Folie a Deux

I didn't feel like talking, though. I just wanted to occupy my mind, and being here with Frank was definitely doing that.

He was a very easy person to be distracted by. I swear I could spend an hour studying his eyes alone.

Frank didn't seem to mind, which made the whole experience a thousand times better. Most people would have tried to comfort a grieving friend, but I wasn't a friend, at least not yet, and Frank certainly was not "most people."

Our conversation slowly died out shortly after we ordered our food- Frank getting a salad, and I a coffee.

"Just a coffee?" he frowned after we ordered. "Is that all?"

I blinked at him. "What?"

He blinked back, rapidly. "All you're having is a coffee?

"Yes."

He stared at me for a few moments and I felt the overwhelming need to defend myself.

"I'm just not hungry, okay?"

He gave me a skeptical look but didn't press the topic, and for that I was thankful.

I just wasn't that hungry.

I'd had some pancakes that morning, and even though it was just a few hours away from dinner time... I didn't want anything to eat. In fact, the thought of food was making me sick to the stomach.

We sat in silence for quite some time. An hour and sixteen minutes, to be exact.

Just the two of us, sitting there, for seventy-six minutes in complete silence.

It was nice.

I found myself looking at him, his hands, his eyes, his mouth, everything about him. I watched from the corner of my eyes as he ate and I studied the way he glanced up nervously when he thought he'd done something stupid, like when he accidentally dropped a piece of lettuce onto his lap or when he accidentally flicked a carrot off of his plate when he tried to stab it with his fork.

I pretended not to notice, but I absolutely did.

I always noticed.

I was a very observant person.

I, quite honestly, thought that all of his nervous quirks were kind of adorable. They weren't hard to pick up on. Every few seconds he would glance around the room. Every few minutes he'd glance out the window. He was constantly looking at me, too. He was paranoid, but it was an oddly alluring characteristic.

"Gerard," he said eventually, his voice quiet. He almost sounded a bit nervous. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course," I said, taking a sip from my coffee. "I don't see why not."

He nodded, sitting his fork down and putting his hands in his lap, studying my face for a few seconds. "Why, exactly, did you ask to meet me here today...?"

I shrugged. I knew, of course, why. I had an answer, but he just wouldn't understand. "I guess I just... Wanted to see you again." I didn't like lying but I couldn't exactly say "Because I want to get to know you."

No, no that'd be the wrong thing to say. Especially to Frank. I could tell that it would just be a very off-putting statement to him. I've struggled with paranoia for most of my life and was just recently beginning to get over it, so I was aware of most of the symptoms. He wasn't exactly a classic case of paranoia, but he definitely had a few phobias that mimicked it.

He nodded slightly, looking satisfied. "Okay, I guess that makes sense."

I took another drink of my coffee, appreciating the flavor.

Between the people and the coffee, I was starting to rather enjoy this diner.

"What now?" he asked.

I raised an eyebrow, setting my coffee on the table. I'd been enjoying the silence but now he seemed determined to break it. "What do you mean, 'what now?'"

"I mean, what do we do now? We've been sitting here for over an hour."

I almost wanted to correct him- it was an hour and thirty-eight minutes, to be exact- but I decided not to let my dirorder get the best of me. I had OCD- obsessive compulsive disorder. The doctors say I have it pretty bad, but I don't think so. I'm not overly concentrated on being clean, I don't wash my hands every few hours. I could honestly care less how sloppy my room looks.

I cared about timing, though. I cared about the precise timing of each and every aspect of my life, and I cared about doing things the right way. I cared about buttoning every button on a sweater and zipping jackets to the very top and keeping my shoelaces hanging symmetrically and drinking every last drop of coffee.

I wasn't at all obsessive, or compulsive.

I didn't have a problem.

I just liked things to be done the right way.

"What do you want to do, then?" I asked, trying not to sigh.

He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I don't know."

I turned my gaze to the diner's window. "It's a nice day out." I sent him a glance from the corner of my eyes. "Would you like to maybe go to the park?"

He paused for a second, biting his lip. "I... I don't know..."

"Oh, come on," I said, offering an encouraging smile. "It's really nice outside."

He paused for a second, gaze flickering from the window to the door to me and then back to the window. "Okay," he said softly, keeping his gaze on the window. "To the park."

He put his fork on his plate and started to pull out his wallet to pay for his food, but I stopped him before he could place any money on the table.

"Let me pay," I insisted.

He frowned, looking confused. "Why?"

I shrugged. "I'm the one who wanted to meet here. If I hadn't asked you to come, you wouldn't have been spending any money today. So, let me pay for it."

There was no way I was going to let Frank pay for his own food. I was the one who wanted to meet here again, I should be the one to pay. It wouldn't be right to just invite someone to go somewhere with me like that and then make them waste their own money.

Frank sighed, but stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. "Okay... Fine. But I'm paying next time."

"Of course you will," I grinned at him.

"Well," he said, blinking at me after I put the money for his salad and my coffee on the table. "To the park?"

I nodded, smiling. "Yeah, one second. Let me finish my coffee."

"Okay."

I drained the last few drops of coffee from my mug and then stood up, adjusting my hoodie on my shoulders and flicking my hair out of my face. "Come on, then. Let's go."

Frank followed me out of the diner, waving a small goodbye to the waitress and grinning at her.

Once the door clicked behind us I raised an eyebrow at him, slowing my steps to fall in pace with him. "So you and the waitress are friends?"

He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets, glancing at me and laughing a bit. "Yeah. Why?"

