Polaroids & Cigarettes // Frank Iero // MCR

The Black Parade was the tour everyone remembers. This is the story nobody saw.

Charlie Snows has spent the last three years chasing bands around the world with a camera in one hand and a coffee in the other. At twenty-one, she's already become one of the most sought-after tour photographers in the scene, known for capturing the moments fans never get to see-the laughter after the encore, the sleepless bus rides, the friendships that form somewhere between soundcheck and sunrise.

Fresh off Warped Tour with her best friends in All Time Low, Charlie is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: document My Chemical Romance's year-long Black Parade World Tour and create the official behind-the-scenes photo book.

She already knows the band.

They already know her.

Especially Frank Iero.

The two of them are a disaster waiting to happen.

They're forever stealing each other's hoodies, eyeliner and cigarettes. Sneaking beers when they definitely shouldn't. Daring each other to do stupid things. Charlie's constantly climbing barricades, speakers and lighting rigs for the perfect photograph, collecting bruises and cuts like souvenirs, while Frank stands at the bottom yelling, "Don't die!" before asking to see the picture. They're always covered in Sharpie and somehow always getting yelled at by security.

To everyone else, they're inseparable.

To Charlie and Frank, they're just... Charlie and Frank.

A year of sold-out arenas. Endless highways. Late-night diners. Disposable cameras. Found family. Inside jokes that stop being funny to everyone else. The kind of friendships that only exist when you're twenty-something, living out of a tour bus and chasing the next city before the sun comes up.

Because sometimes the best stories aren't the ones under the stage lights.

They're the ones happening just outside the frame.