fungus. Gerard stared at them  with dawning horror.“C’mon, brave adventurer, time to ford the creek,” Frank said cheerily, shoving Gerard forward. Gerard balked.“Oh, f@ck no,” he said, standing on the bank and staring down at the clear, icy  depths. The creek looked like hypothermia made incarnate. There was a  lacy froth where it hit half-submerged rocks, and swirls of dead leaves  drifted past in mysterious, hieroglyphic patterns. Some corner of  Gerard’s mind had been leery of all the hiking and outdoorsy behavior he  was embarking on, worried about ticks and exposure and getting lost,  but he hadn’t suspected anything quite so dastardly as this lying  in wait for him. While he stared in disbelief at the make-shift bridge,  Frank took the opportunity to scurry across, moving lightly and doing a  triumphant dance once he reached the other side.“C’mon, Gee!”  Frank hollered across. “You have no idea how long it took me to find  these b@st@rd logs for you and figure out if they’d hold your weight.”“F@ck you!” Gerard said, indignant. “I’m not that much heavier than you. If it held you, it should hold me, right?”Frank looked shifty on the other side of the river. “Probably.”Gerard  put a tentative foot on the bridge and felt the log roll beneath his  foot. Oh man, this was going to end in hypothermia and watery death.  F@ck this.“I’ll just stay here,” Gerard said. “You can go fetch my bag. Chop chop.”“Oh,  kiss my ass,” Frank replied cheerfully, stepping lightly onto one of  the logs. “C’mon, Gee, I’ll meet you halfway. Take my hand if you want  to live!” And then he cackled ridiculously, swaying above the flowing  water.The logs were basically a death trap, Gerard knew this,  but he still found himself inching out towards Frank in tiny, careful  steps. Frank was doing some sort of bizarre flamingo pose and beaming at  Gerard encouragingly, wiggling his fingers in the air. Frank was maybe a  foot away when one of the logs crunched beneath Gerard’s foot and sent a  cascade of centipedes and grubs and many-legged things out onto his  shoe and the leg of his pants. Gerard squawked and probably would have  hurtled ass-backwards into the water if a hand hadn’t grabbed him  suddenly and hauled him to safety, which Gerard would probably  appreciate more when he wasn’t covered with spidery agents of death.“Get  them off! Seriously, f@ck@ng get them off, oh Jesus, you @ssh@l@, what  the f@ck, the f@ck@ng woods! Who comes here! You and your f@ck@ng  bridge, I’m going to die.”Eventually Frank stopped  laughing long enough to help, inspecting his feet and pants legs for  evil maggot spiders, flicking them off into the wilderness with a  forefinger.“These used to bother the f@ck out of me,” Frank  said, peering at one fat, pale-bodied spider perched on his fingertip.  Gerard stared at him. Frank was clearly in league with the forces of  darkness. This f@ck@ng clinched it. Frank flicked the spider into the  leaf litter, where it scuttled away on its evil purposes. Gerard  shuddered and patted his jeans again against stray skittering  sensations. What if they’d laid eggs?“You’re all clear, Gee,” Frank said, clearly amused. “Calm down. It’s just spiders, babyface.”Unfortunately,  Gerard sensed that to give into his prima donna instinct and stomp off  into the nearest grove of trees, cursing all hot boys and their  treacherous ways, would result in mud and leeches and other unpleasant  woodland things, not to mention being lost for all eternity and dying  cold and alone. So he settled for blowing his bangs out of his eyes with  a huffy breath and glaring.“Aw, Gee,” Frank said, rocking back on his heels and giggling. “Buck up. We’re almost there. Even you couldn’t get lost now.”Gerard  sincerely doubted this, but the trees were thinner here, and the woods  looked strangely insubstantial, as if the late afternoon sunlight was a  thin veneer Gerard could scrape away with his thumbnail. Frank was  walking backwards, doing an MC Hammer slide through the leaves—the  showoff, Gerard grumped to himself, biting down on a grin.“You’re  gonna f@ck@ng run into a tree or something,” he called out, shuffling  along at a more sedate pace behind Frank, keeping a weather eye out for  spider webs.