Tiptoe Through the True Bits

I didn’t really sleep much that night. I was still finding it so difficult to believe what had happened between Gerard and I. He wanted me. For some reason unbeknownst to me and probably to the rest of mankind, this gorgeous, sweet, funny, talented, amazing man was attracted to me; the plain, chubby, short, uninteresting mute. He could have had any girl he wanted. But he wanted me.

For a long time I just lay there, perfectly content, as Gerard slept soundly behind me. His heavy arm was draped across my waist, leaving his hand resting precariously on my stomach. I was quite happy just to monitor his heartbeat through his chest – because knowing my luck it was not unlikely that he might die in his sleep – and feel the steady rhythm of his long, deep breaths. In and out. In and out.

Love, so I am told, can do funny things to a person. Love can reduce even the most logical, mathematical thinker to a state where they begin to believe the most incredulous of things. Superstition, you may call it. You begin to worry about everything. Every time there is a pause in breathing, or a “but...” at the end of a sentence, or a slow response to a text message, you worry that the object of your affections is in danger, or is going to break your heart. I have never been a worrier, but that night as I listened to Gerard’s breaths, he would occasionally inhale and then there would be a pause, in which my whole body tensed and I crossed my fingers and hoped against all else that there would soon be an exhale. And of course, there always was, and I always found myself smiling with relief and loosening up again.

The storm was still raging outside, making its presence known every now and then with a white hot flash and then a low, deep rumble. Fuck you, storm. I’m not afraid of you anymore. With Gerard beside me, I felt safer than I had ever felt in my whole life, even if he was asleep. I can’t really explain why, but the thunder and the lightning didn’t bother me now. Nothing seemed to bother me anymore. I was blissfully content just to be lying here in his arms, feeling his warmth seep through to me and his heart beat softly against my spine and his heavy breaths tickling the back of my neck.



The next day was a Sunday, and I knew as soon as I opened my eyes – presumably I had managed to fall asleep at some point during the night, although God knows when – that it would be a good day. I had very few good days at this time, and so I was determined to make it count.

Gerard’s arm was still draped across me as I drifted into consciousness, and I let a wide smile spread across my face, almost afraid that I would split in two if it got any wider. I gently turned around in his arms, so that I could see his face. He was beautiful in the mornings. It seemed that no ailment, from crusty eyes to morning breath, afflicted this man. Of course it didn’t. Gerard Way was too perfect for these sorts of things.

I watched him for a little while, with that dumb smile still stretching across my face, almost making my cheeks ache. But I couldn’t have stopped even if I had wanted to. I was more than happy just to admire him from this close position, watching his nostrils flare and close with every breath, and soon I noticed a very clear smile grace his lips.

“Are you watching me sleep, Elise?” His voice was raspy and dry, and he was still smiling.

I blushed a little and let out a small, breathy laugh through my nose. How long had he been onto me?

Eventually, his eyes fluttered open, and met mine immediately, the smile on his face almost a mirror image of mine. His hand reached underneath the covers for mine, locking our fingers loosely together and kissing me softly on the lips, in a way which made all of my internal organs spasm.

I sighed contentedly and wrapped my arms around him as he pulled me closer, so that our noses were touching, and he rubbed the tips together. I gave a gentle laugh and nuzzled myself into the crook of his bare shoulder, closing my eyes again.

“It’s eleven-thirty,” I heard him sigh, after quite some time.

I kissed his neck gently and withdrew myself from him, both groaning longingly and sitting up. His hair was as scruffy as I’m sure mine was, but he looked so adorable that I couldn’t stop smiling at him.

He rubbed his hands across his face and through his hair, serving only to mess it up more, and I gazed down at his striped bedsheets, picking aimlessly at the thin cover.

“We should probably get up,” he sighed, but allowed himself to fall back onto his pillow anyway. He then made another low grown.

Reluctantly, I nodded and hopped out of his bed, no longer really feeling too self-conscious about the amount of flesh on show. It seemed that Gerard liked me even if my legs were a little wobbly and my second toe was longer than my big toe and my hair looked stupid in the mornings.

