Keep the Faith

“’Cause the hardest part of this is leavin’…”

He stared at them with tears springing to his eyes. ‘Why do I even bother anymore?’ he thought silently as the stage fog curled around his feet and up into his nose with the familiar choking scent of dusty water. They were cheering, yes, screaming and yelling in support, but he could hear how halfhearted it had become. It wasn’t fair.

“You.”

A single drawn-out word managed to carry all the sadness and pain trapped inside as he finished the song. His voice broke off; ‘Too soon,’ he chided himself, ‘always too soon.’ He stood there for a moment and stared down at the stage. The mischievous tears finally strolled down his face and dripped off, disappearing into the fog. He was suddenly thankful for the miasma surrounding him; he could hide in it, pretend they couldn’t see him, the pieces of a broken soul that had worked so hard to give them what they wanted, only to end up failing and falling so far.

The lights flickered amber and fell across his wavering form. He could almost feel the irony weighing him down. The backs of his arms gleamed and glittered golden as the sweat dripped off of his body, mixing with his tears and pouring onto his blurred shadow. Around him, the cheering and endless screams faded into a dull roar before finally falling into silence, as if it had all been sucked up by a black hole, a shadow of the hero he had once been. He let out a short, laconic laugh before turning to walk away. He longed to run from all those people; he needed to escape before his mind started to crack and crumble from the turmoil they had put him through. Instead he walked, feigning a calm demeanor that was a small fraction of the façade he had been hiding behind for so long now.

Frank wrapped him in a hug the minute he had disappeared from view of the fans. Gerard stood there stoically and simply wondered why.

“What’s wrong, Gee?” Frank asked over the roar of the crowd, miraculously sounding like he was merely whispering.

“I’m supposed to be perfect,” Gerard muttered numbly as he thought of the lighting techniques they had chosen. “I’m supposed to be golden.” He paused a moment to fight back the tightness in his chest. “Only a fool would believe that now.”

“Don’t say that,” his friend said firmly. Gerard roughly shoved him away, halfway between being irate and on the verge of bursting into sobs. He inwardly scoffed. Frank’s sweater was black with several wide gold bands; even such a minor detail made it seem as if he was already closer to the trait than Gerard would ever be.

“It’s true,” he said in a broken voice as his bandmates gathered around him. He stopped and studied their faces. All except their piano player stood there, looking solemn and wanting so badly to help him. Meanwhile, the one missing person continued with a string of slow notes on the keyboard, and Gerard suddenly remembered the encore. “I’m nothing now. Look what they’re doing to me.”

“Get it together,” Bob said more gruffly than Gerard expected. “We’re not finished yet.”

“But what if we are?!” the singer suddenly cried in despair. The tears were coming more freely now. “What if this is what tears us apart? I don’t know how much more I can take!” He sniffled, feeling incredibly pathetic but unable to help himself. “My fans hate me. They fucking hate me.”

Bob gripped Gerard’s shoulders and spun him around so he faced the stage. “You look out there,” he said fiercely, “and you fucking tell me those people hate you.”

He averted his eyes as if that would make them suddenly vanish. He remembered when he and Mikey were kids; ‘If you can’t see them, they can’t see you,’ the sentiment had always been, no matter what game they were playing. He tucked his chin against his chest and clamped his eyes shut as if he was trying to hide from a terrifying monster. He expected the worst now; maybe something would grab him and pull him into the darkness, or he would simply fall apart and the band would be no more and all his problems would finally dissolve into sweet nothingness-

Then he heard the chant.

“MCR! MCR! MCR!”

He opened one eye in caution and realized it wasn’t his imagination after all. They really were cheering for him, thousands of voices shouting in unison for them to come back out and finish off the show right. Three little letters regularly pulsated like the rapid-fire beat of his heart and beckoned him to return to his rightful place at the front of the stage.

“Well, Gerard?”

Bob’s voice shot him down back to reality, and as he snapped out of his reverie, the haunting words and rumors bombarded his mind all over again. He sighed and turned his gaze to the ground.

“I can’t do it, guys. I can’t.”

“Gee?”

“What, Mikey?” Gerard snapped. It was only after the silence set in that he realized how worried and hurt his brother sounded. He still refused to face them for fear of losing his composure all over again, but he did want to know what the younger man had to say.

“Do you remember…when Bullets first came out?” Mikey asked with uncertainty. He knew he was treading on volatile ground, like a field laced with land mines of bad memories waiting to explode. Gerard’s shoulders gave a violent twitch as he swallowed another sob. He remembered. “How we thought we were lucky to play a show for ten people?”

“You should be talking to Frank if you’re gonna bring that up,” he growled. “Don’t thank me.” He could just picture Mikey’s face now: he would be biting his lip nervously, that one lock of hair falling across his face and making him look exactly like the kid brother he had always been, the one he always would be.

A hand met his shoulder.

“They loved us, Gee. And they probably shouldn’t have, because we weren’t really that good, but they did anyway. And yeah, there’s a lotta shit going around right now, but you can’t listen to it.” Mikey’s voice was growing stronger with each word. “You can’t let it ruin everything we’ve built up. Look at me.”

Gerard shook his head, but Mikey turned him around anyway.

“Look at me, Gerard.” The gleam of determination in his brother’s voice finally moved Gerard to tilt his chin up just enough that their eyes met. “What if we only had one fan left? Would you want to keep making music for them?”

“I don’t think-”

“Would you?!” Mikey was almost screaming at him now. Gerard was silent. Mikey walked a few steps away from him in frustration. “The only reason they think you’ve changed now is because you start acting like this all the time! They know it and they’ll eat you alive if you don’t pull it together.”

Gerard took a deep, slow breath and closed his eyes for a moment. “Fine. If you want me to go back out there, I will. Finish the set and all.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to do anything,” Mikey shot venomously. “They want you out there. They need you out there because they believe in you and they want you to believe in them. When you figure that out, let me know.”

Mikey stormed past him and the other band members to find a replacement string for his bass. The others gave him some space as he began to pace back and forth. He could hear James’s piano filler drawing to a close, and he knew he had to make a decision.

For a moment, his mind wandered back to that first concert, back to the moment when he felt so nervous he thought he’d throw up all the alcohol he had downed just minutes earlier. He shook his head. ‘I’m better than that, aren’t I?’ he thought. ‘I have to be.’

The familiar electric excitement of a concert shot through him, running up from his fingertips and into his brain and making him want to just scream from the burst of energy. It was like a transformation he had become used to now, going from his normal self to his stage persona. He suddenly felt alive.

Without another word, he turned around and paced out to the stage. The crowd’s cheers doubled in volume as he approached the microphone. He gave a quick nod to James to begin the predetermined song and couldn’t help but smile as the stage went dark, save for a single light on the floor behind the piano player with wide rays that spread out like sunlight and cut through the stage fog.

“And if they get me and the sun…goes down into the ground,” he sang as slowly as possible. Waves of people singing the lyrics back to him only made his smile grow wider. ‘You just have to believe in them a little,’ he told himself as he continued the slow melody of the song, knowing it would all disappear in a few moments when the rest of the band came back and they launched into Give ’Em Hell, Kid.

‘You just have to keep the faith.’