Glades and Playgrounds

I jumped out of the bus after Mikey, the sun immediately hitting me and making me hot in my oversized hoodie and black jeans. I stepped aside to let the rest of my classmates come out of the bus and we all gathered in front of our teachers.

Like kindergarten all over again… My class followed our home teacher Mrs. Torn, me and Mikey walking quietly at each other’s side- a contrast to the horde of wild, laughing teenagers that surrounded us- up the big stone stairs and through a wooden door. The visit to the museum was something that Newark High did yearly, it was a way of bringing the class closer together and at the same time learn about the city’s history… with simple words; a day when you didn’t have to do anything.

“Alright ladies, please be quiet and let me talk” Mrs. Torn said over the mass of babbling youths, indicating on some noisy girls who were laughing at some unknown subject. “You will choose a supervisor from the 11th grade that you will stick to for the whole day, who will look after you and make sure you’ll be alright”

“Do they think we’re six?” I whispered to Mikey who smiled, shaking his head.

“It’s so we won’t like… break anything. They think the sophomore’s are so much more mature than us. And just so you know, I’m taking Gerard”

“Dude, that’s evil”

“Sorry, but there’s no way I’ll have Bert McCracken to look after me for a whole day” he said, smiling as he walked off to Gerard, who put an arm around Mikey’s neck. Not in a nice way though, more in a wrestling-move-kind of way. I looked at the rest of the sophomore’s; most of them were already taken. Bert had a blonde girl who was desperately trying to flirt with him, but he simply pulled up his Ipod and started lip-syncing to it, not paying her any attention. Mike and Tré were also taken, and I sighed, wondering if I could possibly share ‘supervisor’ with Mikey since I really didn’t wanna have a stranger to hang out with.

Suddenly someone’s hands were put in front of my eyes from behind. At first I though it was Gerard, but realized he had been a few metres away from me when I saw him two seconds ago. Wait… If it’s not Gerard, Bert, Tré or Mike, it’s…

“Hey Billie.”

Billie laughed, removing his hands from my eyes and stepped out from behind me.

“Care to be my partner today?” he asked.

“Well, everyone else is taken…”

He gave me a sarcastic smile.

“Come on, we need to go,” he said, giving me a gentle push towards the counters where one of the teachers were trying to explain that they should get a discount since we’re so many. We slipped past the marble counter like the rest had done, leaving the teacher alone to her struggle.

“Can’t we walk with the guys?” I asked, glancing at my outspreaded friends. Gerard and Mikey were looking at a painting with bored expressions, Bert still listening to his Ipod and Tré and Mike had escaped their partners and were now standing and talking menially with each other.

“What did you think? That we had to ignore the rest of our classmates? This is a day when we’re supposed to-“ he noticed my blank expression and dropped his haughty tone, responding with a low “Yes”

We started walking towards Mike and Tré since Gerard and Mikey were nowhere to be seen at the moment and Bert had stopped tormenting the blonde girl by ignoring her and were now instead flirting wildly.

“Wanna go and look at some old junk for the third time in a row?” Mike asked in an exaggeratedly hyper voice, clapping his hands together in a girlish way before his face fell and he showed his true one, which showed boredom. I was about to answer when suddenly, for the second time today, someone covered my eyes from behind and I immediately recognized Gerard’s cologne.

“Hi- Oh…” I said, starting out normal but as I felt something soft, wet, warm- I could go on- touch my neck, I let out an involuntary moan. Gerard laughed from behind and the guys in front of me stared at me, wild-eyed. Now, that wasn’t embarrassing…

“Someone likes Gee-Gee’s lips…” Tré taunted and I moaned again, this time not in a sexual way, but in a way of hopelessness. They wouldn’t let this pass… I slightly turned around to face Gerard, who was smiling.

“Did you really have to do that?”

“How was I supposed to know you’d be all… horny about it,” he grinned, clearly satisfied with the response his neck-kissing had gotten.

“You just caught me off guard, that’s all…” I said in a weak attempt to make myself less embarrassed, turning around with my back against Gerard, who was still standing pretty close to me, with one hand on my shoulder. “Let’s show the newbie around, yeah?” They all gave me some weird looks.

“Do you really wanna look at the old crap?” Billie asked with a smirk, and I furrowed my eyebrows. We were at a museum… and we would be here the whole day, so why not walk around?

“What are we gonna do if we don’t?”

“Same as everyone else. Just… hang out. And of course avoid the teachers,” Mike explained.

