Did You Get What You Deserve?

~*Alec’s Point of View*~

I sighed, arching my back as I straightened up. I was packing up my stuff so I could move in with Melanie. I taped closed the box in front in front of me, then pushed it into the corner of the room and walked down the hall towards the storage cupboard to get another box. Opening the door, I pushed some things out of the way to get to the spare boxes at the back. Then I stopped. One of the boxes right at the back of the cupboard was marked “Alec’s Stuff.” It couldn’t be Little Alec’s, she had all her stuff in her room. This must be my stuff from fifteen years ago.

I pulled the box out of the cupboard and dragged it down the hall to my room. Then, pulling the tape off, I opened it. There was a coat of dust over everything. As I blew it away, a piece of paper fluttered off the top. I picked it up and sat down to read it.

It was a page of lyrics. At the top of the page was a line of notes.

G – F# – B – E – D – G – C – B – E – A – D

“Welcome to the Black Parade,” I whispered.

As I read through the lyrics, written, edited and rewritten, I leaned back and remembered that day.

“He said I have a nice voice!”
“Practice may not make you entirely perfect, but it does get you pretty damn near.”

I grinned and placed the paper to one side. Next in the box were my old school books.

“Oh my god.”

As I lifted them out, a folded piece of paper fell out of the back of my maths book. I opened it out. It was from the day Jennifer Keating and I played Note Buddies in class. It took me a moment to figure out who had written what, and then I realised I must have started the conversation.

I hate fractions

I like em

Meh I don’t understand this shit

Do you want me to help you? I could come over to your place this afternoon and we could work on it

Nah it’s alright I’ll ask Frank to help me

I laughed. I was so stupid then. It was obvious now that she had just wanted to hang out with me. Thank god that wasn’t one of the days Mr Buckett went around the classroom confiscating notes and reading them to the class. I’m sure everyone else would have understood what she meant, and they all would have laughed at me.

I shook my head, laughing, and placed the note back amongst my school books. I pulled out most of the stuff in the box, including the laptop Gerard, Mikey, Bob and Ray gave me for my twelfth birthday. I never got a chance to use it. I put it to one side so I could look at it properly later and figure out if it would still work.

Right down the bottom of the box, I found something I didn’t recognise. It looked like a present, wrapped in shiny paper. I picked it up and went to the lounge, where Frank and Jamia were sitting watching TV.

“Dad?”

He looked around.

“Hey Alec. Still packing?”

I nodded, holding out the present.

“What is this?”

He looked at it, then shook his head, puzzled.

“I have no idea. Where did you get it?”

“I found a box of my old stuff in the storage cupboard.”

“That stuff! I’d forgotten about all that.”

“This was down the bottom.”

He turned the present over in his hands, frowning. Then a look of recognition appeared on his face. He gasped.

“This was Katie’s present for you!”

I looked at him curiously.

“For your twelfth birthday. She was going to give it to you that night, but of course, well, you know. You died.”

He looked up at me.

“I never did tell you this... about how we told everyone. No-one could believe it. Everyone cried. Gerard practically went into shock. But Katie... she insisted we were lying. She said you were coming back. And she told me to leave this on your desk for you until you did. And, well, I just packed it up with the rest of your stuff. I never opened it.”

He handed it back to me. I carefully took off the wrapping paper. It was a book. A large, plain, leather-bound book. I opened it and read the title hand-written inside.

Katie and Alec through the years.

“It’s a photo album!”

The first photo in the album was of my mum in a hospital bed, holding me. The caption read “Alec, six days old.” Frank peered over my shoulder.

“Cute,” he said. “So small and... wrinkly.”

I grinned and turned to the next photo. It was me and my mother and father sitting on a couch. I must have been about two, judging by the fact that my mother was pregnant. I was leaning on the arm of the couch, grinning at whoever was taking the photo, and my parents were kissing.

For some stupid reason, looking at that photo sent a pang through my heart. I guess I was mourning three things: my mum, my dad and their marriage.

Frank shuffled off the couch and sat down beside me.

“You were so oblivious to the plan,” he laughed. “There they were trying to take a cute picture, and you went and spoiled it. Nice going.”

I elbowed him, turning the page.

The photos went on for a while, depicting me and Katie getting into all sorts of scrapes: The time I fell out of a tree in our back yard and Katie took the opportunity to play doctor. Me playing soccer while she cheered from the sidelines. Her in her school Christmas play, dressed up as an angel.

One photo was different from all the others. I was sitting on a stone ledge in front of a courthouse. Katie was standing in front of me, and I had my arm around her. Someone had obviously just said something to me, as I was looking over my shoulder. Katie was looking squarely at the camera, squinting slightly due to the sun, and twisting her hair around her finger. Neither of us was smiling. The caption gave no description, just a date: 15/12/03.

“Divorce,” I murmured. Then I sighed and continued to flick through the album. The photos finished about halfway through the book. The final photo was of me, Katie, Jamia and Frank. Frank had picked up Katie and looked like he was in the process of turning her upside-down. Jamia was laughing and leaning away to avoid being accidentally kicked. I had my eyes squeezed shut and was grinning, my hands holding Katie’s feet. The caption read “It’s times like these that I enjoy the most.”

The next page had a piece of paper pinned to it, with three big words on it: To Be Continued. I sighed, smiled and closed the album. I caught Frank’s eye.

“Wanna continue it?”

He looked at me for a moment, then grinned.

“Yeah, alright.”