I Can Transform You

POV: Gerard

-10 minutes earlier-

I didn’t want to leave Frank on his own; that wasn’t part of the plan. We were supposed to stick together. But there’s not a lot I can do when my dad is pushing me out of the kitchen with that threatening look in his eye; the one he gets when his irrational orders are not immediately followed. I’d only seen him really lose his temper once before - with Mikey when he came home an hour after his curfew – and that wasn’t a fun time for anybody (especially Mikey, who ended up in tears and grounded for a month).

Yeah, I knew better than to test my father.

But still, I couldn’t get that petrified look on Frank’s face out of my mind. I wanted to be there for him, to keep holding his hand, but deep down I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to do that again on my dad’s watch. I knew as soon as I saw his jaw clench and his eyes narrow that we’d made a mistake in displaying our affection for eachother so openly in front of him like that.

I wanted to say something to justify my actions to him now, but I was too nervous to initiate any kind of conversation with him. I could practically hear him silently seething and holding in his rage, as he pushed the living room door shut behind him, locking me in and making it so much harder for me to try and eavesdrop of Frank and his mother in the kitchen. I strained my ears and listened as intently as I could, but two seconds later, my dad was jumping down my throat and stealing all of my focus.

“What in God’s name were you thinking running away with Frank like that?” He turned on me faster than a ravenous lion; just one with less of an appetite for meat and more of an appetite for answers.

“I-”

“For Christ sake, he’s a mentally unstable boy, Gerard!” Okay, an appetite for expressing rage. “Didn’t you watch his suicide tape?”

I opened my mouth to let out an exasperated “yes!” but then it got trapped in my throat when I realised that wasn’t the right answer.

“I – no, I didn’t,” I admitted in a small voice, thrown off-course by this realisation. I’d forgotten I’d only watched the first ten seconds of the video… How could I explain to my dad that I still knew instinctively everything Frank had said on it?

I hesitated awkwardly, before finding my strength and continuing more forcefully: “But I know what he’s going through and I was just trying to help him… He needs me, dad!”

“What he needs, Gerard,” he retorted sharply, looking down his nose at me, “is real help.”

A voice in my head exploded with: “I am real! I’m his best friend!” But the thought didn’t quite make it past my lips in time. My dad was ranting and raving again before I could gather my thoughts into one coherent sentence.

“The boy tried to kill himself!” I flinched at his blunt words and the mental image of Frank with a revolver against his temple that followed. “Don’t you see how serious this is? It’s out of your hands!” he exclaimed dramatically, evidently stressed by this whole ordeal. I knew my dad well enough to know when the stress was too much for him, and I feared what his solution for all this would be.

“Okay, I know he’s got some issues, but he’s working on them,” I replied as calmly as I could, trying to relieve some of the tension in the room. “He’s already doing much better than he was yesterday. It’ll be okay - he’ll get through this. I mean, everybody gets depressed sometimes, right?”

I had complete faith in Frank. I totally understood what he was going through, because I’d been through it myself; I’d been to rock bottom and climbed my way out in the past. And if I could come through the darkness, Frank could too. I’d be his guiding light, helping him fight all of his inner demons until he finally found peace in himself.

Unfortunately, my dad didn’t share my faith in Frank.

“This isn’t just depression, Gerard. It’s bigger than that,” he stated sinisterly, and I couldn’t tell anymore whether he was overreacting or telling the truth that I had yet to discover. As far as I knew Frank was just feeling hopeless and depressed right now… Was I missing something?

“He has some serious psychological issues that you wouldn’t understand… and actually, no, he’s not working on them,” my father dropped the missing information on me like a bombshell, not caring about the explosive consequences it would have on me.

I blinked expressionlessly at him a few times, before a deep frown contorted my features.

“What are you talking about?” There was something inside me refusing to let his words sink in properly. He had to be mistaken though; I’d know if Frank had any ‘serious psychological issues’, for fuck sake, I’d spent everyday with him for the last fortnight. “He’s just going through a hard time at the moment,” I started to protest, confident that my dad was the one who didn’t understand the circumstances, not me. “His girlfriend cheated on him and -”

“Yes, I saw the video, I know all about his two-timing girlfriend and backstabbing best friend,” he waved a hand dismissively, carelessly. Then, he paused and studied me for a moment with knowing eyes, as if waiting for me to stop clenching my jaw and shout at him for his uncaring attitude, but I held my tongue somehow.

