When Gerard was about five years old, and the years prior, he and Frank had actually been really good friends. They played together in the park, and ran around each other's houses, picking on the neighborhood kids, even though they were both a lot smaller than everyone else in the neighborhood. They used to help each other dot their i's and slash their t's in kindergarten.
Their houses were right next to each other's, so obviously they had a lot of contact with each other. Frank's mom used to drop him off at Gerard's house when she had errands to run, and vice versa. They just always got along. Honestly, everyone who'd ever seen the two would've sworn that they'd be friends through their childhood at least, and maybe on into adolescence.
Back then, they were both blank slates, didn't know very much about the world. They just sort of accepted anything they heard as the truth. One of the older boys in the neighborhood once told Frank that you could grow scotch tape if you shook the dispenser. He was little enough to believe that lie. So Frank pulled out all the tape, wrapping it around his fingers, and then he shook the tape dispenser and waited. He watched, and for about five minutes it was like watching grass grow. Five minutes to the five year old Frank felt like an hour, so he decided that it'd just take some time. The tape never grew back unfortunately. Gerard had had to unwind him from all the tape.
So when someone asked Frank and Gerard if they liked each other they said yes. Because why couldn't a boy like another boy? It's not that anyone tried to pull them apart or anything, because they thought it was cute. It probablywas cute.
The thing was that they spent almost every day with each other. One day they signed a contract that they would even get married. Obviously they didn't take it seriously at the time, they just thought it was something goofy. Though, they did get that contract typed which made it all feel so official. They even signed and stamped it. The only stamp they could find was a red Santa like stamp in the bottom of Gerard's toy box, riding, what everyone direly hoped was meant to be a reindeer.
As they'd had Gerard's mother type it up, she appointed the clause near the bottom that the contract would be binding if neither of them had found a mate by the frightfully far-off age of thirty. That gave them both twenty five years.
It was a joke of course, but that contract was laminated, and that made it infinitely more official. It was funny though, because they were best friends, and at only five years old, had agreed to marry each other as a last resort. For a year, people would tease them, most lightheartedly, until they got to the evil place.
'The evil place' is what Gerard later dubbed their elementary school. They started first grade, hoping that everything would be the same as it was back in kindergarten. People laughing along with their friendship that was maybe a little stranger than everyone else's. That's what they'd expected, because they hadn't really seen enough of the world to expect anything different. Little kids are like sponges, they just accept whatever you tell them, and most things brush off them pretty quickly.
Except first grade was not like kindergarten. Compared to first grade, kindergarten was a walk in the park. Literally. On Mondays they used to walk in the park next to the school littered with cottontails that Frank used to joke looked like burnt hot dogs. First grade was not like that though. It was scary.
See, their elementary school started at first grade and went through fifth grade, and fifth graders were huge. Frank was sure they were some type of monster that had escaped from his picture books. They were ancient, and giant. They were just so big compared to him though, and they were mean.
Fifth graders got the esteemed privilege to acquaint first graders with the new school. So every Wednesday and Friday the fifth graders would visit Frank and Gerard's classroom. It was basically midget hunting season. The fifth graders were allowed to pick on the little kids, because the teachers were taking 'break time' which was actually just gossip hour. The fifth graders were supposedly responsible though. They were, after all, hundreds of years older than the first graders, so they were totally worthy of babysitting the little kids for an hour.
Wrong.
It was The Hunger Games with six year olds. The eleven year olds versus the six year olds, and one team had a definite competitive edge with the fact that they were thirty feet taller. Fifth graders were so mean. The boys would pick on each other, so the big guys would pick on the little guys, meaning that Frank and Gerard were well accustomed to the game of tag. Sometimes though, they'd be able to escape by infiltrating the sanctuary the girls seemed to build.
Except fifth grade girls were, if it's possible, meaner than the boys. They would pick on you with words. It was like a sparring session except the first graders were too small and young to understand that every word out of their mouths was a lie. That was where Gerard first heard the 's' word. Stupid. Then Frank later told him while they were at his house playing Go Fish that the 's' word is actually shit. Frank's mom heard him say that and he wasn't allowed to have fruit rollups for a whole week. It was awful.
That wasn't what was bad about the fifth grade girls though, it was the way they picked on everyone. Somehow they found out that Gerard and Frank were betrothed. They were six years old, it wasn't a serious thing. They just signed a totally unofficial contract that was now hanging up in Frank's room. It wasn't a big deal. Except the fifth grade girls did not perceive it that way.
That was how Gerard learned his first slur.
After that, they were self-conscious of their friendship. First graders are sponges though, so all of their classmates started using those words too. They were officially the gay first graders. Not only were they called that among their own class, but the second graders learned of the affair, and then steadily, so did the whole school.
Now, in the evil place, the teachers didn't take things as lightly as they had in kindergarten. When word spread to the teachers and eventually the principal, that there were two gay first graders, they didn't laugh it off the way everyone else had. No, Frank and Gerard were sent to the principal's office. From there they were given the lecture on homosexuality being a bad thing, and they were even read parts of the bible. That was strange as it wasn't even a religiously affiliated school. It was just a school. The question could have been asked whether that was even legal, or morally correct, but they were six, they didn't know how to debate. They had never even heard the word debate before.
Frank and Gerard had never heard of the word homosexuality either. They didn't know there was a difference between liking people who had the same junk as you and liking people who didn't. That was something unimaginable to their six year old brains.
After that, Frank and Gerard were placed on opposite sides of the classroom. They were isolated from each other in every part of the day except for when they got home. At recess, Gerard wasn't allowed near Frank, and vice versa. It didn't seem all that fair. It's not like they wanted to hurt each other, they just wanted to hang out.
