The Chasing of Moons

“Pete, have you heard the big news?” Brendon shouts from way too far away for Frank’s comfort. He really shouldn’t have said anything. This is going to get real dirty real fast. The only thing he can do to save his lie from getting out is to borough himself a million times deeper in that lie.

“You finally grew a chest hair? Brendon, I am so beyond proud of you,” Pete says, walking over to them, and forcing Brendon to flip him off.

Frank tries to hide his face with the backpack sitting on his lap, but it doesn’t do much to actually hide him. Frank’s small, but he’s not that small.

“You’re so funny Pete, I’ve got a joke for you, go fuck yourself.”

“You don’t really understand the logistics of joke telling, do you?” Pete asks him, sitting down on the railing next to Brendon. Technically, students aren’t allowed to sit on the railing, because there’s this urban legend that seven years ago, some kid sat there, slipped and cracked his head open, but no one actually believes that and no teacher has ever enforced the rule so no one actually listens to it. Besides, it’s spring, and no one wants to get grass stains on their jeans from sitting on the ground, so the railing almost completely full of teenagers who are balanced very precariously on the long arm of metal.

“Pete, that doesn’t change what I was trying to say. Go fuck yourself.”

“Well aren’t you just the sweetest thing. So what is the actual big news then?” Pete asks, and Frank cringes because Brendon’s about to spread his lie. Frank’s terrified of this, he knows it’s going to get out now, because Pete’s mouth is as big as Brendon’s ego. Also, Frank’s not exactly a nobody, even if he would like to be, so people actually care about hearing gossip that concerns him, which is very confusing in his opinion as he can’t believe he, the guy who uses a Mario toothbrush, is anyone who you’d care to know things about.

“Frank got laid,” Brendon announces.

“Say it louder, would you?” Frank hisses at him, “My mom is only working across town, I think what she really needs is to hear you talking about my sexual escapades.”

“You did not,” Pete says, narrowing his eyes at Frank. “When?”

“After you... you left the bar,” Frank says.

“Proof or it didn’t happen,” Pete says, crossing his arms, and Frank just shrugs.

“I don’t have proof,” Frank says, and sighs, because maybe it actually will blow over the way he’s hoping it will. If Pete doesn’t believe him than he won’t have to deal with it somehow getting out. He really needs Pete to not believe him, that would be ideal.

Frank doesn’t even know why he got himself into this. He should have just told Brendon that he went home and watched a movie or something. He could have literally said anything else, but he panicked. He couldn’t help his tongue, it just slipped, and now he’s fucked.

“Oh my god, you did, didn’t you?” Pete asks, his eyes getting all wide. “You’re telling the truth! Fuck it, man, we should’ve stayed longer, we could’ve watched it all go down.”

“What? A second ago you said I needed to show you proof!”

“Nah, your face is giving it away, you actually did,” Pete says, and shakes his head, looking, to Frank’s horror, impressed.

“So wait, you just picked some chick up after we left? How long after?” Brendon asks, “Like, now I hate myself, we should’ve stayed longer, Pete, this is all your fault!”

“You met her at the bar? So you slept with an older woman?” Pete asks, “Congratulations Frank, you’re finally a man.”

Frank just cowers under the hair in his face and tries not to turn bright red at how awful this all is. Why did he have to open his mouth in the first place? Why can’t Pete have a quieter voice? Why can’t he be straight?

“Okay so tell us more, man,” Pete says, looking over at Frank intensely, “or we’re going to have to start singing that song from Grease.”

“Well we already know how far he got,” Brendon says.

“Yeah, but was she hot?”

“He-uuh,” Frank realizes his slip and tries to correct himself, “here’s not a great place to talk about it?”

“Talk or you die.”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“Nope,” Pete shakes his head. “I want all the information except for the information I don’t want, leave that out.”

“How am I supposed to know what you don’t want to hear?”

“Just skip the details. Save us the expense of what happened when you took off your pants, okay?” Brendon says. “Just tell me, was she hot?”

“Well, uh, yeah,” Frank says, honestly, thinking about Gee. The guy was really hot. He wasn’t a she though, and that’s what makes him feel so uncomfortable having to lie about it. Frank really wishes that he could just say that Gee was a boy. He wants to just be out, and not afraid of it, but he isn’t, and he is afraid. Frank doesn’t want to be afraid, but he can’t do anything about it right now. He probably wouldn’t want to talk about Gee anyway, but at least he could stop using the wrong pronouns.

“What’d she look like, man?” Pete says, rolling his eyes at Frank, “tall, short, blonde, brunette, big ti-”

“Jesus, just calm yourself down,” Frank interrupts him, “she had black hair, or, like really dark brown hair, I guess. Uh, really really really really small teeth. Like her teeth were tiny. Like I’ve never seen anyone with teeth that small, it was weird, but cute.”

