Chapter Text 1 страница. It was like being caught in an ocean current, tossed briefly back into consciousness only to be sucked back beneath the waves moments later

Chapter 11

It was like being caught in an ocean current, tossed briefly back into consciousness only to be sucked back beneath the waves moments later, raw and tumbled and confused. He woke up a bit as he was being shoved into a trunk, and his hands were tied behind his back, what the fuck? His head hurt, he was bewildered and didn’t know where he was, and the coach was looming over him, face twisted. Gerard opened his mouth to shout, or yell, but Sikowski must have hit Gerard again, maybe, because there was another bright shock of pain and the undertow dragged him back down.

Then he was suddenly being dragged out of the truck, stumbling, and it was getting dark. He didn’t remember the ride at all, had no idea how long he’d been out. But it was dark outside, which didn’t bode well, he thought. It’d taken him a moment to even realize he wasn’t in Jersey, that this wasn’t Belleville. His brain was sluggishly rebooting, throwing out random outdated thoughts. Vermont. This was Vermont. He’d missed the test in Biology on the anatomy of amphibians. Ray was going to be so upset.

Sikowski didn’t give him much time to orient himself, just shoved him along a path, muddy and steep. Most of Gerard’s focus was on keeping his feet beneath him, but he noticed the coach kept looking over his shoulder like he was being hunted. He started pushing Gerard to go faster, but Gerard’s vision was swimming and he couldn’t keep up, had a suspicion he didn’t really want to.

“Fuck you,” he slurred, and thought about running, thought about losing himself in the trees and dead leaves, but the coach just laughed, ugly and deep, and gave him another hard shove.

His hands were still tied, and when he fell he couldn’t catch himself; he sprawled in the mud and leaves and felt tears stinging his eyes. Shit, he had to figure out what was going on. Something awful was happening, but his head fucking hurt, and he couldn’t think. These weren’t Frank’s woods. He knew that. Why did he know that, but not what was going on? Where was he?

“How’d you find out?” the coach asked, and Gerard glared at him from under his muddy bangs, tried to struggle back upright without moving his head too much. Fuck, he was going to throw up. He wouldn’t have answered the asshole’s question even if he knew. “Ted said you liked to dick around in the woods after school, I shoulda known—you fucking freaks are all the same.” A pause while Gerard started feeling more and more nauseous. “You saw him, didn’t you? I fucking knew it. They all said I was wrong, but I knew it.”

“You killed him,” Gerard said faintly, and then threw up.

“Aw, hell,” Sikowski said, and waited for Gerard to finish before hauling him up gingerly. Apparently they’d finally reached their destination now, some rustic hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere, where no one would ever find his body. Just like Frank. Fuck. Fuck. “I didn’t kill him. It was an accident, dammit. I never meant to kill anybody, and Iero can just shut the hell up about it.”

Gerard was pretty sure he had a concussion. A head injury would at least explain why Sikowski was talking nonsense, Gerard thought dimly, and tugged experimentally at the knots on his wrist. The coach spotted him doing it and scowled, dragging him inside the cabin and slamming the door shut.

There was a chair next to the fireplace, heavy carved wood, decorated with deer—fuck, people out here were fucking obsessed with deer—and Sikowski shoved him into it, then tied him in place, cussing under his breath all the while. He was in an old t-shirt and a ballcap, and the resemblance to Ted was striking—it was like watching an older Ted with a broader jaw, a thicker neck. But Ted had never looked so vicious, even when he was bashing Gerard’s face in.

“There,” he grunted. “Scream all you want, kid, nobody’s gonna hear you out here. You sit tight, now.”

“What?” Gerard said, startled. He supposed he should have realized he wasn’t going to be tied up and then bashed in the head with a brick, talk about a waste of time. But who fucking knew with this guy. “Where are you—”

But the door was slamming shut, and Gerard could hear the sound of the bastard walking quickly off through the fallen leaves. Then nothing. Not even the sound of the truck starting, which meant Sikowski was probably right. He was far from anything in earshot, far from any road; no one was going to hear him if he shouted, or screamed.

The dick hadn’t turned on the lights in the cabin, and the last of the sunlight was fading. Gerard stared at the darkening windows, breath coming quicker, but he couldn’t panic, he couldn’t fucking panic. He had to—there had to be something he could do, except he fucking hurt all over, and he was tired, and it was getting colder.

