It Started With A Dare

It was the following Monday and I was sat at home with Gerard going over some stuff about animals or something. Bob had gone out with Shelby so we were home alone, and it was slightly awkward at times. It was pretty boring having to study all this stuff, science wasn’t exactly my favourite subject.

“No, Darwin’s theory didn’t determine the origin of life, it just elucidated how organisms had transformed by random mutations.” Gerard said, sighing at my lack of knowledge.

“Stop using all of these long words, its confusing me!” I whined, tugging on my hair frustratedly as I continued to flick through my text book.

“Well if you’d just revise what we study then you wouldn’t be confused!” Gerard retorted. I groaned and let my head drop to the desk in defeat.

“Why don’t we carry on with this on Wednesday?” He asked rhetorically. I groaned in response, hearing him chuckle at me. A few minutes later I felt him poking my arm childishly, I simply ignored him but it grew more difficult as it became more and more annoying.

“Gerard! Quit it!” I exclaimed, my words coming out muffled. Did he stop? The hell he did. I lifted my head up from the table to glare daggers at him whilst he responded with a cheeky smirk.

“Aw come on, you can’t stay mad forever.” He said.

“I can try.” I replied. I stood up from my seat at the kitchen table and made my way into the living room, grabbing the remote before collapsing onto a sofa. I flipped through the many channels on the TV before stopping on Fuse where a Smashing Pumpkins music video was playing. I was getting really into the video when Gerard sat down next to me, making me jump a bit.

“I didn’t know you liked the Smashing Pumpkins.” He commented.

“You didn’t ask.” I responded, my eyes still fixated on the TV screen in front of me.

“So what other bands are you into?” he asked.

“A lot of old school stuff like the Misfits, Black Flag but also a lot of pop punk like Green Day.” I answered.

“Really?” I nodded “I didn’t think we’d have anything in common.” He said.

“You mean you like that kind of music too?” I asked, a bit shocked.

“Hell yeah!” he responded. We continued to watch more music videos until I became bored, and at that point I voiced my boredom to Gerard.

“Well what do you expect me to do about it?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I mumbled, pouting at the TV screen, I heard him sigh beside me.

“Do you wanna come over to my place then? We’ve got Xbox?” he suggested, sparking my interests.

“Xbox?” I questioned. He nodded. I stood up from my seat on the sofa “Well what are we waiting for? Lets go!” I exclaimed, making him chuckle. We both headed out to his car where he drove us to his house; it wasn’t too far away so we were there in no time at all. When we got there I followed Gerard up to the front door of a two story house, complete with honeysuckle crawling up the wall around the door and windows.

“Welcome to casa de la Way!” Gerard announced as he pushed open the door, gesturing for me to walk in first. I shuffled inside and followed Gerard as he led me to the living room where there was a big TV with the mentioned Xbox sitting underneath it. Sitting down on the sofa, I watched as Gerard booted up the game system and put in Halo, handing me a controller before taking a seat next to me. We played for around an hour when Mikey came into the room.

“Hey Gerard, where did you put my headphones?” He asked, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

“I think I left them on your dresser.” Gerard answered, pausing the game we were playing. Mikey nodded before running back up the stairs.

“Wait, Mikey lives here?” I asked confused.

“Well yeah, he’s my brother.” Gerard replied, as if it was obvious.

“Really? Wow, I didn’t know, you don’t look anything alike.” I commented.

“Yeah we get that a lot, I always just tell people that he’s adopted.” He said, making me giggle before blushing at my insane laugh. I averted my gaze back to the screen and then got distracted looking at the shelves of videogames and movies.

“Whoa, you got a lot of horror movies.” I observed.

“You like horror movies?” I nodded “I didn’t think many girls liked scary movies. I got a tonne more down in my room, you wanna check it out?”

“Down?” I questioned, confused.

“My bedroom’s in the basement.” He said, making me go ‘oh’. We stood up and I followed him down the stairs to his dimly lit bedroom and over to a bookcase full of movies.

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. I skimmed through the many gruesome titles of films, noticing that there were more classic horror movies rather than the newer, less scary ones. But what caught my eyes the most was one title in particular.

“God I haven’t watched this in ages!” I breathed out, picking up the case which read ‘Red Dragon’, Hannibal Lecter was the shiz!

“You can borrow it if you want.” Gerard offered from behind me.

“Thanks.” My eyes studied the room I was in; various band posters littered the walls along with a few art pieces. I wonder if he draws …
In the corner of the room I spotted a pile of magazines, but on closer inspection they weren’t magazines, no, they were comic books!

“Oh my god.” I mumbled, walking over to the pile and picking one up, studying the glossy cover.

“Uh erm t-those aren’t mine, they’re uh Mikey’s, yeah, he just left them down here.” Gerard stuttered out. Wait, stuttered? Ha, he was embarrassed and it was hilarious.

“Why are you lying to me, Gerard?” I asked, deciding to have some fun with this, it was just too amusing to see him squirm.

“Look you can’t tell anyone at school about this.” He threatened, trying to sound authoritative.

“I won’t tell anyone … on one condition.” I said, smirking.

“What is it then?” he sighed.

“Let me borrow the X-men comic, I haven’t read this month’s issue yet.” I said, picking up the comic and waving it at him.

“You read X-men comics?” He asked incredulously.

“Yeah, now have we got a deal or not?” I asked. He shook his head lightly before holding out his hand; I took it and shook it, sealing our deal. “Okay then, can you give me a ride home now please?” he chuckled before leading me up stairs and out to his car where he drove me home. Hmm, a pretty successful day, a movie and a comic book in the space of five minutes. I am victorious!