When We're Both Thirty

Prologue

When Gerard was about five years old, and the years prior, he and Frank had actually been really good friends. They played together in the park, and ran around each other's houses, picking on the neighborhood kids, even though they were both a lot smaller than everyone else in the neighborhood. They used to help each other dot their i's and slash their t's in kindergarten.

Their houses were right next to each other's, so obviously they had a lot of contact with each other. Frank's mom used to drop him off at Gerard's house when she had errands to run, and vice versa. They just always got along. Honestly, everyone who'd ever seen the two would've sworn that they'd be friends through their childhood at least, and maybe on into adolescence.

Back then, they were both blank slates, didn't know very much about the world. They just sort of accepted anything they heard as the truth. One of the older boys in the neighborhood once told Frank that you could grow scotch tape if you shook the dispenser. He was little enough to believe that lie. So Frank pulled out all the tape, wrapping it around his fingers, and then he shook the tape dispenser and waited. He watched, and for about five minutes it was like watching grass grow. Five minutes to the five year old Frank felt like an hour, so he decided that it'd just take some time. The tape never grew back unfortunately. Gerard had had to unwind him from all the tape.

So when someone asked Frank and Gerard if they liked each other they said yes. Because why couldn't a boy like another boy? It's not that anyone tried to pull them apart or anything, because they thought it was cute. It probablywas cute.

The thing was that they spent almost every day with each other. One day they signed a contract that they would even get married. Obviously they didn't take it seriously at the time, they just thought it was something goofy. Though, they did get that contract typed which made it all feel so official. They even signed and stamped it. The only stamp they could find was a red Santa like stamp in the bottom of Gerard's toy box, riding, what everyone direly hoped was meant to be a reindeer.

As they'd had Gerard's mother type it up, she appointed the clause near the bottom that the contract would be binding if neither of them had found a mate by the frightfully far-off age of thirty. That gave them both twenty five years.

It was a joke of course, but that contract was laminated, and that made it infinitely more official. It was funny though, because they were best friends, and at only five years old, had agreed to marry each other as a last resort. For a year, people would tease them, most lightheartedly, until they got to the evil place.

'The evil place' is what Gerard later dubbed their elementary school. They started first grade, hoping that everything would be the same as it was back in kindergarten. People laughing along with their friendship that was maybe a little stranger than everyone else's. That's what they'd expected, because they hadn't really seen enough of the world to expect anything different. Little kids are like sponges, they just accept whatever you tell them, and most things brush off them pretty quickly.

Except first grade was not like kindergarten. Compared to first grade, kindergarten was a walk in the park. Literally. On Mondays they used to walk in the park next to the school littered with cottontails that Frank used to joke looked like burnt hot dogs. First grade was not like that though. It was scary.

See, their elementary school started at first grade and went through fifth grade, and fifth graders were huge. Frank was sure they were some type of monster that had escaped from his picture books. They were ancient, and giant. They were just so big compared to him though, and they were mean.

Fifth graders got the esteemed privilege to acquaint first graders with the new school. So every Wednesday and Friday the fifth graders would visit Frank and Gerard's classroom. It was basically midget hunting season. The fifth graders were allowed to pick on the little kids, because the teachers were taking 'break time' which was actually just gossip hour. The fifth graders were supposedly responsible though. They were, after all, hundreds of years older than the first graders, so they were totally worthy of babysitting the little kids for an hour.