“Not me,” Frank said, and grinned as he dodged a stump. “I know these woods like the backs of my hands, m@th@rf@ck@r.”Gerard  had to admit, that did imply a certain degree of familiarity. God,  Frank’s hands. Christ, he had to remember not to think about that whole  shower scenario, Frank’s tattoos blurring up and down, until he knew for  sure he wasn’t going to embarrass himself and get a ridiculously large  b@n@r or something. Frank looked over, mouth open to say something, and  caught Gerard staring. His eyes went wide—f@ck, Gerard probably was  making a terrible, weird face, and now Frank had seen it—but then  suddenly Frank’s foot caught mid-stride in a muddy hollow and he  toppled over with a look of comic surprise, landing in a drift of leaves  with a thump and a muffled “What the f@ck!”Gerard felt a  pointed silence and maybe a raised, gleeful eyebrow would be the best  commentary on the situation, so he manfully withheld his triumphant  cackling and sauntered over to the supine Frank. Frank looked  flabbergasted.“I never trip,” Frank said, laying on his back and  staring up at Gerard. He pointed a finger accusingly in the vague  direction of Gerard’s kneecap. “You made me lose my balance!”“Ah,  yes, I finally get my superpower,” Gerard said solemnly. “Tripping  people that walk backwards. F@ck@n’ A. I vow to use it only for good.”Frank  seemed pretty committed to lying in the leaf litter, one red maple leaf  stuck in his hair. “Liar. You’re a f@ck@ng fiend. Supervillain material  for sure.”Gerard dug a toe into Frank’s side.“Up,” he said. “We have stuff to do, m@th@rf@ck@r, and if I’m late again tonight my mom’s gonna roast my b@lls over hot coals.”“Oh,  well then,” Frank said. “In the interest of saving your b@lls for  another day. It’s just around the bend. Can’t you hear the river from  here?”“Do we have to ford it?” Gerard asked darkly. He didn’t  know how he’d fallen in with a punk Huck Finn wannabe, but he knew he  didn’t like it.“Nah, task for another day,” Frank said, cheer  apparently regained as he levered himself up by means of Gerard’s pants,  grabbing handfuls of fabric and dragging himself up. Gerard clung to  his waistband for dear life.“What the f@ck, Frank?” he squeaked. “I’m not a f@ck@ng ladder.”“Good  man,” Frank said, and patted Gerard on the shoulder. Gerard stared at  him. He’d known weird people in his day—Gabe Saporta came to mind—but  Frank really took the cake on personal space issues, or the lack  thereof. Dude was f@ck@ng handsy.“C’mon, this way, Gee.”‘This  way’ involved one last tromp through a thatch of spiky hell-plants, and  then abruptly Gerard bashed his shin on a granite cross. Who the cross  belonged to was unclear; the name had worn away and all he could see  through watering eyes was an indistinct squiggled impression.“I  call her Matilda Bones,” Frank said over Gerard’s shoulder, making him  jump. He was watching Gerard intently. “I named all the ones that didn’t  have their own names anymore, you know?”“Yeah?” Gerard said,  grinning. “Dude, that’s f@ck@ng macabre. And awesome!” He added quickly,  in case Frank was offended, but he shouldn’t have worried. Frank was  obviously ridiculously excited by the whole thing, pointing out a  tombstone with a skull and crossbones and the really eerie epitaph  “Today for me, tomorrow for thee,” then getting distracted and dragging  Gerard over to look at the intricate carving on a stone set into the  ground, engraved with willows and urns and a sunburst pattern rising off  of the granite. Someone must have planted roses on one of these graves,  once, because here and there thorny vines snaked around tombstones and  crawled up trees.“They bloom in spring,” Frank said. “You’ll  like it, it looks f@ck@n’ creepy and symbolic and sh@t. There’s apple  blossoms, too. Careful, don’t slip—it’s kind of mossy here.”“Watch  your own self, dude,” Gerard said, but his old Converse were sliding  all over the place, so he caught hold of Frank’s arm preemptively before  he continued mocking him. “’Know these woods like the backs of my  hands,’ my ass.”“Yeah,” Frank said, staring at Gerard’s hand on  his sleeve, brow furrowed. “That was a fluke, though. You’re a total  klutz. I’m a g@dd@mn ninja fox.”“I know,” Gerard glowered,  scowling at Frank as they weaved among tree trunks and tombstones. “You  always scare the sh@t out of me, I never hear you coming. I still think  you must have tunnels or a f@ck@ng trapeze or something.”“Mmm,” Frank hummed noncommittally and bumped Gerard with his shoulder. “Here, check it out.”He  nodded to a non-descript grey tombstone, hands in his pockets. Standing  in the patches of sunlight, Frank looked even paler than before, like  even the cold autumn sun could blister him. Gerard had a moment where he  jumped from the thought, ‘I should slather him in sunscreen, jeez, I  bet he scorches in the summer,’ to ‘I should slather him in sunscreen  and take off his pants and maybe bite his collar bone,’ to other, less  decent images, and he totally missed whatever Frank had been saying.“Sorry,  uh. What were you saying?” Gerard said sheepishly, and sent a silent  prayer to the god of teenage crushes that he hadn’t been making a  terrible, slack-jawed sexual-fantasy face. Frank was grinning at him and  shaking his head, so probably he hadn’t noticed anything untoward.