To Love/Hate the Spotlight

Holy shit, right! An update! I can not say sorry enough. This absence has been... ridiculous yet at the same time fulfilling in its own right. I got lost in the pairing that is Batman and Joker. Nothing like slash to get the hetero juices reflowing!
Anyway, this chapter is not my best, but your comments urged me to get my ass in gear and post something, anything. Now at the moment I'm too eager to get this up to take my time and add a brief summary of the events thus far-- yes, I'm an asshole. So if you're confused, I don't blame you, I had to reread just to know what the hell was going on. So without further ado, the long awaited -meh- chapter.
Can you also guess that I absolutely love 21st Century Breakdown?

"Do as I say, not as I do because the shit's so deep you can't run away.
I beg to differ on the contrary;
agree with every word that you say..."

How it came to it -I don't know- but I strolled through a nice neighborhood walking alongside a white picket fence and dragging a stick across its perfectly spaced posts.

I wouldn't mind growing up here. This looks like an aspiring housewife's wet dream.

The clicking din did a world of good for my streaming consciousness. Exceedingly sunny; I was a ghost drifting down the street. It wasn't my intention to get lost. It just sorta happened.

Little kids ran around sprinklers and charged at slip 'n slides in their front yards. Their screaming and giggling matched the typical summer atmosphere. The growling of lawn mowers made me ache for school summer vacations.

"Ah... to be young." Life suddenly felt too long.

"Dead at eighteen----boy, do I not feel sorry for you."

"Well, no one ever asked you now did they?"

Eventually my drumming stick ran out of fence. I swung it once then twice and tossed it behind me. They're only fun for so long. Coincidentally a clang and a yelp sounded simultaneously behind me. I had tossed the stick in the front spokes of some kid's bike. He sat in a heap of twisted chains and pedals, hissing in pain on the asphalt. "What the hell?" he spat, rubbing his split lip. He couldn't be more than my age.

Frozen and speechless, I searched for an apology in my head. "I'm--" short of poetry and much more sincerity. Restraint became in effective. My eyes roamed greedily over his skinned knee, raw and gravel-encrusted palms, blood streaked chin, his mutilated arm--

"All of our most favorite things."

Now don't think terrible of me. I don't know how it could have happened; I had no intention of doing it.

I laughed.
Whooped.
Cackled.
Not enough self control to bring it down to a bloody guffaw.

"The fuck's wrong with you?!"

Stifling giggles, I turned away and ran. His curses chased me down the street. The muscles in my legs pumped and burned, and I could do nothing else but love how my lungs shriveled with the fire of exertion. Perfectly manicured, emerald lawns with the matching two-story streaked past my peripheral, my eyes fixed ahead to a far ahead point of consuming black. I thought my feet didn't carry me as far as they had but when I stumbled over curb, i noticed I was in a completely different part of town.

Fuck downtown, this is the slums!

I looked around at my surroundings. Inflamed cheeks, licks of sweat, greedy for oxygen. Not once did my laughter subside. I only became all the more light-headed. My fingers grappled with the wall of brick beside me as I fought for balance but inevitably slid down to the side walk. Muscles and ligaments screaming in abject horror of my actions.

"What----did I.... I find funny again?" I wheezed with an open-mouthed smile. The sun-soaked dilapidated structures held firm in their own misery and looked upon me in pity: Such a sad, hysterical clown.

My eyes soaked in tears of my unrelenting mirth---slid up and down the street searching for signs of life.

Cars... no one with any sense of purpose would be caught dead around here. It's a wonder I ran from suburbia U.S.A. to depressing outskirts.

Waves of heat and nausea coated my brain. Eye lids heavy with the depleted energy. The shaded brick was soothing against my cheek. Garbage and exhaust stuttering my breathing.

The occasional giggle puncturing the enigmatic silence.

Frank's POV:

"Great. Just fucking great."

"Everything okay?"

"Oh yeah, every thing's fan-fucking-tastic," I spat and fought the urge to whip my cell phone at a wall. The crack and splatter of plastic guts would be beyond therapeutic right now, but I was reluctant to shove it back in my pocket. Why did I bring it along----just to give her attorney a chance to call and bitch about alimony? Why not call mylawyer?

I think it was just to ruin my day. Good job, Jamia. Mission accomplished.