“That’s a strange thing to describe about a girl you fucked,” Brendon says, looking confused. “Like, who focuses in on someone’s teeth?”

“Well you’d remember that too if you’d seen hi-her,” Frank says, cursing himself again for almost slipping up.

“So you gonna see her again?” Brendon asks, elbowing him and doing this weird wiggle with his eyebrow that’s more creepy than it is anything else.

“What?” Frank asks, watching people filing out of the school with their lunches and finding a place to sit. Frank’s not all that concerned with actually eating, as he’s too busy trying not to panic at the fact that he might get caught in this lie any second now. He tries to eat a grape casually and almost chokes on it when he realizes that it still has a small part of the stem on it.

“Wow. That was attractive,” Pete says monotonously as Frank spits the grape onto the sidewalk.

“Sorry,” Frank says, frazzled and blushing a bright red. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you were gonna see her again,” Brendon replies.

“Oh, uh, no. She’s gone. She was... well, married.”

“Dude!” Pete says, his face suddenly looking angry. “You did not!”

“I didn’t mean to! I mean, I only realized, like, after I got her home and it was just awkward to try to mention it at that point. She tried to tell me it wasn’t cheating, but I figure she was just lying to save my conscience. But, if she was cheating, it’d have happened anyway whether I was there or not, I figure, so it’s not really on me. I’m not the cheater.”

“Yeah, but still,” Pete shakes his head, “it’s a good thing you’re not seeing her again then.”

“Yeah, probably,” Frank replies somberly.

“Oh god, you really liked her.”

“What? No, I just... well, yeah. I liked her.”

“What was her name?” Pete asks.

“I’m not going to tell you! That’s one thing that will stay with me,” Frank declares.

“Well fine, keep secrets from your best friend,” Brendon scolds.

“Bren, I’m his best friend,” Pete says.

“Fuck off,” Brendon replies, “we both hate your guts, but we’re too polite to admit it.”

“Shut up, you two,” Frank says, watching the doors again with boredom. He’s not looking for anyone in particular, he just doesn’t want to have to look at the two guys next to him, because he’s afraid his face will give away the fact that he’s lying.

“Fine. One final question, and, forgive me for asking Frank, but you’re extremely disgusting, ugly, smelly, gross, and revolting, so why on earth would an older woman be interested in you?”

“I have been asking myself that very same question since I met her,” Frank shakes his head, “god, she was gorgeous. Really beautiful. And for some reason, liked me. I don’t get why.”

Frank takes another grape, having recovered some of his dignity by now, but he makes sure that it doesn’t have a stem on it this time. He’s really worried he’s going to end up choking on a seed, but then he reminds himself that these are seedless grapes. He’s just not having a very good time at thinking logically today.

Brendon’s at the beginning of saying something when Frank splutters and almost chokes on yet another grape, but it’s for a very different reason this time.

It’s just that, Gee is standing right there. He’s standing right in front of Frank, about thirty or forty feet away, but still, he is right there.

Except, it’s not Gee. Gee was 27, and he looked about that age, but the guy that Frank now finds himself gawking at is a teenager. He’s no older than Frank. But that is Gee. Frank would bet his own life on the fact that that person standing right there is Gee.

He’s got the same exact face. He’s got the same hair, though it’s much more obvious to tell that it’s dyed than Frank remembers it being. He’s got the exact same eyebrows in the exact same shape. He’s got the exact same mouth, lips a little thin, but not that much. Frank can’t see his teeth because his mouth his closed, but he imagines that they’re just as small. He’s got the exact same nose, a very unique nose that you’re not likely to find a lot of duplicates of. It’s Gee, it absolutely is.

He’s not a bad looking guy, not in the slightest, but Frank thinks that the Gee he spent the weekend with looked much more grown into his own face, while that guy looks much more awkward with it.

But it’s not Gee. It can’t be, and Frank knows that. Gee was older than that guy. Not by much, but it was still pretty distinct. Besides, the guy that Frank now looks at is too pale to be Gee. He’s too young, too pale, a little chubbier, and his hair is quite a bit longer, covering up a lot of his face. But it’s him. Frank is sure of it. That has to be him. There’s no possible way that Gee is not that boy over there, but there’s no way that Gee can be that boy over there either.

Gee is looking at the entrance to the school, like he’s waiting for someone. He’s not even slightly aware of Frank staring at him with his mouth wide open, and eyes possibly about to fall out of his skull.

“Frank?” Brendon asks, suddenly extremely concerned for his friend who’s turned into a cartoon character.

“That’s him!” Frank shouts loudly, not even bothering to censor himself so that he makes sense. Frank doesn’t even consider what he does next. He doesn’t think about how much he’s going to regret it, or how much embarrassment is about to befall on him. He doesn’t think of any of those things at all. What Frank does instead is hop down onto his feet, letting his bag of grapes all spill out onto the sidewalk, and he just speeds over to the guy. Frank barely looks where he’s going, doesn’t realize he steps over a grape and almost collides into a girl trying to walk the other way.