“Nothing  important, I guess,” Frank laughed, and knelt on the mossy ground,  brushing away some grime from the tombstone before looking up directly  into Gerard’s eyes.“Gerard, meet Sally,” Frank said, strangely  solemn, running his hand over the smooth slate. The words on her  tombstone were deeply grooved and still legible. Sally Cartmill,  September 12th, 1811-April 13th, 1829.“She was our age, huh,”  Gerard said, enchanted. F@ck, this was cool. It wasn’t a date, he knew  that, but if it had been, it’d be the coolest date ever. He knelt  next to Frank and reached out a hand, felt the name beneath his  fingers, rubbed his thumb over the deep text and the engraving of a  simple lily.“Yeah,” Frank replied, leaning against the stone  and flicking his hair out of his eyes. “This is her family plot, see?  You can sorta see the wall around it, but it’s mostly gone. And I guess  maybe they planted apple trees in it, on the graves – see, there’s one  by each headstone, and they’re the oldest. I guess they spread from  there.”And yeah, now that Gerard noticed it, there were fallen  apples strewn about the forest floor, patches of red and reddish brown,  and in the trees the apples still hung low and heavy from the bows.  Fruit actually growing on trees. Weird. Awesome. Gerard was yanked from  his reverie about living from the land and trapping furs by Frank  kicking a rotten apple at him. It rocketed past with a squishy thump and  Gerard flung his hands in front of his face a split second later.“Why!”  Gerard sputtered indignantly, clutching his hoodie closer like a  shield. “That thing probably had f@ck@ng wasps nesting in it or  something!”“Pay attention to me, @ssh@l@,” Frank said, sticking  out his tongue. “I could see you drifting off again.” And then, as  Gerard continued to glower, he shook his head and muttered something  about Gerard being a giant baby, reaching upwards to an overhead tree  branch and exposing a strip of pale, inked skin. Gerard edged a few  steps closer, skirting past a small, square grave marker. He was just  interested in what exactly the tattoo said, what the wrought-iron  letters spelled. Not at all in the curling line of hair trailing down  Frank’s belly and into his pants. Definitely not.“Heads up!”***art by arabel***Through some miracle of physics, Gerard flailed his hands around spastically and managed to catch the apple just before it hit his nose. Frank did a golf clap, which Gerard ignored in favor of being hugely impressed with himself. The apple was still warm from hanging in the autumn sun, dappled red and gold, surface more uneven and rough than the fruit he saw in the grocery store.“They’re pretty good this time of  year,” Frank told him and watched Gerard carefully inspect the apple for  worm or wasp holes before taking a self-conscious bite. It was good,  Frank was right. Crisp and tart, with an undertone like honey.“Anyway,”  Frank said, looking away as Gerard blissfully savored each bite. Wild  apples from a f@ck@ng abandoned graveyard. It was like a f@ck@ng  storybook. Maybe they’d give him powers, let him talk to the dead. He  dragged his attention back to Frank, who was rambling on again. “So,  yeah. This is the Cartmill family plot,” Frank said, waving a hand  around them. “It’s my favorite. What do you think?”“Hey,” Gerard  said around a mouthful of fruit, bending down to peer at another stone.  “You can actually still see the names and dates on almost all of these.  That’s weird. Most of the other ones we’ve seen were completely  obliterated.”“Different kind of stone,” Frank said, hands in his  pockets. He was watching Gerard potter around with an expression Gerard  couldn’t quite read—hopeful, almost, which didn’t make sense, so Gerard  went back to trying to read the weathered stone. “Slate, I think, but  what do I know. I’m not a rock doctor.”“A geologist,” Gerard corrected absently, and Frank rolled his eyes hugely and muttered, “Beg your pardon, I’m not a geologist.”  When Gerard pouted, though, Frank grinned and called him a dweeb, but  in this really proprietary, affectionate voice that made Gerard feel  kind of hot and dizzy and delighted.He went back to poking  through the little family plot, trying not to blush, and then got  genuinely diverted by deciphering the dates.“Holy sh@t,” Gerard  whispered, and crouched down on his knees by the last stone, apple  sticky and forgotten in his hand. “They all died within, like, a f@ck@ng  week of each other. You think there was an Indian attack or something?  