“So you guys have never seen the stuff in here?” I asked, gesturing with my hand at the countless showcases made out of glass around us. I’m not a geek or anything… I don’t really care about history, but since it was free and all, I could might as well walk around for a bit. Not the whole day of course, hanging out with the guys can be a lot of fun, but since it’s only 9 in the morning and we’re gonna stay here till 3, so why not?

“F’course we have… Our first year, but after that, we’ve just… skipped it”

I looked at them, and my eyes met with Mikeys. He was standing to Gerard’s left, staring daggers at me. Of course… He didn’t want to hang out with Gerard’s friends. Mikey would much rather walk around so he could avoid them.

“But this is my first year here… so I think I deserve a quick tour,” I smiled. I could see that Bert was about to protest, but Gerard pushed me forward, telling them;

“What he wants goes”.

Mike and Bert moaned in unison, leaning on each other for a second before obeying, following the rest of us that had started walking. It seemed as they had been telling the truth; no one actually walked around in the museum. Kids could be seen sitting on benches that had been set up along the white, grey and golden marble walls or just simply sitting on the floor with their friends while the teachers ran around, trying to get them up on their feet.

A teacher walked by us, giving us a satisfied nod and then shoving a paper in Tré’s hands.

“Write your names so I know you’re here” she said in a bored voice, glaring at the kids sitting on the benches. Tré quickly wrote his name- much to the teacher’s dismay, his nickname- and passed it on to the rest of us. We wrote our names after him. I smirked as I saw Billie’s name, reminding myself to taunt him about it as soon as the teacher was gone.

“You spell your name with ‘ie’?” I asked and couldn’t stop a huge grin to spread over my lips.

“Yeh, why?” he asked, looking at something that looked like a shark’s tooth in a showcase. He read the small note that was in the corner of the glass; the information about the tooth, but didn’t seem too impressed as he rolled his eyes at it.

“Nothing…” I said slyly, “But you know, that’s how girls spell it.”

Although I doubted any of the guys actually understood what I meant by that, they started laughing as Billie raised his eyebrow at me.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, if it’s a boy, you spell it with a ‘y’… and if it’s a girl whose name’s Billie, you spell it with ‘ie’”

He frowned at this for a second before smiling, pumping his fist in the air.

“Then I don’t need to change my name when I turn into a transvestite!”

I laughed, not really knowing whether he was serious or not, but decided not to ask and instead pointed at a vault you could go through to get to another room.

“What’s in there?”

“War stuff.”

“Well, come on then!” I said, taking Gerard’s hand and dragging in after me, knowing that the rest would follow if just Gerard came.

“Do you like war?” Gerard asked, sounding surprised and a bit disappointed.

“Depends.”

“On…?”

“Which war it is,” I explained absentmindedly as I scanned the pedestals that had either old helmets, clothes or weapons to bear up. “Like… World War II”

“Please tell me you didn’t like World War II.”

I turned my head away from some old bullets and looked at his face; he seemed to be fairly pissed off.

“Just so you know, Bert’s Jewish” he added, his voice low and warningly and that’s when it dawned on me.

“Oh… You think I… I don’t like wars, and I’m so not on Hitler’s side, I just think it’s… interesting.”

“Interesting that he slaughtered-“

“No,” I interrupted him, inpatiently, as his voice was still pretty cold, “I find it interesting because of how oblivious the rest of the world was. I’m not a Nazi!”

“Okay, fine, I just thought that was what you meant…”

“Yeah well, you didn’t let me explain,” I said, shrugging and turning to watch the bullets again.

He smiled, cocking his head to the side; “You know, I almost wanted to beat you up there.”

“Sure you did…” I laughed, accepting the hand that he was now holding out as I saw it, and he dragged me into him, placing both of his arms to hang loosely around my neck.

“Mhm. No one fucks with my Berty,” he said, smiling as he noticed how hypnotized I was by his lips.

“Come on, I wanna see the rest of the stuff,” I said, slipping away from him and instead placed my arm around the small of his back, tangling my index finger in the belt-loop.

“Meh, fine” he sighed. I smiled; I knew how he’d enjoy just hanging out with the guys instead of walking around. Speaking of the guys… Gerard was the only one that had fulfilled his promise of showing me around, the rest of them were just sitting on the benches and talking. Mikey was sitting on the floor a couple of metres away from them, listening to what seemed to be Bert’s Ipod.

