A Case of Unknown Identity

“Waaaaaaaaait,” the word is too strung out and makes Frank seem like a complete imbecile, “you guys are dating?”

Pete shrugs and looks at Patrick, “I guess.”

“You learn something new every day,” Franks sighs, looking down at his blank paper. Frank doesn’t actually remember what they’re meant to be drawing but he looks at Mikey who looks completely unsurprised by the revelation about Patrick and Pete.

Frank had only just noticed that they were holding hands, and Mikey didn’t seem to care. At least that’s something good for Frank to know. Mikey wouldn’t be mad if he came out to him, and those two certainly wouldn’t. That doesn’t mean he’s going to come out though, it’s just good to know.

“You still sleeping over tonight?” Mikey asks, nonchalantly.

Frank nods affirmatively. He, Brendon and Ray are sleeping over at Mikey’s. Frank hadn’t even been to an actual sleepover since the fifth grade. Sixth grade and ninth grade are the two years when you’re most likely to be abandoned by your friends, and Frank was no exception. He had lost his friends because they all had superficial goals that included becoming popular, but he didn’t really care anymore. He’d moved on from them, and they certainly didn’t care about him.

“Long weekend plans?” Patrick asks.

Three days isn’t exactly a long weekend, but it’s better than two days. Frank honestly doesn’t even know what they get a day off for, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. A day off from school is a day off from school, end of story.

It’s Thursday for them so it feels a little weird, not having school the next day, but Frank’s a little more excited than he’s letting on to spend time outside of school with friends. It’s unheard of for him.

It’s been two days since that detention with Gerard and for some reason it’s all Frank’s been able to think about. Gerard was so... cute?

Frank threw away the very idea. No way is he going to allow himself to be attracted to a bully. Well if he’s not a bully anymore though... Frank throws away that idea as well. Only when he’s sure he’s forgiven Gerard will he allow himself to like him at all.

“My brother’s got an appointment thing around six so he’ll be gone for a few hours, but we have to meet him after school to walk home,” Mikey informs him.

They’re going directly to Mikey’s house after school because he lives so close to the school. For Frank it had been easy to just pack a small bag and leave it at his dad’s house, where he can just run in and grab it, but Brendon had to use his backpack so it looked twice as big as usual. Frank had only seen him earlier that morning but he looked weak and small trying to lug around three textbooks in his arms instead of his book bag.

“You know I’ve never actually met your brother,” Frank says absently, scratching away at his paper.

“He’s annoying,” Mikey grimaces, “but he’s okay.”

“I don’t have any siblings,” Frank says, even though Mikey already knows that.

“Lucky,” Mikey answers.

Frank doesn’t think much about it. He rather enjoys lunch. Patrick and Pete sit with them because apparently they can no longer sit with their old friends, for homophobic reasons.

“I hate math!” Ray says coming to their table a little later than usual, and slamming his textbook on the table top with a loud bang.

“What’s up?” Mikey asks, seemingly unstartled by the loud noise.

“I forgot to do my homework, so I have to do it before fourth period,” Ray says with a pout as he dives into his geometric proofs.

Frank shrugs. Ray has the annoying teacher that checks peoples work rather than the lazy one he has. Frank still hasn’t actually done any math homework other than studying since the beginning of that year. It’s been almost four months since then, and he’s known Mikey for about a fourth of that.

“Math is actually just a sadist ritual to make teens want to pull their eyelashes out one by one,” Ray says.

“You say that but have you had Health yet?” Mikey asks. Health is in place of gym every other day, and Frank had been more than thankful to get that over with.

“No, why?”

Mikey just raises his eyebrows warningly, “let’s just say, I have never been so thoroughly lied to about anything as much as I had been in there.”

“Heteronormative and misogynistic,” Frank mumbles. Health is, of course, just a friendly name for ‘sex ed.’ and it is extremely biased. The entire course was made for straight men. If you’re a girl you might as well not have showed up and god forbid you’re gay because then you don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

Pete shrugs, “that’s what google is for.”

Frank looks at him a little critically, “I think google is actually for cat pictures and cheating on your homework.”

He shrugs in a ‘same thing’ sort of way.

For some reason that leads them to a debate on which is worse, Math or Health. It’s a dead tie for Frank, because both have the possibility of actually being useful but they’re taught so badly that there really isn’t a point.

What’s the point in a sex ed. class where you tell the girls they’re idiots if they don’t take your advice, but don’t teach them anything? That’s like getting mad at a toddler for drawing on the wall when you didn’t tell them not to do so in the first place. What’s the point? Another stupid thing about health is that they don’t do any coverage for gay people. If you’re a lesbian than you end up with less knowledge than when you started and if you’re gay then you have to try and figure out what the hell any of the terms you’re being taught have to do with anything.

Then there’s math, where you could be learning things you actually need, and might use in the real world outside of school, but then they teach you a bunch of algorithms that no one has ever used, ever. No one actually has a friend who buys 674 gallons of milk from the grocery store and delivers them each individually to separate people on certain days of the week. Story problems are meant to be a link to the real world, but no one even buys more than two gallons of milk anyway. What would you do with all that milk? You’re not going to drink it! Do you need to bathe in the fucking milk or something?

Frank’s mind gets lost in the very idea of all that milk for the rest of the day, because milk is a whole lot more interesting than anything else.

English basically consists of the same thing, so he barely pays attention to that either. It’s his last class, and it’s with Mikey but that doesn’t make it any more fascinating. They over analyze the theme of some book that no one has ever actually read but many people say they did so as to make themselves looks smarter. The teacher makes all these parallels to real world problems that are not waterproof and don’t make much sense in the first place, and the whole thing just seems kind of fake. No one actually cares about this 19th century novel where women are treated like objects or prizes, or that early 1900 sci-fi novel where the ‘distant future society’ setting has long since been passed. “Holden Caulfield thinks you’re a phony,” as John Green would say, and Frank thinks the entire structure for the American public school system is built around phonies in the way that Mr. Caulfield would decidedly agree with.

He doesn’t register that class is almost over until he hears the bell ring, but he’s perfectly okay with the time having passed, so he walks out of the room with Mikey. He always remembers how short he is when he stands next to Mikey who isn’t all that tall either, but he’s much taller than Frank.

Frank walks behind Mikey where they meet Brendon at his locker, trying unsuccessfully to cram several textbooks into a locker that is not built for anything larger in diameter than four centimeters.

“Fucking textbooks,” he murmurs, and eventually forces it in, so that the next time he opens that locker he is going to be attacked by an avalanche of the entire contents falling out, but Frank says nothing, because he doesn’t want to wait any longer.

They meet Ray outside next to a large snow pile and wait for Mikey’s brother.

Frank’s actually curious to meet him, because he’s never really considered whoever the guy is, but he’s probably walked past him a few times in the hallway. Should be fun. The other Way brother.