gala_apples (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gala_apples) wrote2011-08-21 04:11 pm
gala_apples) wrote2011-08-21 04:11 pm
Entry tags:
The Deeper Meanings of Wearing Someone Else's Shoes (1)
Day One- Part One
Pete jolts into wakefulness very confused. He’d been sure tonight was one of the nights where he just wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep. They come as often as not, no schedule he can set, no pattern that the therapist he doesn’t go to would analyse for hidden meaning. It’s not as though restlessness is a new thing to Pete; ever since he can remember, sleep has been an elusive mistress. As a child it meant getting up for fourth and fifth glasses of water, a bit older asking to watch one of the grown up shows with his parents, older still with the television at low volume and a t-shirt at the seam of the door to prevent the flashing commercials from making it obvious.
Then came sophomore year and the three strikes -getting caught coming home from his first party with alcohol, a phone call home about ten skipped classes in U.S. history, and a fist fight with Ellington Chalmers for calling Andy a fag- that lead to him being struck out. Exiled out, really, to a boot camp. His parents had paid for six weeks of behavioural modification, which seemed ridiculously long, an eternity, until he found out that some of the other teenagers had been there for over a year. Destiny Radin had been there over four when Pete came in, nineteen and legally free to leave except her parents wouldn’t accept her until she passed the program and she had no money or education to take care of herself. All in all, six weeks really wasn’t much.
When he got back, his insomnia changed. Instead of lying awake for hours trying to find a cool spot on his pillow, wishing he could sneak to the computer room for his Ipod and making do with humming Slayer to himself, now Pete just does his best to distract himself from his memories. Once he starts falling into memories of walking without shoes on gravel roads, not allowed to stop until the bottoms of his regulation white socks were tinged red, it’s hard to pull himself out. Punishment walks were one of his least favourite remembered activities. There are whole days he can’t remember at all though. He expects the things that happened then were worse.
Upon waking, his eyes bolt open, an automatic movement conditioned into him. The confusion almost immediately turns to terror. Not being able to remember falling asleep is one thing, having all his safeguards taken away is completely another. The light’s not on, he’s not wearing a hoodie and sweat pants knotted so many times at the waist that it takes a good five minutes to untie them every morning. Worst of all, he’s not sleeping on the couch. After a week of sneaking downstairs to the living room to sleep after coming home, his parents finally got him one for his bedroom. It’s a safe substitute since it has a back he can curl into. His room still has a bed but he hasn’t used it in the last year and a half. It’s covered in CDs and books, comforter dusty in the spots that items aren’t strewn about.
Pete goes to string his hand through his red dyed bangs. Possibly it’s not the best habit, but pulling on his hair is a grounding motion. It’s not like he pulls strands out, so it can’t be that self-harming. His bangs aren’t there. Pete was never one of the ones they publicly stripped and shaved, claiming an infestation of lice. Still his safety brain kicks into high gear and he puts himself into first position, legs curled to his chest, chin as close to his knees as possible, hands on the back of his neck, fingers linked.
It’s then that he feels the chain. Pete’s never worn a necklace a day in his life, not even a collar for goth night at one of the clubs a friend convinces him to go to. But it’s there, tiny connected balls warmed by his skin, and it’s odd enough that he can pull himself out. If he can look at himself in the full length mirror attached to the back of his door he can maybe figure out what the fuck is going on.
The light switch isn’t where it’s supposed to be, and for that matter when he reaches for the door handle, neither is the knob. He gropes his hand sideways, trying to keep himself calm in the pitch black -wherever he is, there’s either no windows or some asshole put up a blackout curtain- by reminding himself it’s like a corn maze. If you keep your left hand out, you will eventually find the exit. Pete ends up snagging a finger on a poster, but that’s not exactly his biggest concern. If he’s been kidnapped he’d hardly going to give a shit if he’s fucked with someone’s decor.
He finds the light switch before he finds the doorknob. It’s dimmer than his room; looking up shows that whoever decorated thought it would be a good idea to spray paint the ceiling fixture black, so it just gives off a grey light. Pete turns in a slow circle looking for a mirror. The scan shows the owner is lucky he only tore one poster -literally every inch of wall is covered in posters. There is, however, no mirror, so Pete opens the door in search of a bathroom. Everybody’s bathroom has a mirror, it’s like a interior decorating law.
He recognises the hallway layout. He’s somewhere on his street, he has to be. Chessem Bay is a cookie cutter street, forty one houses all identical except for colour of trim and shingles, and the occasional wood siding rather than stucco. Pete’s played with enough kids on his street to know the insides are identical, though there are more options to change indoors than out. This house has old seventies wallpaper in the hall, olive, maple and black with hexagons. He goes to where the bathroom is in his house, and the toilet and sink sit in the same place, white rather than the pink that matches the floral wallpaper that’s in Pete’s house.
A moment’s look into the mirror changes things. He doesn’t understand what the fuck is going on, but he knows who will.
*
The sad truth is Mikey has the weakest bladder of anyone he knows. He’s the one demanding they stop at every gas station on road trips, and at this point he knows to hold off as long as possible when he’s drinking because once he starts any beer runs through him like a sieve. Forget age sixty, at seventeen it’s a rare night he doesn’t wake up needing to piss.
Tonight is no different. Mikey wakes up under a warm blanket -it doesn’t exactly feel right but then he got pretty stoned before crashing, there’s a good chance he grabbed half a dozen extra from the linen cupboard and one of the seldom used ones made it to the bottom layer against his tossing and turning- and for a moment contemplates trying to roll over and go back to sleep. If he does that, however, he’ll just wake up in twenty minutes needing to piss even more desperately, a progression getting worse and worse until he either gets up or pisses the bed. It only happened the one time, hung over enough, brain rubbing against a grater in his skull, that letting go seemed the less evil of two options. Since he had to get up to change the sheets, which had involved both bending over and fine motor movement Mikey’s pretty much never letting that option win again.
There’s no sense in reaching for his glasses from the thick headboard, as he’s not planning on opening his eyes. He’s lived in this house seventeen years, shared this room with Gee forever before dad finished converting the basement and Gerard moved down there to give them both space for puberty to happen. Mikey knows exactly how many steps it takes to get to the bathroom, could do it drunk or stoned or rolling on E or tripping on shrooms. Since Gerard’s move he can do the stairs blindfolded too. One time he even went down the steps on his hands and knees, not trusting his perception of the world in the haze of whatever the pot was laced with.
The problem is Mikey can’t find his slippers at the side of the bed, not even when he balances on one foot and swings out the other an inch off the carpet. It sucks; the bathroom tile is cold as a bastard. But he needs to piss more than he needs to protect his feet so he’ll just have to suffer this time. Mikey shuffles the fifteen steps and isn’t at the door frame of the bathroom. It’s not that concerning. He figures he probably slept in Elena’s room. He and Gee do that sometimes, when one of them feels sad. Her closet still has her sheets in it. The cotton doesn’t smell like her anymore but it’s pilled in all the right places, and her bed still creaks the way it did when she would pretend to be mad as they woke her up Sunday morning and then read them stories before church. He shuffles the extra steps to the toilet, wincing as his feet hit the first step of uncarpeted floor.
By the time Mikey’s making the return trip he’s awake enough to know that he’ll want his slippers in the morning. Mornings tend to be cramped for time, parenting Gerard because Mom and Dad have morning shifts and have been out of the house for hours. It’s either set his alarm five minutes earlier or find them now. If it was his room he’d have to throw clothes around trying to find them; he’s got too many tubs of comic books under his bed for anything to escape there. But since he slept in Elena’s room there’s a good chance they just slipped under the bed. As he enters he paws at the switch only to realise it’s already on. It’s not that odd considering the time it probably is. Mom or Dad would have turned it off as they passed the room getting ready for work, but it’s probably not quite five am yet.
Mikey opens his eyes and blinks rapidly against the sudden glare. Two disturbing facts burst into his mind immediately. It’s not Elena’s room, and he thinks he was sleeping on a couch, not her bed, under a fleece blanket he’s never seen before. Secondly, his eyesight is perfect without his glasses. Something’s fucked.