So distracted with the so-called "conversation," I had separated myself from the rest of the guys and marched outside by the buses. Popping two Advil with a tall glass of cool water and laying down for several hours till the show sounded like a hell of a plan. Up ahead the GD guys sauntered towards their own. The dark sunken flesh under their eyes subjected to the harsh stage lighting spelled out a long night driving. Billie Joe appeared to be the worst off: Eyes hardly open as he bumped into everything and everyone with murmured apologies (person or not).

Since the incident with him and Becky, I'd been wary of seeking out either of the two. No one has yet to mention any of it, probably hoping all will eventually be forgotten. I, like the others, didn't seem to have a problem with that plan; touring just started after all. The only person who seemed to resist the idea was Gerard: Still tight-lipped (away from the mic) and constantly brooding. "Why" was quite obvious, considering his past, but this was a situation he shouldn't worry over. We just met these people. Their business -no matter how intriguing and tempting to submerge yourself in- was their own.

"God dammit --- fuck me in the ass!" snarled from across the lot. The door to the GD bus flung open and a furious Billie Joe stomped down the steps. Cussing as he walked, he made it yards away. My problems now appeared a lot less interesting, so I carefully approached Mike and Tre hanging around the doorway watching their ranting band mate.

"Hey..." Mike greeted from his spot on the steps. Tre, lingering on the border, didn't look the least bit perturbed.

"How's it going?" Hands shoved in my pockets, I shot a quick glance past Tre in the darkness of the bus, hoping to catch a glimpse of Becky and ask how she was today. That didn't seem likely. "Everything, um... okay?" Looking at the raven-haired distraction groping his pockets for something highlighted the stupidity of my question.

Mike sighed with a defeated grin, rubbing his cheeks with a loose fist. His blue eyes monitoring Billie Joe and -shaking his head- returned back to me. "He--well... depends on how you look at it." He continued on at first sign of my confusion, "Becky's gone off somewhere. She didn't leave leave, just... went out."

"Then why is he...?"

Three sets of eyes dared to look upon the singer/guitarist mumbling obscenities and cherishing a lit cancer stick. A part of me prayed he wouldn't notice my inquiries. The dude was fucking scary in a rage.

"I don't understand what's wrong with that. What is she-- twenty-two, twenty-three years-old?"

"Right," the blond scoffed. "She's a well-rounded adult." His mocking tone triggered an itching in my brain.

It only worsened more when Tre added, "She's Dracula's bride, who knows how old she is: Eighteen or a hundred two and everywhere in between..."

"Wha..." Right, the fangs. To be honest their pretty forgettable compared to everything else about her. Yet there was something else about the way Mike smacked Tre in the side at the tail end of his sentence. Was there something I'm missing? After that phone call though... fuck it. I don't have the energy.

"I'll um----see you guys later then." I slid away from their low bickering and shot a glance at Billie Joe -silent, brooding, and randomly lashing out by kicking the asphalt- and more or less ran to my bus.

So many secrets.
I am going to figure this out.

Back to My POV:

Humid summer air gradually chilled to goose bump shivers. The high in the sky sun had sunk down behind the surrounding buildings minutes ago. Maybe I should have grabbed a jacket? Grabbed a jacket? The fuck am I thinking? I didn't plan for this. I didn't plan on wandering for god knows how long -my ears pricked and eyes open for flowing population- and shuddering from the bicyclist... uh, incident. What the hell came over me, huh? I trip the guy up and couldn't even say I was sorry? Just took a gander of the damage and ran off like a banshee shrieking at the top of her lungs? What- what is wrong with me?

No one else saw, right ---- no one I know at least? It didn't happen then. Yep, just file it under the many few and far between (increasingly frequent lately) episodes where it's no one else's business but my own. All mine. I'm the only one that needs to know; not Billie, not Mike, or Mom, or the shrink they'll most definitely send me to if anyone were to find out what goes on up here--- the book! Fuck, I gotta burn the fucking book. It has everything in there.

"But Blow Job stole it and sent it off, didn't he? Trying to humiliate you by making sure everyone knows: About Me, about Us... Forget about shrinks, they'll lock you up... again."

Not true and you know it. Billie doesn't know. He hadn't read that far. I'm safe there. And I'm not going back to hospital food and the pill-popping and itchy beds and mind-numbing therapy-- nope, nope, nope, no more, not for me, never again. I'm just going to have to be more careful with myself. I can do that, been at it for years. New game plan: 1)Get my ass back to the venue; 2)Kiss ass till my lips are raw and bleeding; 3) Call and cancel that whole book mess --- burn all evidence; 4) Keep myself sane; 5) Deal with family (with little blood as possible); and 6) Breeze through this tour like the wife Billie deserves.

