Three Cheers for Sweethearts [Frerard AU]

PART III: Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13 – THE SHARPEST PENCILS

A/N: Can you tell I'm running out of puns for these chapter titles? I'll see myself out.

The weekend was spent well. Mikey and I continued to have casual conversations, which, as meaningless as some of them were, made me feel like we were even closer.

I'd always said I hated people. I never loved human contact, yet here I was, wishing for a closer relationship with just about everyone. Maybe my problem wasn't people – maybe it was that I just didn't know a lot of people. And not knowing people very well had always made me feel at least some level of awkward, since I didn't want to do something around them that might turn them off.

Of course it was good to have friends. Of course it was. But... I didn't want friends. I wanted people I could trust. And believe me, trust wasn't something I gave to people who I didn't know forwards and backwards.

At lunch on the first day of the week, the table behind us selling tickets to Sweethearts was ridiculous. We could hardly get to the table, it was so crowded.

"Hi," Frank said as I sat down.

"Hey." I paused. "It's lunch. Aren't you going to eat?"

Frank stared at the empty space of the table in front of him. "Not hungry," he said. I shrugged it off.

"Week of the dance," Ray commented as a freshman was shoved into him. "Should have expected this."

"Say, did Christa ever get back to you?" I asked, suddenly remembering she still technically hadn't said a definite yes or no to going with him.

"No... damn, what should I do?"

"Hmm... ask her again?" Frank suggested, to be immediately shut down by Ray.

"No way! That would look so clingy!"

I got some serious déjà vu as we pressured him into asking her again. And he did, again. "Fine! Fine. I'll go ask her. For the second time. If this doesn't end well, it's your fault." Eyebrows raised, I shrugged with one shoulder, indicating I was completely okay with that.

We watched as he, once again, walked over to Christa, but this time, there were so many kids in the way we couldn't even see his expression, let alone hers.

Ray pushed his way back through the crowd and around the table, wincing as his feet were stepped on. We looked at him, waiting for an answer.

He suddenly looked confused. "Why am I sitting down? I need to get in line to buy two tickets."

He grinned as he stood to join the mob, and we grinned, too, happy for him. I then pointed at my brother. "Did you buy tickets already?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Alicia seems excited."

"Good, she should be. She has no idea how lucky she is," I said. He wrinkled his nose, and I laughed.

In Theatre class, I caught Frank absently doodling beans in his Theatre notebook. I looked over his shoulder. "Try not pressing so hard," I teased. He glanced up at me with a little smile, the paragon of knowing something no one else did.

Mikey looked at us, a little lost. "What are you, his art teacher?"

"Well, yes, actually, in a sense." I shrugged. "I tutor him after school in the library on Fridays."

"That's what you're doing!"

I laughed. "Did I really never tell you?"

He broke the stillness of his face with a little bit of a smile, which was a win, in my eyes. "I guess I never really asked." He paused. "Do you think you could tutor me, too?"

"If you want, sure!" I said, maybe just a little too eagerly, but he either didn't think so or didn't mind.

The week passed quickly. This was a surprise, considering how slowly last week had gone by. Hunter only tried to attack me with his stupid little remarks maybe twice a day, and took some pictures that were supposed to upset me; a drastic decline from the average.

Any time it got physical, instead of getting involved on the same level, I had more fun teasing him. I would slap him lightly across the face, which never failed to make him blush. Maybe I was having a little too much fun provoking him, but he wasn't much bigger than me physically and didn't have any more power than I did. More friends, yes, but no one ever befriends the emo anyway, so that was hardly a surprise.

After school on Friday, I packed up my things, picked at whatever new message he had on my locker (it was getting hard to read), and headed toward the library. Hunter stepped in front of me, and I nearly ran him over.

"Where are you going?" he sneered. "Did you fail a class again, Gerard Gay? What a shame. I get to leave school early, but you have to stay behind to make up for how dumb you are. Do you think if I told your teachers about that mental disability, they'd let you off easy?" He stuck out his lip in a mock pout.

I leaned my head back to the ceiling, completely done with him. "Look, I can't deal with this right now, okay? I'm already on crunch time."

I tried to head to his left, but he stepped in my way. I stumbled toward his right and he stepped in front of me again. "I really do think you're misunderstood, and maybe your teachers won't be so strict if they knew-"

"You couldn't be more wrong. I'm tutoring three of my friends in art, so I'm not the dumb one here, they are." As soon as it left my mouth, I knew I shouldn't have said it. I didn't mean that, of course I didn't, not really, but I couldn't go back on it. Now he was going to go telling the other three that I thought they were dumb. They wouldn't believe I said that, right? But, luckily, that's not where he went with it at all.

"You have friends? What?"

I faked right and sprinted left around him. He hollered after me some sort of indistinct rude comment, but I didn't pay attention to it at all. Glowing in anger, most likely, I let the tension in every muscle I had slowly relax the closer I got to my destination.

I was the last one in the library, of course. Running all the way there, I didn't expect to see Ray and Frank showing Mikey the bean exercise I showed them last week. Yet they were, so that he wouldn't be behind when this lesson started. They were doodling on one of the slips of paper the library had if a student needed a bookmark, ignoring the librarian's protests to how many they were taking.

"Hey guys, sorry I'm so late. I was... held up. Anyway, thanks for showing Mikey how to do that," I gestured to the bookmarks with bean people all over them. They nodded wordlessly, and we got down to the lesson of the week.

I made sure they all had paper and taught them how to make shadows under things, depending on where they decided the light source was. How much was too much, also, after noticing Frank digging his pencil into the eye sockets of a bean person to make the crevice.

At the end of our half hour together, Ray headed off quickly to get ready for the Sweethearts dance tomorrow. Mikey told me he also wanted to make sure he was prepared, so left the room to call our mom for a ride. That left Frank and me alone for about a minute. I swallowed my bubbling fear at the thought of trying to initiate conversation and forced myself to say something to fill the air.

"I like how our tutoring sessions turned into a little class," I commented off-handedly, trying to make conversation. Frank nodded in agreement, but not really listening to me. He looked like he wanted to say something, so I looked at him expectantly. He straightened his tie and stuttered for a second before taking a breath to talk.

Mikey came back into view. "Mom's waiting outside," he said. "See you later, Frank!"

There was a fraction of a second of silence while Frank shifted his anticipated words and used that breath to say something else. "Right. See you around, Way brothers."

"See you," I said, giving Frank a curious look. I didn't ask, in case whatever he was about to say was private or something; if it was important, he'd text me.

He never did.