To my added confusion and exasperation, he suddenly smirked. My frown deepened, and I opened my mouth to ask what the fuck was funny about any of this, but he spoke again in a patronising tone:

“Not to mention his puppy love for his brother…”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth and hanging in the air, the whole atmosphere seemed to get tenser, if that was even possible. Despite the fact that my dad was smirking and evidently mocking Frank (and me, I guessed), I knew things were far from jokey and light-hearted. He wasn’t teasing in a playful way; he was doing it in a spiteful way, hinting his disapproval unsubtly.

I knew I wouldn’t get through this conversation without the subject of mine and Frank’s feelings for eachother cropping up, but that didn’t make me any more prepared for it. I didn’t know what the fuck to say in response to that, and I was sure my dad had a lot more he wanted to say anyway, so I just stood there in silence, impatiently awaiting the upcoming lecture.

“I don’t know what on earth is going on with you two, but I do know that I can’t allow you to be… romantically involved with eachother,” he declared boldly, cringing at the words as they left his mouth.

Even though I was expecting a lecture along those lines, it still wasn’t easy for me to accept. All my life I had obeyed my dad’s rules, both sensible and ridiculous, just because we’d been through so much as a family and I wanted to ensure our relationship stayed strong. I didn’t want to cause my dad any more heartache after what he went through with my mom, so I’d always been a golden child. But maybe it was finally time I revaluated my good behaviour…

“Why not?” The words were out of my mouth before I even realised it was open, and I was staring at my dad in anger.

There was an instant flash of disbelief across his face; a shocked look in his eye, as if he didn’t really believe the outrageous idea he was forbidding might actually be something I wanted to happen. The stern expression on his face disappeared, as it slowly dawned on him that it was real; his own son was gay and wanted to be with his soon-to-be stepson.

For one crazy second, I thought that realisation might make him take back his stupid rule and give us his blessing, like any understanding father would try to. But I’d forgotten that my dad didn’t understand anything outside of his old-fashioned views, and he’d have a hard time accepting my sexuality alone, without the added sin of incest, or whatever the fuck it would be if Frank and I got together.

“Because it’s wrong on so many different levels,” he eventually answered lamely, looking at me like I was dancing naked on the dining table. “Let’s put aside the fact that he’s going to be your brother, okay - you’d only get hurt if you got involved with a pathological liar.”

I froze at that point and so did the world around me.

“A – what?”

“Pathological liar,” he repeated, calm as ever, despite the look of shock and incredulity on my face. I wasn’t sure if I was hearing things or if my dad was seriously accusing Frank of being a pathological liar. Like, what the fuck even? “He never tells the truth, Gerard. Even in his confessional suicide tape, he was lying.”

Okay, I didn’t actually see the tape… But I was still fairly certain Frank wouldn’t have lied on it. It was the one time he was finally confessing his feelings and secrets to the people he had lied to and manipulated his whole school life. He had stopped hiding and just told them everything; the truth at last.

Yeah, there’s no way… My dad had to be mistaken, once again.

“No, he wasn’t,” I jumped straight to Frank’s defence; a reflex to the negative accusations flying around. Of course I couldn’t really fight his corner too well, having not seen the video myself… “What did he say?” I changed my tactic, searching for more ammunition to defend Frank and myself against. I was fully prepared to argue against whatever story my dad tried to feed me.

“Well, he said that he loved you, for starters,” he scoffed, and even though I was on guard and ready to protest Frank’s innocence, his words went straight through my metaphorical shield, like a bullet to my heart.

“And no one could ever love me, right?” I nodded in fake understanding, my tone sharp and bitter. “The only explanation for it is that he’s a pathological liar…”

My dad looked mildly alarmed by my sarcastic reaction, like he wasn’t expecting me to take offence at his words in a million years. But how could he not know how fucking insecure I am when it comes to love, after being abandoned by my own mother and after the years I’d spent being bullied? I’d always told myself no one loved me, because that’s how I felt. But now I actually had someone in my life who was finally showing me the real meaning of love, and my dad was trying to take that away from me with some fabricated story about that special someone being mentally ill?