Maybe some kind of Mike Meyers vengeance killer going after the Cartmill  family…” Gerard trailed off, story panels already falling into place in  his head. Open with the overgrown cemetery, the fallen stones. Flash  forward to a blood-soaked room.“Nah,” Frank said vaguely, and  slouched further down against a tree trunk, hands in his pockets. “Think  they died in a flu outbreak or something.”“Yeah?” Gerard said,  slightly disappointed but still intrigued. Killer viruses were good too,  just in a different way. He could work with a killer virus. “How d’you  know?”“Oh,” Frank said, hair blowing into his eyes. “Dunno, just a feeling. Probably read it somewhere.”“Huh,”  Gerard said, and started rummaging through his bag, coming up with his  sketchpad and Derwent pencils, and then he jumped about a million feet  in the air. “F@ck!”“What?” Frank asked, staring at him.“Did  you hear that?” Gerard said, looking behind himself nervously. “I  thought… nevermind. It was just the wind.” But he could have sworn he’d  heard someone laughing, in his ear. Right next to him. Just the wind,  though. Right. Way to act like a spaz, Gerard. He pulled his hoodie  closer around him. The afternoon light was all warm and gold now,  slanting through the empty branches, but it was still cold, chilly  enough that he wished he’d worn a long sleeve shirt beneath his hoodie  instead of a t-shirt.“Hey, do you mind just standing there a moment while I draw you?” he asked Frank diffidently.Frank  had been looking at Gerard contemplatively, but at this he promptly  struck a bizarre, Egyptian pose and started singing Vogue. It was  painfully adorable and completely at odds with the atmosphere Gerard had  been hoping for—suitable for a doodle, but not really an in-depth  study.“Jackass.” Gerard rolled his eyes, manfully resisting the  urge to sing along. “Can’t you just stand there? Look, I dunno,  contemplative? Look like you’ve got the flu.”Gerard settled with  his back to Sally’s tombstone and spread out his supplies on the ground  beside him, flipped to a clean page in the book. He glanced back up,  charcoal pencil next to the paper, and Frank stared back at him,  waggling his eyebrows dramatically. Biting his lip, Gerard returned his  eyes to the paper, starting off with quick sure strokes of the outline  of trees, the shadows of the tombstones, a white island in the left side  of the paper where Frank and his tree would be.The river was  rushing past and filling the graveyard with water-sounds, roars and  ripples; Gerard could see it froth white beyond the last edge of the  trees and tombstones. Frank was half in shadow, and something made him  want to add in the Cartmills, Sally Cartmill a distant column of smoky  charcoal, with the faintest hint of a face. He blew at the page,  charcoal dust lifting, and picked up his red and burnt sienna watercolor  pencils, his burnt ultraviolet and black pine, and shaded some of the  leaves, edged some purple shadows beneath the tombstones. He couldn’t  shake the feeling that someone was laughing. He kept twitching and  looking over his shoulder, but nothing was there.When he stretched, looking back up again, Frank was looking at him oddly, gaze intense and penetrating.“Uh,”  Gerard said uncertainly, and looked over his shoulder again. Nothing.  What was Frank looking at? Had he gotten charcoal on his face? “Sorry if  that was boring. Wanna see?”Frank approached slowly through the  tall dead grass and leaves, coming right up to Gerard’s feet before  stopping, face still strangely blank. Gerard turned the sketchpad around  and Frank started, reached out a hand to touch the page. When Frank  laughed suddenly into the quiet river-noise, Gerard actually could feel  his heart sort of stutter before getting back on beat.“F@ck,  Gerard, you did this in like fifteen minutes and it’s the most awesome  thing ever. D@mn,” he whistled, shaking his head, still chuckling.“Yeah?” Gerard said, and felt his cheeks flush. “You like it?”“F@ck@ng—yes,  I f@ck@ng like it, moron,” Frank said, still cradling the sketchpad  carefully, like it was a tiny paper baby. “The f@ck@ng leaves blowing  across everything. The, whatsit, the perspective. You made me look so  badass, dude. I look like a f@ck@n’ necromancer. And hey, you even got  Sally. Gorgeous, dude. Can I have this?”“Of course, yeah. I drew it for you,” Gerard said, still blushing as Frank carefully tore the sheet out of the book.“Lemme go put this away before it gets crinkled and sh@t.”