Anorex-a-Gogo

Maybe it's the fact that I'm still an immature little kid at heart, but I love Christmas Eve. I love how the house feels just a tad warmer than usual, even though the thermostat's been set at 84 for weeks now. I love how the snow seems to fall thicker and whiter, even though it just blocks up your car anyway. I love watching my Mom walk around the house in a knit sweater and the same Santa hat she's had since I was a kid. I love that she's smiling, especially since the Hell I've put her through this week. Christmas Eve seems to have started a new slate for us, as clean as the fresh layer of snow on the front lawn.

She tells me she has a little bit of last-minute Christmas shopping still to do. I tell her I think I'll just stay home and rest up. This is us trying to pretend that nothing is awkward. It still is, but we try to ignore the tension that hangs over us like a black cloud. I figure that she needs a little time on her own after what she walked in on last night. She smiles and tells me to make sure not to do anything that might upset my side. Then, almost as a side note as she's going out the back door, she tells me that she'd really prefer it if Gerard and I went out for a bit instead of staying in all day. She raises her perfect blond eyebrows.

Translation: I don't especially want to come home to two horny teenage boys fucking on my kitchen counter, so either be finished or be gone by the time I get home.

Real fucking subtle.

My ears tinge bright red, the heat spreading across my cheekbones. There's nothing so embarrassing as being caught by your mother when a guy's busy trying to flip your world upside-down. Nothing.

"Do something simple. Take a drive or something. The doctor said no walking around a lot, but do something that will get you...erm, out of the house for a while, okay?"

"We will, Ma," I promise her. I've never been so relieved to see her car backing down the shoveled driveway.

It takes me nearly eight minutes just to get up the stairs. Looks like last night's little rendez-vous did a number on my side. I try not to breathe as I focus my mind, not on the pain, but on getting back to bed. A couple more hours of sleep, maybe a sponge-bath from Gerard, and I'll be practically as good as new.

He's just waking up, yawning and stretching like a cat, when I push open the bedroom door, clutching my side. Feels like someone stabbed me there. Twice.

"You okay?" he asks, scooting over on the bed.

I sort of collapse beside him, falling into the warmth he left behind on the pillow and the sheets. I take a moment to inhale his scent, the familiar calming affects taking hold of me like a slow drug. "I'm fine," I breathe, and then I am.

He tosses an arm across my chest and shoves his face into my neck. The scent of dried sweat mingles with his baby powder-cigarette-cheap cologney fragrance. I read somewhere that everyone is attracted most to one single smell in the world. Hands down, Gerard has my soul-smell. Sometimes I want to groan on the spot when it reaches my nose. Sometimes I do.

I'm thinking, I really am fine. My brother is in custody of the state for attempted murder and multiple rape accounts. Turns out I wasn't the only one either. My mother lost one son and she almost lost another. She got a full-frontal view of that son getting a blow job from his over-age boyfriend. I was fucking stabbed and mutilated and tortured and destroyed and defiled and betrayed and let down and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt. Look at me. I'm still standing, I'm still alive. Look at me, I'm a survivor. Not just of rape. Not just of lies. I am a survivor of life. I am a survivor of Be Invisible, and I am a survivor of heartache. Look at me. I am NOT Invisible. Just fucking look at me.

I'm thinking, all of this could change if this boy lets go. This boy better not let go. He just better not fucking let go.

* * *

It's times like these that I thank Karma for getting me stabbed.

I can't get the wound wet, but I'm sort of laying up against the tub, my back propped up by the cool porcelain. My eyes are closed as I lean my head back with a sigh. Gerard is humming softly under his breath a song that I don't recognize, sitting on the edge of the tub, his bare feet swishing around the warm water inside. His fingers are deep in my hair, massaging shampoo and sudsy bubbles around my scalp. I can't even help but smile as his spindly fingers thread through my hair.

"...without me?"

"Hmm?" I mumble, only catching the last couple words of his question.

"What would you do without me? I mean, what if I died, or had to go away or something?" he repeats.