“You look really good in my underwear,” I heard him say from behind me as I was stretching into the mirror, as if to confirm these thoughts. I turned to smile at him and he was grinning manically. He then got to his feet, and made his way over to me, snaking his arms around my waist and bending slightly to rest his chin on my shoulder. I smiled at him through the mirror. “We look good together,” he observed, kissing me softly just below the ear.

He was right. Looking at the reflection of the two of us, we looked like normal, happy kids. We were both damaged, in different ways, but as it were we could have been any other teenage couple, with matching grins and bed-hair and a warm embrace.

I liked the thought of being a normal, happy teenage couple, and Gerard must have thought the same. “So,” he said quietly, still meeting my eyes in the reflection of the mirror. “Are we like...doing this?”

I nodded, and we both grinned and turned to each other and shared a long, soft kiss.

Yep, life was good.

For now.



She knew. And I knew she knew. And I knew that Gerard knew that she knew, and I knew that Gerard knew that I knew she knew. We were all quite aware of the situation.

Of course, Donna was loving it. Making us squirm as she beamed a sunny smile at the two of us from across the table. She was humming. I couldn’t quite tell what she was humming, but it was damn catchy, whatever it was. I knew that I’d have that same tune stuck in my head all day.

“So,” she finally spoke, taking a sip of her coffee, “you two.”

I looked up at her sheepishly through my fringe. It was so obvious what had happened. We had both retired to Gerard’s bedroom a little after 8pm, and not returned for 15 hours. My car was still parked outside the house, and I was still dressed in her son’s boxers and T-shirt. We were eighteen and reckless and both mentally damaged. She’d be an idiot, quite frankly, if she thought nothing was amiss between us.

She seemed to be loving it though, smacking her lips together inquisitively and trying (failing) to mask the grin on her face. Oh yeah, she loved making us feel awkward.

Gerard cleared his throat and his fingers laced themselves with mine beneath the table. He was supporting me, silently apologising for his mother’s inquisition. “Yeah,” he replied with a faint smile, bringing up our hands so that she could see them. “Us two.” He then frowned a little. “How did you know?”

Donna gave an abrupt laugh, chuckling like a mother hen. “I knew before either of you did,” she giggled, getting to her feet and grabbing her coffee cup as she exited the room. “Have a good day, kids!” With this, she was gone, leaving Gerard and I alone at the kitchen table, sneaking amused glances at each other as we finished off our toast, our hands still entwined.

Of course, I’ve had boyfriends before. At one point, I even thought I was in love before. But now, I realise that this was not so. Sure, I liked Nick. He gave me butterflies in my stomach when he kissed me, and he made me feel good about myself. He used to tell me I was beautiful and perfect. I even lost my virginity to Nick, and I can’t say I regret it, really. He was a good guy, and a good boyfriend.

It’s just a shame he couldn’t stick around to be there for me when I needed him. Just like everybody else.

I guess people never really know how to react to death when it doesn’t directly affect them. I guess nobody could see that I didn’t want space or time to grieve. I just wanted to know that somebody cared about me, enough to wrap a supportive arm around me when I broke down in hysterical tears, or enough to sit and talk to me about how I was feeling, or enough just to place a sympathetic hand on my shoulder and tell me that everything would be okay.

I don’t think I was asking for too much. But instead of any of this, all I got was alienation. Kids are stupid, and when they don’t know what to do, they just do nothing. And that was the worst thing they could have done.

I really thought Nick was different. For some reason, I honestly believed that he would help me pull through all of it. We were together for almost a whole year. Everybody envied me for having the “perfect boyfriend.” He was kind, and he was good-looking, and he made me laugh, and I felt so happy in his arms that I thought I could never be as happy ever again.

We were prom king and queen in our junior year, just two short weeks before it all fell apart.

It’s funny how things turn out.

Looking back, I can see that I was probably never in love with Nick. Because I never used to get that rollercoaster feeling in my stomach when I looked at him. And I never just wanted to watch him sleep. And we never really shared anything other than bodily fluids and cheap plastic crowns. We never shared anything that mattered, like a dark secret or a favourite song or a moment of eye contact that made the world and everything in it just stop, for a little while.