Mikey was going to be so mad at him if he died out here. He made a nauseating effort to try to rock the chair over or something—maybe he could get free, find a weapon. But the chair was fucking heavy, and possibly even tied to the wall. It wasn’t moving more than an inch, at best.

Okay, he thought. Okay, okay. Time to shout. Might as well try.

But Sikowski had been telling the truth. An hour later, Gerard’d gotten tired of trying for volume, his throat hoarse and sore. He had a head injury—he couldn’t sleep, he knew that much from all the late-night medical dramas he’d watched. So he sang the Misfits, and showtunes, and the theme song to the Thundercats, anything he could think of, feeling crazy and alone and forgotten, voice scratchy and shaky.

Next thing he knew, though, there was light streaming in the windows again. There was a disorienting moment of complete confusion—the last thing he could remember was running late to class, coming back from a smoke. And then—fuck. That murdering inbred fuckwit had fucking kidnapped him. Gerard was in a cabin, some weird fucking rustic cabin decorated with dead animals, and there were voices coming from outside, getting louder, and he still couldn’t move, and he hurt. And fuck, it was so fucking cold, but not the good kind of cold, not the Frank-kind. His shoulders were wrenched behind his back, his mouth tasted like stale bile, and he really, really had to pee. Shittiest morning ever.

“How could he know?” one of the voices said, sounding exasperated. “Mark, you goddamned moron, do you even know how badly you’ve fucked things up?”

“You didn’t see the kid’s face,” Mark said darkly. “He knows. And Ted says he spends a lot of time out in the woods, the fucking freak. Iero told him. I knew he’d tell someone eventually. I tried to warn you.”

“Goddammit, are you goin’ off about that ghost story again?” the other man said, and then the door was opening, and Gerard could see two men standing in the light. Mark Sikowski, and an older man Gerard had never seen before, but his identity was apparent enough anyway.

Great. Fucking fantastic. There was another Sikowski here, because Gerard hadn’t been doomed enough already, and this one probably had a badge and a gun and plenty of professional experience with covering up murders, and was probably actively out there keeping Gerard’s family and friends from finding him. Just great.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” the sheriff continued, rubbing at his temples tiredly, like he had a headache. Gerard had no sympathy whatsoever. “Worst thing the kid could have done was find the body, until you fucking snatched him. Now we’re all fucked. Did you think of that for one goddamned second?”

“Don’t act so superior,” Mark sneered. “You never go in those woods either, and you know why. You know damned well why. Ever since we dumped that little asshole’s body—”

Gerard made an involuntary noise of rage and both men went quiet. There was a heavy, thick silence as all the eyes in the room turned towards him. Gerard mentally berated himself—he should have tried to act like he was unconscious. Everyone knew that. You played dead until the bad guys gave something away, something vital. But he was having a hard time just keeping himself from shaking so badly his teeth rattled.

“Shit,” the sheriff said. “Great, Mark, he’s awake. Now what? You could’ve at least blindfolded him.”

“Well, obviously we should drug him until we figure what to do with him,” Mark growled, and then went to a drawer in the kitchen and came back with a hand towel, approaching Gerard with a smirk. Gerard glared, trying not to give in to panic as the blindfold went over his eyes. He couldn’t see. Fuck, he couldn’t see. And here he’d thought things couldn’t get any worse. And now they wanted to drug him, too. Gerard wasn’t drinking anything these bastards gave him, no matter how thirsty he got or how much his tongue felt like soiled sandpaper. He had to stay on top of his game, and not think about his mom, or Mikey, or Frank, who all had to be going crazy. How long had he been missing? Fuck, he had to keep calm.

“Jesus,” the sheriff muttered. “At least get the boy some water. We’re not fucking animals, here.”

A hand came down on his shoulder, and Gerard’s heart convulsed and his whole body jumped as he tried to edge away.

“Sorry, kid,” the sheriff said, sounding gruff and almost sincere. “Real sorry about all this. You shouldn’t have gotten mixed up in it.”

“ He kidnapped me,” Gerard managed to say, and fuck, hearing his own voice, scratchy and scared and young, somehow made it seem so much more real. He breathed in, trying to keep the tears out of his voice. “I didn’t get mixed up in shit. Just—please, just let me go.”