Brendon and Pete both chase after him, Pete grabbing the backpack that Frank let fall to the ground, because they’re both fairly sure he’s having some sort of mental break. If Frank were thinking logically, he’d probably agree with that assessment.

“It’s you!” Frank states loudly, still walking towards the guy, but this time the guy in question actually hears Frank. It’s at this point that Brendon does the panicking that Frank should be experiencing right now but hasn’t, because he hasn’t registered yet how weird he’s acting.

The guy who Frank has decided is Gee’s doppelgänger, looks his way at Frank’s words, and the look of surprise on his face is pretty damn justified when you consider the way Frank is acting.

“Excuse me?” Gee’s doppelgänger asks. He’s standing next to this taller lanky dude who Frank’s not familiar with.

He’s pretty sure he understands now why Gee had looked so familiar, he had this guy’s face. Frank’s seen him before, he know he has. That’s why he couldn’t place where he’d seen Gee before. He wasn’t an actor or anything, and Frank really did know that face, it just looked a little different because he was older than this person here. This has to be why he looked so familiar then. But god, Frank is still so confused.

“Do you have an older brother or something?” Frank asks, finally coming to a stop directly in front of the Gee doppelgänger. Frank can’t even believe that idea himself, though. Brothers can look similar, sure they can, but not that similar. That’s not possible. The only people who can possibly look that similar are twins, except Gee was older than this boy here, so Frank doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.

“Uh, no?” the guy says, looking really fucking confused, and somewhat repulsed with Frank now. When he scowls slightly at Frank, he gets a glimpse at his teeth, and just as Frank has suspected, they’re the same tiny teeth as Gee’s.

Frank’s had classes with this guy. He has classes with his guy. He’s the weird guy who sits in the back of the class with that other guy who has huge hair. Frank’s pretty sure they went to middle school together. He can almost remember talking to him maybe once or twice in English class. He could be wrong though.

Frank knows the guy’s name, it’s at the tip of his tongue. It’s something that sounds like an old man’s name, he remember. Frank thinks it was two syllables maybe. It started with a... Frank thinks it started with a G.

“What’s your name?” Frank asks him, and Brendon catches up finally, and begins trying to tug Frank away by the arm.

“Do you know this guy?” the tall kid standing next to Gee’s doppelgänger asks, and Frank looks at him, evaluating quickly. There’s a definitive family resemblance there. Frank would be extremely surprised to find that they weren’t related in some way. Probably brothers. But if they’re brothers, then who the fuck was it that Frank met at that bar? Who could possibly look so much like this kid that Frank’s known for nearly eight years without ever actually talking to.

“You’ve been in the same class as me since middle school and don’t know my name?” the guy asks Frank, looking extremely unimpressed with him. Brendon starts to pull a little more forcefully, trying to get him to walk away, but Frank resists.

“G something. Or J something,” Frank says.

“Gerard,” the guy who Frank has decided is the brother of Gee’s doppelgänger, tells him.

“Mikey,” Gee’s doppelgänger spits angrily, like he didn’t want his name to have been told.

“Gerard!” Frank repeats it victoriously. “Gee for Gerard. So it is you.”

“Frank, we should go,” Brendon tugs on him.

“What’s me?” the guy asks, and Frank’s finding it hard to put the name ‘Gerard’ to his face when he’s so used to thinking ‘Gee.’

“It’s you!” Frank says, “Right?”

“He had a really sour cup of coffee this morning,” Brendon says, “I think he needs to see the nurse.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Gee, no, Gerard, says.

“No! I’m not crazy. That’s him, I know it is!” Frank says, too loudly, but Pete’s now helping Brendon out and they’re slowly pulling him away the best that they can. At least you can’t say they’re bad friends.

“What’s him?” Pete asks him quietly, “Don’t freak out the guy you’ve never talked to, Frank.”

“But I know him, I do!” Frank insists, and that’s when Gee or Gerard or whatever the hell his name is shrugs and starts to walk away. Frank tries to push Brendon off of him, but to no avail, and that’s how he gets himself dragged up the steps back into the school.

Frank starts to come to his senses a little bit when he’s hit by the air conditioning. It hasn’t quite processed fully what an idiot he just made of himself, but it will sometime soon, that’s for sure. Even though his head is a little clearer and he’s starting to think a little more rationally, Frank still looks out the door behind him where he can just barely see the back of the guy’s head, and even from the back of his head, Frank is absolutely sure that is Gee. It has to be. Somehow, and he doesn’t know how quite yet, Gee and Gerard are the exact same person. They have to be. Frank just doesn’t know how.