“I can just draw you another if it does,” Gerard offered. Seriously, Frank was totally overreacting.Frank waved him off and started loping towards some crumbling stone  buildings on the edge of the river. “I know it’s kinda late, but it’ll  only take a second. I’ll get you home on time, princess, don’t worry.”A  rabbit startled away from them as they crashed through the  underbrush—Gerard didn’t know what the f@ck people were talking about  when they said the grandeur of nature made them feel small. Gerard  always felt like a f@ck@ng water buffalo lumbering around out here. But  the rabbit was a dark glossy brown with a white flashing tail and  Gerard, charmed, followed it with his eyes for a few moments before he  lost sight of it again.“A bunny, dude!” Gerard said, hustling to  catch back up with Frank and banging his shin on a dead stump. Another  bruise for the collection, whatever. Gerard had a theory that eventually  he’d just become impervious to pain entirely, and that day was gonna be  awesome. “Did you see it?”“I see them all the time,” Frank  said, bemused. He’d stopped to watch Gerard watch the rabbit. “I know  you may not have noticed, Sasquatch, but we are in the woods. Bunny country.”“Did  you see its little nose?” Gerard sighed, hugging himself and wondering  if the fur had been as soft as it looked. “F@ck, I want a bunny. Frank,  catch me a bunny.”“What am I, Daniel Boone?” Frank laughed, and  pushed aside some branches covering a door into one of the dilapidated  stone houses and making a grand sweeping gesture, motioning Gerard  forward. “Home sweet home. Cool, right? They had some archaeologists out  here a while back, identifying all this sh@t, but they didn’t stay  long. ”Gerard stayed put. He felt a little iffy on the sweetness  or the hominess of the building. He also felt a little worried about  the stability of the infrastructure.“So, this is the mill  house. No one comes out here, not since that archaeology thing, anyway.  Guess it’s supposed to be haunted or something.” Frank laughed and  looked at Gerard’s sketch, grinning crookedly. “I sorta fell into hiking  when my parents moved out here, found this place and set up camp.  Nothing much else to do, you know, besides sit at home and scratch your  b@lls, and here my parents weren’t always yelling about money and sh@t.”“Yeah,  I know what you mean,” Gerard said, still hovering outside the door,  despite Frank rolling his eyes and pushing him towards the door. “If you  hadn’t dragged me out here, I’d probably have just slept until my mom  got home. It’s nice to not be in that house, all the time. It’s not my house, it’s just… I dunno, it kinda creeps me out sometimes. And it’s always so empty.”“Empty sucks,” Frank agreed quietly, and then shook himself. “F@ck, it’s getting late. C’mon, you coming in or what?”Gerard  batted away some cobwebs stretched across the door and peered warily  into the shadowed room. Frank finally just swore and tugged Gerard  inside by the wrist, because “It’s f@ck@ng fine, you pansy, it hasn’t  fallen yet.” Gerard stuck out his tongue to the back of Frank’s head and  let himself be pulled.“When’d your family move to Glen Fell, anyway?” Gerard asked, edging inside after him. Maybe the roof wouldn’t cave in.Frank was rustling around in a corner somewhere, futzing with a ratty backpack.“Oh, a while back,” Frank said absently, emerging from the bag with a dusty-looking can of Diet Coke. “Thirsty?”Gerard  accepted the can cautiously—seriously, it was offering a Grand  Sweepstakes Prize to go see the *Nsync World Tour. This can had probably  been made when Gerard was still, like, in diapers or whatever. The  aluminum had probably leached heavy metals and poison dye into the soda  by now. Possibly when he opened it, an airborne killer virus would  escape. He cautiously popped the top and puttered around the room for a  while, fake-drinking and making swallowing gestures. Where the hell had  Frank gotten this sh@t? Was he raiding the backrooms of warehouses or  something? But Frank had gone into sullen, non-communicative mode, so  Gerard bit his tongue on his questions for now.Half the building  was roofed only by tree branches and tiled with rubble and sapling  trees. On the other side there was a blackened fireplace with a sleeping  bag tucked up next to it, Gerard’s copy of Doom Patrol on top of  the pillow. Another stack of tattered comics rested on a makeshift log  shelf, and a guitar case leaned drunkenly next to it, and a hand-crank  radio/flashlight, along with an assortment of lighters and candles  littered the ground by the fireplace.Frank’s only attempt at  decoration, it looked like, was the row of colorful glass bottles he’d  lined along most of the windows, sunlight casting bright shadows on the  floor. Old, warped cloudy jugs and beer bottles and medicine containers,  Gerard guessed, and an assortment of water-smoothed fragments that  glittered in the afternoon light. Greens and blues and murky whites,  ambers and deep reds, dark browns.It was an awesome set up, in  terms of looking