"There's a reason we are white and pure, and they are black and dirty. There's a reason they stain our skin. That we are shamed if others see those stains. They're bad people, Frank. They're disgusting."

Gerard was late, and it was fucking raining. He'd missed the bus and it was fucking raining, and he was totally going to get dropped from the play if he was late again and he was so fucking screwed, but honestly Gerard wasn't all that keen on it when he'd heard the only main part he'd managed to get in this damn theatre group was of a fucking crossdresser. For someone who was supposed to be in the closet, he was doing an awfully bad job of it. Frank Iero was Gerard's favourite punk ass skater dickhead, that he was currently working on eternally denying to himself the crush he had on Frank, which totally didn't exist of course, but Frank was really cute, and Gerard was really stupid; stupid enough to think that he could totally pull off pretending to be a girl in order for heterosexual Frank Iero to fall for him. Surely, this was truly the worst idea Gerard Way has ever had.

It's the lake in November, and the move closer to the ocean, and Gerard's fixation, and Gerard's compulsions like tidal waves dragging him down, and Mikey's more distant than ever: like they're drifting out into the middle of the ocean, whereas Gerard's just stuck there: water turning to quicksand around him, drowning. And it's the letter; Frank finds it on the floor of the boys' bathroom on the first floor. It's dropped in accident, perhaps from a pocket or something, and it's drenched in what Frank hopes is tap water, and the words: scrawled in blue ink are difficult to make out as the words join together in a fuzzy inky mess. The only paragraph legible is the final one, and even still, it barely is: 'I've been underwater for a long time now, but I'm not drowning, I'm beginning to think I can breathe like this, but I can't, I'm gasping for breath, and I have to do this, Mikey, I have to end this myself. I'm going to the lake on the 1st of November, don't wait for me... I'm not coming back.' And the name signed at the bottom is little more than a smudged mess of blue ink, and there's nothing Frank can do about it, but he knows for certain that the one thing he can't do is ignore this letter, and he reminds himself of that as he folds it into his pocket. It's a suicide note, Frank's stupid, but not stupid enough to brush over that fact, and whoever this person is, Frank knows that they most certainly don't deserve to die. And Frank isn't going to let them. Because he's going to find this person; he's got time now at least, and he can save them, he will save them - Frank promises himself that. But one person in a whole school, it's like a needle in a haystack, but he's got time, it's November 1st in thirty days, and he can only hope that it will be enough. He's got one month: the date is October 1st.

Frank is a hopelessly short, hopelessly desperate, and just generally hopeless highschooler, whose only friend is the amazingly tall kid with the 'fro: Ray Toro. School is mundane, school is just, well, school: Lindsey Ballato is a goddess, Pete Wentz is a MySpace whore, and Brendon Urie totally deserved getting kicked in the balls last summer, but then Mikey fucking Way turns up and before Frank knows it he's over at the Way household and swooning over an unfairly hot older brother who has totally just made out with an overly casual Lindsey Ballato. And that's not even to mention Gerard's past and sort of ex-boyfriend Bert McCracken who he kind of did, kind of didn't leave in the old town he and Mikey just moved from, but what is for sure is that Gerard Way can't help but stare at Mikey's sort of best friend, Frank, just a little too much. But Gerard is older and sort of world's away from Frank's league: he's like Lindsey Ballato - unobtainable and godly, and most definitely a member of the elite sex club that Frank reckons Lindsey's involved in. And this elite club of people who've seen Gerard Way naked? Let's say, Frank Iero wants in... to Gerard's pants. However Mikey thinks that it's less of a club and more of a support group.

Two boys move into the Iero house as foster kids. The younger brother is like a parental figure for his older brother who lost most of his memory and developed a mental disorder after an accident. But Frank Iero is there to help the older brother through a lot of things and surprisingly, the older brother begins to trust Frank more than he trusts his younger brother.

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." When notorious pirate (and total asshole) Gerard Way snatches young, innocent Frank Iero from his tidy, planned-out life and deposits him on the infamous pirate ship, The Black Freighter, he is immersed in a world of deception, violence and sin. The thing is, though, he knows from the start that it won't be the fighting that destroys him-- it will be the loathing he and Gerard feel for each other that will tear him apart in the end.