If I Knew Who You Were

“Mikey?” I hissed into the darkness of my baby brother’s room. Okay, so the reality of it was that Mikey wasn’t a baby any more, but he would always be my baby brother. “Mikey?” I asked again, a little louder, hope in my voice as I practically prayed that Mikey wasn’t spending the night at Alicia’s. Even more so I hoped that Alicia wasn't spending the night here.

I looked into the darkness, not even being able to make out any shapes due to the large and thick curtains that hung at the window, not allowing even the smallest pin prick of light to flicker through. With a swift motion of the hand, I flicked on the light switch causing me to wince away from the too bright light after being in such darkness, and caused a lump under some bed covers to groan.

“Alicia,” Mikey whined. “Five more minutes,”

I chuckled and walked over to my brother. “Alicia’s not here,”

Mikey jumped and turned over, opening one eye and looking back at me, before looking over at the clock. “Shit. Gee, it’s 2am. What’re you doing in here?”

“I didn’t really want to sleep alone,” I said, biting his lip at the stupidity.

“You’re twenty-one,” Mikey stated.

“Really? I’d have never known how old I was if it weren’t for you,” I laughed back sarcastically. “Please Mikey. I know it’s a little weird now, but I really need to be near someone who doesn’t hate me,”

“Who hates you?”

“Like everyone,” I sighed, climbing in beside him. “Frank hates me fore accusing him of stealing money. Linda hates me for accusing Frank. Matt hates me because I was all weird with him today, plus his house and his Dad are pretty freaky and I confronted him about that. Mum and Dad obviously hate me because they’re never around. You’re the only person I’ve got,”

“What about Lilly?”

“Shit. I forgot about her,”

Mikey frowned slightly. “You’re letting all this stuff with Matt and Frank get in your way too much. Lilly is your best friend, even more so than me, so why don’t you spend time with her anymore,”

“Because she’s being all weird with me,”

“Of course you know why that is,” I just started blankly at him and his face contorted into one of shock. “You don’t?” I shook my head and waited for Mikey to speak once more. “She loves you Gerard,”

“I know, I love her too,”

“No, I mean she loves you. She wants to be with you as like...boyfriend and girlfriend or something like that,”

I raised my eyebrows and was about to burst out laughing and tell him how wrong his was, when a conversation popped into my head;

"What's up?" I had said. It was when we were planning on going to that college party where I ended up meeting Matt.

"Nothing," She’d answered.

"Lilly-" I started, about to lecture her about how she can tell me anything in the world.

"Okay, it's just...have you even wanted someone that you can't have?"

"Hello, I've been waiting for Frank for eight months," I’d laughed. Little did I know that I’d be seeing him again only the next day.

"That's not what I mean. I mean like; if you were friends with this really great guy...and you started to fall for him, but he was straight. You know what I mean?"

"That's never happened to me because I won't let myself fall for straight guys," I said, and paused. "Oh my god...Lilly, are you a lesbian?" I asked, looking at her quickly.

"No!" She shot back. "I mean, I don't have a problem with them it's just, I'm not one of them,"

"Then what is this about?" I started. She opened her mouth to speak and glanced up at me, a blush sliding across her face. "Oh my god, you love a gay guy don't you!"

"Yeah," she said, looking at the floor.

"Who is he? Is he hot?"

"Yeah, he is hot," she sighed again.

"Well. Who is he? Maybe I can help you straighten him out,"

"I don't think you could...”

“How long have you known for?” I asked, looking at Mikey with big, worried eyes.

“Since forever, she practically oozes love for you,”

“Ugh! She tried to tell me! But I didn’t read that much into it!” I said, putting my face into my hands.

Mikey just gave me a sympathetic look before leaning over me and hitting the light switch on the wall by his bed. He was lazy and sometimes couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to turn the light out, but couldn’t sleep with it on, so in the end Dad caved and got a light switch installed by his bed.

I rolled over and faced away from him, staring at the space where I should be seeing a pale green color of the wall, but instead saw pitch darkness.

Darkness means that you can’t look around, and see things that can distract you from your thoughts. That means it gives you time to think, which is the one thing I didn’t really want to be doing right now, I just wanted to erase the thoughts from my mind and dream about the good things. Dream about the times before Matt, before Frank and heck, even before Lilly.

I know I’ve said it before, but it really should be repeated. I just want to be a child again.