Mikey’s not sure why his first reaction is to go to the room that should be his, just that it seems to make sense to him. From the glow of a nightlight he can see the room is purple, with a overall unicorn theme. On the whole, not bad, unicorns are sort of kick ass. But it’s definitely not his room. Also, he thinks there’s a girl in the lacy bedding.
Mikey goes back to not-Elena’s, already trying to figure out how he dropped into another universe without knowing. More importantly, is there another version of himself? Will he cease to exist if he looks upon Mikey Two? Is there a Gerard or Ray or equivalent to help him figure out the differences between the worlds and how to get back home? They share some of the same favourite series but alter on others, the more theories for this sort of thing the better.
Someone is knocking at not-Elena’s window. Mikey finds the middle part of the curtain and pulls the edges apart. It’s him. Which he supposes answers one and two, although it certainly isn’t the safest way to test, and you figure Mikey Two would know that. He sends a quick mental prayer that the window isn’t alarmed, a fifty fifty chance between people who think suburbia is too safe to need it and ultra-paranoid suburbanites, and opens it. There’s no sudden squeal throughout the house, which is good considering he would have had no idea what code to use to turn it off.
“Hey Mikey. Do they call you that here?” Seasons of Sliders have proven calm is the best way of doing this.
“The hell? I’m Pete Wentz. Change us back right now. I don’t know what voodoo shit book you checked out from the library after DnD today but change us back.”
“DnD’s on Wednesday,” Mikey recites automatically. Forget the date once and Ray and the rest have never let him forget it.
His body rolls his eyes at him. “So not the point. Fucking fix this.”
It’s Mikey’s chance to roll his eyes. From what Pete’s saying, he’s guessing they’ve switched and he’s actually using Pete’s eyes. “I didn’t do this. Lets just sleep it off, okay?”
“I don’t sleep!” Pete howls.
“Well, I do. I’m tired as fuck. I’m going back to bed. Couch. Whatever.” Mikey’s got the window half closed before something occurs to him. “If we don’t wake up in the right body, you need to get Gerard up.”
“Whatever,” Pete parrots back at him.
“I’m fucking serious. The alarm goes off, get him the fuck up. If he’s not up there’s no one to open the store. I’ll punch you in the fucking face, I’m serious.”
Pete rolls his eyes again. “I’ll get him up. Hint, I don’t get along with my family. So if you act all chummy they’ll know something’s up. Trust me, only bad things come from them noticing things about me.”
Mikey nods and closes the window. Gerard’s safe for tomorrow morning, that’s all that matters right now. He can figure the rest of it out later, when it’s not something like four in the morning. It’s a time you stay up until, not get up at.
*
Gerard is not the best in the morning. Well, that’s what he would say about the matter. Some people might call that an understatement. Mikey would probably say it was the most ridiculously obvious comment in the world, but Mikey has a bad attitude. Probably because since Mom and Dad are both at work by the time they need to get up, Mikey’s the one in charge of getting him up. He’s been told it’s not the easiest of jobs. Gerard tends to reply with something along the lines of “quit bitching,” unless Frank or Bob or Ray says it first. He’s the big brother twenty three hours a day, Mikey should be able to handle a role switch from eight to nine.
Still the role never really goes away, and it’s impossible not to notice that Mikey is off, because it’s Mikey. Normally he comes into the bedroom and either shoves him until there’s enough room on the edge of the bed or climbs over him to the side between Gerard and the wall. Mikey’s first order of business is to put his cold motherfucking feet on Gerard’s shins, squirming his toes into the space between his calves. Then he plays the ‘I’m going to poke Gerard in random spots because I’m a giant bastard’ game. As much as it would make Gerard smack him -if it wasn’t Mikey, if it wasn’t too exhausting to contemplate moving his arm out of the blankets- Gerard has to give props to the tenacious little fucker. It always works, better than methods that others have tried. Gerard was always the first to cave in the nuh uh-nuh huh game as a kid, and ten years has done nothing to his stamina. He always gets sick of being prodded before Mikey gets sick of prodding.
At this point in the every day saga of getting ready for work his senses haven’t quite woken yet. It’s generally a two at a time thing, he can hear and touch or touch and see. So Mikey helps with that too, tells him if something is too smelly to wear to work, or if his hair looks greasy enough that he needs to wash it or if it can wait until tomorrow. On the rarest of occasions he even tells him he needs to shave. That’s not often though; Gerard’s not really a hairy guy and probably shouldn’t be trusted with even a safety razor before noon.
This morning absolutely nothing in phase one goes to schedule. Mikey wakes him up by shouting his name through the door. Gerard’s ears resent having to wake up so quickly, but it’s been seven years of living in the basement and Mikey occasionally too incoherent to do anything but collapse at his door frame and wait for Gerard to open it himself, he can hear the difference between open door calling and closed door calling. Mikey sounds abnormally irritated, which would probably concern him more if it wasn’t ass o’ clock.
When Gerard finally manages to wake his throat enough to say ‘what’ -okay, so it’s a grunt, Mikey will know it for what it is- because from the door? seriously? there’s no reply. Instead Gerard can hear the heavy footsteps of Mikey clomping back upstairs.
He considers following Mikey to see what’s up, if they had some sort of drama between the two of them getting fucked up that Gerard can’t remember and may or may not have to apologise for. But there’s a good chance that Mikey went out after Gerard passed out, because he usually does. For all he knows everything is fine, Mikey just had rough sex with some guy last night and is all bruises and doesn’t feel up to tossing himself over his older brother and vigorously poking him. It’s the kind of thing that makes Gerard happy to be in a relationship. With it there’s only rough sex when he wants it. Although he pretty much has to assume Mikey wants it too. Otherwise he has to brutally murder someone and reruns of CSI have taught him killers are always caught and put in jail. Gerard decides to work on the premise that everything is fine untilproven otherwise.
His brother already up the stairs means there’s no incentive to get up. Though it’s never been carrot in front as much as stick behind with Mikey. Gerard takes the once in a lifetime opportunity to roll over and go back to sleep. When Mikey comes back Gerard doesn’t know how long he talks before he actually hears the implied threat in “No, seriously. Time to get up.”
There’s barely time to groan something that might sound like ‘what’ before Mikey strikes. Gerard’s eyes are closed but he can sense when Mikey turns the light on, ears catching the snick of the light switch. Moments later it doesn’t take sensing to know his little brother’s taken the goddamn blankets.
“What crawled up your ass and died,” he manages to say nearly coherently. Mikey doesn’t reply so Gerard’s not sure if he caught the message mumbled into the pillow. The light’s not on until it leaks through his closed eyelids. And it’ll take his body a good five minutes to lose its warmth from the sudden lack of covers. This does not mean defeat.
It’s some time later that he concedes, skin goosebumped. Gerard considers this the Bob method, and it’s possibly his least favourite. When Gerard’s at his house on the rare nights it’s possible, the bastard turns up the air conditioning a half an hour before trying to rouse him. Mikey’s upstairs again, so Gerard just reaches onto the pile of clothes on the floor. He feels more than sees softness of a hoodie and rough, slightly sticky jeans, eyes not quite used to the glare of the light bulb. The stickiness isn’t spilled paint, and there’s nothing on the hoodie, and that’s gonna have to be good enough.
Plopping down into his normal chair at the kitchen table is proof enough that phase two of getting to work is also being fucked with. Not only is there no beer stein of coffee sitting on the ratty place mat, he can’t even smell it brewing. It’s enough to make Gerard wonder if there’s a liquid version of anorexic, because he literally cannot remember a single day since Mikey turned fourteen that he hasn’t had at least a cup. At least Mikey’s making himself toast, that much is normal in the universe.
He waits for a minute, hoping his presence will jolt Mikey into action. When it doesn’t happen Gerard offers into the air “coffee?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” Which isn’t even close to the right answer. If for some unfathomable reason Mikey had decided against coffee, his response to Gerard asking for it should have been a hearty ‘make it your own damn self’.
Still, coffee is coffee. It goes against his morals to turn it down if Mikey’s making it. And he’s got the entire car drive to question his brother about what the hell is wrong with him. Gerard buries his face in his hands against the evil sun peering through the sheer yellow curtains and counts down the minutes. Eventually the coffee maker lets off the vicious shriek that is only music to his ears and Gerard prepares to flood himself with the sweet nectar of the morning.
