The Chasing of Moons

Earl

Frank can already tell that school is going to be miserable today. He's already late for class, though people are still coming in through the doors behind him so he kind of doubts that he's going to be the only person who's late, but his teacher is a wanker and any excuse to give him a tardy is up for grabs. And Frank really can't get another tardy for History because then he'll have a detention. Eventually he settles on skipping it altogether and he'll forge a doctor's note to give Mr. Disachio, or as he likes to call him, Douche-achio, tomorrow. Frank then waddles his way to the boy's locker room to stand under a hair dryer for an hour.

Three periods later, Frank grumbles to himself in the cafeteria across from a heavily disheveled looking Pete. Literally no one is on their best game today it seems. At least he's somewhat dry though. He'd had to ring his clothes out and he severely abused the dryers in the locker room, but now he's not freezing cold and dripping water everywhere. His shoes are miserable though, he couldn't dry those off enough in the time allotted. They make a squidgy sound whenever he moves them and he can feel water soaking into his socks maniacally with every single step.

"Dude, so, I don't mean to alarm you, but you have a goblin growing out of your forehead," Pete says.

"I'm aware," Frank replies, "your hair is flat."

"Don't remind me," Pete says. He did go through a phase where he worshipped a hair straightener until Brendon and Frank were able to convince him that he looked like an imbecile. He still does but now he has better hair.

"Where the fuck is the water even coming from," Brendon says a minute later, slamming a lunch tray onto the table. Frank eyes him worriedly, because he doesn't know what crawled into Brendon's brain and made him think it was a good idea to buy a school lunch. Unless he's really anxious to get food poisoning.

"Why are you-" Frank starts to ask.

"My bag fell apart," Brendon says, before Frank can even finish. "Literally just collapsed on itself. This is what you get for using a paper bag."

"Well at least you've given the squirrels a nice snack," Pete shrugs.

"I hope they enjoy my soggy goldfish."

"Ew," Frank makes a face, "soggy goldfish."

"Whoa, dude," Brendon starts, pointing at Frank.

"Yes I know, okay! I can't just make it go away, and absorb it back into my skin. I would if I could, but it's a part of me now, you'll all just have to live with it."

"I'm naming it Earl," Pete states.

"Who's named Earl?" Ray says sitting down.

"Frank's pimple."

Ray looks at him, double takes like he's just seen a ghost and Frank mentally flips off Satan or whoever is the cause of the damn thing.

"Yes, yes I get it. I have a sentient pimple, haha, very funny," Frank frowns, combing his hair out the best that he can, which covers up his eyes, but he's not sure that that's any worse. Either he can have a gigantic eye sore in the middle of his face or a bad hair day, and he's compelled by the latter.

Frank hears rather than sees two more people sit down, he assumes its Mikey and Gerard, but his hair is in the way of everything.

"Should I even ask?" Mikey questions, presumably in reference to Frank.

"He's got a pimple the size of Mars," Pete says.

"Now Pete, don't say that," Brendon says, "More like the size of Jupiter if you ask me."

"It's not that bad," Ray says, not sounding too convinced with himself.

"I wanna see," Mikey says, and before Frank can stop him he's all hands on, pulling Frank's hair out of his face.