Keep the Faith

The man looked disinterestedly at the filthy walls around him. He tried to read the graffiti on them, but he couldn't -- most of it was in a foreign language. Well, foreign to him, at least. If he stopped any passer-by and asked them to read it, they probably wouldn't have had any trouble at all. The language wasn't foreign, here, he reminded himself.He was.

He sat up straight when he spotted the letters 'MCR', but sagged with disappointment to see that the rest of the message wasn't in English. He got to his feet and took a step back, to get a good look at the entire thing.

Someone had written 'MCR SOMETHING-SOMETHING!!' in big block letters. Then, another someone had scribbled over it, crossing it out. Next to it, they had written a few sentences full of somethings -- the only bit Gerard understood was the 'MCR' in it. At the end, they had drawn a picture of a hand making a rude sign.

The man's heart sank; he knew what this was. Someone must have written 'MCR ROCKS!!' or something to that effect (something that sounded less juvenile, he hoped) and someone else had crossed it out, bashing MCR and the person who had written it. He noticed that the first person hadn't bothered to reply. Angrily, he punched the crude drawing of the hand.

"Ow." That hadn't been a very good idea.

"Well, that was smart of you," came a child's voice. He jumped and turned, holding back a curse. Here he was, the Gerard Way, rockstar, frontman, punching the wall of a dingy stairwell. Not something he wanted the people of -- where were they? Philippines, right -- the Philippines to remember him for.

There was a young boy standing in the mouth of the stairwell, looking amused. Gerard turned away again, not quite sure where to look. People who make it should be injected with stuff that makes them immune to awkwardness, he thought. But then, he didn't like needles.

"Um," he said finally, staring at the boy's shoes. "I was just...angry about something."

"About what?"

"Can you read that for me?" he asked, pointing to the graffiti he had tried to read. The boy came over and walked up to where Gerard was. Unrecognisable words slipped fluently from his tongue.

"Could you translate that, please" The boy nodded and frowned slightly at the words.

"The crossed-out one, it says MCR is... Um, it says that MCR is really bad, it sucks," he said ponderously. "The other part, it says...that's they're wrong. And that MCR is special and passionate, I think. And the last bit..." he trailed off, giving a nervous giggle. " 'Putangina mo'. 'Fuck you'."

"So... The crossed-out one is bad and the one next to it is good?" asked Gerard disbelievingly.

"Yeah," said the boy. "If you like MCR."

"I do," said Gerard. "I mean, I think I do."

"What do you mean you think you do?" demanded the boy, plopping down onto a step. Gerard did the same, onto the one a few steps below the boy's.

"It's done...both good and bad thing to me."

"More good or more bad?"

"More good, definitely."

"What's the bad?"

Gerard opened his mouth to speak, but he stopped himself. Why dump all his troubles onto a little kid? But technically, it wasn't dumping, exactly... He would just be telling. And the fact that the boy didn't recognise him meant that he wouldn't freak out if he told him who he was. But still...

"It's my...friends," said Gerard. "A lot of them, they don't' want to hang out with me anymore because... Because I love MCR so much. And they say I've changed, they don't like me being me. They said they hate me now. They don't wanna be my friends anymore. And I don't know what to do.

"It's not just that - they've started turning some other friends against me too. They go and spread rumours and stuff about me and it really hurts. What hurts even more is that they don't care about how I might feel about it, or they think I won't find out. But I did and they weren't the least bit sorry when they found out I did. I... I don't know. I really don't know," he said, his voice growing softer and softer.

"Well," the boy said, after a while of thinking. "They're just your friends, right? You've still got your family and all... And you've got some people who still wanna be your friends, right? All of them can't hate you! The ones who are still here... They kind of matter the most, 'cause some of them won't ever leave. You gotta hold on to them, y'know? And besides," he concluded with a smile, "you can always make new friends."

Gerard had to smile too -- the kid was right. And it helped that the boy was large-eyed and adorable.

"Thanks. I actually feel a lot better. I think I'll remember that, everything you said..." he mused. "Hey, what's your name?"

The boy stiffened.

"I'm not supposed to give my name to strangers," he said tightly, almost in a mechanical manner. Gerard grinned.

"It's okay. Why are you out here alone?"

"My sister," he scowled, the uptight demeanor melting away immediately. "She went mad when she found out MCR was coming to the Philippines. She says they're living in a hotel around here, so she's here trying to find them. She wanted me to search this side of the block. I think she wants to give them some stupid book she made. Keep the Faith II or something, I dunno. Have you seen them, any of them? I don't know what they look like."

"Another Keep the Faith? Oh man, that's amazing. Did she start it?"

"Yeah. She printed the first one out. She killed our printer! We couldn't use it for a whole week, and it was brand-new."

"Wow, she started it? That's just incredible. What's her name?"

"Isabel," said the boy. "Why?"

"Could you bring me to her? Please? I'd really, really like to meet her," he said earnestly.

"Why?" he asked again.

"I... I read Keep the Faith I and I was really impressed with the whole thing, I really loved it. I want to meet the person who came up with the idea."

The boy agreed, and together, they trudged over to the next block of shop lots.

Gerard saw the girl before she saw them. She was striding along, clutching a large book like her life depended on it -- maybe it did, or maybe other people's lives did. She was obviously looking for something (or rather, someone) from the agitated look on her face, the way her head swiveled this way and that.

He swallowed quickly and called, "Isabel!"

She looked up at him and froze, completely stunned. Her grip on the book slackened considerably, and she nearly dropped it, juggling it for a few seconds. All the while, her brother and Gerard were walking towards her. The boy gave his slack-jawed sister a funny look.

"What's-- Wait. Wait, you mean this is...him?"

"Yeah," she replied, never taking her gaze off her hero's face. "This is him."

"I read Keep the Faith I," said Gerard, smiling slightly at the look on Isa's face. "The whole thing. I actually cried."

"Oh, God, you did? Well, um, we've done another one for you guys. Keep the Faith II." She gave the book to Gerard, who ran his fingers over the glossy cover appreciatively.

"I want to think you guys so much, on behalf of MCR. The first book, we all read it and we were so touched...at how strong and how passionate you guys are, and, um, it's just..." He trailed off, shaking his head. He couldn't continue -- he didn't know how.

"Can I hug you?" Isa asked, rather abruptly, as though she had been summoning the courage to say it. Gerard smiled warmly.

"Sure."

So they hugged. They hugged, and they rocked back and forth, and Isa said (quietly, so that her brother wouldn't hear), "You guys saved my life, you know." Her voice cracked on the last syllable.

Gerard smiled even wider and replied, "You guys saved mine too."

He couldn't voice his gratitude, his appreciation, because he couldn't find the right words, so he tried to convey everything through that one hug.

And although he wouldn't swear it, he was fairly sure that she understood. All the things he couldn't say: how the band had felt when they read the first book, how deeply it touched them, how amazed they were to see each other in tears -- she understood it, all of it.

And he was so glad that she did.