Mikey gives him a cup. An actual teacup sized cup. It’s like Gerard’s entire existence is shattering into bits. Mikey’s cup is also teacup sized which doesn’t make it better. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see it, it’ll only make things worse to see the cup. The handle feels odd in his fingers, the weight of the coffee just the dregs of his normal mug. As he raises the teacup he tries to rationalise it. Maybe one of the things that happened last night was attempting to make mixed drinks in his stein, and it fell to the ground and broke.
The coffee is pisswater. The coffee is at least three scoops less than what both Mikey and Gerard mix, Mikey every morning, Gerard in the evenings. The coffee is fucking tea, and the question bursts out of his mouth before he can stop it. “What is wrong with you?”
Mikey shrugs and grins. Not his normal smile, or even the stretched mouth that comes with hysterical laughter at Monty Python. A fucked up, teeth flashing grin>.“What, dude? Nothing.”
Mikey’s never called him dude. Ever. Gerard changes his mind. He’s not going to probe for details of last night in the car. He’s going to keep his fucking mouth shut until he can get to work and ask Frank and Bob their opinions on alien invasion. Because something fucking crazy is happening here, and that’s about the only thing that could explain Mikey waking him up by shouting at him, taking his blankets, forgetting to make coffee, making coffee weaker than water, and rounding it all off with calling him dude. He can only hope Ebay has overnight shipping for ray guns.
*
Gerard drives him to school. Pete strongly hopes that Mikey knows how to drive and this is just the Ways caring about the environment and conserving gas, or even being cheap and only wanting one car, because no one at home will be giving him a ride if he can’t do it himself. The lesson of only trusting yourself is repackaged and sold as being self-reliant to make it prettier to the consumer, and making sure their children have driver licenses is a single piece of the puzzle. It’s a five member four car family, Hilary being twelve being the reason there’s not five. Pete doesn’t like it, words spiralling in his head as his fingers tap on the grey seatbelt. It’s nerve wracking sitting in the passenger seat, not being in control. Gerard still being half asleep and a total spaz doesn’t help much. Mikey seriously deserves a fucking medal for putting up with this shit every day.
It’s at the doors of Washington that it really hits him how difficult this entire thing is going to be. After leaving his bedroom window Pete spent the rest of the night awake watching some of the movies burned onto DVD-R’s with Mikey’s Xbox. Mikey’s parents were up early, and then he’d had to follow Mikey’s stupid instructions about making Gerard get out of bed, the lazy bastard. He hadn’t really thought about the mechanics of pretending to be someone else. He doesn’t know his schedule aside from sharing band class, he doesn’t know his friends names or if he’s deadly allergic to shellfish. Which, fine, probably aren’t going to be in the school cafeteria, but the point still stands.
At the very least he needs to figure out what classes he needs to go today. Mikey had a backpack sitting by the front door, Pete had grabbed it without thinking about making sure it was packed. Pete stops by the office, where the traffic is slower. No sense in trekking all the way to one side of the school if Mikey’s first period is on the other. Opening the bag proves disappointing to his plan to figure shit out and possibly damning if a teacher sees all that’s inside. It’s only half full; two empty bottles of water and one uncracked, a pair of jeans with swirls and rambles written on them in White Out, wrist bands, a few dead glow stick necklaces, a Tylenol bottle that does not have Tylenol in it, an iPhone with headphones, and a notebook. Mikey apparently not only owns a party backpack, he leaves it in the middle of the hallway.
The only thing that could be at all useful is Mikey’s phone, so he can text himself for a class schedule. Presuming that Mikey found the outlet that his phone was charging from and took it with him. The back of it is altered; where the Apple logo should be is a piece of worn red duct tape, with 1111 scrawled out on it in black marker. It turns out to be the locking code, which seems incredibly redundant, but whatever. It’s Mikey’s privacy, not his.
Pete can’t help but nose first. Mikey’s got a huge address book, one that rivals Pete’s. It makes him want to figure out Mikey’s Facebook password so he can see how many Friends he has. Only some of the entries overlap, people like Ryan Ross who are social climbers who insist on knowing everyone. From the bag it’s obvious Mikey is a partier, the sort that logs everyone they’ve ever talked to into their phone. Not that Pete’s that much different, more than a few exchanged sentences and he’s typing in their number. But he does it because he wants texts about this really great band is playing this place on this night. He’s willing to bet Mikey’s are at least half drug hookups.
Pete’s got his number typed out when a massive hand comes down on his shoulder. It’s all Pete can do to not drop to his knees for second position. His inner voice telling him he’s in high school and he doesn’t do that anymore, repeating it until Pete feels safe, drowns out half of what the guy says. Looking behind him he can only be happy that friends don’t often call each other by their first names, intent to get their attention made obvious with other means, because he has no fucking clue who this guy is.
Well, if he’s friendly enough to touch Mikey, he should be friendly enough to know what courses Mikey’s taking. “What’s first today?”
Normally Pete hates classes changing order between even days and odd days. It’s disorganised, and not in a good way like a mosh pit or Ashlee’s bedroom. Today he’s grateful for it, if only because he just sounds like a spaz not knowing what school day it is instead of a complete moron not knowing a schedule he’s had for two months.
“Come on man, it’s day two.”
Pete stares at the tall guy. Hopefully it’s close enough to Mikey’s stare to seem real. It seems like Mikey’s default expression the few times he’s seen him walking down the street, or at the same youth club, or the rare time that he looks up from his sheet of music in band.
“Which means sociology, AP math, Spanish, lunch, band, physics, 3D art. Seriously, how do I know your schedule when you don’t know your schedule?”
Unfortunately for him, there’s still a good fifteen minutes before first period. He guesses the waste of time in the morning is the price Mikey pays for getting a ride, but it’s annoying as hell. Worse, he’s forced to follow metal-hair to his locker because that’s probably what Mikey would do, and he needs to try to figure out what to say to sound like him. Pete suspects this would be less of a problem if it wasn’t Mikey Way he was body-switched with. Mikey is a weird guy to have to imitate. When they were all younger and all you had to do to know your neighbour was knock on every door on the street and ask who wanted to play soccer or tag or hockey, the Ways never joined. Not just didn’t join on Pete’s invitation, but didn’t join on anyone’s. The only thing the Ways did was sidewalk chalk drawings with some of the girls, and that was rare too.
At first glance he’s sort of lucky, because it appears for all the people in his contacts it’s only this guy that cares enough to hang out before class. There’s only only person Pete needs to fake it for. Mikey’s going to have it harder, faking it for Ashlee and Patrick and Andy and Joe and whichever others happen to crash their lunch table today. But when you look at it deeper, the sole presence is actually a negative. Since there’s no one else with them to distract him the guy -scrolling through Mikey’s pictures there’s one of Mikey, his brother and this guy, labelled Mikeyfuckingway, Gway, and Ray- will probably notice if he does something wrong. Or well, not wrong, just not Mikeyish. Because Pete’s willing to bet Mikey’s not full of behaving in what would be the normal, right reaction to things.
Three minutes in sociology gives him the idea. They’ve been studying developmental theories, and this seems to fit perfectly for telling Mikey everything he needs to know. Pete’s sociology is second period on even days, so he can give Mikey his list when they pass in the hall. Hopefully Mikey will have his answers by band, and they’ll both know enough to deal with each other’s families this evening.
The letter is pretty much identical to what’s on the overhead. It’s even got highlighter to simulate Mr Weston’s multiple colours of overhead pen. Pete Wentz’s hierarchy of needs.
physiological
air- need it.
water- need it. i drink water or gatorade. don’t touch the 2% milk, only Andrew drinks it.
food- not allergic to anything. i don’t eat more than toast for breakfast. i never eat scrambled eggs, they will know immediately. also don’t eat peanut butter or fish. i guess this sounds weird, but if you’re around my family if you see someone eat any of the three they’ll expect you to have a panic attack. wiki for info on how to do that.
sleep- lol, i dont. i sleep on the couch in my room, but you can probably use the bed cause no one would ever come into my room. im not gerard though, i wake up with an alarm if i do fall asleep.
shelter- i live three houses over, obviously.
clothing- a hoodie at all times. but you do that too, i think, so it’s nothing new. joe thinks he can judge my mood based on my shoes he’s full of crap but he’ll try. i think it’s full of crap so he’ll expect you to laugh.
safety/security
-i don’t have any property or employment. i don’t have any resources. wait, he said it’s not minerals it’s like financial resources. well, i’m not telling you my bank account number, my wallet has fifty bucks, that should be enough for whatever. i mostly spend money on concert tickets, mom and dad pay for caf lunches and gas. i go to a lot of concerts though.
