Earth: Criminal Rehab

Chapter Fourteen

Gerard

I walked so far; I thought my legs would fall off. It took so much effort to lift and drop my leg. It might have actually felt better to snap them off myself. I tossed myself on the ground and held my spinning head in my hands. My stomach growled and my throat burned when I swallowed. I rested my head in the grass and looked up at the moon. It seemed so much smaller down here. The stars were so much prettier. The wind sifted through the long blades of green grass just over my head. I breathed in tune with it.

"Giving up?" someone said. At first I thought I might have been hearing things, but when I lifted myself onto my elbows, I saw someone standing about ten feet away from me. He had a sly smile. "I thought you'd have given up miles ago."

I laid back down. How long had he been following me?

"My name's Frank," he continued and sat down next to me. "You're Gerard, right? You've got some balls to talk to Ryan like that. I wouldn't have taken you for such a badass."

"And I wouldn't have taken you for a stalker who enjoys hearing the sound of his own voice," I spat back at him.

Frank's cheeks went pink and he chuckled. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and looked off into the distance, "I've never met anybody with a brother before. That's pretty cool."

Yeah... Pretty cool, I thought. Pretty cool to have to hide someone you care about every single day. Pretty cool to have to constantly worry if the guards were checking rooms. Pretty cool to watch him being dragged out and not knowing if he was alive or not. Yeah. Having a little brother was pretty cool.

Frank was waving his hands in front of me. I blinked and wiped my hand over my face.

"You okay?" he asked.

I nodded, "Yeah. I'm just thinking."

A gust of wind blew at us. Frank squinted his eyes and blocked it with his forearm. After the wind died down it was just silence that remained. He opened his mouth and took a breath in like he was going to say something, but it too died before it came off of his lips. He swallowed and tried again, "I'm going to help you find your brother."

I laughed and shook my head. It was a nice gesture, but I doubted it, "They've been gone for too long. Even if we did find Pete, I doubt any of them would want to be around me...especially not Mikey."

"Why would you say that?" he frowned. "He's your brother. I may not know how it feels to have one, but I can imagine you'd never want to leave his side and I'm sure he feels the same way. He may be upset with you for choosing the opposition, but he'll have to get over it. You're family."

I bit down on my bottom lip, "I'm not so sure."

Frank stood up straight and lifted himself on his toes, surveying the scene where he could see. Then, he glanced back down at me and offered his hand, "Well, you have no choice. Come on. I think I see something over there."

I hesitated for a minute, but I took his hand and pulled myself up with him.

***

Frank was right. He found a drugstore a few minutes away from where we were. He stepped right through the hole in the broken glass door and disappeared. I bent down to look through it. "Come on!" Frank's voice echoed. Careful of my steps, I fit my body through the hole and into the store.

I hated the fact that my eyes went straight towards the cigarettes and pills on the shelf. The shelves were mostly deserted, but there were enough to understand what was supposed to be there. I closed my eyes tightly and gulped and turned my back on them. Frank found a lighter and lit the cigarette between his lips. He pointed it towards me and puffed the smoke from his mouth. I turned away and continued strolling around the aisles.

I passed the long expired snack bags; some of them were open and spilled onto the floor. I made my way around the not-so-frozen section, which was nothing more than a few doors with rusty colored gallons of milk and other dairy products. There were the many aisles of essentials, electronics, cards, candy, and a couple racks of clothes.

Somehow, I found my way into the beauty section, which was almost fully stocked. Apparently, nobody needed makeup while the bombs were falling. There were bottles and pencils and sticks that surely had some kind of purpose, but looked completely foreign to me. There was an entire shelf full of hair dye as far as I could see. Out of curiosity, I pulled one out. I used hair dye continuously on the Legacy. My hair was naturally brown, but I bleached it to the point where you couldn't tell if it was blonde or white. Now, my roots were starting to show through. I could see in the dusty mirror above the top shelf. I browsed through the exotic pinks and blues and greens knowing well enough I'd never be able to pull that off. My eyes were strangely drawn towards the deepest, darkest black I could find.

I'd spent somewhere close to an hour with my new project. I followed the directions I'd remembered from before: substituting jugs and bottles of water for a sink. Frank found me sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor with neat lines of water around me.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he came closer and took the open bottle at my side.

I shrugged and massaged my wet, black head, "I'm starting new. I blew my first fresh start. I want to be someone else."

"Gerard..." he laughed, "You don't have to dye your hair to start anew."

I unfolded my legs and stood up. My legs were tingled with numbness and I wobbled around a bit before I got used to the feeling. We walked out of the store with a few useable tools and supplies. I felt pretty good.

"Frank?" I asked with my eyes focused on the nature beneath my feet.

"Yeah?" he replied, "What's up?"

"Why did you follow me? It would have been much easier for you to have stayed with Ryan and everyone else," I put him on the spot. He didn't seem to like it much.

He twisted his lips and thought about his answer, "I never really agreed with what Ryan stood for. I just wasn't brave enough to step up and out like you did. I do agree with what you said to him. I don't care about who leads us. Hell, I don't care if anyone leads us. All we have to do is live and breathe for a while and they'll send down the rest of our people - that's what we need to be focused on."

I nodded and tried to hide my smile. It was good to hear that from somebody else. I'd grown to enjoy his company after the past few hours with him. If he'd knew what I did on the Legacy, he would not have wanted to hang out with me like this. Nobody would. So, I vowed never to tell him. I didn't want my crime to change his opinion of me.