Drowning Lessons (Frerard AU)

Fourteen - So Many Stars In The Sky

After the half term, once I was better and eating normally again everything seemed to fall back into a general routine, every day been organised and the same. It was like things could finally settle down, for a bit anyway. Time seemed to fly by, a week of school, then homework and maybe a day out, sometimes clubbing - at which I never drank - then the cycle restarted.

During November it got cold, really cold actually, the only places that were warm were the library and some of the classrooms. It was freezing in the dorms it was really fucking cold in the cafeteria, it was definitely not the weather I liked, I preferred cold to hot, but I in no way liked the cold, and I didn't like having to pile layers on just for a smoke. Although actually that was a total lie, I kind of enjoyed wrapping up warm, but it was just a lot of effort I guess. I did very much enjoy Gerard when he was wrapped up warm; he wore a little black beanie with his hair poking out and a scarf wrapped right around his neck with his huge trench coat on. It was adorable it really was.

It certainly became a thing Gerard and me and the tree, if it didn't happen it was weird and worrying, everyone else thought so too. In general we all met for breakfast at seven-ish, most days I would shower first, I'd be in and out in twenty minutes. Most people – except for the weird early risers – got up six-thirty or seven, Gerard and I would get up at six and we'd go for a morning walk and smoke. We would head back for six-thirty, mostly I would shower, but if Mikey was up late or being a twat I wouldn't bother, then I'd head down for breakfast. I didn't normally have much although I always had a coffee and usually at least tried to have some fruit. If it wasn't so cold I would go for a run in the mornings, but I would wait until March/April before I started doing that. Actually as weird as it was I missed my running quite a lot. It was weird because I wasn't sporty at all and I wasn't a good runner, but I liked to do it in the mornings when no one was around – I certainly wouldn't run in front of people.

I missed a lot of things from home actually, I missed my family and I certainly missed my dog, I missed my friends and I did miss my bed. But there were things I think I would miss when I went back, things which even after only three months I thought maybe I'd stay for further education in the UK. I couldn't lie that as much as I hated school and had no particular love for learning and education, I liked being pushed; I liked being forced to learn lots and do well. If I was going to know things I may as well know them well and be super smart. I was never going to regret learning but there was always the possibility that I would grow old and regret not learning. It was weird actually, that this school had changed my attitude in a way, in a way I would miss back in Belleville. So yes I missed going for a run in the morning in the park with my dog, but I would also miss the learning environment at Waveney academy because it was a fucking good spirit.

Back at home with my friends, school didn't mean shit and if you didn't turn up you didn't learn much less than if you did, hell most of the teachers didn't even care if you sat at the back of the class rolling up cigarettes for when you went on break. Nobody cared about learning it was almost like classes were just there so schools could claim to be teaching kids, but most kids just used them to make plans for the evening or the weekend or just to write down the homework they would use as cigarette paper when they ran out of proper shit. For my school and amongst my friends I was actually pretty smart, I mean I only got high C's and a fair few B's but most of my friends were good with their D's. If my friends were going to tease me for being a smarty pants – which they did only because I was smart enough to know where France is – then I may as well try to be as smart as I could. So my new aim was no longer to just get the year over with, it was to make the most of the year and get the best grades I could. Aim high, I wanted straight A's.

At least then I could at least tell my friends what exactly the smoking was doing to us and why it was killing us, because most of them had no fucking clue what tobacco was even fucking made of, or what lighter fluid was. That was unlikely to stop me smoking though, because I still smoked with Gerard, in our tree morning, lunch, afternoon and evening. That was already a head start to quitting that was a half at least of what I used to have daily. But back home we would smoke right in front of teachers, we'd spend hours in the evenings at the skate park just smoking cigarettes after cigarette. In Waveney I had to walk half a fucking mile up the field just to lower the chance of being caught and then excluded. Thank God I had friends who helped me out.