Born and Broken Every Single Time.

"Frank! You’re going to be late!" Mrs. Way screeched frantically as she snapped me from my sleep, throwing some clothes at me. I apologised, then thanked her for waking me up. I threw my clothes on and pretty much ran straight out the door as soon as I grabbed my bag. I waited out the front and saw Mikey appear from a silver car, leaning through the window to kiss his girl goodbye before joining me at the front.

"Good night?" I smirked, noticing Mikey looked like he hadn’t slept a wink.

"Not bad," he laughed. "Yourself?"

"Not bad," I grinned, walking beside him as we headed into the gates. As the bell rang we split up for our usual daily routine. Today was the last day we’d be doing this for a while because the joyous occasion we knew to be half term was coming up, meaning no school for about a fortnight. I liked the idea even though I was meant to be having a ’new start’. Skiving work was always too tempting.

As the day slowly drew on it finally came to last period, English. It went quickly enough but the reason it stuck in my mind was our teacher had informed us half of the class had to resit their oral exams, resulting in outrageously immature laughter from our table. It made the rest of the class snigger, but we were strangely uncontrollable and made the teacher blush. That’s what she gets for using words full of innuendo. As the bell rang the three of us left the room, still in the trail off of our laughter to find Mikey waiting outside the door glaring at the other two defensively.

"Hey man," I giggled before saying my goodbyes to the other two.

"Why didn’t you have your phone on?" he frowned, not even reciprocating my hello.

"I don’t know," I shrugged. "Why?"

"Dad texted. Shit’s going on at home," he muttered. "Seems like my darling brother has been causing trouble again."

"What’s happening?" I asked as we sped out of the nearest exit, walking briskly to get home as soon as possible.

"I don’t know," he shrugged. "All I know is it’s apparently some massive argument and I didn’t want to face it on my own." He glanced over at me, his face concerned as we pushed past all the younger kids. After a few minutes at this pace, and a stitch starting to burn my side we arrived back at his, walking literally straight into the middle of the argument. Gerard was stood half way up the stairs leaning over the banister as his parents stood in the hall shouting at him.

"You’re insane! You expect us to fucking pay for it!" his dad yelled. "You can’t even fucking draw!"

"I’m not asking you to pay for it!" his son retorted. "I’m asking for a loan so I can do this! And since when did you ever care! The moment you knew I wasn’t going to play football like the other kids was the moment you stopped caring!"

"Don’t talk to your father like that!" his mother intervened, frowning sternly at him.

"Oh come on!" he smirked. "Don’t get me wrong, I love you dad but you never cared about me like you cared for Mikey. He’s all you wanted in a son, I was just in the way."

"That’s not true," Mr. Way grumbled. "I just don’t see where this has come from!"

"Maybe someone knocked some fucking sense into me," Gerard yelled before running upstairs. He returned moments later with a handful of sketchbooks in his arms and dropped them over the banister so they landed near his parents. "Maybe I can draw and maybe I’m past caring about being rejected for the first time in my life."

"But where has this come from?" his Dad repeated, turning the statement into a question. "You were fine yesterday."

"Yeah, I was fine," Gerard continued confidently. "But I wasn’t fucking happy dad. I don’t want to be here years down the line; I want to do something! You both did things with your life before you ended up here. I’m just here. I’ve gone nowhere."

"Get a job," his father continued sternly. "You don’t need this stupid art degree, you got good enough grades at school to just walk straight into a job."

"But I don’t want any job!" he yelled. "I want a job I’ve dreamed of all my life! I want a job that doesn’t feel like work, one that I actually enjoy! Not one that I have to do."

"We don’t always get what we want," was his stern reply.

"You know what? Maybe that’s true, but someone once told me you’ll never know unless you try," Gerard snapped. I was torn watching this. I felt so overwhelmed at how he was compelled to do something from what I’d said to him, even throwing my words in his fathers face. But I felt unbelievably disheartened as I saw the passion in his eyes, seeing him slowly crumble as his dream was once again being beaten down.

"It’s all fine and well to throw stupid philosophies or contradictions in my face but you’re not getting the money! What do you think this degree will get you? A first class ticket to the west end for set designs? Is that really the sort of shit you’d waste years working towards?"

"Actually," Gerard said calmly. "Yes, it was. But forget it."

He stormed up the stairs, the sound of his door slamming echoing the house. Everyone looked around at each other at a loss of words.

"Uh, I’ll take them back to him," I said calmly, indicating to the sketchbooks.

"Thank you," Mrs. Way smiled as she led her husband to the kitchen, putting the kettle on as she hugged him briefly. Mikey just sighed and stepped over the books as he joined his parents in the kitchen. I bent down, carefully picking up the array of sketchbooks before heading upstairs. I tapped the door awkwardly with my foot seeing as I had no spare hands and was told to go away, probably under the belief that it was one of his parents.

"It’s me," I replied, waiting as Gerard came and opened the door and took his books from my hands before throwing them to the ground. He stood on them as he returned to his bed, exhaling deeply as he glanced back over at me.

"I tried," he shrugged. "It wasn’t meant to be."

"You can’t let that stop you," I pressed. "I’ve seen your stuff, I’ve heard your fucking story Gerard. I saw you down there, and you weren’t fighting because that was your last chance to do this, you were fighting because you knew you could do it."

"It’s all good being capable of doing something, but the reality isn’t always as perfect. Rejection is what I’m used to and today just proved that all over. They don’t believe in me," he muttered.

"I believe in you," I said plainly, watching as he looked up at me as a smile spread across his face as my sentiment. I had a moment of clarity in my mind and shut the door, taking a deep breath before I continued. "Rejection isn’t always going to be the case."

"Really?" he laughed over dramatically as he stood up. "Look at these! Look at these books! I put them right in front of my parents. Years of my work and they didn’t even bother to look. They don’t care whether I can do this or not, they will never believe in me enough to let me do it. It’s rejection. Did you see how Mikey looked at me? As if I was just causing trouble for the sake of it? Even just that look, it’s rejection Frank and it hurts. You see these?" He paused as he pointed to an array of horror posters on his wall, moving into the space between the wall and myself before continuing. "These were my inspiration, but now you know what they scream at me? They scream rejection and do you want to know why? Because I failed at the only thing I was good at. I’m a failure Frank," he muttered. "All I know is rejection."

He looked up at me briefly as he finished, his eyes meeting mine as the moment of clarity I had previously had was confirmed. Rejection wasn’t all he would ever know. Without a word I walked over to him, smacking my lips to his and obviously taking him by surprise. I couldn’t help but feel relieved as I felt his lips move against my own, his tongue gently colliding with mine. I’d show him being rejected didn’t mean it was the end of his dream, but first I’d show him that I believed in him. Really believed in him.