Someone out There Loves You

[THREE WEEKS LATER.]
Levi snatched the magazine from my hand and shoved the camera lens right in my face. “Hey there my little cripple! How’s it hanging?”
I reached out for the Alternative Press. “Trying to read an article on our band, Levi,” I said, “Now gives.”
“Only f you tell us a little bit about where we are.”
I laughed. “We’re in Wyoming shooting our video for Mechanics.” I tried to get the AP again but he pulled it back farther. I elaborated, “We turned one of the classrooms into a living room of someone’s house so we don’t have to find an additional set.”
“Tell me more, tell me more,” Levi sang in his best Grease impression.
“Well we have our lovely friend Molly Iero cross-dressed as a manwhore,” I smiled. “She’s supposed to play Drew’s asshole boyfriend who gets totally trashed and then starts hitting on the cross-dressed Mark, Monster, and Levi. I kind of stand on the sidelines and notice all this until I point it out to Drew, who then punches and dumps Molly. After Molly’s vomited out her soul.”
“And the fake barf tastes gross.” Molly strolls up to us then, simultaneously tying her tie. “It’s like oatmeal and some random goo shit. Jared wouldn’t even tell me all of what it was. Every time I started to ask he had to go do something else.” Molly sat down next to me. When she was dressed up as a guy, she looked CREEPY like Frank. When I told her that, we’d been walking and she promptly jumped into the nearest locker and popped out of it, impersonating her dad from I’m Not Okay.
“So what about this little dilemma?” Levi pointed the camera down at my leg cast. “How has that gotten in the way?”
“We’ve had to change a couple shots so I can be shot only from the waist up,” I said. “And every time the video shows me walking it has to be in slow-mo. But we already finished shooting all the little performance bits before I cut my hair so at least that’s consistent.”
“You just confuse the shit out of people walking around the party when you suddenly have purple hair,” Molly added.
“LEVI! HELP ME WITH MY BOOBS!” Monster ran up to us then, trying to cram mini silicone domes into his strapless dress. “They won’t fit.”
“But you’re legs look wonderful,” I told Monster. “All hairy and shit.”
“Clayah!” Jared peaked around the corner. “I just talked to Mikey, he said he’ll be here in an hour to get you, so we need to shoot this last bit fast.” I nodded and Jared vanished again.
“Alright guys, c’mon.” I stood up slowly and Molly grabbed my crutches, handing them to me. “Monster, let me help you before you pop those all over the place.”
“I got it,” Levi said. He was struggling to shove Monster’s fake boobs in with one hand and hold his camera with the other.
“At least let me hold the camera.”
“Clayah, I’ve got this.”
“Dude it’s caught on my sequin!” Monster protested. “Just let Clayah do it.”
“I’ve got this.” With a final shove, the fake breast was down Monster’s dress. “See?”
“Thank you.” Monster shifted things around a bit with his hands. “But they’re helping me with my makeup.”
“Are you kidding? I’m great with makeup!”
“Yesterday you made me look like the Joker.”
“But the Joker is awesome.”
“But the Joker doesn’t have Ginger Danger.” Monster fluffed his hair. “Which I am upset had been so tamed for this video.”
I reached up as high as I could and slapped his hand down. “People have hardly let me do anything today because of me legs, but what I did get to do that was productive AND good was you hair, so keep your hands off of it.”

An hour later, we were finished. We had a ton of stuff to clean up around the school and I wanted to help, but of course Mikey was there to take me home. I said my goodbyes to everyone, telling Drew and Jared we’d work on the editing via e-mail, and Mikey helped me out to his car.
“Tired?” he asked as he started to pull out of the parking lot.
“No,” I lied. “I was only moving around for a few hours.”
“Yeah, but that cast of your is like having an extra appendage.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Clayah.”
“Fine, Mikey, I’m tired.”
He smiled with success. “Did you want to stay with me or Gerard tonight?”
“Gerard. You and Alicia need some time together before we leave next week, Mikes.”
“We don’t mind! We love having you.”
“And I love being there, but as your sister I’m telling you to spend some time with your wife.” I leaned my seat back. “Besides, I’m sick of you.” I punched him lightly in the arm.
Mikey laughed. “I figured as much. Gerard and Lynds are expecting you anyway.”
I sat up a bit. “Then why did you ask?”
“The hell of it. Plus they say Bandit’s been fussy since you left.” Mikey reached out with on arm and pushed my head back down. “Now get some sleep before w get there. It should be a few hours.”
“I’m not that tired.”
“Don’t care.” Mikey flipped on the radio to a mellow indie station.
I gave up and let my eyes close. Honestly I was exhausted. I wished my leg would heal faster so people would stop treating me like the cripple that I was and I could just get back to work. Right now I rested up so that I could play with Bandit later. I let myself nod off to the thought of lying on the living room floor and coloring outside the lines while I talked music with my sister-in-law and Gerard drew in the next room. Lyn-Z being smart enough to not argue with my when I offered to help cook dinner with her. Watching some old, badly made, black and white horror movie with my brother after Bandit and Lynds went to bed.
This was my new life.
We finished up America and Canada starting next week, then would stop in Jersey for a while before leaving for Europe. I’d meet my biological parents then—Don and Donna (that wouldn’t get confusing). I wasn’t sure where I stood on calling tem “mom” and “dad” yet. Regardless I was excited to meet them.
I remembered when Molly came over to Mikey’s last week. She and Frank stayed the night so we could leave for Wyoming the next morning. She and I had talked about my new last name situation.
“So it would be like…Clayah Shay?” Molly popped a couple M&M’s in her mouth. “Or Clayah Why-er?”
“Wire?” I rinsed a dish from dinner and started to dry it. (Alicia and Mikey had come to the conclusion that, no matter what they said, if I wasn’t going to help cook dinner I was at lest going to clean it up.)
“Not W-I-R-E, but W-I-E-R,” Molly said. I told her I wasn’t going to change my last name, but I held onto Wier internally.
I rolled onto me side as best I could in a car set while being pinned under a seat belt. When I was settled Mikey reached out to pat my back, which faced him.
“I love you, Clayah,” he said quietly.
“Love you, too, Mikey,” I yawned.
This was new for me. It’s not that Gerard and Mikey and I had never said we loved one another. But it was strange to love and be loved by people so quickly. It was just natural; we were family, always had been, always would be. For all the times and places my life had felt empty and unloved, Gerard and Mikey filled it in. And as I fell asleep in Mikey’s car to the sound of the engine and acoustic guitars, I realized I hadn’t been so alone after all.