The sheriff sighed, and Mark laughed darkly, and then they both moved away. It was driving Gerard crazy not knowing where anyone was, but he could hear them talking, voices low and combative. Then the sheriff came back with a cup of ice-cold water, and it turned out Gerard couldn’t resist drinking after all, even if it was drugged. It just tasted like water, though. He wished there was more.

And fuck, Gerard still had to pee. His brain was swelling, and he was going to get a bladder infection, and some assholes were probably going to murder him. He struggled a bit more with his bonds, squirming, and then thought, what the hell, might as well ask. Mark made some snide remark, but then the sheriff snapped at him, which, hey, Gerard totally supported, especially since afterward Gerard was helped up and led to the bathroom. He considered trying to make a break for it, but he was feeling queasy and dizzy just at standing and staggering around a couple feet, and besides, he was blindfolded. He’d probably knock himself out on a doorknob before he got anywhere. At least this way he got to stretch his legs a bit before they tied him back to the chair.

They both left a little while after that, and now that Gerard was marginally more alert and awake, he was going sort of insane with boredom. He almost wished they’d come back. Sure, he was fucking terrified, but he was also stuck staring the insides of his own eyelids for hours on end, with nothing but his own thoughts to distract him from how uncomfortable he was.

He wondered what Mikey and his mom were doing. They had to be frantic by now. He hoped Mikey didn’t panic and relapse, just because Gerard had been an idiot and provoked a known killer. Though in Gerard’s defense, they had been in public, in broad daylight. It’s not like Gerard could have known Sikowski was that crazy.

Crazy enough to wallop Gerard on the head and drag him out to the woods to die. Fuck. Fuck. Gerard thought maybe he understood why Frank didn’t want to talk about his family or friends from before. He kept imagining his mom and dad at the funeral. His mom crying. Mikey white and silent. Mikey alone. At least Mikey would know about ghosts, that Gerard was out there somewhere—but what if it didn’t work that way? What if not everyone became a ghost? What if Gerard would just be gone?

He had to stop thinking about it. He was going to hyperventilate. Deep soothing breaths, he reminded himself, and tried to focus on slowing his heart down. He’d just… think about X-Men for a while. No one died in X-Men forever, not really. It was just a matter of time before someone resurrected you, or shoved you in a parallel universe.

Someone came by in the afternoon, interrupting his mental rundown through all the X-Men story arcs. He thought it was afternoon, anyway—the light was warm and rich around the edges of the blindfold. Whoever it was didn’t say much, but they helped Gerard up and took him outside to pee again. He felt stupidly, pathetically grateful just for that. He fumbled open the button of his jeans, not even caring that the guy was looming behind him, menacing and silent. At least Gerard wasn’t going to piss himself, small comfort that it was.

He hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning. That couldn’t be good. He was weak; he wouldn’t be able to fight back if he had to. Not that he could anyway, all tied up like this, with his vision spinning. But it would’ve been nice to know that if circumstances aligned themselves just right, he could fight, or at least attempt an escape.

Time passed really fucking weirdly when you couldn’t see or hear anything. It was almost like sensory deprivation, except for how he was way too intimate with this fucking chair and the ropes around his wrists. He couldn’t tell if his aching head was from caffeine withdrawal or, like, brain hemorraghing. By the time his captors showed up en masse at nightfall, when the air was cooling, Gerard was almost glad of the company.

Then they started debating what to do with him, and he abruptly reversed his opinion.

“I’m telling you, the boy knows what we did,” Mark snarled, and Gerard could hear him pacing. “He knows about Iero! I had to do it. I had to get him out of there, before he told anyone else.”

“Great, Mark, just lay it all out there for him like that,” a different voice said, tight and exasperated. “Right now this is just about your dumb ass getting us all arrested as conspirators to a kidnapping. You idiot. So shut the fuck up for once.”

“You don’t know shit, Tim,” Mark said, scowling. “I’m telling you, this boy goes in the forest, and he’s just like Iero, look at him. Fucking freak. He’s been messing with my nephew, too. And he’s a fucking liability. Something has to be done, and we all know what.”