After school they got to see each other again though. Frank's mom, and Gerard's parents didn't see things the way that the school had. They thought it was cute. No one ever considered that the two boys didn't actually understand what the hell kind of contract had even made. Mostly, they just wanted an excuse to learn how to sign their names in fancy handwriting. Frank's cursive could've been mistaken for someone sneezing on a piece of paper.
At that point in time, Gerard had a new baby brother, who was starting to follow them around. He was called Michael, but they didn't like that. So he became Mikey. He didn't know many words back then, but Mikey liked to walk around and follow them. He was three years younger than them, but they hadn't been allowed to play with him as much when he was a baby. The reason was something about not wanting to drop Mikey on his head like they had with Gerard followed by don't tell your mother I said that.
It was right around Christmas, about a month had passed since they'd been separated at school when Gerard and Frank had been decorating Gerard's house, putting things all around. They found themselves under a mistletoe. The two of them had their first kiss when they were six. Basically it was two little boys making faces like they'd just eaten a lemon, then they kissed, and pretended it was the most disgusting thing to have ever happened. They'd made gagging noises, wiped their mouths off, and the works. When they were that small, it didn't mean much, because they still didn't really understand the mechanics of much to do with relationships. They were still just best friends. After that, the following weeks they'd made such a melodramatic show of never stepping under that archway at the same time.
The two boys were just best friends. That's all they were, the school didn't seem to understand that. They were close, sure, but that's because they'd spent their whole lives with each other thus far.
They were the closest friends in the world, until, all of a sudden, they weren't.
First grade came and went, and then second grade started. There was a new girl in their class though. Little miss preachy Savannah. Her name was Savannah. She was rather preachy. Hence the name, preachy Savannah.
The commotion had all but died down about Gerard and Frank's not-actually-real romance. The gossip still lingered though, because preachy Savannah somehow heard about them, and then she was out to save their souls. You wouldn't think kids that young could be so hateful. Turns out, hate comes in all shapes, sizes, and degree of dimples.
Preachy Savannah left only about a year after she arrived, but that was enough time for her to get into Gerard's and Frank's heads. Neither of them has ever actually learned the truth of what happened that year, because preachy Savannah was also tricky Savannah.
First, Savannah had to discover all of Gerard's and Frank's dirty secrets. The first thing she learned was that Gerard cared maybe a little too much about his hair. The second thing she learned was that Frank's favorite color was red. Preachy Savannah was an evil genius. She took a bottle of red paint, mixed it with a bottle of glue, and put the concoction in Gerard's winter hat. She didn't use enough for Gerard to spot the booby trap, but she used enough that Gerard had to get all of his hair cut off. That was, at the time, the worst thing that had ever happened to him, and it's left him with a distrust of winter hats.
That in and of itself remained a mystery for a few days, as the teacher couldn't figure out who had perpetrated the heinous act. Frank didn't know who'd decided to ruin Gerard's hair, all he knew was that he wanted to pinch, or maybe even kick the person who'd done it.
The third thing she learned was what Frank's favorite shirt was. Savannah was emanating the ten plagues essentially, but to a much smaller degree. She wrote a giant letter G in permanent marker on the back of Frank's shirt during art class while he wasn't looking. At that point, it hadn't quite crossed Gerard's mind that all his hair, the hair he cared so much about, could have been ruined by his best friend. The dots didn't connect that the evildoer had used red paint, Frank's favorite color. Now of course it wasn't Frank who'd done that to his hair, but Gerard didn't know that, and he didn't even as much as suspect Frank. He actually started to believe it might have been an accident. That was until Frank accused Gerard of ruining his favorite shirt. The G was a little less ambiguous than the red paint.
At that, Savannah had done her job. She'd set the ball rolling and all of a sudden, the grudge was put in place between Frank and Gerard. They stopped hanging out, almost overnight. It's amazing how powerful manufactured hate can be, especially between two people who were too young to resolve the problem.
When Savannah had left the school after second grade, Frank and Gerard were already mortal enemies. It just felt natural to hate each other after they jumped to the conclusion that the other had ruined something they loved. The jumped to those conclusions without any proof of that matter, or a reason for either of them to do so. Little kids and logic do not go together very well.
That hatred didn't end as quickly as everyone had hoped. Third grade went by and they made new friends. Fourth grade was soon to follow with neither of them so much as trying to talk to each other. They lived next door to each other so they really shouldn't have been behaving like they were, but it was too late. Their friendship was too far gone.
A couple more years passed, and a couple became a dozen. A dozen became two dozen, and all of a sudden, it was twenty four years later. It had been twenty five years, however, since they'd made that contract, as that was made a year before the two of them begun hating each other. Twenty five years passed, or if you want to get technical, it's actually been twenty four years, eleven months and twenty nine days.
Gerard hasn't thought about Frank in at least ten years. The last time they saw each other was at their graduation party. That was twelve years ago.
The day is September 28, and Gerard doesn't think he'd even recognize Frank if the guy were to come up to him on the street and introduce himself as Frank Iero. Gerard never cared much for his childhood nemesis, Frank, and he made a pact with himself to forget every last person he went to high school with. He's not doing a terrible job. He accidentally stayed in contact with a few of them, like Ray, but that's not something he necessarily regrets.
He doesn't remember that contract he made either, because he was only five at the time.
September 28, twenty five years later. Gerard is thirty, so the expiration date had passed for him a few months ago.
September 28, twenty five years later. Frank is only twenty nine.
Trouble is that the heading of that contract doesn't say "when one of us is thirty." The contract says "when we'reboth thirty."