That, I can do.

Giddiness refreshed with new and simple plan of attack, I prowled the pavement with a new fervor, crossing into something much like a town square. People! Dirty, loud, nostril-whistling, glorious people! Families, couples, strays strewn up and down -I squinted at the mounted sign on the light post- go figure, Main Street. They shopped and strolled and ate in outdoor cafes. All this determination to find someone and ask for directions, and now the time was finally here and my throat swelled with the notion. An unnatural fear of repeating today's earlier outburst of hysterical emotion muted me.

Great, fucking helpless.

"Wait, stop. Over there, do you see them?"

Where, who?

My hi-tops planted themselves firmly in the middle of the side walk; inconvenienced pedestrians shooting glares and some having the testicular fortitude to make a comment or two. I didn't care though, too busy searching for what my eyes saw but I didn't really see.

"There, at the bus stop down: MCR shirts."

Yep, true to the voice in my head's word, a pack of darkly dressed teens stood waiting and chatting at the corner across the street. A relieved smile flitted across my red-smeared lips. They had to be going to the concert! It stayed until -fuck- the bus was pulling up.

Like a bat out of hell, I scrambled into action: Dashing across the street, dodging cars and motor bikes, ignoring the blaring horns and shouted curses, pumping my legs till they carried me to a stuttered stop at the bus steps. The pudgy driver looked down at me in the fluorescent bus cabin glow: Hair a knot, breathing heavily, black-rimmed eyes drooped and glaring. He sneered and barked, "In or out?"

Clamping my mouth shut as my nostrils sucked in air, I wobbly climbed up the steps; the folding door banged shut at my heels. The haunting dread of once upon a time of getting on a school bus: Those eyes watching, cold and scrutinizing new arrivals set my nerves on edge. I didn't dare look, instead shuffled forward with my vision consuming the dirty rubber-lined flooring.

Not more than two baby steps until a thick arm shot out and blocked my path. Stunned slightly, my eyes wearily followed the retreating limb and its obnoxious tapping on the cash box. "Buck fifty."

Automatically my hand reached behind me to my back pocket where I usually kept my wallet, but I only grabbed a handful of ass.

Fuck.

"There a problem?"

I could just see my blasted Velcro wallet laying forgotten on the counter; that dollar and two quarters that are surely in there. I have absolutely nothing with me except the clothes on my back. Shit.

Laughter rattled like a dying wheeze inside my skull. Hell, gazing at that fat stern face and knowing I didn't have a dime on me, I wanted to laugh too.

"You deaf?" he spat, well within his middle-aged right to be pissed at still being only a public transportation operator and dealing with this bullshit. "I got other rounds to make."

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. God damn. Fuck. "... um, yeah about that--"

"Not payin'-- get off." The door clanged open.

I still jumped at the sound, though I knew it was coming. Tears work, right? "No, no, please. I have the money -I do-" An angry snort plowed through his pockmarked nose. A hot spike of rage needled the back of my eyes. Fists clenching. "I do. I promise I will pay it."

"Don't take promises. Tough shit, now get off my bus." He had the audacity to physically push my arm. The fat slug.

"The fuck?!" I ripped the offending limb away from me and maybe jumped a foot farther away from the door. Venom surged and replaced the blood in my veins -a nagging yet welcomed burn- as bared teeth made me look more animal than human. This time I could sense the change more easily, and this time I would do nothing to prevent it. "Who the fuck do you think you-"

"Here, I got it," a defusing voice sounded from behind as a folded bill and twin coins was shoved into the cash box. I tore my burning eyes from that snouted, so very punchable face onto a shocking yet pleasant sight: Strawberry blond curls framing a deliciously pale face, shining mascara- frilled blue eyes and carnation pink lips apprehensive to reveal a smile. That face was all I saw and would notice of her. She was... gorgeous.

"Thanks," I breathed with a deer in headlights expression.

"O-kay, Gloria. Good deed accomplished. Now get your ass back over here." I peered over her should as she turned to acknowledge the dark-haired, smirking boy sitting like he own the back corner seat.