“That’s not what I meant,” he tried to recover, shaking his head gravely. “You’re a very loveable person, Gerard, and one day you will find someone who is willing to give you the true love you deserve.”

I knew this was his attempt at being a caring father, but he was failing fucking miserably. I did not care for his patronising attitude. He had no right to talk down to me like this.

“Frank loves me!” I insisted strongly, raising my voice in frustration. “God, what the fuck do you know about love anyway? Mom left you as soon as she had the chance!”

The words spewed from my mouth like word vomit, poisoning the atmosphere even more and completely undoing all my hard work over the years of being the golden child. I’d finally cracked, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds until my dad followed.

The transition from a shocked and hurt expression to a livid one was so fast I didn’t have time to brace myself for his hand across my face, slapping me hard. I staggered backwards and clutched a hand to my stinging cheek, staring at him with eyes wide in disbelief, and he immediately looked rueful, hanging his head guiltily.

The tears were burning my eyes, but I refused to let them fall in front of my dad; I didn’t want him to see me at my weakest. I blinked rapidly to try and dispel them, as I lunged towards the door, intent on making my escape now while he was distracted by regret, but it turned out to be a poor distraction, because it didn’t stop him grabbing my arm and pulling me away from the door.

“Your mother never loved me,” he choked out, trying to resume the conversation as if nothing had happened. He was staring into my soul with tears in his eyes, trying to make me feel guilty for what I’d said, but I was too emotionally devastated to feel bad about it in that moment. He deserved it. “She just depended on me, to hold her up when things went wrong; financially, emotionally, everything… Lord knows how much money I gave her.” He shook his head and closed his eyes, dwelling heavily on his past mistakes. “I always felt like she was using me… And she was.”

I never knew this about my mom. My dad never so much as mentioned her name after she left. We all just had to carry on and pretend our whole life hadn’t just fallen apart, and I never knew the reason it had fallen was because my mom was some kind of goldigging bitch, who only married my dad for his money. This was hard for me to get my head around.

“Frank doesn’t love you, Gerard - he just depends on you,” he sniffed, wiping his eyes hastily and regaining his composure somewhat. “He needs you to help him right now, but once he’s learnt how to stand on his own two feet, he won’t.”

I wasn’t prepared for the conversation to take a sudden 180 and go back to me and Frank. My guard was down and, once again, his words hit me like bullets, piercing holes in my heart. I didn’t want to believe what he was saying, but there was a small part of my brain echoing his words and absorbing them as if they were fact.

“You’ve got him all wrong,” I mumbled, trying to ignore my own mind. I swallowed a lump in my throat with great difficulty and added, “He’s not a liar.”

Frank had put his trust in me way before any of this shit kicked off… We had formed a special connection because of it. He trusted me with his darkest secrets about his past, and I had trusted him with mine. We depended on eachother for support, in a way. It was a true friendship… Real love.

“What exactly did he tell you about his father?” my dad eyed me curiously, and I didn’t like the expression on his face. His eyebrows were raised expectantly, like he was fully expecting me to say something he could easily dismiss as a lie.

I didn’t want to say anything. It was private information and I wasn’t comfortable discussing it with my dad, even if he knew the truth as well from watching Frank’s video. It still wasn’t our business to be talking about it.

Seeing my hesitance, he continued questioning me, trying his best to provoke a response.

“Did you know his father killed himself with the very gun Frank tried to kill himself with?”

I was staring at the ground up until this point, but I snapped my head up at those words, gaping at my dad in sheer disbelief. What the fuck did he just say?

“What? No, he – his dad was killed. Murdered by his best friend,” I argued, forgetting all about not wanting to discuss Frank’s personal life. I was too confused to keep my mouth shut now. I mean, what the fuck was my dad going on about?

“Yeah, that was the story he told his therapist too,” he sighed, looking at me with pitying eyes that made me want to scream at him and/or burst into tears.

I didn’t understand what the fuck was happening. Either my dad was lying about Frank, or Frank had lied to me about his dad… Either way, someone was lying to me and my heart was breaking because of that.

“Linda tells me Frank still hasn’t really come to terms with what happened… He’s been lying to himself about it, as well as to everyone else,” he continued sombrely, and I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes again. My emotions were all over the place, thrown out of balance by this surprising twist in a story I believed to be true.