“Hey!” Gerard called at them as he saw what they were doing, “Get up, I told you we’re showing Frank around!”

“We were up, but then you two seemed to be fighting, so we sat down… You know, so we wouldn’t be in the way,” Tré said, smiling innocently as that was his only intentions.

“We weren’t fighting… get up! We can take it easy after lunch, alright?” They obeyed, all of them rising from where they sat.

Bert was the last one, moaning out some random “But my back hurts” or “I’m not wearing my walking-shoes” and Gerard shot him a deathglare.

“We really don’t have to walk around” I whispered to Gerard, “I mean, it’s just a museum…”

“Shh, I wanna torment them.”

I laughed, once again putting my arm around his waist. Gerard smiled, doing the same with me and leaning towards me, tickling my ear with his nose. We walked on, the guys in front of me and Gerard, who were walking next to me. Once again, I noticed how his hips were swaying when he walked, like a bell.

“Ow… Ow… My back hurts…” Bert whimpered from where he walked in front of us and without warning, Gerard had taken a leap forward and jumped up on Bert’s back. Bert yelled out a ‘fuck!’ in surprise, but as he realized Gerard wasn’t out to kill him, he started laughing. He put his arms under Gerard’s thighs, hauling him further up on his back and Gerard laughed.

“You guys are so gay…” Mike laughed as Gerard bent down and whispered something in Bert’s ear.

“F’course we are, Gee’s faggy enough for the two of us,” Bert retorted, making a clumsy twirl, almost knocking down some probably priceless items from a shelf. “Come on Frankie, spank his booty!”

I laughed and shook my head at their antics and suddenly noticed Mikey walking behind me. He was looking at Bert with a quite bored and disproving face, which I thought was pretty unnecessary… Aren’t they allowed to mess around?

“Sorry Gee-Gee, he does not want to spank your booty.”

Gerard laughed, “Whatever, Berty. Let me down, or I’ll lick your ear.”

“Was that supposed to be a threat?”

“Just let me down!”

Bert dropped Gerard with a sudden movement, almost sending Gerard to the floor, but after a few stumbling steps, he had regained his balance.

“You okay, Mikes?” he asked as he saw his younger brother watch some random thing in a show-case. Mikey took out on of the earphones from his ear and nodded.

“I’m just wondering what the hell this was used for…” he pointed at the show-case he’d been watching.

“Hey, did you steal my Ipod?” Bert exclaimed, looking at the Ipod in Mikey’s hand with a confused look. Mikey stared at him with a blank expression, not answering for at least three seconds as if really considering whether to answer the idiot or not.

“You gave it to me.”

“Now, why would I do that?”

Since it wasn’t really up to Mikey to answer that question, he didn’t, and Bert shook his head at this.

“Anyway… Can I get it back?”

Mikey shrugged, handing the Ipod back to its rightful owner and as he had done so, he turned his back to Bert and once again looked at the show-case.

“Didn’t even say thanks…” Bert mouthed to Gerard, who pinched his cheek, grinning madly.

“He said thanks when you gave it to him… God, sometimes you’re so stupid, I just wanna kiss you.”

“Erm… Boyfriend at three o’clock, Gee-Gee” Bert laughed, mentioning at me and Gerard rolled his eyes.

“I don’t fall for stupid guys anyway…”

“No, you fall for Nazi’s” Bert said, smirking at my confused look as I realized Gerard must’ve told him about what I had said before, “Oh yes, he told me…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m a Nazi…“ I said, smiling as Gerard pulled me into his arms, chest to chest.

“If you’re gonna be all cuddly, I’m gonna go and join mah’ nimrods at that bench…” Bert moaned, “Or Little Miss Sunshine over there” I just assumed that he was talking about Mikey, because all I could see at the moment was Gerard’s hair since my head was on his shoulder. “Or I’ll-“

“Shut the fuck up, Jew”

“Ooh, the Nazi’s talking. I’m so telling your mommy about that.”

I laughed, but fell silent as I felt Gerard kiss my neck again. This time I’d been more prepared for it, so I did no strange noises, but it still felt god damn good. It was pretty weird how natural it all felt; after mine and Gerard’s first date, everything had just been really smooth, I didn’t even have to ask myself whether I really wanted to continue dating him or not.

His hands that had been resting on my hips had slowly worked their way to the small of my back and were now gently massaging it, his fingertips pressing into my flesh. I moved my head up a little, placing my mouth just by his ear and allowed my mouth to open up so I could breathe on it. He shuddered slightly and moved his hands even lower, but I could clearly hear the wolf whistles from Tré so I whispered a quick ‘no’ and his hands returned to my back.

