Diluted ☻ FRERARD ONE-SHOTS

Not-So-Straight As

Frank Iero doesn't try hard in school. It's not because he lacks intelligence but rather because there has yet to be a single teacher who can inspire him to look forward to a bright future. It's only when a certain Mr Gerard Way strolls into the classroom that Frank thinks he might have something worth fighting for.

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"You may open your papers."

Frank, instead of paying attention to what the nameless teacher at the front is really saying, fixes his eyes on the window, on the hole being dug up at the side of the road for whatever reason. He wishes that hole would swallow him, or at least this damn English exam he's being forced to do.

He can't concentrate. Barely thirty seconds into the three-hour-torture-period, and the doors outside are opening as a flood of younger students make their way to class; laughing and yelling amongst themselves, ignoring passer-byers telling them to 'keep it down', and Frank flinches at the noise.

Years ago, when he passed certain classrooms during exam time, chatting with his friends, teachers hissed at him to be quiet and he instantly shut up because he imagined what it would be like; the stressful days in which he'd be taking those vital tests and begging for silence. But today, he couldn't care less whether his volume or lack thereof resulted in those students getting straight As or fails.

Frank is allowed to be selfish right now, because he's the fool sat in the half-broken chair in the school hall with the scattered exam papers in front of him, not some escapees well into their college years.

And, well, he just wishes all the obnoxious kids outside the hall would shut the hell up.

Gerard said this would be easy and Frank was naïve enough to believe him. However, it seems that his English teacher was lying, because the words on the page may as well be in Cantonese - he can't make sense of any of it.

'PART A: Choose a novel, play or short-story you have studied and write an essay to convey how the main character(s) dealt with the central conflict(s) mentioned throughout. The essay should be a minimum of one-thousand words.'

And he has fifty minutes - no, forty-eight - to do so. That's only part A, too, never mind the rest of it. Everything Frank knows about Frankenstein floats out of his head.

Maybe if Frank wasn't completely and hopelessly controlled by the teacher who taught him this subject, he'd be less worried about failing. But suddenly Gerard's face is in his head, encouraging and believing, and Frank can't let him down. He would be wrecked with guilt. So he has to at least try.

But maybe he shouldn't have promised the first time he met his teacher, "I'm going to get an A plus. You'll see." It's not impossible but Frank doesn't have much confidence in himself. Mr Way, on the other hand, believed he was capable of anything...

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At the beginning of junior year, it's announced that the old bat known as Mrs Bates will be retiring after about three hundred years of teaching at Belleville, and Frank can't be happier. He hopes that maybe the new one will be a little more bearable - is asking for one good teacher so preposterous?

Apparently not, because the second Mr Way enters the classroom, it's evident by the inviting smile, casual clothes and bounce in his step - causing all student eyes to train on him in awe - that he isn't like any other.