totally badass and like a f@ck@ng lair or something,  but Christ, if Frank were actually spending the night out here for more  than a day or two at a time, it was a little subpar. Gerard stirred the  glass shards with his hand, the water-worn edges smooth against his  palm, deep in thought. He had to be spending the night, right? Just  camping trips or whatever. He couldn’t actually live out here, could he?But  that was definitely what it looked like was going on, and he really  couldn’t think of a better explanation for Frank being out here all the  time, for Frank never leaving the woods at all. F@ck, Gerard had to get  him out of there, somehow. He could totally drag Frank home with him, at  least. What could be so bad that living out in the woods was better  than being in an actual house, an actual home? Gerard’s house might suck  at the moment, but at least it was warm, and out of the wind.“Found  those in the river,” Frank said from behind him, making Gerard jump and  drop the shards with a clatter. “I kept thinking I’d do something with  them, but I can never think what to make. I’m not artsy and sh@t, like  you.”“Yeah?” Gerard said, and bit his lip, thinking. “I have  some good adhesives and frames at home, packed away somewhere, I could  probably make you a pretty nasty mosaic. Stained glass, you know.”“Really?” Frank said, beaming from ear to ear. “That’d be so f@ck@ng sweet, Gee. Anything you make would be awesome, honest.”Gerard  puttered with the glass some more, waiting for his cheeks to cool, then  after getting the go-ahead from Frank, he pocketed some of the shards  to show Mikey later. Frank was grinning at him, leaning against the  windowsill overlooking the river.“Found those bottles the other  summer on the island,” Frank told him. “There’s a lot of cool stuff  washed up there, all these bones, and some crazy buttons, and nails. I  like the glass best though.” He snorted. “I’m pretty great at  decorating, huh. Whatcha think, I need some goldfish to fix my chi?”“Nah,  maybe a rabbit,” Gerard said absently, staring out the window and  trying to imagine what it’d be like to live out here, how starved you’d  be for attention, if this was your home, this broken house from three  hundred years ago. No television, just the piping of birds, the sound of  the river and trees. And it got so dark at night, and cold. It wasn’t  even winter yet, but it was already chilly—not to the point that frost  was on the ground in the morning, but close.Gerard wanted to  say something, something like how long have you been out here, are you  okay, let me help—but Frank couldn’t be planning to stay out here, like,  permanently. That’d be insane.“You and that bunny,”  Frank said, shaking his head, laughing. “Bunnies are f@ck@ng vicious,  you know that right? They have giant teeth, and claws. Monty Python  don’t lie.”“We’ll name him Tim, then,” Gerard said, lounging  against the windowsill and staring out at the sky, streaked with high  cirrus clouds. Frank looked sort of jittery, and he was fiddling with a  lighter, flipping it on and off. F@ck, Gerard was going to have to say something.“Look,  I don’t wanna pry, Frankie,” he started nervously, staring at his  hands, then over at the pathetic sleeping bag, the crumbled remains of a  fire. “But… I mean, it sorta seems like you’re living out here. But  you’re not, right?”“Can we not talk about this right now?” Frank  said, voice small. Gerard cut his eyes over at Frank, who was all in  shadow now and pressing himself into the wall, like he could make  himself disappear. “Just... not today?”“Okay,” Gerard said  readily, a little ashamed of how relieved he was to let the subject go.  “No, that’s cool. Just, do you need anything? Like, a place to stay, or  food, or something? My mom wouldn’t mind, I—”“No! No. Thanks, though,” Frank said, voice quiet and unhappy. “You’re—it was nice of you to ask. I can’t, though.”“I  mean,” Gerard said in a rush. “It’s not like I’d tell anyone you were  here or anything, or judge, or whatever. We’re friends, right? I mean, I  totally like you, like, um. A lot, and if there’s anything I can do to  help—”Frank had the strangest look on his face, eyes wide and  staring and he wasn’t saying anything, Jesus Christ, it was like  torture. Gerard could not get himself to stop talking, it was like an  out-of-body experience.“And you totally don’t have to tell me  now, or whenever, I just want you to know that, um, I’m here for you,  uh—” Oh Christ, he’d really just said that. He was like a Lifetime  Romance Hallmark card. He finally just shut himself up with the soda,  before remembering the whole Soda of the Ancients thing and then he  stood there for a second with his cheeks bulged out with flat, dead  soda, trying to decide if spitting or swallowing was the better part of  valor. Maybe he could pretend to be overcome with emotion and turn  around and subtly spit out the window. Frank finally burst into  laughter, and the weird terrible awkward stillness finally passed.  