It was summer.
The cloudless sky stretched endlessly overhead, a perfect clear blue canvas for the graceful, red-tipped swallows to dance across, under the sweltering rays of sun beating down on the parched school field. Little blades of lustrous, green grass swayed shyly in the balmy breeze that swept across the school grounds and ruffled the white heads of the daisies embroidering the field, making the perfect August afternoon.
Sixteen year old Frank Iero was laying on his stomach on the lush blades of green grass, gazing dreamily out across the parched field, his chestnut brown hair swept gently across his face by the tickling breeze of pollen and heat. Opposite him, also laying on his stomach, was another boy of the same age, only instead of gazing out philosophically at the hazy heat of the field, he was hunched up over a small, battered black sketchbook, his raven black hair flopping over his face as he earnestly sketched away with a 3B pencil, smudging here and there without looking up.
Silence wove a thin web over the two boys, but it was not an awkward silence, merely peaceful; only the distant burble of their peer group lazing in the swelteringly hot, parched concrete of the schoolyard metres behind them and the soft whispering rustle of the soft breeze brushing through the grass and the wildflowers broke the peaceful quiet. It was pure contentment; each boy was lost in his own little world, one in charcoal imagination, the other in dreamy curiosity and wonderings.
“Where do you think the swallows go?” Frank asked suddenly, leaning his head on his hands and gazing up at the birds dancing elegantly across the azure sky overhead. He then turned to look at his best friend, the slim, pale boy sketching away so earnestly under a shrouding of slightly chaotically raven hair.
The boy, Gerard, looked up at his best friend with almond-shaped, empathetically emerald and hazel tinted eyes that shone in the blistering sunlight and brushed his silky midnight hair from his face with charcoal stained fingers. “Africa,” he replied simply before returning to his sketch, impatiently brushing his hair from his eyes.
“How do you know?” Frank asked, flopping over to lie on his back so as he could continue looking back up at the vast freedom of the blue stretching over their heads, the breeze brushing his face like a gentle whisper.
“Mikey told me,” Gerard replied simply, without looking up, continuing to smudge and perfect his sketch with long, pale, skilled fingers. “He’s studying them in biology next semester.”
Frank sighed and tilted his head back further to take in the wondrous freedom of blue above him hair flopping back and mingling in soft chestnut tendrils with the little blades of summer grass.
He had always liked to ask questions, always been curious, ever since his first day of nursery where he asked the teacher why he existed. Needless to say, he was still searching for the answer to that particular question.
Almost everything fascinated Frank; from the way clouds formed in the sky to why he breathed in the humid summer air, but his favourite questions to ask were those that could not be answered.
A comfortable silence fell between them once more, Gerard continuing to sketch, Frank continuing to dream. It was how they’d always been, ever since they’d fought over the little finger paints in first grade. Later on, Frank decided that art wasn’t for him, and had picked up a guitar instead. But Gerard had known what he wanted right from the start, and stuck with the paints and the brushes through the years. He was now the best artist Frank knew.
Gerard had stuck with Frank too; They’d made mud pies and wobbly crayon drawings together, played at being superheroes or goblins, patched each other’s grazed knees up and shared lemonade in the summer holidays, scared themselves to death watching Dawn of The Dead on Gerard’s tenth birthday, braved their first day at high school, done each other’s homework, and shared CDs and secrets ever since. They were completely inseparable.
