Drowning Lessons

Frankie’s POV

We’d been chased out of every sanctuary we’d found by police, and I was getting pretty sick of running already. I didn’t know how long we’d been driving, as my cell was dead, this car’s radio was broken, and we don’t wear watches. But I could see that night was starting to fall.

“Gee?” I asked timidly. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but since we’d left the hotel he’d been pretty short-tempered and distant.

“Hm?” Came his gruff response.

“Where are... where are we going to go?” My voice sounded pathetically small, and I wished I could return it to normal, but my vocal chords seemed oddly constricted.

“Don’t know. Gotta keep driving,” Was what I heard after a long silence. It was also the last thing I got out of him before, a few hours later, I fell asleep in the stolen car.

When I woke up again, the sun was just barely starting to rise, and I was stretched out in the back seat. Gerard must have moved me sometime during the night.

I sat up and looked around. I didn’t see or hear Gerard.

The car was also in a small grove of trees, surrounded by giant cedars.

I got out of the car and started slowly walking around, looking for some clue as to where Gerard may have gone.

I widened my search range, but I still couldn’t find him anywhere. I began to get desperate.

“Gerard? Gerard, where are you? Gerard!!” My voice crescendoed louder and louder with every syllable.

“Gerard, please answer me! Gerard!”

Silence.

I got frantic, and my breath came in short gasps. I needed to calm down. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere. He could simply be exploring... he could be doing anything.

Anything but leaving me. No, he would never leave me. Even if he did, why in hell would he leave the car AND the keys here?

I slid down to the foliage covered forest floor and leaned my back against the car. Slowly, I regained control of my breathing and decided to just wait for a while. Wait and see if he came back.

Sure enough, shortly after I made that decision, I heard the crinkling and crunching of dry leaves, signalling that Gerard was somewhere in the vicinity.

He came up and stood in front of me, giving me an apologetic look.

“Sorry. Went to bury the knife. Can’t have it on my person anymore. Just the gun... just the gun...” he said shortly, distantly. He sounded deeply disturbed.

“Gee? Honey? What’s wrong?” I asked, laying a tender hand on his shoulder.

He started, as if he wasn’t expecting me to touch him, or come into contact with him at all. His eyes had the look of a cornered animal, and he was pale and sweaty, his beautiful hair sticking to his skin.

I contemplated trying to comfort him again, and tried to brush some of his hair away from his face, but my hand dropped mid-way, falling to my side.

Without a word, he slipped back into the car, started it up, and I followed.

Gerard’s POV

I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking about what a monster I’d become. To kill a boy just as his life was beginning, to threaten any number of people with death if they didn’t follow my orders... and do it all without a single bit of remorse.

That’s right. I didn’t feel bad for any of this, and that alone made me feel terrible.

I couldn’t be all bad, if I wanted to feel bad, right? I mean... I still had some conscience left.

I decided that, as I couldn’t sleep a wink, I might as well make myself useful. So I drove the car to a small forest, and buried the knife in the middle of nowhere under the bright foliage.

I had to get Frankie out of this. I’d been devising a plan all night. I’d ditch the car, maybe even bring it back to the same hotel, so that the rightful owner wouldn’t have to go through a lot of trouble to find it.

Mostly to save my own ass from another charge, though, really.

After ditching the car, we’d probably have to lay low for a few days, in case that person HAD in fact reported their car stolen, so that we’d be in the clear for a while.

Then, we’d hitch back to Jersey, Frankie would return home, return to life as it was, and me? Well, I really didn’t know what would happen to me.

I guessed I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Now there was just the matter of convincing Frankie it was the right thing to do.

“Frankie...” I began, trying to choose my words carefully, “Frankie, we gotta go home, man.”

He looked up at me with a frightened, angry look.

“Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you know what they can DO to you? Honestly? Gerard, have you thought this through at ALL? If they arrest you, not only will it be horrible for you, but it will be painful for your mom, the guys, and ME! Have you thought about ANY of that? Gerard, look at me!”

I hadn’t expected this outburst from him. He did have a point, though. I hadn’t thought about anyone else’s feelings, really. I thought I’d been thinking about Frankie, but really, I didn’t want the guilt of getting him into trouble. I cast my eyes downward, and hoped for his tirade to end. When it finally did, I forced myself to look up at him.

“Don’t you think I know that? Yeah, it will be painful for everyone, Frankie, but I did something terrible, so maybe I deserve some punishment. I took someone’s life from them. I can’t just run from the consequences forever. It’s going to be hard, but you can’t undo what’s already been done. I have to face it like a man, not run like a pussy for the rest of my life. I’m taking you home,” I said decidedly.

