The Crumbling Pyramid

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

Ray crossed his fingers, hoping she would pick up this time.

Buzz. Buzz. Bu-

"Hello?"

"Anette!" Ray said brightly.

"Ray?"

"Yeah! Hey, so are you doing anything today?"

"Not really, just dreading school tomorrow. Why?"

"Um, well, I was wondering if you wanted to come to band practice with me. It's only for a few hours at Gerard and Mikey's house."

"I'd love to."

"Okay, I'll come pick you up. Five minutes?"

"Sure."

"Great, bye."

"Bye."

Ray hung up the phone, grabbed his jacket, guitar, notebook, and car keys - his amp was already in the trunk of his car. He walked downstairs, said bye to his mom, jumped in his car, and drove to Anette's house just down the block from him. She was waiting on the porch in a grey pea coat, huddled together on herself to keep warm. She got in the car and they were off to the Way house.

"How'd you get my number?" she asked, blowing on her fingers to get them warmed back up.

"Gerard. I hope that's okay."

"Totally fine as long as you're not going to stalk me."

"Yeah Anette, that was my plan all along," Ray said, laughing.

"Figured as much," she replied, smiling.

It took Ray longer that usual to get there because the roads were icy, and they found Frank and Bob already there. The garage door was closed, but it didn't help much because there was no heating in the garage. Everyone was wearing either long sleeve shirts or coats and gloves.

"We have an audience today," Ray announced as he opened the door with his foot, struggling slightly with all the equipment in his hands. Anette opened the door all the way for him and then followed him inside.

"Oh shit," Gerard said.

"It's just Anette," Frank said to him. "It's not like she's going to shoot us if we suck."

"Not at all. If anything, I'll probably be cheering for you," Anette said, smiling at them.

"I hope so," Gerard muttered. "Uh... the amps are safe to sit on, but other than that, there's not much."

"Thanks," Anette said, and she sat on the one amp that wasn't in use yet. "So, what do you guys do?"

"Besides argue about super heroes?" Frank asked, smirking.

"Shut up Frankie. We just... play. Write songs. Be stupid with our instruments," Gerard replied, tapping at his microphone to make sure it was on and working right. "I guess today we'll be getting outside input on our songs."

"Of course."

Anette was rather impressed by them. They played five songs for her, all original ones, and they sounded pretty good for a high school garage band. They were all good at what they did, and Frank really liked dancing around while he played. He was probably the only that was actually warm.

They finished their last song and Anette clapped as well as she could for being so cold. They stood there panting for a moment before Bob said, "I'm fuckin' cold."

"So am I."

"Me too."

"I'm not."

"Fuck you, Frank."

"Sorry, but that's Gerard's job."

Everyone either rolled their eyes or snorted, and Mikey said, "Let's go inside."

And so there was a furious packing up of equipment and everyone ran inside, suprising Gerard and Mikey's mom. "That was fast," she said.

"That's what she said," Frank said in a voice just under a whisper.

"Hot chocolate?"

"Sounds great, Mom."

"Thanks Mrs. Way."

"Oh, hello there," she said to Anette. "You must be Anette. You were wonderful on stage."

"Yeah, that's me. And thank you," Anette said, blushing.

They all collapsed in the cluttered front room, and Mrs. Way brought them six steaming cups of hot chocolate before disappearing back into the house.

"This shit is awesome," Frank said as he drank his as fast as he could, nearly burning himself.

"Tell it to my mom."

Anette drank the chocolate in silence, trying desperately to warm back up.

"So, what did you think?" Ray asked Anette nervously.

She swallowed her drink and said, "You guys are great. I mean, really great."

Gerard sighed in relief. "Really? 'Cuz this is Bob's like, sixth practice."

"Well, then he's catching on fast."

"I've got it!"

Everyone stopped and looked at Mikey, who was staring at the back of a book. "Guys, I've got it."

"Got what?" Ray asked.

"A band name."

"Tell us!"

"Fuck yeah!"

"That's awesome Mikey!"

"Shut up!" Bob said. "Let the man speak."

"My Chemical Romance," Mikey said.

Everyone sort of mouthed the words to themselves as it sunk in.

"Mikey... that's like, brilliant," Gerard said, the first one to recover.

"Hell yeah!" Frank said, punching Mikey playfully in the arm.

"It fits," Anette said, smiling.

Gerard pulled out the notebook that Anette recognized as the one that they all took turns writing music in, and he wrote "My Chemical Romance," on the cover. "This is awesome," he said, giving his younger brother a hug. "You're amazing. We're never replacing you."

"You'd better not."