“Wanna go somewhere more private?”

“It’s a museum… There is no such thing as privacy”

“Bathrooms…”

“I’m not going to the bathrooms just to make out” I whispered back, rubbing his neck with my fingers to get him to lean closer so I could kiss him. He didn’t get the message though… I wanted to experience that feeling again, that feeling of not being myself, of just forgetting about the moment and, if only for a second, escape my mind.

“We can do more than make out.”

“Like what?”

His hands once again ran lower, this time almost placing themselves on my back pockets. I grabbed his upper arm and forced it up.

“How cheap do you think I am?” I smirked.

“Apparently not as cheap as I thought.”

I broke away, watching him with my left eyebrow raised and with a small smile playing on my lips and he smiled.

“I’m kidding, okay?” he laughed, leaning forward and kissed my lips quickly. Small, explosive tingles were sent from my lips, shooting straight to my chest and made my heart beat so much faster than before.

“You know what, screw the museum, let’s just… talk,” I said, untangling my arms from him and lead him across the big room to sit down with the rest of our small gang. Mike, Billie, Tré and Bert had seated themselves on a bench, while Mikey had once again sat himself down on the floor, even if there was space for at least one more person on the bench.

“Move,” Gerard demanded, waving for Bert, who was once again listening to his Ipod, to move closer to Mike. “Bert!”

Bert slowly looked up at him, cocking his head and pulled out one of the earphones, “What are you bitchin’ about?”

“Move…”

“Oh…” he said, moving to the right, allowing Gerard to sit down, who mentioned at me to sit next to him.

“Nah, it’s okay. I’ll just join your brother on the floor”…

… Three hours later, and all we had done was to be acting high as soon as someone walked by us, or just simply laughing at the random songs that were on Bert’s Ipod. Mikey had been sitting quietly next to me on the floor, although laughing sometimes, but in that case, very quietly and carefully, as if he was worried he wasn’t allowed to laugh.

“Mike, I dare you to ask Mrs. Fenny what her home number is” Tré exclaimed as Mrs. Fenny, Gerard and Bert’s home teacher, had walked by us for the third time. “We all know she has a crush on you anyway…”

“Pff, I wish…” Mike said with a mocked dreamily face and looked as Mrs. Fenny was scolding some students for trying to break down a locked door. “I’ll do it when she walks by again.”

“What happens if you won’t do the dare you’re asked to do?” I asked, not really sure if I wanted to be a part of their game if there was no other options than simply doing what you’re told.

“Oh come on, we’re not that mean” Gerard laughed, “But sure… if you’re a pussy, there are exceptions.”

“And they are?”

He looked slightly surprised for a second, as if he’d been sure the pussy-comment would be enough to make me stop asking, but then smiled; “Well… If you refuse, we’re allowed to write and draw stuff in your face and you have to walk around with it for a whole day in school”

“How lame…” I laughed and Gerard shrugged, picking his nails and then adding nonchalantly;

“Bert came up with the rules.”

“Watch it, or I’ll exclude you from my private party…”

“Private party?” I asked and Bert looked at Gerard.

“You didn’t tell him?”

“Dude, he won’t come anyway.”

“Come where?” I asked, and Bert responded with a simple;

“My parents are gone tonight”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, so I invited you guys over… well, Gerard was supposed to tell you, but I guess he just doesn’t want you there”

“You’re an ass, Berty,” Gerard sighed, turning to me, “I just didn’t know if you wanted to come or not.”

“Yeah well, it must’ve been pretty hard to now… Since you never asked him, asswipe!” Bert exclaimed and Gerard smacked him in the back of the head, sending Bert’s head to fly forward. “Dude, seriously… I’ll exclude you!”

Gerard closed his eyes for a second, taking a deep breath and gave Bert a deathglare before he looked at me.

“So… Do you wanna come?”

“Sure. I just have to ask Linda, but sure. How long will we be there?”

“Uhm… for about,” Bert started, then counted on his fingers, “Twelve hours”

“Huh?”

“It’s a sleep-over” Gerard explained, stopping Bert from confusing me further by putting his hand over his mouth. “Mikey, are you coming?”

“A sleep-over…? With you guys?” Mikey asked, his one eyebrow rose in a perfectly shaped arch and his eyes showed nothing but dull boredom. “Nah thanks”