When I finished speaking, I noticed a hurt look in his eyes that went much deeper than offense. Much deeper than betrayal. I had wounded him, because I no longer wanted him with me on this journey that would ultimately end in my imprisonment.

He didn’t say a word. I slowly pulled away and back in the direction of the hotel we’d stayed in the previous night. Time to return this heap of shit.

We did it as quickly as possible, parking the car as close as possible to where we’d thought it had been, and got the hell out of there. We walked to the highway, and shortly after sticking our thumbs out, got a ride from an exotic looking young woman, driving a red Toyota Hybrid. Today was our lucky day.

“Hey there. Where you guys headed?” she asked in a soft melodic voice. Quite a change from the old hick who’d picked us up earlier.

“Actually, we’re headed real far away. We need to get back to... erm, we need to get to Belleville. Is that out of your way?” I said in a tight, clipped voice. Frankie gave me an odd look.

“It doesn’t have to be. Hop in!” she said with a warm smile that could have brightened even the darkest of cellars.

I was a little confused by her answer though. What did she mean, it didn’t have to be? Was she going to take us the whole way to Belleville? That would be pretty kickass.

“So if you guys are headed back to beautiful Belleville, what the hell are you doing in Allenhurst? This place is the asshole of New Jersey,” asked the woman. I already liked her. She was blunt and to the point, no fucking around.

“Its actually a really long story, and rather than bore you with details, we’ll say we were on vacation and ran into some trouble. We just want to go home now,” Frankie responded solidly, without missing a beat.

She seemed to accept this answer. A short silence fell.

During this time, I got a good look at the woman, who was younger than I’d taken her to be at first glance. She looked younger than we did, almost. She was pretty short, about Frank’s size. She was also pretty compact and delicate, almost breakable. The fine features on her face were defined by the creamy white hue in her skin. She had black hair, with a thrilling bright red streak through her bangs, and striking blue eyes. She was wearing a brown shirt, skinny black jeans, black-and-white checked slip-ons, and a black and white zip up.

I wish I could have spent more time studying her, but her voice broke the silence.

“Is that what you call a vacation?” she asked with a sinister underlying tone to her voice.

“What do you mean?” Frankie asked, his voice anything but solid now.

“I mean, you call shanking some guy and then running off to the middle of nowhere in hopes of hiding from the angry mob who is no doubt chasing you, a vacation?” she said with humour.

The color drained from Frankie’s face, as I’m sure it was draining from mine. I felt cold all over, and my tongue was now paralyzed. I didn’t know what to say. Is it possible she too could know what I’d done? Was she going to turn us in? Oh god, anything but that.

“Hey, I know how it must look, but I swear, I’m not a bad guy. I don’t know what the news or the radios have been saying, but it was self defense! I didn’t know it would kill him! I just wanted to be left alone! You have no idea what that guy had put me through my entire life! You can’t know what its like! You’re not going to turn me in, are you? Please, I was going back to Belleville to turn myself in! I just want to go home!” I pleaded, my voice growing more and more frantic by the second.

And finally, the dam burst.

I cried as I hadn’t cried since the day I ‘shanked’ Rick, as the girl had so aptly put it. Oddly enough, she didn’t seem weirded out at all. In fact, she even pulled over and put her arm around me.

“Hey, dude, don’t even worry. Hey, don’t cry. Its going to be okay. Like hell I’m going to turn you in! If anything, I’ll help with keeping them from knowing where you are, if you want me to. I’ll help you run. I recognized you guys on the road, from the news. Do you think I would have picked you up otherwise? I fucking idolize you guys!” she said reassuringly.

After a few minutes, I calmed down, and felt quite embarrassed. Here I’d broken down in front of a complete stranger, and she’d only comforted me and offered to further protect me.

“So what are you saying?” I asked.

“I’m saying, I’d like you to take me with you on your adventure!” she said enthusiastically.

I couldn’t help but smile brightly at the maniacal look on her face. She really wanted to do this. I looked over at Frankie, to see his reaction to all of this, and to my surprise, he was staring intently into her eyes, with a grin fit to split. It unsettled me, somehow...

He finally snapped out of his trancelike state, shook his head, and opened his mouth to speak.

“I’m sorry, where are my manners? We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I’m Frank, and this is Gerard, my...” he stopped, debating no doubt whether or not to tell her of our relationship. He finally made up his mind, and said, “my boyfriend. And you are?” he finished politely.

She didn’t seem the least bit perturbed about the word ‘boyfriend’, and held out her small pale hand.

“Me? Well, you can call me Rabbits.”