"Coming," she chirped with a pacifying wave. For some reason I thought her voice would be more whimsical and as gratifying as honey; I was sorry to hear it sound so regular. She whipped back around -but boy was she beautiful. I wish I could look like that. "I'll be seein' ya I guess..." With a smile she glided back to her spot beside her no doubt boyfriend.

The bus hissed and grunted into motion. My legs like rubber, I trip-lunged for one of the support poles; knuckle-white grip and swung myself into a vacant seat.

"Smooth, real smooth."

"Shut up," grumbled low under my breath.

The ride lasted at most twenty minutes: Twiddling my thumbs, ignoring the giggles and the animated conversation amongst normal people my age going on seats behind me. Turns out we're heading to the same place. I wonder if I should thank her better. Knowing me, I'd get tongue-tied; my reaction to her being a moment of weakness in lou of a kind face. Then of course the driver kept me pinned in place with glares aimed within his rear view mirror. Yeah, don't worry about me, fat ass. I'm as cool as a fucking cucumber.

I just do not get along with bus drivers.

Finally, when I was sure I chewed my bottom lip to the likeness of raw hamburger, the bus screeched to a halt and that group and she blew past. Such a creeper; I followed, pretending my shuffling shoes were the most interesting sight to behold instead of paying a silent Fuck Off and Die to the driver. He wasn't worth the trouble.

The venue wasn't a far cry from where the bus dropped us. A static of voices congregating blocks over. I didn't have much of a strategy at this point, what with no cash or photo ID and looking like I crawled straight from the bowls of Hell: The ragged clown get up along with a scuff of dirt on my cheek and others up and down my arms. Approaching the building, I didn't think I could have ever been this self-conscious before; not when stalking up the steps of a school bus, giving an oral report, losing my virginity for the second time, not on the beach or my first day back from the hospital, ever. Jittering hands worked to rub away the prominent streaks but ended up only smearing them around. Great.

Too absorbed in my rubbing fest and darting eyes, I didn't notice the small breakaway in the leading group yards ahead and the jogging towards me addition. "Hey there," a regular but nonetheless cheery voice said. It was her.

I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me but as soon as the initial shock subsided, I found myself on five second delay and had spewed all matters of gratitude with bits of past bad days strung like gold accents in between. When I realized what I'd done, I was panting and red faced, and she was wide-eyed (to put it nicely).

"Oh... gosh, um.......... that's er... hey, wait, come back!" I could hear her footfalls stumbling after me and feel the light brush of fingertips on my elbow. Could you honestly blame me for running away? To first spew word vomit, then see that wrinkle in her brow which clearly said she thought me crazy. That's the last fucking thing I need.

She blocked my path with a disarming smile. "Wait! Be fair here. I wasn't expecting-----that."

"I have to go."

"But aren't you going to the concert?"

"Er... sort of."

"Then why don't you hang out with us----unless you're meeting someone?"

"Um, kind of..."

"Ooo no, am I doing it?" A look of worry pinched her features.

"I'm not following."

She cast a glance at her waiting group; they appeared less than happy with the hold up. "Christian, my boyfriend, the tall guy with the dark hair, he said I have this habit of latching myself onto people and obligating them into doing things."

"Like charity cases, for example."

"I wouldn't say that. I think you're nice." Perhaps overly so.

And just that easy the worry lines smoothed away and that warm smile returned. "Thanks, but before this gets too past the point of no return, I'm Gloria."

"Scarl- Be- Becky. I'm Becky." Her hand was warm against my icicle digits. A blush surfaced in light of my stutter. I don't stutter. Ever. Maybe I can be at a loss for words, but being st-st-stu-stuck like that wasn't me.

Drawing near the line where her friends held her a spot, she didn't seem at all concerned about my slip up. "So are you on the floor?"

"No." I could see the path I had to take around the building: Just follow the fan gates till I find the buses and security to reason with.

"A seat then? Aw, that sucks. We heard the first band is great to mosh to."

A grin eased itself onto my face. "Yeah, I suppose they are..." A nervous squirming wriggled in my gut, alerting me to the time. It'd be nice to talk to Billie before they go on. I couldn't miss another performance, I just couldn't. "Hey, it's um been great talking to you and thanks again for the bus fare, but I gotta go."

Confusion looks good on everyone.

"But the line..."

By the time she motioned absently at the queue of people, I was striding away with a purpose towards the side of building. "I'll make it up to," I called over my shoulder and quickly disappeared in the crowd. Now how do I do that? Something about tracking her down to give her a measly buck fifty screamed pathetic.