Gerard wanted to snarl at Mark to shut up about Frank, to say he didn’t even deserve to know Frank’s name, but for once in his life he managed to bite his tongue. He just huddled in on himself and started painfully, carefully, testing the bonds on his wrists for the eleven thousandth time.

“Well, you sure as shit shouldn’t have done this,” the guy—Isaac’s brother? Tim Barrows, maybe?—said. “Now the Feds are involved. We’ll be lucky if we don’t all go to jail—my father wants this mess straightened out without any more bodies, so just stand down, man.”

“We can’t let him go,” Mark argued viciously, and he was standing right in front of Gerard, saying that. Gerard could smell the sweat of him, the cologne, and his throat kind of hurt with how hard it was not to cry. He wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t. If they killed him, he’d be buried him in a different forest, away from Frank. Fuck fuck fuck. “He knows about Iero, and he knows all of our names. We don’t have a choice.”

“How the fuck—” the man next to Gerard said exasperatedly. “If there was anything to know, which I’m not saying there is, mind, how the hell would this kid have the slightest fucking clue?”

“I told you, the little fucker hides out in the woods! Iero told him everything, he must have,” Mark said, and he sounded crazy, fanatical. Apparently Gerard wasn’t the only one who thought so, because the sheriff snorted.

“Yeah, that’ll hold up in court. Christ, we would have been fine, Mark! I can’t believe —” Then there was a sound, something fell over with a hard clatter on the wooden floor, like maybe someone’d kicked over a chair, and Gerard couldn’t help but jump, heart pounding.

“I’m done cleaning up after you, Mark,” the sheriff said tiredly. “I’m done. We’re taking this boy home. We’ll dope him up—I’ve got a good stash in the truck from the last bust we did. No one’ll listen to him, even if he does talk.”

Mark snarled and stalked towards Gerard, Gerard could hear him coming, and then suddenly his head flew backward, slammed against the wall and everything went bright and sparkling with pain. Before he could think he was throwing up, heaving desperately and choking on it and dimly aware that people were yelling. He hoped he’d at least got some of it on Mark.

“Jesus,” he heard from far away. “Calm down, Mark. We’ll say you found him in the woods on a hunting trip—you said he likes the woods, right?—it’ll be fine. He hit his head hiking, trippin’ out on drugs. We don’t want to do anything stupid, Mark, he’s just a kid.”

“No,” Mark said wildly. “No, he knew about Iero before today. He knows. He knows it was me, he knew—fuck, Scott, he knew we broke that fucking kid’s neck. We have to let Iero know—we have to let him know what happens to people he tells. And then no one else will ever go in the woods. No one’ll talk to Iero again. We’ll be safe.”

Gerard felt a swell of triumph at that—fuck you, Mark, Frank’s out of the woods now. Even if Gerard did die, at least he’d done that, right? He’d saved Frank.

“Mark,” someone was saying. “You’re not a murderer, man, you just—we made a mistake. You didn’t mean to. Let’s just—”

“This kid knows. And he won’t forget,” Mark continued, sounding strangely serene now. “We have to kill him. It’s the only way.”

Everything went kind of still and quiet, even though people were still talking around him, arguing loudly, but Gerard was in some sort of bubble of shock. It was strange to hear someone say that out loud, and to know he honestly meant it. Mark meant it. Gerard was going to die. Mark was going to kill him, just like he’d killed Frank. Gerard was never going to get his own comics published, or show Frank what an X-box was, or even introduce him to Mikey. He’d never see his dad again, or meet his new girlfriend. Gerard hadn’t been ready to meet her, not yet, and now he never would be, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

And Gerard was just sitting here, letting it happen. He had to at least try to do something.

He started rubbing his wrists together again, panting harshly, and god, his head hurt, but he’d gotten his wrists almost loose and half the blindfold had slipped down. The first thing he saw, vision blurry and indistinct with pain and tears, was Mark glaring at him, holding one of the pokers from the fireplace. Someone was holding him back, but as Gerard watched, he shook them off and stalked forward.

“Fuck,” Gerard said thickly, struggling to a sitting position, raising his chin. His voice trembled, and he was covered in vomit, but this bastard had killed Frank. He'd thrown him in a river and left him to rot, and Gerard wasn’t going to beg. They weren’t the best last words ever, but he was tired, and he couldn’t think of anything better. “Fuck. You.”