-locker combo’s 3-15-24
-i’m healthy, and no dentist apointments in the near future so you lucked out.
-there’s no such thing as someone’s body being safe or secure i don’t have any bullies, and i know how to fight. i’m not sure if my body would remember or if it’s all in my brain now though.
love/belonging
family- mom, dad, no aunts, grama on mom’s side but we only acknowledge her at christmas. i fucking hope we’re not stuck like this until christmas. Andrew’s 16, Hilary’s 12. none of us are friends, none of us talk. wentzes are self sufficent.
friends- primary: 1)Andy. red hair, glasses. hardcore vegan, checks shoes for bits of leather before he wears them. mostly straight. primary goal in life is swaying people to his cause. put up with it, don’t buy into it. 2) Joe. jew-fro. stoner. doesn’t always hang out, has his secondary group of Jon and Tom and Cassie. laugh at what he says. totally straight, made out with him once, it failed. 3) Patrick. you’ll get your nose broken if you try to take his hat off and don’t move fast enough, but he’ll know something’s up if you don’t try. call him lunchbox or pattycakes, again, dodge the hit. he might be in love with me, completely ignore anything, patrick’s not something that can be fucked up.
--->secondary: Ryan. wears a lot of makeup. i think he might crossdress, but i don’t care, whatever makes him happy. he’ll probably invite me to stuff, get confirmation from two other sources in my phone that it’ll be awesome before going, he likes literature circles and shit too. William. long black hair, pretty as fuck. again, mostly at shows, he goes here but we don’t really talk. fucking head over heels with Mike Carden, it’s the most obvious thing in the world, if you say it he’ll beat you to death, he’s got all his shit suppressed. repressed. whatever. Travis. black, tons of peircings. only at shows. try to think of at least one band he’s never heard of to tell him about it.
intimacy- been dating Ashlee about a year. we have sex, USE A CONDOM, her mom is creepy and has swapped out birth control for candies before. a few guys will try to hit on you, probably. they’re not ex’s, we never dated. don’t be bitchy unless you have to be.
-on the soccer team. i’m striker, please wiki for details.
esteem
so i’m kind of fucked up. i’m not telling you everything, you don’t need to know. PAAJ know bits of it, but it’s not like i talk about it a lot. my family doesn’t want to know. just make sure to do the panic attack thing and everything will be fine.
self actualization
yeah, i have no fucking idea what this is. realising one’s potential and fulfulling it, apparently. mother teresa as an example. so it doesn’t really apply.
*
“Hey,” Patrick says to Pete as he sits beside him, waiting for the inevitable shove of the spiral bound notebook into his face. After all, it’s come regularly for the last two years. If Patrick wasn’t such a good flincher his head would be covered in paper cuts.
Pete looks up slowly, slow enough that Patrick has to wonder if something is wrong. He says hey back. It’s hard to fuck up one syllable, but it sounds wrong, somehow.
In high school you mostly meet people because they sit beside you in some class, or a teacher forces you to be partners for some projects, or they take your parking spot and you feel the urge to bitch them out while you’re with your friends and they come up from behind when you’re not looking and you think you’re going to die but instead they say you have spunk. Not Pete. Of course that’s not how Patrick met Pete, because Pete doesn’t know how to do normal interactions.
Since sophomore year Patrick’s been in charge of the school literary magazine. It’s a bit of a lofty title, considering it’s about fifteen stapled pages eight times a year, but it’s something that looks good on an university application, and that matters since he’ll be going to school with a combination of loan and scholarship. All in all, it’s a pretty good gig compared to some of the other things he could use. It’s a way to gather attention in the future without having to worry about gathering attention now. He’s not the guy that has to catch a football in front of a few hundred teenagers, he’s not the guy that has to deliver lines with emotion and subtext while making sure he’s remembering the blocking correctly. He’s just the guy that sits in Mr Allen’s English class after school once a month and reads through the submissions that have been dropped off by the same handful of people.
So when Patrick moved Alana’s story into the fuck-no pile -steampunk was cool in theory, but not when it read like ten pages of world building- and the page under it had a name Patrick didn’t recognise he had been interested. Not that he had anything against publishing Brendon’s folk tales, but a new writer was always a good thing, and hopefully it would be a genre more accessible to the average teenager.
What it had been was a suicide note thinly veiled in a poem. With a set of balls Patrick hadn’t known that he had, he’d tracked down ‘Pete Wentz’ and told him the poem was crap, and it wouldn’t make the cut. If he wanted to be in the paper he had to write something better. It had worked, had become a One Thousand and One Nights sort of thing, each poem making Pete stick around a day longer. Most adults wouldn’t have understood the technique; if Patrick had ever told his parents they would have been appalled that he didn’t report him to the guidance counsellor. But eventually Pete’s poetry had moved into less suicidal affairs, had done so before Patrick had felt it necessary to betray his confidence.
Reading Pete’s writings and giving his opinions on it has stayed a habit. He’s pretty much the only one that’s capable of doing it. Pete doesn’t react well to most other’s opinions. Patrick’s seen nightmarish reactions: Pete refusing to write, or Pete defiantly making mistakes on purpose to piss off the audience. The three weeks fucking asshat William Beckett shared all his creative self doubt and Pete picked up on it were horrible. And it was an entire semester of Pete refusing to capitalise the names of countries after a teacher bitched him out for it, a half a mark off for each improperly written instance leaving him to almost fail the course.
This semester they’ve got gym together first period, or second on odd days. Pete’s not great with patience, Patrick can’t really expect Pete to wait until lunch to hand his notebook over. He’s not sure how they get away with doing it during Mrs Batt’s daily fitness lecture. Not so much with her, all she cares about is shouting at them about how they’re all atrophying from using the computer instead of going hiking, she hardly ever actually looks at them. It’s the other people in their class. Patrick’s pretty sure their peers should be giving them shit for caring about poems. Maybe they think it’s next period’s homework, or lyrics. Or maybe Pete’s scary because he went to military camp and for all they know he’s trained to be a superior weapon that will kick their asses. Maybe it’s just that he’s a jock, and jocks don’t get teased. Whatever the reason, no one has said anything thus far, and Patrick’s not going to complain about not getting picked on.
Surprisingly, it’s actually better with gym first period. The first class Patrick thought being away from a desk would make annotating poetry impossible, and somewhat feared the battle of Pete vs. Impossibilities. But if they change into gym clothes as soon as Pete gets to school, and talk quietly while she’s lecturing so she doesn’t notice them pointing to a paper on Patrick’s lap, they’ve got anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes before they need to start doing the warm up jog.
“So where’s today’s work,” Patrick prompts after a minute of silence. Something’s obviously up. It’s weird, the few times he hasn’t wanted to share he’s told Patrick to fuck off, that it’s none of his fucking business in a harsh hiss pitched to not attract Mrs Batt’s attention. He’s never completely ignored it; Patrick’s not sure if he’s capable of ignoring anything.
“It’s gym class.”
“Yeah?” It’s possible it’s a long poem and Pete doesn’t think they’ll have time. Sociology second period could be better because as long as it appears they’re writing notes they probably won’t get caught. It’s just Patrick likes talking about Pete’s writing more than he likes marking his page up with crossed out lines and arrows for lines that should exchange places. He’d really rather do this now.
Pete rolls his eyes, a gesture he doesn’t usually use with him. “Gym class doesn’t have homework.”
“Well yeah, unless you Google ways to distract yourself from the mind numbing agony that are these lectures. Come on man, I mean your poetry.”