Gerard swallowed and made an unhappy, dying sound.“Soda a little out of date?” Frank snickered. “Sorry, dude, I wasn’t thinking, I never drink that stuff.”“Shut  up, @ssh@l@,” Gerard said, pained, tongue gone all fuzzy and gross. He  totally should have spit that sh@t out. He was probably going to get E. coli., but it was sort of worth it, to see Frank grinning again. “Oh my god, that was so gross.”“Shoulda  spit it out,” Frank said, still snickering, shaking his head. “You’re  f@ck@ng nuts, you know that? Anyway, we should get going before it’s  dark.”Which was true. Gerard dumped the rest of the coke out  the window and smashed the can, shoved it in his hoodie pocket to  recycle later.“Hey, um. Thanks,” Frank said awkwardly as they  left, shuffling through the late afternoon sunshine back towards the  woods. “For being understanding or whatever. I promise, I’ll tell you  the whole story one day. Soon. Just, there’s stuff about me you don’t  know, and I—f@ck, later, right?”Frank turned his head to look up  at Gerard hopefully, and Gerard looked down and hated his brain,  because now was totally not the time to think about leaning down three  inches and kissing Frank’s lower lip, but that was definitely the one  image at the forefront of his brain. Frank’s lips, pale and pink, and he  just wanted to press Frank into the sun-warmed grass and see what he  tasted like. Probably better than expired Diet Coke. Probably like  cigarettes.Meanwhile, while his brain derailed and pondered Frank’s flavor, Frank was looking at him and waiting for an answer. Great.“Oh,  yeah,” Gerard said, and de-snagged his sleeve from a bush that he’d  wandered into while on autopilot. “Yeah, later. No rush, dude. I trust  you.”Frank blew out a gusty sigh and then grinned at Gerard, and  Gerard sort of didn’t mind if Frank never told him the whole story,  only he did mind, because something bad had happened to Frank,  Gerard knew it, and he just wanted to f@ck@ng help. But Frank kept  shooting him disbelieving, delighted looks, like he’d gotten a reprieve  at the gallows or something, and if he wasn’t flirting with Gerard then  he was a total f@ck@ng tease. He kept bumping his shoulder against  Gerard’s and brushing their hands together and Gerard was about to  explode with confusion and giddiness. Frank was totally flirting with  him, he had to be, or Gerard was completely and utterly out of his mind.The sun was slowly setting and the forest seemed—not darker,  but the colors had changed: cooler, shot through with purple. It was  weird how different the forest could look through the course of a day.  Probably it’d look like a different place entirely in winter, no bright  red and gold of leaves on trees, just dark branches and white snow. And  in spring, d@mn. Gerard really couldn’t imagine this place in spring.He  wasn’t looking forward to the rest of the walk home in the dark forest,  though, even with Frank leaning against him, rambling on about Gerard’s  Bowie hoodie and how The Man Who Fell to Earth was pretty much  the zenith of modern cinema. Gerard tended to agree, but he was starting  to feel pretty damned tired; he hadn’t really paid attention to the  fact that they’d been heading downhill earlier, other than to note that  dead leaves were slippery and that he didn’t want to careen to his  death, but every bruise on his body sure as hell noticed the trail  sloping upwards now.Mikey would never make it out here to see  these ruins—f@ck, he couldn’t even make it up a flight of stairs. A hill  like this, covered in leaf mold and dirt and god knew what other  irritants… it was stupid to think about, anyway. Asthma aside, Mikey  wasn’t any more of an outdoorsy guy than Gerard was, and it wasn’t like he had a crush on Frank that would make him want to torture himself with  evil thorn bushes and mud puddles and physical exertion. Or hopefully  didn’t. Wouldn’t. Whatever. But it would have been nice to have the  option to drag Mikey out here, to have someone to sympathize and  complain with.“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Gerard said, groping  for a change in subject when Frank stopped mid-rant and looked at him  strangely, like maybe he’d noticed Gerard’s expression shifting. “I  might go to a concert this weekend with some guys from school, but I  guess you can’t come?” Frank nodded, didn’t say anything or meet  Gerard’s eyes and Gerard hastily continued. “They’re good guys, I like  them a lot. They’re all in band. Bob Bryar and Ray Toro, and some band  kids named Patrick and, um. Worm? They’re pretty cool. Ray likes Bowie  too, he’s—”“Toro?” Frank interrupted, eyes huge. “Little Ray Toro?”