I shrugged, laughing a bit, too. "Just asking." I paused for a few seconds, counting how many steps it took us to walk over one rectangle of sidewalk. "She's a pretty girl."

Frank looked up at me, eyes widening. "What? You think I'm- that we're... What? No!"

I rolled my eyes, laughing again, but more at him than myself this time. "I wasn't implying anything, Frank. Just making an observation."

His breathing slowly returned to a normal pace as we looked at each other for a few seconds before he broke the gaze, dropping his eyes to his feet. "Y-you make a lot of observations, don't you, Gerard?"

"Mm-hm," I agreed, nodding vaguely. "I like making observations... It's a nice hobby to have, I think."

Frank tilted his head, studying the side of my head as I shyly turned my face away. I liked making observations, and I knew for a fact that I was good at it, but it was strange for someone else to notice.

I guess I just wasn't used to other people noticing. I don't talk to other people much, though, so I guess I had just never really given them a chance.

"What are some other observations you've made?" Frank asked, tilting his head slightly.

I shrugged, not sure how to answer. Most of my observations weren't things you could put in to words. Most of them were emotions, quirks, little things like that that I picked up about other people. I wasn't just seeing things about people, I was witnessing their personalities.

You couldn't just sum up someone's entire personality with words.

"I've made a lot of observations, Frank, but I don't really know how to explain most of them... Sorry."

"Oh... Well, that's okay, I guess. I understand."

We continued to walk in silence for a few minutes, until we arrived at the entrance to the city park.

"I haven't been here in forever," Frank admitted as we walked under the small iron arch, raising his head to look around.

We stood there, just inside the park gate for a second, and gazed around. It wasn't a big park- it was maybe about the size of a small parking lot- but that didn't stop it from bringing back a few miles worth of nostalgia.

I'd spent a lot of my childhood at parks. Not this one, seeing as I'd only ever been here once or twice in the past few years, but all over the country. My family did a lot of traveling before we settled down in North Carolina. I'd spent most of my life with my mom and my brother on the road.

We had started out in New Jersey, where most of my family, and my dad, remains. From Jersey we'd somehow managed to work ourselves all the way down to Florida, up to Baltimore, west to Chicago and then to California, then south to Texas, and then back to the east coast, finding a home in first South Carolina and then North.

It had been a hetic travel, my mom trying to find work as an artist and my brother Mikey and I struggling to stay kept up in school. Mom finally decided, a few years ago, to pull us out of the public school system all together and home school us. Mikey didn't mind it much, seeing as he had never really liked school in the first place, but I kind of missed it. I didn't miss the people, no, but the classes. I liked having structure. I liked having to move on a schedule and having a different room and teacher for every subject. I also missed my music class, but that wasn't nearly as much as a problem as the structure was.

I think that's why I liked parks so much. Every city we ever went to, if there had been one thing in common, it had been the parks. There were new people and new accents and new foods and new everything, but parks were a constant factor all the way across America.

Parks were a steady example of childhood, and childhood, no matter where you lived, should consist only of happiness and fun, and that's what parks were. They were the structure of childhood. Parks were direct representations of what childhood should be, so I guess that's why I spent so much time in them while my brother and mom stayed cooped up in whatever hotel or apartment we had been residing in. I was just trying to get back the childhood I had never had.

It had never really worked, though. Most of the time I got so caught up in the faux-happiness that I managed to do something stupid and screw it all up.

"Gerard," Frank said softly, noticing my blank expression.

I looked up at him, blinking away the memories of a fourteen year old me all alone in a city park, struggling through some guitar chords and singing my heart out to impress some girl I would never see again once I moved out of state.

"Hmm?"

"You okay?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Just... Just being in a park brings back a lot of memories."

Frank nodded, too, turning his gaze to the swings. "Yeah, for me too..."

We somehow made an unspoken decision to sit on the swings and walked over to them, both of us drowning in our memories.

I watched Frank on the swings, laughing a bit as he swung his legs to go higher and higher while I decided to just kind of sway forward and backwards, lifting my feet so that they didn't crape the ground.

"What are you doing?" I laughed, raising an eyebrow as Frank reached one hand away from the swing, spreading his fingers and letting the air rush through the gaps between them.

"I'm flying!" he said, like it was obvious, flashing me a grin and he swung past.

I rolled my eyes, grinning back. "Of course you are."

"Come on," he laughed, swinging his legs forward. "Try it, it's fun!"

I laughed and stood up half-way, moving as far back as the swing would allow me to and then pulled my feet forward, letting the swing fly forward. It took me a few minutes but soon enough I'd picked up a good pace of swinging, laughing at Frank as he laughed at me, and we both held our hands out, letting the wind hold our hands and rush through our hair.

"I haven't been on a swing in forever," Frank announced, closing his eyes and leaning back.

"Me neither," I said, leaning back as far as I could without falling at closing my eyes, loving the rush of air as I went up and the way my stomach flew into my throat as I swung back downwards.

"We need to do this more often," Frank said.

"Then we will."

I watched as Frank tossed his head back, letting out a happy laugh into the chilly fall air, strands of his black hair being caught in the wind.

He caught me looking at him and just grinned.

I smiled, too, because we looked like idiots. We were two teenagers on the swings in a park made for eight year olds, but I didn't care and I could tell he didn't, either.

All that mattered in that moment was swinging high enough to touch the sun.

And we did. We reached the sun and we touched the sky until it turned dark, and even then we didn't stop. We just ran our fingers through the stars and felt the air hug our hands.