Patrick really doesn’t understand the way Pete is staring at him. It takes almost a full minute before Pete shrugs slightly. When that’s all that comes before Mrs Batt orders them to start running length of the gym Patrick knows something’s wrong. He needs to consult with Ashlee to see if something horrible happened that he doesn’t know about yet. If she doesn’t know either this could get ugly and dramatic, fast.
Part Two
Pete jolts into wakefulness very confused. He’d been sure tonight was one of the nights where he just wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep. They come as often as not, no schedule he can set, no pattern that the therapist he doesn’t go to would analyse for hidden meaning. It’s not as though restlessness is a new thing to Pete; ever since he can remember, sleep has been an elusive mistress. As a child it meant getting up for fourth and fifth glasses of water, a bit older asking to watch one of the grown up shows with his parents, older still with the television at low volume and a t-shirt at the seam of the door to prevent the flashing commercials from making it obvious.
Then came sophomore year and the three strikes -getting caught coming home from his first party with alcohol, a phone call home about ten skipped classes in U.S. history, and a fist fight with Ellington Chalmers for calling Andy a fag- that lead to him being struck out. Exiled out, really, to a boot camp. His parents had paid for six weeks of behavioural modification, which seemed ridiculously long, an eternity, until he found out that some of the other teenagers had been there for over a year. Destiny Radin had been there over four when Pete came in, nineteen and legally free to leave except her parents wouldn’t accept her until she passed the program and she had no money or education to take care of herself. All in all, six weeks really wasn’t much.
When he got back, his insomnia changed. Instead of lying awake for hours trying to find a cool spot on his pillow, wishing he could sneak to the computer room for his Ipod and making do with humming Slayer to himself, now Pete just does his best to distract himself from his memories. Once he starts falling into memories of walking without shoes on gravel roads, not allowed to stop until the bottoms of his regulation white socks were tinged red, it’s hard to pull himself out. Punishment walks were one of his least favourite remembered activities. There are whole days he can’t remember at all though. He expects the things that happened then were worse.
Upon waking, his eyes bolt open, an automatic movement conditioned into him. The confusion almost immediately turns to terror. Not being able to remember falling asleep is one thing, having all his safeguards taken away is completely another. The light’s not on, he’s not wearing a hoodie and sweat pants knotted so many times at the waist that it takes a good five minutes to untie them every morning. Worst of all, he’s not sleeping on the couch. After a week of sneaking downstairs to the living room to sleep after coming home, his parents finally got him one for his bedroom. It’s a safe substitute since it has a back he can curl into. His room still has a bed but he hasn’t used it in the last year and a half. It’s covered in CDs and books, comforter dusty in the spots that items aren’t strewn about.
Pete goes to string his hand through his red dyed bangs. Possibly it’s not the best habit, but pulling on his hair is a grounding motion. It’s not like he pulls strands out, so it can’t be that self-harming. His bangs aren’t there. Pete was never one of the ones they publicly stripped and shaved, claiming an infestation of lice. Still his safety brain kicks into high gear and he puts himself into first position, legs curled to his chest, chin as close to his knees as possible, hands on the back of his neck, fingers linked.
It’s then that he feels the chain. Pete’s never worn a necklace a day in his life, not even a collar for goth night at one of the clubs a friend convinces him to go to. But it’s there, tiny connected balls warmed by his skin, and it’s odd enough that he can pull himself out. If he can look at himself in the full length mirror attached to the back of his door he can maybe figure out what the fuck is going on.
The light switch isn’t where it’s supposed to be, and for that matter when he reaches for the door handle, neither is the knob. He gropes his hand sideways, trying to keep himself calm in the pitch black -wherever he is, there’s either no windows or some asshole put up a blackout curtain- by reminding himself it’s like a corn maze. If you keep your left hand out, you will eventually find the exit. Pete ends up snagging a finger on a poster, but that’s not exactly his biggest concern. If he’s been kidnapped he’d hardly going to give a shit if he’s fucked with someone’s decor.
He finds the light switch before he finds the doorknob. It’s dimmer than his room; looking up shows that whoever decorated thought it would be a good idea to spray paint the ceiling fixture black, so it just gives off a grey light. Pete turns in a slow circle looking for a mirror. The scan shows the owner is lucky he only tore one poster -literally every inch of wall is covered in posters. There is, however, no mirror, so Pete opens the door in search of a bathroom. Everybody’s bathroom has a mirror, it’s like a interior decorating law.
He recognises the hallway layout. He’s somewhere on his street, he has to be. Chessem Bay is a cookie cutter street, forty one houses all identical except for colour of trim and shingles, and the occasional wood siding rather than stucco. Pete’s played with enough kids on his street to know the insides are identical, though there are more options to change indoors than out. This house has old seventies wallpaper in the hall, olive, maple and black with hexagons. He goes to where the bathroom is in his house, and the toilet and sink sit in the same place, white rather than the pink that matches the floral wallpaper that’s in Pete’s house.
A moment’s look into the mirror changes things. He doesn’t understand what the fuck is going on, but he knows who will.
*
The sad truth is Mikey has the weakest bladder of anyone he knows. He’s the one demanding they stop at every gas station on road trips, and at this point he knows to hold off as long as possible when he’s drinking because once he starts any beer runs through him like a sieve. Forget age sixty, at seventeen it’s a rare night he doesn’t wake up needing to piss.
Tonight is no different. Mikey wakes up under a warm blanket -it doesn’t exactly feel right but then he got pretty stoned before crashing, there’s a good chance he grabbed half a dozen extra from the linen cupboard and one of the seldom used ones made it to the bottom layer against his tossing and turning- and for a moment contemplates trying to roll over and go back to sleep. If he does that, however, he’ll just wake up in twenty minutes needing to piss even more desperately, a progression getting worse and worse until he either gets up or pisses the bed. It only happened the one time, hung over enough, brain rubbing against a grater in his skull, that letting go seemed the less evil of two options. Since he had to get up to change the sheets, which had involved both bending over and fine motor movement Mikey’s pretty much never letting that option win again.
There’s no sense in reaching for his glasses from the thick headboard, as he’s not planning on opening his eyes. He’s lived in this house seventeen years, shared this room with Gee forever before dad finished converting the basement and Gerard moved down there to give them both space for puberty to happen. Mikey knows exactly how many steps it takes to get to the bathroom, could do it drunk or stoned or rolling on E or tripping on shrooms. Since Gerard’s move he can do the stairs blindfolded too. One time he even went down the steps on his hands and knees, not trusting his perception of the world in the haze of whatever the pot was laced with.
The problem is Mikey can’t find his slippers at the side of the bed, not even when he balances on one foot and swings out the other an inch off the carpet. It sucks; the bathroom tile is cold as a bastard. But he needs to piss more than he needs to protect his feet so he’ll just have to suffer this time. Mikey shuffles the fifteen steps and isn’t at the door frame of the bathroom. It’s not that concerning. He figures he probably slept in Elena’s room. He and Gee do that sometimes, when one of them feels sad. Her closet still has her sheets in it. The cotton doesn’t smell like her anymore but it’s pilled in all the right places, and her bed still creaks the way it did when she would pretend to be mad as they woke her up Sunday morning and then read them stories before church. He shuffles the extra steps to the toilet, wincing as his feet hit the first step of uncarpeted floor.
By the time Mikey’s making the return trip he’s awake enough to know that he’ll want his slippers in the morning. Mornings tend to be cramped for time, parenting Gerard because Mom and Dad have morning shifts and have been out of the house for hours. It’s either set his alarm five minutes earlier or find them now. If it was his room he’d have to throw clothes around trying to find them; he’s got too many tubs of comic books under his bed for anything to escape there. But since he slept in Elena’s room there’s a good chance they just slipped under the bed. As he enters he paws at the switch only to realise it’s already on. It’s not that odd considering the time it probably is. Mom or Dad would have turned it off as they passed the room getting ready for work, but it’s probably not quite five am yet.
Mikey opens his eyes and blinks rapidly against the sudden glare. Two disturbing facts burst into his mind immediately. It’s not Elena’s room, and he thinks he was sleeping on a couch, not her bed, under a fleece blanket he’s never seen before. Secondly, his eyesight is perfect without his glasses. Something’s fucked.