But I thought it was highly plausible that I was in love with Gerard.

“When you’re in love, you just know,” my father always used to say, as he gazed adoringly over at my mother, across the breakfast table. And I would always laugh and roll my eyes and call them both losers. But now, I get it.

Apparently, I am growing up. Because all of these words of wisdom my parents used to dish out are finally starting to make sense. I just wish that they could be around to see it.

“Elise?”

His voice brought me crashing back down to earth as I realised that I had been staring at the steering wheel for a long time. Slowly, I lifted my head back up to face him, smiling apologetically.

“Are you okay?”

I gave him a nod, and quickly got out of the car, squinting narrowly at the gravel beneath my feet before allowing myself to look up at the rusty iron gates that stood before us.

Death is the last of life’s true mysteries. As humans, we have triumphed over everything else. We have harnessed electricity, defined the laws of gravity, landed on the moon. We know why thunderstorms happen, and why apples fall from trees, and where our place is in the universe. We have mastered the very art of invention, from antibiotics to toaster strudels to wood-free paper. We are at our scientific peak, having a deep need to logically and empirically explain everything around us, and now there is but one tiny mystery that we have yet to solve; we want to hold the very secrets to life itself.

Because we know what it means to die, objectively speaking. We know that, to die, our hearts cease to pump the blood around our bodies. We know that our brains can die long before the outer shell of us. We know that without the constant supply of oxygen to our vital organs, we can no longer be. And we know how much it hurts, when somebody that you love surrenders to death.

We know all about the process of dying. What remains elusive to us is what will happen to us after death. Of course, every faith in the world has its own opinion. Some believe in Heaven and Hell, some believe in reincarnation, some believe in the afterlife. None of these theories have ever fully satisfied me. They seem far too romanticised; too far-fetched and complicated. Sometimes I think that maybe there is nothing else. Maybe we just die, and that is that. But I can never forget the words of my middle-school physics teacher, Mr. Tees.

Energy cannot be destroyed.

I remember Mr. Tees telling me this, when I was only twelve years old. Energy can only be transformed into other forms of energy. This concept baffled me when I was younger. Energy cannot be destroyed. It seemed impossible at the time; a deluded rambling from an old eccentric. Anything that can be created can surely be destroyed. And we create energy all the time, don’t we? We pull back a rubber band and there is elastic potential energy. We flick a switch and there is light energy, illuminating the whole room for all to see. We open our mouths and produce sound energy, or at least most of us do. So why can’t we destroy energy? Why can’t we just put the rubber band down and flick the switch off and take back the words we speak? If energy can only be created, surely the whole world is overfilled with it. Surely we have far too much energy around us.

And if energy really cannot be destroyed, then what happens to our energy when we die?

Twenty one grams: the weight of the human soul.

This was another of Mr. Tee’s claims, which had seemed ludicrous at the time but grew to sound more and more plausible. When a person dies, when the light behind their eyes is extinguished, their body loses twenty one grams. There is no clear-cut explanation for this phenomenon. Scientists say that it can be attributed to many things; gas and fluids escaping the body, and so on, but we really don’t know for sure. These people just want to explain everything, and so they hypothesise, but sometimes there are no explanations. Sometimes things just happen, and dead bodies weigh twenty one grams less than live bodies, and nobody really knows why.

So if energy cannot be destroyed, and the body loses twenty one grams after death, unaccounted for, which we can assume to be the soul, then where does the soul go?

It’s hard not to think about death when you are surrounded by it. I took a deep breath and pulled Gerard’s hoodie tighter around my frame as the icy breeze nipped at me, rippling the fabric against my body. Soon I felt Gerard’s arms wrap around my waist and I closed my eyes, already overwhelmed by the thought of crossing the threshold into the cemetery.

“I’m right here, Elise,” he whispered softly into my ear, making me shiver all the way down my spine. “Don’t ever forget that.”