They sat in a comfortable silence, drinking and grinning at Mikey and the new band name.

"Am I the only one who got their new schedule?" Anette finally asked, finally warm.

"Nope, I got mine too," said Ray, and everyone else nodded. Soon, there was a massive trade of schedules and what everyone was taking, and Anette beamed when she saw she and Ray still had History, the free period, and now a Chemistry class together where her Graphics class had been, and Mikey was in that too. That made, what, four classes they had together?

“This is so shit, I have to take another semester of gym,” Mikey grumbled.

“Me too,” Anette said, and she smiled a little, but he didn’t return it.

“Yes, we get to keep the free hour,” Ray said brightly.

“I’m excited.”

“Me too.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the living room, talking and laughing and telling jokes. It made school the next day seem like something that would never come.

-

It snowed all the first week of the new semester, meaning that almost everyone was staying on campus and inside for lunch. Frank, Gerard, Mikey and Ray all sat at their normal lunch table. Bob wasn’t there with them that day, but he sometimes ate with them. They didn’t blame him – he was in a completely different social circle after all, and so he felt that he needed to uphold his reputation sometimes.

A few tables away was the jock table, which was home to Andrew, his thug-like friends, and sometimes a handful of cheerleaders, like there were today. And then the table next to them was Chase's table where Anette usually sat with Rachel and Dawn and all her other friends, and sometimes Hailey and Bob sat there when they weren't off by themselves. But today, Ray watched Anette walk right past her boyfriend's table and take a seat between himself and Frank, crossing her legs and smoothing out her skirt.

"Hello," she said smoothly, as if this was an every day occurrence.

"Hey," Gerard said, looking up briefly from his latest drawing. "What brings you here?"

"Nothing much, I just didn't feel like eating with them today," she replied, jerking her head back to Chase's table. Everyone at that table was staring at Anette with looks of various levels of confusion on their faces.

"Not cool enough for them?" Mikey asked a bit snidely, but Anette didn't comment on that.

"Not at all. They're apparently too cool for me."

"What?" Ray asked.

SMACK. "I can't get this damn thing right!"

Gerard had smashed his forehead into the table, dropping his pencil. Frank reached over and rubbed his hand up and down Gerard's back.

"You just need a break, Gee. You've been at that thing for hours."

"Exactly! I can't get it to look the way I want," he mumbled from between his arms.

"I'm sure-"

SPLAT.

Something had flown through the air and landed right in Frank's hair, making it sticky and slimy. Gerard looked up and Frank pulled what turned out to be half a mayo-slathered sandwich off the back of his head. It gave him the appearance of just having someone cum all over his head.

They all turned when they heard a roar of laughter coming from Andrew's table. Andrew himself was bent double, laughing so hard his face was turning red.

"Asshole," Frank muttered, accepting the napkin Ray handed him and started wiping off his hair as best he could. Mikey started to stand, but Gerard shook his head.

"Mikey, it's not worth it. At all."

"He just threw shit at Frank!"

"Hey Iero, just finish having faggot sex?" Andrew called from across the room, and his table erupted in another wave of laughter. Tables around them were starting to laugh, too.

Ray had to hold Mikey down this time, but he realized too late that Mikey wasn't who he should have been worried about.

"Anette, get back here!" Gerard hissed, but she was already halfway to Andrew's table. Everyone but the people at his table fell silent, and they all watched Anette with anticipation.

"Andrew, you are a sick human being," she said, trying hard not to shout but failing at it, because Ray could even hear the quaver of anger in her voice.

"Anette, stop," Gerard groaned, but she of course couldn't hear him.

"This isn't a zoo, it's a cafeteria."

"Yeah? Those fuckers look like they belong in cages to me."

"Andrew, how about you just fess up and tell everyone that you're really only trying to hide the fact that you like it up the ass yourself?"

Everyone gasped. Ray had never heard Anette cuss before, let alone say anything that rude to anyone.

Andrew stood up, his face contorted in anger. "Shut the fuck up, you little-"

But before he could finish his sentence, Anette picked up the pudding cup of one of Andrew's tablemates and threw it all over his face.

It only took a few seconds for everyone to figure out what had happened, and they gasped, except for the people at Andrew's table, who looked like maybe they were too afraid to do anything.

"Get. Her," Andrew growled, and he threw someone's pasta at Anette as hard as he could.

It seemed like everyone in the cafeteria was throwing food at Anette. Ray ran through the flying food, getting bits of just about everything caught up in his wild curls. He grabbed her and started pulling her towards the exit, much to her protest.

"NO RAY, I'M GONNA KILL HIM!" she screamed.