Mikey’s not sure why his first reaction is to go to the room that should be his, just that it seems to make sense to him. From the glow of a nightlight he can see the room is purple, with a overall unicorn theme. On the whole, not bad, unicorns are sort of kick ass. But it’s definitely not his room. Also, he thinks there’s a girl in the lacy bedding.
Mikey goes back to not-Elena’s, already trying to figure out how he dropped into another universe without knowing. More importantly, is there another version of himself? Will he cease to exist if he looks upon Mikey Two? Is there a Gerard or Ray or equivalent to help him figure out the differences between the worlds and how to get back home? They share some of the same favourite series but alter on others, the more theories for this sort of thing the better.
Someone is knocking at not-Elena’s window. Mikey finds the middle part of the curtain and pulls the edges apart. It’s him. Which he supposes answers one and two, although it certainly isn’t the safest way to test, and you figure Mikey Two would know that. He sends a quick mental prayer that the window isn’t alarmed, a fifty fifty chance between people who think suburbia is too safe to need it and ultra-paranoid suburbanites, and opens it. There’s no sudden squeal throughout the house, which is good considering he would have had no idea what code to use to turn it off.
“Hey Mikey. Do they call you that here?” Seasons of Sliders have proven calm is the best way of doing this.
“The hell? I’m Pete Wentz. Change us back right now. I don’t know what voodoo shit book you checked out from the library after DnD today but change us back.”
“DnD’s on Wednesday,” Mikey recites automatically. Forget the date once and Ray and the rest have never let him forget it.
His body rolls his eyes at him. “So not the point. Fucking fix this.”
It’s Mikey’s chance to roll his eyes. From what Pete’s saying, he’s guessing they’ve switched and he’s actually using Pete’s eyes. “I didn’t do this. Lets just sleep it off, okay?”
“I don’t sleep!” Pete howls.
“Well, I do. I’m tired as fuck. I’m going back to bed. Couch. Whatever.” Mikey’s got the window half closed before something occurs to him. “If we don’t wake up in the right body, you need to get Gerard up.”
“Whatever,” Pete parrots back at him.
“I’m fucking serious. The alarm goes off, get him the fuck up. If he’s not up there’s no one to open the store. I’ll punch you in the fucking face, I’m serious.”
Pete rolls his eyes again. “I’ll get him up. Hint, I don’t get along with my family. So if you act all chummy they’ll know something’s up. Trust me, only bad things come from them noticing things about me.”
Mikey nods and closes the window. Gerard’s safe for tomorrow morning, that’s all that matters right now. He can figure the rest of it out later, when it’s not something like four in the morning. It’s a time you stay up until, not get up at.
*
Gerard is not the best in the morning. Well, that’s what he would say about the matter. Some people might call that an understatement. Mikey would probably say it was the most ridiculously obvious comment in the world, but Mikey has a bad attitude. Probably because since Mom and Dad are both at work by the time they need to get up, Mikey’s the one in charge of getting him up. He’s been told it’s not the easiest of jobs. Gerard tends to reply with something along the lines of “quit bitching,” unless Frank or Bob or Ray says it first. He’s the big brother twenty three hours a day, Mikey should be able to handle a role switch from eight to nine.
Still the role never really goes away, and it’s impossible not to notice that Mikey is off, because it’s Mikey. Normally he comes into the bedroom and either shoves him until there’s enough room on the edge of the bed or climbs over him to the side between Gerard and the wall. Mikey’s first order of business is to put his cold motherfucking feet on Gerard’s shins, squirming his toes into the space between his calves. Then he plays the ‘I’m going to poke Gerard in random spots because I’m a giant bastard’ game. As much as it would make Gerard smack him -if it wasn’t Mikey, if it wasn’t too exhausting to contemplate moving his arm out of the blankets- Gerard has to give props to the tenacious little fucker. It always works, better than methods that others have tried. Gerard was always the first to cave in the nuh uh-nuh huh game as a kid, and ten years has done nothing to his stamina. He always gets sick of being prodded before Mikey gets sick of prodding.
At this point in the every day saga of getting ready for work his senses haven’t quite woken yet. It’s generally a two at a time thing, he can hear and touch or touch and see. So Mikey helps with that too, tells him if something is too smelly to wear to work, or if his hair looks greasy enough that he needs to wash it or if it can wait until tomorrow. On the rarest of occasions he even tells him he needs to shave. That’s not often though; Gerard’s not really a hairy guy and probably shouldn’t be trusted with even a safety razor before noon.
This morning absolutely nothing in phase one goes to schedule. Mikey wakes him up by shouting his name through the door. Gerard’s ears resent having to wake up so quickly, but it’s been seven years of living in the basement and Mikey occasionally too incoherent to do anything but collapse at his door frame and wait for Gerard to open it himself, he can hear the difference between open door calling and closed door calling. Mikey sounds abnormally irritated, which would probably concern him more if it wasn’t ass o’ clock.
When Gerard finally manages to wake his throat enough to say ‘what’ -okay, so it’s a grunt, Mikey will know it for what it is- because from the door? seriously? there’s no reply. Instead Gerard can hear the heavy footsteps of Mikey clomping back upstairs.
He considers following Mikey to see what’s up, if they had some sort of drama between the two of them getting fucked up that Gerard can’t remember and may or may not have to apologise for. But there’s a good chance that Mikey went out after Gerard passed out, because he usually does. For all he knows everything is fine, Mikey just had rough sex with some guy last night and is all bruises and doesn’t feel up to tossing himself over his older brother and vigorously poking him. It’s the kind of thing that makes Gerard happy to be in a relationship. With it there’s only rough sex when he wants it. Although he pretty much has to assume Mikey wants it too. Otherwise he has to brutally murder someone and reruns of CSI have taught him killers are always caught and put in jail. Gerard decides to work on the premise that everything is fine untilproven otherwise.
His brother already up the stairs means there’s no incentive to get up. Though it’s never been carrot in front as much as stick behind with Mikey. Gerard takes the once in a lifetime opportunity to roll over and go back to sleep. When Mikey comes back Gerard doesn’t know how long he talks before he actually hears the implied threat in “No, seriously. Time to get up.”
There’s barely time to groan something that might sound like ‘what’ before Mikey strikes. Gerard’s eyes are closed but he can sense when Mikey turns the light on, ears catching the snick of the light switch. Moments later it doesn’t take sensing to know his little brother’s taken the goddamn blankets.
“What crawled up your ass and died,” he manages to say nearly coherently. Mikey doesn’t reply so Gerard’s not sure if he caught the message mumbled into the pillow. The light’s not on until it leaks through his closed eyelids. And it’ll take his body a good five minutes to lose its warmth from the sudden lack of covers. This does not mean defeat.
It’s some time later that he concedes, skin goosebumped. Gerard considers this the Bob method, and it’s possibly his least favourite. When Gerard’s at his house on the rare nights it’s possible, the bastard turns up the air conditioning a half an hour before trying to rouse him. Mikey’s upstairs again, so Gerard just reaches onto the pile of clothes on the floor. He feels more than sees softness of a hoodie and rough, slightly sticky jeans, eyes not quite used to the glare of the light bulb. The stickiness isn’t spilled paint, and there’s nothing on the hoodie, and that’s gonna have to be good enough.
Plopping down into his normal chair at the kitchen table is proof enough that phase two of getting to work is also being fucked with. Not only is there no beer stein of coffee sitting on the ratty place mat, he can’t even smell it brewing. It’s enough to make Gerard wonder if there’s a liquid version of anorexic, because he literally cannot remember a single day since Mikey turned fourteen that he hasn’t had at least a cup. At least Mikey’s making himself toast, that much is normal in the universe.
He waits for a minute, hoping his presence will jolt Mikey into action. When it doesn’t happen Gerard offers into the air “coffee?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” Which isn’t even close to the right answer. If for some unfathomable reason Mikey had decided against coffee, his response to Gerard asking for it should have been a hearty ‘make it your own damn self’.
Still, coffee is coffee. It goes against his morals to turn it down if Mikey’s making it. And he’s got the entire car drive to question his brother about what the hell is wrong with him. Gerard buries his face in his hands against the evil sun peering through the sheer yellow curtains and counts down the minutes. Eventually the coffee maker lets off the vicious shriek that is only music to his ears and Gerard prepares to flood himself with the sweet nectar of the morning.
