Crooked Halos

“Now, as I was saying. The entire Romanov family were… what is it, Pete?”

“Why are we doing this?”

“Because it’s on the curriculum.” Ms. Smith sighs. “Now, Mr. Wentz, if you would kindly turn to the correct page in the correct textbook because we are not having a biology lesson.”

“But why do we need to learn about dead people?”

“Because we’re going to end up the same way as them.” Gabe lets out and almost manic giggle.

“Mr. Saporta, sit down! No, Mr. Leto, you may not go to the toilet! Mr. Urie, please stop trying to pass notes to Mr. Ross.”

Ryan immediately turns around to look at Brendon who looks so red-faced he’s either going to find the hole Pete crawled out of and die or his head is going to explode.

“Now, can we please settle down, and focus on page 69 of our textbooks and apply ourselves to our essays on what happened to the Romanov family.”

“They died, big fucking deal.” Pete mutters and Ms. Smith snaps.

“Mr. Wentz, outside, now! I will not have that sort of language in this classroom!”

Pete’s foot manages to connect with my chair on the way out, just like my foot connects with his ankle.

He stumbles, cursing loudly.

She ignores it, not even blinking as he flips me off, limping heroically out the classroom and into the hallway, letting the door bang shut behind him.

I return to the monotonous task of staring out the window.

It only takes two minutes before Gabe realises what the rest of us realised at the beginning of the lesson.

“Ohmigod!” He squeaks and pushes his textbook away from him, onto the floor and pointing at Ms. Smith accusingly. “You sick, perverted person!”

She closes her eyes, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm herself down. “What is it?”

“Page 69! Eww…”

More than one person starts laughing, Ryan just looks like he wants to dive, head-first out the window.

Ms. Smith looks mortified.

***

It’s a bit like the battle of general asshole-ish-ness in here, the rest of us watching in shock and mild horror.

We’ve seen worse, but nothing recently.

Patrick’s got blood flowing from his nose and he sits on the bed next to wiL who’s trying (failing) to stop the blood coming, pinching the top of his nose and tilting his head back slightly.

“You can’t just fucking hit him!”

Yup, it would be Davey who stands up against Gerard. He’s the only one who’s dumb enough to stand up for someone who won’t talk. If it had been Jade, then I could understand Davey leaping to his defence, but Patrick… I mean, what the fuck?

Gerard just lets out a low growl from the back of his throat, sounding a bit like a pissy cat and he punches one of the walls, leaning against it, breathing heavily through his nose, brown eyes flashing with anger.

“You just fucking hit him!” Davey shouts and Gerard wheels on the spot, his normally elegant face distorted with anger.

Ryan whimpers from next to Brendon… they were talking prior to Gerard walking in, knocking the shit out of Patrick and starting to pace the room.

“If you’d just fuck off…”

I’m surprised all this shouting hasn’t attracted the warden’s attention already… oh wait, they don’t give a shit, sorry, my mistake.

“If you’d take your dick out your boyfriends ass and stop acting like a fucking prick already-”

Gerards fists fly and there’s more blood.

Blood on the floor, on the wall next to Davey and all down Davey’s school shirt.

Oops.

Poor little Ryan is sheet-white and looks so shocked, the rest of us watch with the look that says ‘he deserved it’.

Even Brendon although of the main group, he’s the only one whose face sports even an ounce of sympathy.

“Just fuck off!” Gerard screams, his voice crackling between pitches, making him sound insane, demonic almost as he storms out.

There’s silence in the room, everyone listening to the noises outside, barely daring to breathe as Gerard apparently pushes someone over and carries on walking.

“What the hell happened?” Kyla appears in the doorway.

“Just a little argument, go take care of your boyfriend, Iero.” Shannon doesn’t even look up from his game of solitaire as Frankie stalks out in the general direction of Gerard.

Jade pulls out a wad of tissues from the pocket of his jeans, handing them to Davey as the raven-haired boy collapses beside him.

Kyla crosses the room in mere moments, sitting next to wiL, helping to stop the blood flowing from Patrick’s nose and gently prodding him for information while Jade occupies himself trying to mop up his boyfriend.

Two minutes later and Patrick’s nose has stopped spouting the pretty little crimson fountain (such a shame) and Kyla and wiL have disappeared off somewhere, possibly to fuck, most likely just to talk… they’ve been doing a lot of that recently. If I didn’t know that they’re both too dumb to do shit, I’d think they were plotting something.

As it is, I highly doubt it.

Ryan pulls a face and, with much difficulty, Brendon drags his eyes away from where Jade and Davey are locked at the lips and smiles carefully at Ryan.

“Do you wanna go somewhere?”

Ryan nods, seemingly grateful for the distraction and slips off his bed, walking close to Brendon.

Pete wolf whistles cruelly but immediately has Gabe on top of him, pinning him with his body and hands across his mouth.

“Have fun guys.” Gabe winks at the pair, laughing as Pete tries to shift his weight. Pete might be strong, but Gabe’s stronger by quite a long way… probably due to all the excess running around he does.

A glance over at Patrick proves that, indeed, he is buried away in a book again.

I myself start to feel more than slightly disturbed watching Jade and Davey, even though I have seen and done much worse myself, it’s still not something I would opt to see. I wouldn’t, however, mind doing a bit of that myself right now…

I tear my gaze away and try to see what Jared’s writing on the end of my bunk instead. I pick out something about dying and I love you and it’s not worth it any more but I get bored easily so I give up trying to read ‘inconspicuously’ from upside down.

“I’m going outside, guys.” I say, standing up.

No one even so much as looks away from what they’re doing. Well, I guess it’s good to know you’re loved.

Walking down the corridor and there’s blood splattered across one of the walls, a single bloody handprint – it looks kinda artistic in a sickening way, but I ignore it. One of the newbies was probably crossing the line again; the wardens probably sorted the little bastard out. Nothing new, happened to the best of us.

Outside the air is cold and the sky is dark, it feels so good after so long inside.

We don’t usually come outside, it’s a nocturnal nature that develops and strengthens with time, a sick addiction to being sick in a way. There are so many rumours flying around as to why we’re here… we must be in here for something, something that links us all together in some way, but no one knows so we just guess.

It has to have something to do with all the tests they used to put us through when we were little, when the school nurse would ask you questions until you went half-crazy and said the first thing that came into your head and she gasped and phoned the headmaster.

They paid our parents off. I know because they might think I’m stupid, but I’m not. Even a five year old understand when two men in business suits offer to clear all your mom and dad’s debts if they sign away ‘the kid’ to the government.

And then they put us in the big black car, with the scary woman in starch white telling you that “it’s okay” and that “you’re going somewhere special”. Apparently at that point Gabe had a panic attack because he thought he was dead and that they were taking him to hell. Poor kid, he was eight when he got taken.

And then we were put in this place – MerryWeather.

It seemed like hell in the first few weeks, all the kids seemed so much bigger, and so many of the bigger kids had scars all over their wrists. Everyone seemed dead, walking around, blindly doing what they were told – one of my first memories of MerryWeather is a warden punching an older boy who was maybe sixteen or seventeen and the boy just let himself fall to the ground. He just lay there, his nose spurting blood all over the place and his jaw hanging off at an odd angle and he just let himself get kicked half to death and made no move to defend himself.

It was a hard lesson, but it was one that had to be learnt.

“What are you doing out?” A voice snaps from behind me and I wheel around, catching a hard, angry eye with my own before I lower my glance to the floor, muttering that it’s nothing and shuffling quickly indoors.

You don’t fuck with Gerard and you don’t fuck with the wardens.