Just a Bit.

Brendon was seventeen when his mother died of cancer.

One day she woke up and found a tender spot on her left temple. Brendon wanted to take her to a doctor but she insisted to stay home. Four months later she was dead and Brendon was alone.

He spent a few months shuttling between foster homes until his father came back to his life after his wonderful disappearing act when Brendon was five. He offered to let Brendon stay with him – Brendon didn’t feel so fantastic about it. But anything was better than foster homes.

Brendon never really saw much of his father. He worked at night at some fancy building as a security guard. Brendon lived a very monotone life. When he wasn’t at school, eating or shitting, he was in his room all day watching TV and listening to music.

His father being a man of action – despite the fact that he spent eight hours sitting on his ass watching surveillance monitors – he didn’t like what Brendon did. So he fished the boy out of his room and brought up his dead mother. He asked Brendon if he wanted to talk about it and he answered no and that he wanted to be left alone.

“Brendon,” he said, his face twisted in frustration. “Look at all of the people in the world who have actually accomplished something!” He gripped Brendon’s shoulders and shook him a bit while his son looked at him strangely. “Do you think they got to where they are now by listening to rap music?”

“I don’t listen to rap.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Well, I don’t exactly know how they got to where they are, so maybe.”

He didn’t like Brendon’s answer, so he sent him to a shrink, Ms. Reid. She was fairly old, a few strands in her hair were dull silver and they were always held up in a bun. Her glasses hung on the tip of her sharp nose. To Brendon, she looked like a creepy old witch.

“Do you miss your mother?” she asked.

“I guess. She’s my mom.”

She looked skeptical before writing something down. “Do you hate her sometimes?”

Brendon raised an eyebrow. “Hate her? Hate her for what?”

“For dying.”

“Oh.” His face settled down into thought. “Dying? That really wasn’t her fault – why would I be mad?”

Ms. Reid’s face scrunched up and tapped her blue-inked pen on her lips. “But you do hate her sometimes, right? For leaving you?”

Brendon shook his head and leaned on his black, leather seat. “I hate cancer for killing her. I get mad at doctors and fuck . . . and you know, it’s been around for centuries and we still can’t do anything about it – cancer, I mean. We spend all this money and shit but it just all ends to waste.”

“What about your father?”

“What about him?”

“Do you hate him?”

The boy looked at the therapist like he actually didn’t know the answer to the question. “I don’t even know him,” he said.

“Do you hate him for leaving your mom?”

It was like she was trying to get Brendon to hate his parents. “I don’t know all of the facts. He just couldn’t commit.”

“Your mother never told you?”

“No, because those things don’t matter.”

She didn’t ask any more questions about Brendon’s parents. She moved on to school.

“How do like school?”

Brendon sneered. “I hate it.”

When she asked him why, he said he didn’t know anybody. Then when she asked about girls, he said he hated the thought of being in a relationship. Then when she asked about boys, he asked her what she meant by it.

Afterwards, she had a long talk with Brendon’s father. On the way home, he told Brendon that Ms. Reid believed he was severely depressed and recommended he go do something other than listen to music and watch TV.

Brendon laughed and told him to believe him when he said that there was nothing wrong with him. He didn’t.

The next day, he was forcing his son to join the football team at school. Brendon told him he was being a dumbass and that he was never, ever going to make it. His father looked agitated – Brendon didn’t know if it was because he swore at him or because he didn’t want to try football – and asked what Brendon wanted to do.

“I want to get my license.”

“But that’s just about the same thing as sitting around on your ass all day.”

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s not like you do that for living,” Brendon said. If it wasn’t obvious, he was being sarcastic. His father glared and threatened to send Brendon back to the foster homes if he didn’t try football. So Brendon tried football.

Brendon know he was going to be asked how football was. Along with basketball, baseball, soccer and several other things that Brendon didn’t like.

“Ms. Reid tells me you hate a lot of things.” Of course his father had to know. He had to know about everything.

“That’s because she knows just what to ask.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “Say, she didn’t ask you anything about dancing, did she?”

“I hate dancing.”

He chuckled and pat Brendon’s back. “Good. Because if you ever asked me for dance lessons, I would throw myself off a cliff. Anyway, how’s football?”

“I don’t like the pain,” he said with a dry voice. “I’m like the fucking punching bag of the team.”

“Oh come on!” he said with an annoyingly loud voice. “It’ll bounce right off of you.”

Brendon gave him the same stupid look he gave his shrink. “Dad, I cry when I get a splinter. I faint if I imagine blood. And – and I bruise easily. I’m an easy bruiser.”

But he didn’t care. He said if Brendon ever stopped playing football, he would never let him drive a car until he turned thirty. Brendon told him he was one big asshole of a father. He ignored him.

Brendon was beginning to wonder if he could pretend to like dancing just tick to tick him off. And honestly, it didn’t sound like a bad idea. So he tried it, Brendon took a visit to the nearest dance studio and signed up. He had to sneak out at night to go to the store and buy tights and dance shoes.

He didn’t enjoy sweating, despite the cool air-conditioning in the room. But he would take sweating like a pig over being covered with a thousand pounds of jock any day.

Every Friday night he would tell his father he had to go to football practice when he was really going to dance lessons. Brendon would feel the guilt slowly killing him at the back of his mind whenever his father would feel the boy’s arms and say he could feel his muscles growing.

Dance was how Brendon met Ryan Ross. He’s been doing it for two weeks and he only just noticed him. He had that amused face when he walked to me.

He laughed. Loud. “You’re that guy that tried out for the football team, right?” Brendon though all chances of getting a new friend completely flew out the window.

“Fuck off,” Brendon retorted with a glare.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “I was just wondering, jeez. No need to be snappy about it.”

Then Brendon Urie was friends with Ryan Ross.

He told Brendon about his life. His alcoholic ass of a father, his dead mother and his life at school. Brendon told him his mother was dead, too. Ryan looked at Brendon surprised and asked about his dad.

“I don’t know him,” he told him the same thing he told Ms. Reid. But by now, it wasn’t exactly true anymore. Ryan’s face twisted into thinking and nodded his head understandingly.

“Did he leave you?”

“Yeah…” he sighed and looked down on the floor and twiddled his thumbs. “But hey – I’m living with him now.”

Ryan’s face pulled into a grimace. “That sounds really fucking shitty.”

“Just a bit.”