Mikey gives him a cup. An actual teacup sized cup. It’s like Gerard’s entire existence is shattering into bits. Mikey’s cup is also teacup sized which doesn’t make it better. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see it, it’ll only make things worse to see the cup. The handle feels odd in his fingers, the weight of the coffee just the dregs of his normal mug. As he raises the teacup he tries to rationalise it. Maybe one of the things that happened last night was attempting to make mixed drinks in his stein, and it fell to the ground and broke.
The coffee is pisswater. The coffee is at least three scoops less than what both Mikey and Gerard mix, Mikey every morning, Gerard in the evenings. The coffee is fucking tea, and the question bursts out of his mouth before he can stop it. “What is wrong with you?”
Mikey shrugs and grins. Not his normal smile, or even the stretched mouth that comes with hysterical laughter at Monty Python. A fucked up, teeth flashing grin>.“What, dude? Nothing.”
Mikey’s never called him dude. Ever. Gerard changes his mind. He’s not going to probe for details of last night in the car. He’s going to keep his fucking mouth shut until he can get to work and ask Frank and Bob their opinions on alien invasion. Because something fucking crazy is happening here, and that’s about the only thing that could explain Mikey waking him up by shouting at him, taking his blankets, forgetting to make coffee, making coffee weaker than water, and rounding it all off with calling him dude. He can only hope Ebay has overnight shipping for ray guns.
*
Gerard drives him to school. Pete strongly hopes that Mikey knows how to drive and this is just the Ways caring about the environment and conserving gas, or even being cheap and only wanting one car, because no one at home will be giving him a ride if he can’t do it himself. The lesson of only trusting yourself is repackaged and sold as being self-reliant to make it prettier to the consumer, and making sure their children have driver licenses is a single piece of the puzzle. It’s a five member four car family, Hilary being twelve being the reason there’s not five. Pete doesn’t like it, words spiralling in his head as his fingers tap on the grey seatbelt. It’s nerve wracking sitting in the passenger seat, not being in control. Gerard still being half asleep and a total spaz doesn’t help much. Mikey seriously deserves a fucking medal for putting up with this shit every day.
It’s at the doors of Washington that it really hits him how difficult this entire thing is going to be. After leaving his bedroom window Pete spent the rest of the night awake watching some of the movies burned onto DVD-R’s with Mikey’s Xbox. Mikey’s parents were up early, and then he’d had to follow Mikey’s stupid instructions about making Gerard get out of bed, the lazy bastard. He hadn’t really thought about the mechanics of pretending to be someone else. He doesn’t know his schedule aside from sharing band class, he doesn’t know his friends names or if he’s deadly allergic to shellfish. Which, fine, probably aren’t going to be in the school cafeteria, but the point still stands.
At the very least he needs to figure out what classes he needs to go today. Mikey had a backpack sitting by the front door, Pete had grabbed it without thinking about making sure it was packed. Pete stops by the office, where the traffic is slower. No sense in trekking all the way to one side of the school if Mikey’s first period is on the other. Opening the bag proves disappointing to his plan to figure shit out and possibly damning if a teacher sees all that’s inside. It’s only half full; two empty bottles of water and one uncracked, a pair of jeans with swirls and rambles written on them in White Out, wrist bands, a few dead glow stick necklaces, a Tylenol bottle that does not have Tylenol in it, an iPhone with headphones, and a notebook. Mikey apparently not only owns a party backpack, he leaves it in the middle of the hallway.
The only thing that could be at all useful is Mikey’s phone, so he can text himself for a class schedule. Presuming that Mikey found the outlet that his phone was charging from and took it with him. The back of it is altered; where the Apple logo should be is a piece of worn red duct tape, with 1111 scrawled out on it in black marker. It turns out to be the locking code, which seems incredibly redundant, but whatever. It’s Mikey’s privacy, not his.
Pete can’t help but nose first. Mikey’s got a huge address book, one that rivals Pete’s. It makes him want to figure out Mikey’s Facebook password so he can see how many Friends he has. Only some of the entries overlap, people like Ryan Ross who are social climbers who insist on knowing everyone. From the bag it’s obvious Mikey is a partier, the sort that logs everyone they’ve ever talked to into their phone. Not that Pete’s that much different, more than a few exchanged sentences and he’s typing in their number. But he does it because he wants texts about this really great band is playing this place on this night. He’s willing to bet Mikey’s are at least half drug hookups.
Pete’s got his number typed out when a massive hand comes down on his shoulder. It’s all Pete can do to not drop to his knees for second position. His inner voice telling him he’s in high school and he doesn’t do that anymore, repeating it until Pete feels safe, drowns out half of what the guy says. Looking behind him he can only be happy that friends don’t often call each other by their first names, intent to get their attention made obvious with other means, because he has no fucking clue who this guy is.
Well, if he’s friendly enough to touch Mikey, he should be friendly enough to know what courses Mikey’s taking. “What’s first today?”
Normally Pete hates classes changing order between even days and odd days. It’s disorganised, and not in a good way like a mosh pit or Ashlee’s bedroom. Today he’s grateful for it, if only because he just sounds like a spaz not knowing what school day it is instead of a complete moron not knowing a schedule he’s had for two months.
“Come on man, it’s day two.”
Pete stares at the tall guy. Hopefully it’s close enough to Mikey’s stare to seem real. It seems like Mikey’s default expression the few times he’s seen him walking down the street, or at the same youth club, or the rare time that he looks up from his sheet of music in band.
“Which means sociology, AP math, Spanish, lunch, band, physics, 3D art. Seriously, how do I know your schedule when you don’t know your schedule?”
Unfortunately for him, there’s still a good fifteen minutes before first period. He guesses the waste of time in the morning is the price Mikey pays for getting a ride, but it’s annoying as hell. Worse, he’s forced to follow metal-hair to his locker because that’s probably what Mikey would do, and he needs to try to figure out what to say to sound like him. Pete suspects this would be less of a problem if it wasn’t Mikey Way he was body-switched with. Mikey is a weird guy to have to imitate. When they were all younger and all you had to do to know your neighbour was knock on every door on the street and ask who wanted to play soccer or tag or hockey, the Ways never joined. Not just didn’t join on Pete’s invitation, but didn’t join on anyone’s. The only thing the Ways did was sidewalk chalk drawings with some of the girls, and that was rare too.
At first glance he’s sort of lucky, because it appears for all the people in his contacts it’s only this guy that cares enough to hang out before class. There’s only only person Pete needs to fake it for. Mikey’s going to have it harder, faking it for Ashlee and Patrick and Andy and Joe and whichever others happen to crash their lunch table today. But when you look at it deeper, the sole presence is actually a negative. Since there’s no one else with them to distract him the guy -scrolling through Mikey’s pictures there’s one of Mikey, his brother and this guy, labelled Mikeyfuckingway, Gway, and Ray- will probably notice if he does something wrong. Or well, not wrong, just not Mikeyish. Because Pete’s willing to bet Mikey’s not full of behaving in what would be the normal, right reaction to things.
Three minutes in sociology gives him the idea. They’ve been studying developmental theories, and this seems to fit perfectly for telling Mikey everything he needs to know. Pete’s sociology is second period on even days, so he can give Mikey his list when they pass in the hall. Hopefully Mikey will have his answers by band, and they’ll both know enough to deal with each other’s families this evening.
The letter is pretty much identical to what’s on the overhead. It’s even got highlighter to simulate Mr Weston’s multiple colours of overhead pen. Pete Wentz’s hierarchy of needs.
physiological
air- need it.
water- need it. i drink water or gatorade. don’t touch the 2% milk, only Andrew drinks it.
food- not allergic to anything. i don’t eat more than toast for breakfast. i never eat scrambled eggs, they will know immediately. also don’t eat peanut butter or fish. i guess this sounds weird, but if you’re around my family if you see someone eat any of the three they’ll expect you to have a panic attack. wiki for info on how to do that.
sleep- lol, i dont. i sleep on the couch in my room, but you can probably use the bed cause no one would ever come into my room. im not gerard though, i wake up with an alarm if i do fall asleep.
shelter- i live three houses over, obviously.
clothing- a hoodie at all times. but you do that too, i think, so it’s nothing new. joe thinks he can judge my mood based on my shoes he’s full of crap but he’ll try. i think it’s full of crap so he’ll expect you to laugh.
safety/security
-i don’t have any property or employment. i don’t have any resources. wait, he said it’s not minerals it’s like financial resources. well, i’m not telling you my bank account number, my wallet has fifty bucks, that should be enough for whatever. i mostly spend money on concert tickets, mom and dad pay for caf lunches and gas. i go to a lot of concerts though.