"WE HAVE TO GET OUT!" Ray yelled back.

Mikey and Frank had taken it upon themselves to grab their lunches and went after Andrew, who was still trying to get at Anette. They landed half a salad covered in dressing in his face, and when they ran out of food, they both tackled Andrew to the ground, punching and kicking every bit of him they could, yelling things about them being tired of his shit and that it was about damn time. But then some of Andrew's friends joined in, and soon there was a brawl going on in the lunchroom among the chaos of the food fight.

Only Gerard had not participated. He had instead grabbed his friend's things and shoved them under the table in hopes to protect them from possible food-related damage, and then he tried to stay out of the way.

A shrill whistle pierced the air and almost everything stopped. Coach Jordan was looking at everyone, her whistle just inches from her lips and her face an expression of shock and anger.

"No one is leaving until Principal Morrison gets here," she shouted, and everyone looked around in shock, as if they had been in a trance. Only the guys fighting, Anette, and Ray still moved. Coach Jordan moved over to the fight and blew her whistle again, louder this time.

"Break it up!" she yelled, pulling boys off each other. Mikey and Frank helped each other up, panting and covered in already-developing bruises and some blood. Andrew was lying on the floor, groaning in pain. He had been on the bottom of the pile to begin with, and from the looks of it, had a broken nose. Coach Jordan helped him up, glaring at everyone else, especially Mikey and Frank.

"None of you are going to move until the principal gets here," she threatened again, and then she escorted Andrew out of the cafeteria.

Principal Morrison walked in just a few moments later. She didn't seem startled by the mess, but instead took a deep sigh and said, "Alright, who started it?"

Everyone in the hall but Gerard pointed at the group that was Anette, Ray, Mikey and Frank. Morrison just beckoned them with her finger, and they followed her towards the door.

"The rest of you will clean this mess up. It will be spotless before you leave for your next class," she said, making a motion to the janitor who had just come in to keep watch over everyone. "You four will come with me now," she said in a lower voice, and they followed her out and down the hall to the administrator offices.

Lots of different thoughts ran through Ray's mind as they followed the principal to the waiting room outside her office. They weren't allowed to sit in the chairs because of their varying degrees of filthiness, so they sat on a wooden bench, squeezing together to make enough room for all of them. What would their punishment be? Would Anette and himself get in trouble for starting it, even though they actually hadn't? Would Mikey and Frank get suspended, or maybe even expelled? Would Andrew get punished at all even, and what kind of story was he going to make up when Morrison talked to him?

"I will speak to all of you separately. Iero, you're first," she said, and Frank got up and followed her into her office. The secretaries gave the remaining three of the group looks of confusion and disgust.

Frank seemed to be in there for forever. Ray tried to think about music to distract him, moving his fingers along like he was holding his guitar right there, but it didn't do anything to keep down the nerves. He glanced at the other two - Mikey was stony-faced, and Anette looked extremely upset. But neither of them said anything, so Ray didn't either.

Finally, Frank came out and Mikey was called in. Frank looked really, really pissed, more pissed than Ray had ever seen him, but he, too, didn't say anything.

The second the door closed, Ray heard a sniff. He glanced back over to see a few tears running down Anette's face. He didn't know quite what to do, but he didn't really think her tears were that off-base. Wiping them off would be inappropriate, so instead he set his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. This only made more tears run, but she nodded her head. Then he removed his hand and they sat unmoving once again.

"Baker," the principal said, and Anette's face went whiter than it already was as she stood. Mikey gave her a nod before he sat down and she went in, looking completely terrified.

"Hope Gee doesn't get dragged into this," Mikey muttered softly enough so only Ray could hear him.

"Me too. Think he will?"

"Maybe. She's been looking through our records."

Ray gulped. Their records weren't spotless, that was for sure.

Anette was in there for longer than Frank had been, almost to the point where Ray was beginning to suspect that Principal Morrison was some sort of monster and had eaten her. But then the door opened and Anette walked out. Ray stood, and without either of them really thinking about it, they embraced in a brief hug before he walked into the principal's office.

It wasn't like this was the first time he had been here, nor Frank or Mikey's, neither. The four of them had landed here Ray's sophomore year after they decided to put bugs in all of the shampoo dispensers in the boy's locker room, in revenge for the football team locking all of them inside said locker room, which got them in trouble with a lot of different people. And then Mikey and Gerard ditched every now and then, so there was that. But Ray still didn't like it in the room - it gave him the creeps.

"Sit down, Ray," Morrison said, and Ray sat in the same chair that everyone else had been sitting in apparently, because it had smears of food on it. "Ray, I know you're a good kid. But so was Miss Baker. I never would have expected such an outburst from a student like her."