“You little shit,” Mark said, face going red, and then the door was kicked in. Everything got very loud and confusing, and Gerard kept waiting for the pain, and the flash of light, like Pop Rocks, but there was just more scuffling and shouting.

One voice rose over the rest, and if Gerard turned his head he could see who it belonged to: a man in a suit, with dark circles beneath his eyes and a pink Hannah Montana tie. He’d shoved Mark into a wall, teeth bared in something like a smile. Someone was next to him, gun out, shouting orders.

Gerard stared, not entirely sure he wasn’t hallucinating or brain damaged. It was the tie that really threw him. Maybe he’d already died? Frank had said dying was confusing, and this was pretty fucking confusing.

“Miss me, fucker?” the man was sneering, and then finally the woman with him hissed in his ear and he let Mark slide down the wall. She kept her gun trained on Mark as the other man stepped back, straightening his tie and smiling tightly. “Right, by the books. Totally. I’m Special Agent James Dewees with the FBI, this is Agent Molly Hand, and you fuckers are all under arrest for the murder of Frank Iero and the kidnapping of Gerard Way. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Sound good to you folks? Great.” His partner was glaring and he made a ‘What?’ face at her. “Aww, c’mon, the books are boring, Moll.”

Men in flak vests had swarmed into the room and were cuffing people, not being especially gentle about it. Holy shit, it was just like in the movies, Gerard thought, dimly fascinated.

“We never meant to kill Frank,” one of the men was saying as he got cuffed—Isaac’s brother, maybe. “It was manslaughter, not murder. Jimmy, you gotta—”

“I don’t gotta do anything except put your ass in jail, and if you didn’t all murder him personally, well, then you’re accessories. Not to mention the kidnapping charges. And go ahead, get all the lawyers you want, dickweeds. I look forward to reaming your asses in court.”

There was a lot more noise after that, but Gerard was busy gulping in huge breaths of air. He wasn’t going to die. He’d thought—he’d really thought—

“You okay, kid?” Agent Dewees said, crouching down and looking Gerard in the eye. “Let’s get you out of these ropes, get you some water. Molly, we got some water?” His partner tossed Dewees a bottle without looking, and Dewees snatched it, handed it to Gerard after he’d sliced off the ropes. Gerard couldn’t make his hands work, fingers numb, and the guy just smiled encouragingly and closed his hand around Gerard’s, helped him drink. Then he started cutting Gerard’s feet free.

“How the fuck did the FBI get involved in this?” Gerard asked weakly after he’d polished off the bottle, and Dewees grinned up at him. The Hannah Montana tie was a bright, blinding pink, and Gerard was both fascinated and horrified. Mark was outside, shouting threats, sounding truly, one hundred percent insane, and Gerard was starting to feel a little crazy himself.

“Murder on federal land, my friend,” Dewees informed Gerard, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “And, well. Frankie was my best friend. I’ve been waiting for this call for almost eleven years—had people keeping an ear out for me. Knew the little bastard would turn up sometime.” His voice was sad, but fond, and he seemed to be looking through Gerard for a moment, distant.

Gerard wasn’t sure what to do. His head hurt, and now the FBI were involved, and Frankie’s friend was here. Should Gerard say something about Frank’s ghost? He had no fucking clue, but he really didn’t want to get hauled into a psychiatric ward at this point. Mark had already been carried off frothing, and Gerard was close enough to hysteria already. Talking about dead people would probably just make it worse.

“How long have I been here?” Gerard asked finally, cradling his hands to his chest, wincing as the feeling really started coming back in them. He shook them loose gingerly, then touched his swollen jaw, the back of his head where it’d hit the wall. Fuck, he wanted his mom there, with a sharp suddenness so intense it ached.

“Yeah, you took quite a knock to the ol’ noggin, huh?” Dewees said sympathetically. “No sweat, we got EMTs waiting. We’ll fix you right up.” He paused, and then patted Gerard’s knee. “And it’s been two and a half days, buddy. You’ve held up swell. Look, I gotta run for a second, take care of some things, but my partner Molly’ll stick with you for a bit, alright?”