-locker combo’s 3-15-24
-i’m healthy, and no dentist apointments in the near future so you lucked out.
-
love/belonging
family- mom, dad, no aunts, grama on mom’s side but we only acknowledge her at christmas. i fucking hope we’re not stuck like this until christmas. Andrew’s 16, Hilary’s 12. none of us are friends, none of us talk. wentzes are self sufficent.
friends- primary: 1)Andy. red hair, glasses. hardcore vegan, checks shoes for bits of leather before he wears them. mostly straight. primary goal in life is swaying people to his cause. put up with it, don’t buy into it. 2) Joe. jew-fro. stoner. doesn’t always hang out, has his secondary group of Jon and Tom and Cassie. laugh at what he says. totally straight, made out with him once, it failed. 3) Patrick. you’ll get your nose broken if you try to take his hat off and don’t move fast enough, but he’ll know something’s up if you don’t try. call him lunchbox or pattycakes, again, dodge the hit. he might be in love with me, completely ignore anything, patrick’s not something that can be fucked up.
--->secondary: Ryan. wears a lot of makeup. i think he might crossdress, but i don’t care, whatever makes him happy. he’ll probably invite me to stuff, get confirmation from two other sources in my phone that it’ll be awesome before going, he likes literature circles and shit too. William. long black hair, pretty as fuck. again, mostly at shows, he goes here but we don’t really talk. fucking head over heels with Mike Carden, it’s the most obvious thing in the world, if you say it he’ll beat you to death, he’s got all his shit suppressed. repressed. whatever. Travis. black, tons of peircings. only at shows. try to think of at least one band he’s never heard of to tell him about it.
intimacy- been dating Ashlee about a year. we have sex, USE A CONDOM, her mom is creepy and has swapped out birth control for candies before. a few guys will try to hit on you, probably. they’re not ex’s, we never dated. don’t be bitchy unless you have to be.
-on the soccer team. i’m striker, please wiki for details.
esteem
so i’m kind of fucked up. i’m not telling you everything, you don’t need to know. PAAJ know bits of it, but it’s not like i talk about it a lot. my family doesn’t want to know. just make sure to do the panic attack thing and everything will be fine.
self actualization
yeah, i have no fucking idea what this is. realising one’s potential and fulfulling it, apparently. mother teresa as an example. so it doesn’t really apply.
*
“Hey,” Patrick says to Pete as he sits beside him, waiting for the inevitable shove of the spiral bound notebook into his face. After all, it’s come regularly for the last two years. If Patrick wasn’t such a good flincher his head would be covered in paper cuts.
Pete looks up slowly, slow enough that Patrick has to wonder if something is wrong. He says hey back. It’s hard to fuck up one syllable, but it sounds wrong, somehow.
In high school you mostly meet people because they sit beside you in some class, or a teacher forces you to be partners for some projects, or they take your parking spot and you feel the urge to bitch them out while you’re with your friends and they come up from behind when you’re not looking and you think you’re going to die but instead they say you have spunk. Not Pete. Of course that’s not how Patrick met Pete, because Pete doesn’t know how to do normal interactions.
Since sophomore year Patrick’s been in charge of the school literary magazine. It’s a bit of a lofty title, considering it’s about fifteen stapled pages eight times a year, but it’s something that looks good on an university application, and that matters since he’ll be going to school with a combination of loan and scholarship. All in all, it’s a pretty good gig compared to some of the other things he could use. It’s a way to gather attention in the future without having to worry about gathering attention now. He’s not the guy that has to catch a football in front of a few hundred teenagers, he’s not the guy that has to deliver lines with emotion and subtext while making sure he’s remembering the blocking correctly. He’s just the guy that sits in Mr Allen’s English class after school once a month and reads through the submissions that have been dropped off by the same handful of people.
So when Patrick moved Alana’s story into the fuck-no pile -steampunk was cool in theory, but not when it read like ten pages of world building- and the page under it had a name Patrick didn’t recognise he had been interested. Not that he had anything against publishing Brendon’s folk tales, but a new writer was always a good thing, and hopefully it would be a genre more accessible to the average teenager.
What it had been was a suicide note thinly veiled in a poem. With a set of balls Patrick hadn’t known that he had, he’d tracked down ‘Pete Wentz’ and told him the poem was crap, and it wouldn’t make the cut. If he wanted to be in the paper he had to write something better. It had worked, had become a One Thousand and One Nights sort of thing, each poem making Pete stick around a day longer. Most adults wouldn’t have understood the technique; if Patrick had ever told his parents they would have been appalled that he didn’t report him to the guidance counsellor. But eventually Pete’s poetry had moved into less suicidal affairs, had done so before Patrick had felt it necessary to betray his confidence.
Reading Pete’s writings and giving his opinions on it has stayed a habit. He’s pretty much the only one that’s capable of doing it. Pete doesn’t react well to most other’s opinions. Patrick’s seen nightmarish reactions: Pete refusing to write, or Pete defiantly making mistakes on purpose to piss off the audience. The three weeks fucking asshat William Beckett shared all his creative self doubt and Pete picked up on it were horrible. And it was an entire semester of Pete refusing to capitalise the names of countries after a teacher bitched him out for it, a half a mark off for each improperly written instance leaving him to almost fail the course.
This semester they’ve got gym together first period, or second on odd days. Pete’s not great with patience, Patrick can’t really expect Pete to wait until lunch to hand his notebook over. He’s not sure how they get away with doing it during Mrs Batt’s daily fitness lecture. Not so much with her, all she cares about is shouting at them about how they’re all atrophying from using the computer instead of going hiking, she hardly ever actually looks at them. It’s the other people in their class. Patrick’s pretty sure their peers should be giving them shit for caring about poems. Maybe they think it’s next period’s homework, or lyrics. Or maybe Pete’s scary because he went to military camp and for all they know he’s trained to be a superior weapon that will kick their asses. Maybe it’s just that he’s a jock, and jocks don’t get teased. Whatever the reason, no one has said anything thus far, and Patrick’s not going to complain about not getting picked on.
Surprisingly, it’s actually better with gym first period. The first class Patrick thought being away from a desk would make annotating poetry impossible, and somewhat feared the battle of Pete vs. Impossibilities. But if they change into gym clothes as soon as Pete gets to school, and talk quietly while she’s lecturing so she doesn’t notice them pointing to a paper on Patrick’s lap, they’ve got anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes before they need to start doing the warm up jog.
“So where’s today’s work,” Patrick prompts after a minute of silence. Something’s obviously up. It’s weird, the few times he hasn’t wanted to share he’s told Patrick to fuck off, that it’s none of his fucking business in a harsh hiss pitched to not attract Mrs Batt’s attention. He’s never completely ignored it; Patrick’s not sure if he’s capable of ignoring anything.
“It’s gym class.”
“Yeah?” It’s possible it’s a long poem and Pete doesn’t think they’ll have time. Sociology second period could be better because as long as it appears they’re writing notes they probably won’t get caught. It’s just Patrick likes talking about Pete’s writing more than he likes marking his page up with crossed out lines and arrows for lines that should exchange places. He’d really rather do this now.
Pete rolls his eyes, a gesture he doesn’t usually use with him. “Gym class doesn’t have homework.”
“Well yeah, unless you Google ways to distract yourself from the mind numbing agony that are these lectures. Come on man, I mean your poetry.”
Patrick really doesn’t understand the way Pete is staring at him. It takes almost a full minute before Pete shrugs slightly. When that’s all that comes before Mrs Batt orders them to start running length of the gym Patrick knows something’s wrong. He needs to consult with Ashlee to see if something horrible happened that he doesn’t know about yet. If she doesn’t know either this could get ugly and dramatic, fast.
Part Two