The Dove Keeper (Frerard)

Chapter Fifteen / Everything Part

The next day was Friday, and all throughout school, I felt like I was going to throw up. My head constantly ached; there was a small dull pain near my left temple that didn't cease to exist, even after I took pill after white pill of aspirin. I had to practically beg Sam for the meds, which only put him in a foul mood and added external forces to the tension that was brewing inside myself. My stomach churned, feeling empty and full at the same time, twisting and tying together in knots.

During lunch, when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, I had gone to the bathroom in a vain attempt to make myself feel better. Instead, I only felt the cool slick of the school toilet on my bare arms as I sat there and waited, just waited, for the near empty contents of my stomach to overflow. I even tried making myself throw up by sticking a finger at the back of my throat, but nothing happened. Eventually, I was too embarrassed by people coming in and seeing my jean-clad knees on the tile ground that I just gave up and went back to the lunch room where Sam and Travis didn't even notice my lack of presence. When I took a seat back down, causing a shift of weight, Sam looked at me, eyeing me and my half-eaten sandwich up and down.

"Can I have the rest?" he asked, his eyes wide. I just shrugged and gave it to him, not really caring that he offered his pop to me as an even trade.

He scrunched up his face as he ate the rest of it, bouncing off his seat and talking to Travis heatedly about their plans for after school. The fizzy liquid he had given me in return didn't help at all. In fact, it only succeeded in making my stomach feel as if it was being burned from the inside out.

I tried to chalk up my sickness to the fact that the night before, I had smoked the final slim stick from the pack Gerard had given me. It had taken me awhile to finish off the whole thing, my smoking habits becoming quite sporadic during the weeks it had been since the gift had been given, but I figured that maybe I was still going through some form of nicotine withdrawal. I had to be. I generally only grabbed the pack when my nerves were shot, and that had happened more than average within those weeks. Somehow, the tarry substance always made me feel better, making the bad feelings inside subside while bad air filled my lungs instead. But I knew at school, as my knees and voice shook, that this was more than just a craving.

I was nervous to go to Gerard's that night. Nothing had changed between the artist and I, at least, not yet. If I had my way though, things were hopefully going to be changing for the better. I wasn't nervous for this change; not at all. It was the action that I had to do – the catalyst to get it all started – that scared the living daylights out of me. Even with being scared to the bone, almost throwing up and my constant headaches, I was still going to go. You could not talk me out of this. Sam had even invited me to a party that night – my first social gathering in months from my friends who barely talked to me - and I still turned it down. I was going to forgo everything, even if it was just so I could see the artist I had seen day in and day out that past month. If change happened tonight, then I would embrace it, I knew that much. But if nothing happened, if I chickened out or whatever, I was still going to go and be happy that I went. I would have turned Sam down on any other day of the week; today was just more important than the others.

Gerard was going to paint me, so it was more than our normal every day meetings, if you could even call those normal occurrences. Gerard was going to draw me, in my rawest form and show me what he thought. He was going to take my painting and my picture – my essential image and put down his own interpretation. I needed to see that interpretation. I needed to know how he saw me so I could judge my actions. I already knew how I felt about him; I was falling hard and fast, even after he tore me to shreds with my guitar playing. It only made me fall for him more in a way, because he had been brutally honest with me; something else no one had ever done.