I frown, peeking open one eye to look at his face. He's frowning a little as well. "Why would you die?" I ask him. But I know we're both thinking about that pocket knife, stained with my blood and glinting in the moonshine.

He shrugs and lifts a cup full of warm water to pour over my sudsy head. "Well, maybe not if I died. But what if I had to go some place? Would you be okay without me?"

The honest answer is no. No, of course I wouldn't be okay. But then again, I'm just not an entirely honest person. So instead I reply, "Why would you have to go somewhere? I'd just go with you."

"What if I couldn't bring you?"

"What kind of place wouldn't let you bring me?"

Gerard smiles just a bit, no teeth. "What if it wasn't good for you?"

Both of my eyes are open now, staring straight into his that won't look at me. "Where are you going, Gee?" I slowly ask.

He continues to rinse my hair for a moment. The water trickles down my forehead and cheeks like tears without salt. "I'm not going anywhere, Frankie. Don't worry about it."

I'm not convinced. Not at all. "Then why are you talking about it? Are you going some place?"

"I didn't mean to work you up, Pansy," he says. And with that I can feel him losing the seriousness of this conversation, trying to back out with the use of a silly pet name. It tastes too sweet in the condensed air, and I suddenly feel like throwing up.

"I just want to make sure that you'd be okay if something happened. If I couldn't be here to help you."

I close my eyes again so he won't see the hurt and the doubt in my irises. I believe him, I do. I do. I do.

So why does it feel like I'm trying to prove that to myself?

"I'd be okay, Gee," I murmur.

But only because I really can't deal with thinking about how lost I'd be if he were gone.

* * *

"I love you," I tell him as he's putting on his shoes by the front door. My ears strain so hard in the silence that follows that my head pounds. Say it back, Gee.

He glances up after lacing his boots. Usually he smiles the moment these words leave my lips. I can't say he's smiling now. Smiles aren't forced, and his lips are stretched too-tight over his teeth.

Love can save us.

He's leaving because he won't let Mikey spend Christmas Eve by himself. Of course, their parents are at a party in New York City. It makes me glad that they're brothers and at least they have each other for company. It makes me sad because instead, I will be the one spending Christmas Eve by myself. At least until my mother comes home.

"I'll be by tonight for a bit, all right? Probably late."

I'm picturing Gerard, wild-eyed cocaine-brain. Alcohol drowning his pupils. He'll probably be by late.

"Should I, um...leave the window open?" I ask. I'm trying to mask how much it hurt that he didn't say it back. I doubt it's working at all.

"No, you'll get cold. Don't worry about it, I'll be there."

He slings his messenger bag over his shoulder and pulls his coat tighter around his bony shoulders. Then he steps forward and presses his winter-chapped lips to my forehead. I close my eyes and wait for him to move on to my desperately-waiting lips. He doesn't.

"Maybe I'll stay up for you," I try to say with indifference.

"Like I said, it'll probably be late," he says, effortlessly achieving indifference.

"What are you going to do?"

He shrugs, averting his eyes. Then he says, "I don't really want Mikey alone. Once he falls asleep I'll drive over."

I want to tell him not to drive over. What if he's lying, and Mikey isn't his only destination? What if he ends up by the side of the road, crashed and bleeding and going some place where I can't follow him?

"Oh...okay. I guess I'll see you tonight then. Or in the morning," I mumble.

"Bye, Frank." He's walking out the door. No more kisses, no soft-syllabled names. He's walking into the snow. No absolute promises of where he's going, no promises of when he'll be back. He's getting into his car, and he's driving away.

And there's not a single damned thing I can do about it.

* * *

This is how I end up sitting in my bedroom and watching the clock.

Not right away, of course. No, first Mom comes home. She makes sugar cookies with reindeer and Christmas trees on them. For the first time in years, she actually watches me eat them. And also for the first time in years, I do eat them. I eat six of them and then my stomach hurts but I'm happy because she's happy. Even though her son is in jail for raping and stabbing her other son, and this is our first Christmas without Owen in years and years and years. She's happy. And therefore, I am happy too.

