I'm Not Okay (I Promise)

What's The Worst Thing I Could Say?

Gerard's POV:

We waited for Emily's call the entire day. Guess we were all too anxious to know if we would have our first show in the ball!

Sometime during the middle of the afternoon, we were in my garage just laying around doing nothing, when we heard Mikey's phone ringing.

"Answer it!" Frank screamed.

Mikey ran across the garage and grabbed his phone.

"Put it on speaker!" I whispered.

He pressed something on his phone and then we all could hear Emily's voice.

"Mikey?" she said.

"Hi!" he answered. The rest of us just remained in silence.

"So, I just left the reunion. We voted and talked to the principal about your band."

Silence.

"And...?" Mikey asked.

"Almost everybody voted yes." I knew exactly who said no. "And then we tried to convince the principal. At first, he didn't want to. But in the end... He accepted."

Immediately, Frank, Ray and I started screaming in silence, dancing and jumping around, cheering. Mikey tried hard not to laugh.

"Mikey?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, what?" Mikey said, between laughs. "Oh, right, thank you, Emily, really! Thank you so much!"

She laughed.

"No biggie. Oh, by the way, the only thing the principal asked is that you play some more clean songs. That means no 'three, two, one, we came to fuck', okay?"

Mikey laughed.

"Yeah, sure, sorry."

"Okay, great! Congratulations! Hope you rock the night!"

"Sure! Thanks again, Emily. Bye."

"Bye!"

Mikey turned off the phone. We stayed in silence for two seconds. Then, we all screamed, jumped and danced at the same time.

There was nothing good about going to school on the other day. Still, I was excited. Now, I was counting the days to the ball. We had more or less three weeks to rehearse and choose some songs to play there. We decided to play some covers, too, mixed with our original songs.

Mikey and I met with Frank and Ray at Ray's locker. We were all happy that morning.

"We could rehearse a bit today and choose the songs of the track list." Frank said. "How many songs can we play?"

"About nine, I guess." Mikey said. "It's a small show."

We all nodded, still smiling.

Suddenly, a group of people entered the corridor making a lot of noise. We looked at them and realized it was the Jocks and some cheerleaders. And they were walking directly towards us.

"Are you insane?" Blake screamed when he was close enough to talk to us.

We didn't even had time to respond. The Jocks made a semicircle around us, holding us against the lockers.

"Have you lost your mind, bunch of idiots?" he continued, looking directly to me. "What were you thinking? Playing at the Winter Ball? Do you really think we're gonna let you?"

I looked behind Blake and saw Ashley in the back, observing with a smile. Obviously, she told them.

"You don't have to allow anything." Frank said. Carter punched him in the stomach.

"I don't remember giving you the permission to talk." He said. If he had oxygen, Frank would probably have answered. Gladly he didn't have it.

"If you really thought we would just sit quietly and listen you play your vampiric songs and chemical romances in our ball, you are dead wrong."

We remained in silence. I stared at Blake dead in the eye. I didn't know what to say, so I just didn't say anything.

Then, Blake laughed.

"Look, I'm feeling merciful today, so I'm gonna give you another chance." He passed his gaze on each of us. "Treat this as a warning. Don't play in the ball and we'll be fine. But I swear, if you go..." he pushed me against the lockers before leaving.

When all the Jocks left, my friends and I stared at each other. Neither of us knew what to say or what to do. Honestly, I was so done I didn't want to deal with that right now. The bell rang. I sighed and left.

"I can't really process what happened." Mikey said, lying on the sofa.

"We were THREATENED. THAT'S what happened." Frank screamed as he walked around the garage.

On my house, later that day, was the only time we could actually get together to talk about the threat. Mikey, Ray and Frank had been discussing the situation for about half an hour. I could only listen.

"What are we going to do now?" Ray asked.

Nobody responded. Then, Mikey sighed.

"Guess I'll just call Emily and say were over."

Suddenly, I stood up. They all stared at me.

"No." I said, with conviction. "No. I'm done. I'm tired of being afraid."

They looked at each other and then stared at me.

"What do you mean?" Mikey asked.

"I'm mean I'm not giving up. Not now that we've come so far. Not because of a stupid threat. I'm gonna play in that useless ball. And whatever they do to me later, it's gonna be worth it."

Frank smiled and walked towards me.

"Yeah! That's the attitude. I agree!"

Mikey and Ray stared at each other. Ray smiled.

"I'm in."

Mikey bent his head and sighed.

"We're all dead anyway."

Frank screamed really loud, happy.

"Yeah! Music first, consequences later!"

We all laughed and screamed, too.