"It wasn't her fault though," Ray said without even thinking about it.

Morrison raised her eyebrows, clearly not believing Ray. “Oh? What makes you say that?”

“Well, she didn’t,” Ray said, trying to choose his words carefully now. “Andrew Callhart did.”

“The same boy that’s in the nurse’s office with a broken nose?”

“Yeah,” Ray replied slowly. “He threw a sandwich at Frank.”

Morrison nodded slowly as one might do with a small child who was telling a lie and trying to cover it up. “So, just because Mr. Callhart threw a sandwich, Miss Baker felt it appropriate to retaliate with a food fight, and Mr. Way and Mr. Iero by starting a fist fight?”

Ray swallowed. He knew what she was trying to do, and he had to try and not let her do it. “There weren’t any teachers around, so what were we supposed to do?”

“Get one,” Morrison offered, trying very hard not to sneer at Ray. “Or perhaps ask him to stop.”

“Anette did ask him to stop,” Ray said, having trouble keeping his voice even. “But he wouldn’t.”

Morrison was quiet for a minute as she examined something on her desk. “Ray, disorder happens when people try to take the rules and laws into their own hands. I will not tolerate disorder at my school.”

Ray wanted to point out that Andrew had accosted them several times in the past, most notable at the movie theater and at Homecoming, but he said nothing.

“I will be speaking to Mr. Callhart and then I will determine your punishments,” she said, standing up and showing Ray to the door. Ray opened his mouth to protest, but he was already being escorted out of the office and Andrew was called in. He had a large bruise on his face along with some dried blood, and his nose was at a slightly funny angel, but he still smirked triumphantly as he passed Ray.

“Now Andrew, I want you to tell me exactly what happened…” was the last thing he heard before the office door snapped shut once again. Ray resumed his place on the bench next to Anette, who was still crying silently.

After checking around to make sure no one else was within earshot, Mikey muttered, “This is such shit. We all know Andrew’s gonna make up some sob-story, just like he always does.”

“Yeah,” Frank agreed quietly. “And it doesn’t help that Morrison’s his aunt.”

“What?!”

“You heard me,” he said grimly. “I found out a couple months ago.”

“We’re so fucked,” Ray groaned, and Anette started shaking. “You’ll probably be fine though Anette,” he said quickly. “I mean, you’ve got a clean record.”

“You’re funny, Ray,” she said darkly, shakily. “Andrew’s been probably waiting for this for ages. He’ll probably even say I conceived the whole thing – put stuff in Frank’s hair, told him and Mikey to jump Andrew when the food fight started. My mom is going to kill me when she finds out.”

“Won’t she believe you over that old bitch?” Frank asked, jerking his head to the office door.

“Probably not,” Anette replied miserably.

“Well, you probably won’t get in that much trouble. Like, detention at the most,” Mikey said. “It’s me and Frank that’ll probably get suspended.”

“And he won’t even get so much as a slap on the wrist,” said Frank bitterly.

“Alright, come inside, all of you,” Morrison said, poking her head out the door. The four of them exchanged looks of oh-shit-here-we-go and what’s-gonna-happen? before they went inside.

Andrew was putting on a very good sniffling act, though everyone but Morrison seemed to know immediately it was fake. She motioned for them to take a seat, but no one did. Besides, there weren’t enough chairs.

“I’m very disappointed in all four of you,” she said with her talking-to-a-small-child attitude. “I’ve decided however, that you will only be suspended for the remainder of the week.”

Four jaws dropped and one smirked – three guesses who. “This is much better than what the rules say for fighting, which is expulsion,” she went on, “but Mr. Callhart here felt it was a heat-of-the-moment situation, and has also agreed to not press charges as long as you apologize for your actions.”

Ray knew instantly that Frank and Mikey would rather be expelled or killed or anything else than apologize to someone who didn’t deserve it and when they didn’t mean it.

“Well?”

“Sorry,” Frank finally said through lips that made shapes like he had swallowed poison. “Andrew,” he added as an afterthought.

“For what?” Principal Morrison asked.

“For… breaking your nose,” said Mikey, equally as unwillingly.

“It’s—it’s alright,” Andrew said, pretending to still be upset.

“Thank you,” Morrison said. “You’ll wait outside for your parents, whom I will call now to come pick you up.”

And they were back outside the office, the group of four on their bench, Andrew in a comfy chair across the waiting room from them, and he was smirking up a storm. When no one but them was listening, he whispered, “Looks like I just won the battle, fuckers.”