But night comes soon, too soon. When I was a little kid, I would have been too excited to sleep. I would have tried to stay up to see Santa Claus and then passed out on the couch after too much egg nog. I probably would have left milk and cookies out for him. Tonight, I am not excited.

I am waiting.

Sometimes waiting is okay. You turn on the television or close your eyes for just a second, and then the next thing you know it, the waiting is over. It's just that simple

It's not just that simple when you're waiting for a sign. When you're waiting for a sign to appear and tell you, Hey, it's gonna be okay. You'll work it out. Anything.

I find a pair of his jeans, abandoned from some night where we were close and in love. The front pockets are empty. The back pockets only hold an old, empty package of cigarettes, three nickels and a quarter, and the receipt for a box of flavored condoms.

I can't tell if this is the sign I'm looking for or not.

I'm waiting for a miracle.

For something extraordinary to happen. For something to just blow my mind so I don't feel so trapped. I just feel so trapped. Like a rat in a cage, just pacing and pacing and chewing and gnawing on my own skin just to keep myself from going insane. Back and forth until I feel so suffocated that I might just asphyxiate and die on the spot.

I am waiting for Gerard.

Above all things, this I know. I am waiting for it to be late so that he comes crawling in through my bedroom window. At this point I'll take him in any condition. High and plowed, horny and perverted, sarcastic and mean, hollow and empty. Please come back.

I'm crawling to his side of the bed and I'm burying my face in his side of the pillow that we share almost every night, secret and exposed. I'm drinking in that lung-spasming scent, the one that sends my head orbiting around the sun, and the sun is Gerard. It's not complex at all; he's simply the center of my universe.

I'm falling asleep because it's snowing outside and the world outside is white, blindingly white. I'm too afraid to go back to Elsewhere, not while Gerard isn't here, so I'll just sleep instead.

* * *

Vacant.

My mind is pretty vacant as the window slides shut above my head and the bed creaks under his weight. Vacant because I'm just waking up and groggy and I'm still on heavy medication.

His eyes are pretty vacant. Pretty like they suck me in, vacant like they spit me back out again. Pretty vacant. Nothing but glass and my own disheartened reflection.

He is not on drugs. He is not filled with alcohol. He's just...lost. Like he can't seem to remember why he came here.

I want to remind him why he came here.

"Hey, Gee Gee," I whisper, rolling onto my side to get a good look at him.

Gerard's hands push me back onto my back. They're icy and cold and dead. "You can't lay on your side, remember?" he reminds me. Pretty vacant, like it's just a robot-body there, but no human to inhabit it.

"Yeah, I remember," I reply, squirming under the frosty chill of his skin. "Here, get under here with me. Get warm."

He obeys without another word. Almost like a child. Pretty vacant, all wide-eyed willingness.

"Gerard," I say, searching his pretty vacant eyes in his pretty vacant face that scares me into an almost vacant shock, "What's wrong?"

"Tell me that this isn't wrong," he blurts out, pretty vacant eyes searching my own. Wild and frantic. An animal before the gunshot.

I stammer a little in surprise. "Tell you w-what isn't wrong?"

He's pleading with me, bringing his body so close to mine, but holding back too. "Please, Frankie, tell me that this isn't wrong. Tell me we aren't wrong."

"We're right!" I cry, grasping onto his face. Pretty vacant. I need to bring him back.

He's bawling like a child. "I-I wish...I wish..." Unable to get a whole sentence out. Clutching onto me like maybe we're floating away. Did I not notice he was floating away? It's pretty vacant out there in the nothingness that seems ready to consume him.

I wish I were a genie, and then I could grant his wish. I wish I could read his mind to know what that wish even is.

"I w-wish our l-l-love w-was..." he blubbers, sniffling and ruining my t-shirt. "I wish our l-love was right..."

"It is right," I speak so softly, and for his ears alone. "It's right, it's so, so right. I promise you that love can save us. I promise that we can make it right." I'm rambling and trying to change his mind. Pretty vacant. These promises are pretty damn vacant.

When his hazel eyes land on mine, they're bright with insanity and love lost/love found/love unknown. "I w-wish our l-love was r-r-right...now."