“Uh,  that dude isn’t little,” Gerard said, looking down at Frank pointedly  from his two extra inches of height. Gerard had a freakishly tall little  brother; he knew to savor what he had.“Yeah, yeah, whatever,”  Frank said dismissively, and lifted a blackberry bramble out of the way  for Gerard, which probably Gerard shouldn’t glow over. “He still play  guitar? That kid could shred like a m@th@rf@ck@r.”“I guess so,”  Gerard hazarded. F@ck, they were at the creek again. Maybe he could just  jump across. “Yeah, he said something about working out some songs with  Patrick on Garageband.”“Yeah?” Frank said wistfully. “F@ck, I  miss jamming with the kid. But, um. Don’t tell him you saw me or  anything, seriously, Gee. Please.”“Huh?” Gerard said, startled,  and tried to remember if he’d mentioned Frank to Ray yet—no, he’d just  talked to Bob and Patrick, he thought. “Oh, uh. No, sure. S’cool. My  lips are sealed.”Frank punched him gleefully in the shoulder. “You’re totally my dog,” he said solemnly.“I  am?” Gerard asked, beaming and playing with his hair before he could  stop himself. “Awesome. So, uh, is it okay for you to maybe meet me  tonight at my house? I mean, it’ll be dark, probably no one would see  you or anything, right? And my mom totally goes to sleep at like  midnight, passes right the f@ck out. She’d never know you were there,  honest.”Frank stared at his feet, and then stared out towards the distance.“No, uh. That’s not really a good idea,” he said, not meeting Gerard’s eyes.“We  could be really stealthy?” Gerard said hopefully. He’d anticipated  resistance on Frank’s part, and had already planned out a counterattack.  “I’ve got all the special edition Sam Raimi films on DVD. We could have  a marathon. With pizza. And, uh.” Gerard pondered his mental catalog of  alcohol. “Gin and tonics. And a carton of cigarettes. Or just coffee,  if you want.” He made his eyes as wide as possible and waited.Frank made a frustrated noise and waved his hands.“Dude,” he said unhappily. “I can’t.”Well,  sh@t, if Frank could resist the allure of campy zombies and the  Necronomicon, then Gerard had nothing. He wondered how Frank got food if  he never f@ck@ng left the forest. He narrowed his eyes. F@ck, if Frank  was a f@ck@ng boyscout and, like, hunted for his food, Gerard might have  to disown him. That sh@t was not cool.“Fine,” he grumbled, and  stared morosely at the crumbling, vermin-infested bridge over the Creek  of Doom. “But when I die visiting you out here in the darkness with all  the hidden stones and f@ck@ng, I dunno, chupacabras, you’ll totally be  sorry.”“So melodramatic,” Frank teased, and shook his head. “I’d  never let you die, Gee. I’ll fight all the chupacabras with my bare  hands. My teeth. Those f@ck@rs wouldn’t stand a chance.”Gerard  couldn’t stop beaming at that, not for hours, not even after he’d fallen  in the creek and sloshed home, dripping muddy and happy on the porch in  the fading light. It did sort of suck that he’d dropped his bag in the  f@ck@ng creek, though, even if Frank had fished it out in time for only a  few of the things inside to get wet. Ah, well. He’d gotten sort of used  to using Mikey’s bag—he’d just transfer his notebooks over until his  own dried out and stopped smelling slightly like foot.Anyway, the point was, Frank was his knight in grungy armor. It was awesome.His  mother was less pleased. She clearly hadn’t anticipated her son  metamorphosing into Tom Sawyer overnight, staring at Gerard in  slack-jawed disbelief.“You fell into a what? Hell no, you’re not coming into the house like that,” she told Gerard finally, hands on her hips and blocking the doorway.“What,  you going to hose me down on the porch?” Gerard asked cheerfully, and  squelched past her into the foyer. He at least had shucked his dead  Converse on the front step, but his too-long jeans left a muddy slime  trail behind him as he headed upstairs to change. His mother hovered  behind him with a towel, grumbling.“Hey, you’re the one that  said I needed to get out more,” Gerard pointed out airily, and left her  muttering to herself darkly about the signs of the apocalypse. He closed  the door to his room, peeling off his rank jeans and shucking off his  hoodie. His clothes were actually more damp than wet by now, but it was  still f@ck@ng freezing outside, especially with the wind blowing. Dry  clothes were totally a necessity, even if it did make them a little late  to the Center.'
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.
Assistant: