Thieves and Beggars

I can recall the exact time and date that it happened. And I hate that, I shouldn’t remember this stuff, he shouldn’t stay in my head this long, but he has, and it bothers the living shit out of me.

Maybe I should start at the beginning, you know, introduce myself. My name is Frank Iero, and I am recently 14 years old. Until my upcoming freshman year, I have attended private school. I had never had a boyfriend, or a girlfriend for that matter. Sure I had had more crushes than you can imagine, but most of the time they were on guys, and the likely hood that there would be more than 1 gay or bi guy in the 9 boys in my grade level was unlikely, let alone the whole school.

I’m not a very social kid by nature, I spend most of my time on the computer, writing, reading, being on message boards and just talking to online friends. I have 2 of those, both girls, Jackie and Kristen. I met both last year both on two different forums, Jackie before Kristen.

Part of this I contribute to the fact that I never really fit in at my old school, I drifted in and out of cliques, and I probably didn’t make a good reputation for my self either. I had been known as the argumentative kid, who doesn’t know when to shut up, and it bothered me because the kids didn’t really get to know me because of that.

I have a few friends that don’t go to my school, 4 actually, Michelle, Tristan [who I once tried to pull off as a boy friend and that didn’t work to well], Danielle and Carol. I met Tristan through Michelle, who I have known since I was little. The same goes for Danielle, who I met through Carol. Michelle and Tristan go to the same school, and me Carol and Danielle will next year, something I’m looking forward to a lot.

All right, enough about me, because I could go on and on, lets get to the actual good parts.

It was a Sunday, July 1st and my family had arrived at the campground we were going to be staying at until the next Sunday, and I dreaded it. I hated being here, not because I didn’t like the people but because there was absolutely noting to do most of the time. Not to mention I had spent quite awhile convincing my self that it wasn’t worth it to fall for one of the guys here, all it would be was a quick thing with someone who lived hours away from me that I would probably never see again, and I wasn’t going to let that someone be the person that I shared my first kiss with.

I went to the store with my mom, I had nothing to do and I hoped that it would get me out of my boredom for just a little bit. When we got back, I found that I still was bored out of my mind, so I went to go play pool.

Yes, the campground has a pool table, and a whole game room. Its not a very big place, and is really only packed on the weekends that the NASCAR racers are held, because its only a few short miles to the track. Like I said, it has a game room but its not like its anything special, just a little shack with a pool table, jukebox that doesn’t work half the time you put money in it, a couple shooting games, a fighting game and one of those stupid golf games. Oh, and air hockey that doesn’t work a lot either. There are white tables with little green 70’s type flower print on them too. On two of these tables are those big checker rug type things, which is what the whole beginning is centered on.

You see, if those tables weren’t there, he may have not been either, and I may not have seen his gorgeous pale face with flowing black hair that covered it, and this whole thing may have never have happened.

I have come to realize that a lot of life is chance. It is just by chance that I decided to go play than and not earlier, and it was just by chance that he was playing checkers with a man I would know later as his grandpa when I walked in. And it was just by chance that my brother hadn’t come to play pool with me this time. But it wasn’t by chance that I asked him to play with me.

The past few weeks had been building up to this moment, that I was going to get a guy to like me, and I was going to do it by myself, without the help of those whores that are here almost every weekend and scoop up anything with a dick.

It defiantly wasn’t love at first site, actually I had convinced myself that after our game we probably wouldn’t talk anymore, if we did at all while playing, because that was just how it normally went. When I had asked to play I didn’t really think he cared much, and was just being nice, you know, friendly and what not. It was pretty obvious that not many people here were looking for romance, as I had come to realize just recently. These were the smart people, why bother getting involved with someone you would probably never see again?
While I waited for him to finish his game of checkers, I began putting the balls in the rack, and finally found out how to do it so that it went solid stripes solid strips, so I was quite happy. When his sister walked in my mind immediately figured she was probably his girlfriend, and it made my heart sink a little. All the cute ones had girlfriends, and it just wasn’t quite far. I heard his sister ask if they were almost done and he pointed to me telling her that he was going to play pool wit me when he was done.

He finished up is game and came to play pool, when I offered his sister a chance to play because my brother had just recently come in to bug me and now we could be on teams, she declined, saying she wasn’t very good.

I owe a lot to his sister actually, I’m a shy kid when it comes to guys and probably wouldn’t have asked half the questions she did.

The only question I asked was how old they were which had taught me that his sister was14 going on 15, a year older than me, while he was 16 going on 17. It was thanks to his sister that I had learned that they were siblings, and he had learned my brother and me were too, which brought my heart back up from its slumps. I also learned their name were Gerard and Jessica.

When our game was finished, me with the win, we went back to his campsite to get his mp3 player, which also taught me some things about him. He was into the same music as me; The Misfits was one we both shared a love for.

We went to go sit on the wooden swing that sat in front of the pool. I swear it’s camping. But than again, anything without the Internet is camping for me. He and my brother stood standing, which I’m assuming was because both I and his sister left open spots next to us, and didn’t sit together. His sister assured me that it wasn’t anything I did; he was just a shy kid. Any fool could tell that though, with his pale complexion it was obvious that he didn’t go out much.

In a few minutes we were walking down the hill that sloped into the flat surface of the Volleyball court. I swear his sister had worse ADD than me; the woman couldn’t sit down for a half hour without wanting to go do something different. We split into two teams, Gerard and my brother Anthony and me and Jessica.

It was obvious that neither of us was too good at volleyball, nor my brother wasn’t helping the situation too much. He plays soccer, and when I complained that he had kicked the ball over the net instead of actually serving it, Gerard said that he hadn’t read anything that said he couldn’t do that.

I learned that Gerard was a runner, and that he wanted to be on his school track team next year, while Jessica, much like me, couldn’t run to save her life. It was pretty obvious that they were a lot like Anthony and me and I would say that Gerard was more like me, but I’m actually not quite sure. They were home schooled, which I guess is quite a lot worse than private school, but I knew how they felt because they both went from a tiny little school with a few people to a large school with thousands of people, like I was doing next year.

That night when both of us had to go, I could tell that there was going to be something, or at least I know I did now, but maybe I didn’t realize it than. I curled up into my bunk and waited for morning to come while I fell asleep to a bootleg of Shrek 3 that our friends had let us borrow.

That is when I had another realization, that when you are a regular at a campground like us, (our camper stays here all summer), it can get to be kind of like school. Think I’m insane? Well, wait a minute and I’ll tell you why. Remember those girls I mentioned earlier? Well, they are all sisters, and man do they cause shit loads of drama. Just the other weekend, one of them was mad at the other because she was trying to get with her ex that she met last year. And of course, they are pretty much the lead clique here, not that there are really others. They constantly have guys that await their every word, and I swear, they have a new boyfriend every time they come. Much to my dismay, they have tried to hook me up with girls numerous times. I’m sorry, but I make my sexuality pretty obvious.

I swear, even the adults have a clique, and my parents are in it. I would say the leader of that are the old couple that camp across from us. While my parents disagree with the fact that it’s a clique, it really is. I mean, they aren’t snotty to other people or anything, they are actually quite nice, but there are certain clique-y things they do.

When I woke up, I was freezing my ass off; it was hot last night so almost every window was open because my parents refused to turn the air in the camper on. It must have dropped temperature because when I walked outside, there was nothing I could do to keep warm. I even tried going o swing, which is right out in the sun, and that didn’t even work. I went back to sleep on one of the booths we sit at to eat inside. I woke up a bit later and it was sill cold out so I went to lie down on the couch. When I awoke from that nap, my brother came in and told me that Jessica and Gerard wanted to play volleyball. I got up and changed my clothes and went out to go play.

Thank God it had gotten warmer, because there was no way I was playing with icicles on my nose. This time we switched up teams and Gerard and I were together. When we got done, we went to go play soccer, where I was surprised to find out that Gerard got short of breath really easily, something I had problem with too. Later I would find out that he used to have asthma. We went to go sit by the tree in the big field. I took a seat next to Gerard and, after a few minutes of consideration, rested my head on his shoulder.