Frank Iero's Ultimate Survival Guide to Winning (and Losing) Bets » Frerard

★ One ★

i managed to get you guys a chapter this weekend!! not my proudest work, but regardless, no matter how little editing went into it, it's here. *shrugs* enjoy, my lovelies :*

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"Mr. Iero. Your essay?"

Frank glanced up boredly at the teacher in front of him, his eyes drooping sleepily as she pursed her lips. She didn't say anything more and only raised her eyebrows as she awaited a response from the unamused Frank staring right back at her.

"Your essay." She repeated sternly, placing a rigid and bony hand against her hip.

Frank held his gaze for another moment, before sighing and finally reaching into his binder and yanking out the crinkled papers from the plastic confines. He extended them towards her with the least amount of effort possible, watching as she snatched them from his hand, glancing over them for a moment before humming in satisfaction and dropping them into her thick pile of submissions.

"Thank you." She said stiffly, strutting off to the next student as the tapping of her heels against the linoleum floor followed. Frank only rolled his eyes and slumped back into his chair, letting his head fall back lazily as he tapped his heel against the leg of his chair. He didn't want to be here. Not in the slightest. In all honesty, his senior year of English had proven itself to be one of the worst classes that Frank had ever taken. Even compared to his health class in his freshman year, when his teacher - a balding, middle-aged man who always smelled of old socks - had attempted to flirt with about a dozen girls in his class. Yeah, that's how horrid this class was.

Really, Frank didn't even necessarily hate school itself, it was just the corrupted system, and his bat-shit crazy English teacher that drove him insane. Frank was completely convinced that Mrs. Turner was a witch or something in disguise, and didn't even understand how she was a missus in the first place. How could someone ever marry the woman who crushed all of Frank's hopes and dreams in her palm, and seemed to enjoy it? That was beyond Frank's comprehension.

Thankfully, or possibly not, his hatred didn't seem to go unnoticed to her, because she hated Frank just as much as he hated her. At first, Frank hadn't even had a grudge against her. He'd been completely neutral towards her and had been respectful enough that she didn't give him detention on the first day. It seemed as if Mrs. Turner herself was the one who began the feud between the two, seeing as when she deemed Frank's dreams 'silly and naive', and failed his very first essay, she had begun war.

You see, the prompt was to write about something that you were passionate about, as it would help her to gauge a better understanding of her students and where they stood with their grammatical skills. Frank could only assume she had intended for her students to write about academics and family, y'know, all of the normal passions in one's life. Instead, Frank, obviously, had written about his love for music, and about how he dreamed of pursuing the art as his future career. Of course, Mrs. Turner had practically rewritten his essay with how much editing she had scribbled into the margins, on top of the harsh, degrading essay of its own written at the bottom of his papers. She had gone on and on about how music was silly, and how Frank would never have a successful career and never have a steady income if he decided to stray down the path of musical work.

And oh, did Frank start a fucking war.

He had come into class the next day huffing up a storm, brandishing his essay angrily in his fists, and demanding that he be given his points back. She had only scoffed, and continued to explain to him in person why his essay was, in simpler terms, shit, and why he really should be choosing a more steady, academic career. It took every ounce of self-control in his body to not spit in her face. Instead, he had forced a smile through the fire of rage seething inside his chest and clenched the essay in his fists as he left the classroom as calmly as he could.