I'm Not Okay (I Promise) | My Chemical Romance

Five

Imagine a dark room, one small window filtering in a little light. The walls are covered with dark posters, a bat paper weight holds down a small pile of comic-like drawings. This dank room is the basement, and in the Ways house, the basement was Gerard's bedroom.

There he spent all his time, apart from when he was stuck in the hellhole known as high school. Weekends were spent sleeping, nights spent dreaming. Dreaming of an escape...

But Monday came around soon enough and, along with it, school. That dreaded place, filled with sadistic teenagers and evil professors. Alexander Hamilton High School was a place of shadows, full of dark secrets.

Frank arrived to school on time, but not in the correct state of mind for whatever crap education that was to be spoon-fed to him. He hadn't slept much, and his vision was blurred.

Gerard watched as Frank entered the school gate, noticing the red-rimmed and puffy eyes, the dilated pupils, the grey-tinge to Frank's skin.

"Hey, Frank!" he called, walking towards the boy, who spun around to look at him.

"Woah," Frank drawled, grabbing Gerard's arm to keep him from falling. He chuckled. "I nearly went there. Anyway, whaddya want?"

"Are you okay? You look a little...ill."

"Me?" Frank scratched his nose. "I'm fine. I feel great. I'm lighter than air." He frowned suddenly. "Why do we say 'lighter than air'? What makes air light? What's the heaviest type of gas?"

Shit, Gerard thought. He's as high as a kite.

"I think you should stay at home today...sleep off whatever you've-"

But Frank had already wandered away.

He wasn't the only one to arrive in an unstable state. Ray turned up to school hungover, last nights argument replaying over and over and over in his head.

"Don't you dare talk back to me!"

"But-"

"Don't you fucking dare!"

"Dad? Mom?"

"Ray-"

"Shut up bitch! Ray, go upstairs!"

"But dad-"

"GO THE FUCK UPSTAIRS!"

Shaking his head, he managed to quieten the loop, focussing on his surrounding. There were the stoners, slumped by the gate; the popular, preppy bastards leaning with ease against the wall; and the Way brothers stood by a tree, watching him. Gerard raised an eyebrow, inviting Ray over, but he couldn't face seeing them hungover.

If Gerard sees me like this....it might set him off again....and he's been doing so good....

So Ray turned around, walked right out of the gate, away from the horror of school and towards the city centre.

~

"Sharpe is a fucking bitch."

Gerard gaped at his younger brother. "Since when do you swear?"

"Since when do you smoke?" Mikey retorted.

Sighing, Gerard licked his lips.

Excuse think excuse shit shit shit excuse fuck uhhh

"I don't. It was just that morning. I was trying to pull an all-nighter and was slowly becoming immune to caffeine after my sixth cup of coffee, so I had a few cigarettes. But I don't smoke."

"You're not....?"

"No," Gerard replied.

"Okay."

He fell for it!

"But..."

Shit

"...where did you get the cigarettes in the first place? And where is the rest of the packet?"

Shitshitshitshit

"Uh," Gerard began. "They were from an old pack, the last few. That's all. I've not bought any more, I promise."

Although Mikey had a gut feeling he was being lied to, he decided to trust his brother and give him the benefit of the doubt.

"You would tell me if you were....you know...."

"Yeah, Mikey. I promise. Anyway, what were you saying, about Sharpe being a 'fucking bitch'?"

Mikey groaned.

"She's just harsh, that's all. A bit too harsh if you ask me..."

"I know."

"I saw, this morning, she was picking on Frank. Being a proper dick to him actually."

Gerard raised his eyebrows. Not at Sharpe being a dick, but the victimising of Frank. Hadn't he gone through enough with the other students?

"--I'm guessing she doesn't know he has it bad with the kids here, and that he had it bad at his old school--"

"What?" Gerard interrupted.

"...When you introduced me to him, after the incident at lunch that day, he said he'd 'had enough of that bullshit at his old school', remember?"

Gerard did have a faint memory of that. He just hadn't put two and two together, hadn't realised.

"Oh."

"'Oh' indeed."

~

Frank watched the stars in the velvet sky. He sat in the silent dark, the orange glow from his cigarette the only think interrupting the night. Tears streaked down his face.

They all hate me.

Loud music blasted through his headphones, blocking out the moans coming from next door. Today was a good day for his mom - his stepdad hadn't hit her, or walked out to fuck with someone else; both things he had done in the past. But Frank didn't care if it was a good day for them, he didn't fancy listening to his mom and stepdad fucking. So he listened to loud music and smoked a cigarette.

The breeze tickled the back of his neck, and the glow of the streetlights illuminated the bruise on his shoulder, and the cigar burn on his arm.

They all hate me. They wouldn't care if I tipped myself over the ledge...

And Frank wasn't sure whether he was talking about the kids at school, or his family. That was the saddest part.

A/N: sorry it's been so long since I updated - I'm really struggling with writer's block. But I'm on holiday now so I should be able to write more.
xoLily