“But why?”

I needed answers; I still didn’t understand why Frank would lie to me. Didn’t he trust me? What about the special bond we shared? Had I just imagined that?

“What happened?” I cried desperately, but my dad just shrugged helplessly.

“I don’t know. Even Linda doesn’t know - she just knows her husband shot himself.”

Well, shit. Maybe if she had paid more attention to her son after it had happened, she might fucking know…

“Frank’s the only one that knows the full story, but he won’t tell anyone it,” he explained in a grave tone.

I couldn’t get my head around the fact that Frank had been living with this dark secret on his own for all these years, never letting it see the light of day. Even though a lot of things made a lot less sense to me right now, one thing made more sense, and that was Frank’s ongoing struggle with just being himself and taking off his mask. I realised now that he hadn’t been himself since the night his dad had died, and he probably never would be again. He was lost in his own head. Whatever happened that night had changed him.

“There’s some serious psychological trauma involved there, and we’re gonna do what we can to help him, but you’ve got to back off for a while, Gerard,” my dad spoke again, after a moment of heavy silence where my thoughts were exploding and contradicting eachother, giving me a headache.

“But… he needs me…” I murmured half-heartedly, not fully believing in what I was saying anymore.

When this conversation began five minutes ago, I was so sure that I was helping Frank and he would fall apart without me, but now I couldn’t be sure of anything. I thought he was making progress this whole time, but really, he was still hiding from the truth, letting it tear him apart from the inside-out.

“No, he doesn’t. You’re not helping him - you’re just making him worse,” my dad confirmed my worst fear, and I exhaled slowly in defeat. “He needs to do this on his own. If you care about him at all, you’ll let him go.”

Of course I cared. I cared too much for my own damn good! But how the hell was I supposed to let go? This was going to be too painful… Fuck, I loved Frank. I wanted to help him, more than anything, but I was beginning to realise my dad was right from the start: this was out of my hands. There was nothing I could do to save him now; he needed to save himself, and the only way he was going to be able to do that was if he stopped depending on me and found the strength within himself.

All of a sudden, his yelling voice infiltrated my mind and snapped me out of my own thoughts, alerting me to my surroundings once more. I couldn’t quite catch what he was saying – it was muffled by the two walls between us – but there was no mistaking his anger.

I looked at my dad with wide eyes, but he was already grabbing the door and pulling it open.

“Stay here, Gerard,” he commanded strictly, shooting me one last look over his shoulder. “I mean it: don’t come out.”

Next thing I knew, he was rushing out the door and closing it behind him, and I was standing rooted to the spot, falling back into the same old routine of obeying his orders.

Part of me wanted to rebel against the command and run into the kitchen to find Frank and just pull him into a big hug, but the other part of me knew better than that. I tried to console myself with the idea that my dad knew exactly what he was doing, and he was just as concerned as me about helping Frank, so I should just take a backseat and let him do what he has to do. Whatever that was...

I tried to block out Frank’s hysterical shouts on the other side of the door, but I was on the verge of having a mental breakdown with him. I hadn’t caught much of what he was saying so far, but the next words to come out of his mouth were unmistakable and rang on through straight to my aching heart: “I want to fucking die!”

All of the progress he had made with me up to this point had been destroyed. He was clearly as suicidal as ever, and I knew now I had no hope of helping him. The tears streamed down my face as I listened to his heartwrenching sobs; I felt so helpless and torn, disposable and hopeless, like I had been wasting my time just making things worse for him.

I didn’t know what my dad was doing, but I trusted that it was for the best for Frank. And that’s all I wanted… I just wanted him to be okay again. I didn’t want him to pretend anymore; not to me, not to himself, not to anyone. Admitting he had a problem and facing it himself was the first step, and the only way he was going to get past this.

I’d made my decision to let go. Even when he called out for me, so desperate and so scared, I didn’t give into the voices in my head and go after him; I followed my heart, because I knew it would be better for both of us in the longrun. However, knowing this didn’t make any of it easier… I was crying so hard by this point, I fell to my knees and doubled over, putting my head in my hands and pressing my lips together to keep from yelling back.

“I’m sorry,” I choked under my breath, “I’m s-so sorry.”