His partner was a lean blonde with a harried look on her face, and she crouched by Gerard’s chair, eyebrows drawn together. She was Dewees’ polar opposite, quiet and professional, but when she caught him staring wistfully at his empty bottle of water she immediately went and refilled it. Gerard was so grateful his eyes welled up.

“Thank you,” he said, and took a tiny sip, then another. They sat there for a while in silence, and Gerard started wondering how far they were out in the woods, if the EMTs were taking this long to get here. He could really use some painkillers. There was a pretty steep path—maybe that was the problem? At any rate, the silence in the room was getting awkward, and he really didn’t feel like staying in his own headspace right now. He fiddled with the bottle and glanced up at the agent. She stared straight ahead.

“So, uh,” he said awkwardly. “How’d you guys find me?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just stay calm. The EMTs are on the way, Mr. Way,” she said stiffly, and when Gerard looked disappointed, she sighed, offered him a half smile. “If you must know, it was a classmate of yours that tipped us off. He told us he saw the coach talking to you in the hallway right before you failed to show up for History.”

“Ryan fucking Ross,” Gerard laughed hoarsely, head pounding. “Jesus, I can’t believe it.”

“Well, even that tip didn’t help much. If it hadn’t been for the sheriff’s son,” she continued, shaking her head, “we probably wouldn’t have found this place for another day or two.”

“What?” Gerard said, not quite believing his ears. Maybe it’d been an auditory hallucination.

“Don’t worry,” she said awkwardly, and patted him on the shoulder. “We did find you. Everything’s okay. You’re safe now.”

“No, I know,” Gerard told her, shaking his head. “But – who was it that told you about this place?”

“Edward Sikowski,” she said, looking nonplussed. “One of your classmates. He contacted us, told us about this property—it’s not on any map. We’re sort of in the middle of nowhere, kid.”

Dewees bounded back into the room, grinning and beckoning people in, interrupting Gerard’s moment of total shock. “Medics are here! Bet you’re ready to get out of this hellhole, huh?”

“Ted. Ted saved my life,” Gerard stated blankly, stuck on that. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Huh? Oh, the Sikowski kid, right. Seemed pretty surreal for him, too,” Dewees agreed. “Said he didn’t like you much, but he didn’t think a person should die for being an emo-fag loser in high school, pardon my language. Wouldn’t have expected something so civilized from one of Mark and Scott’s relatives, but hey, people, right? Surprise the shit out of me all the time. C’mon, medics, sick kid this way, hurry it up.”

“This trail is complete shit,” the paramedic grumbled. “It’s two miles of pure mud. So shove it.” And then she was shining a light in Gerard’s eyes, asking him to count for her in a kind voice, and before Gerard knew it he was being carried on a stretcher up a winding path through the trees, then shoved in the back of an ambulance.

“I’ll be contacting you with some questions later,” Dewees said, smiling at him from the door of the ambulance as the woman worked, cleaning Gerard’s head of dried blood and setting up an IV or whatever, since apparently Gerard was dehydrated as all get-out.

Dewees had a nice smile, one that made the skin beside his eyes fan out into laugh lines, and there was an earring with a pink skull on it peeping through his straggly blonde hair. Gerard could see why Frank had been friends with this guy.

“For now, get some rest, kid.” Dewees paused, then said, in a softer voice. “Your buddies told me you were the one to find the body, so. You know. Thanks. I owe you one.”

Then he slammed the door of the ambulance shut, and Gerard could faintly hear him yelling through it, telling people to move out. And now—which was really stupid, Gerard, thought, because now he was safe; he’d won, and he was in a nice warm ambulance and, Frankie’s killers were going to jail, but—he was shaking, and he couldn’t stop..

“Shock, honey,” the woman said, and coaxed him to lie down again. “Just rest, okay. Been a long couple days.”

Gerard didn’t remember agreeing, but he must have, because soon she was gently shaking him awake.

“Sorry,” she said apologetically. “You’ve got a nasty bump to the head, there.”

It was a long drive to Burlington, the closest city with an actual decent hospital, and Gerard suffered through falling asleep and being woken up again several times, his pupils checked and his awareness of the current president ascertained. The adrenaline had left his system, and he’d finally got painkillers, and he was no longer thirsty, and it was easy to dip in and out of dreams, so much that the paramedic almost became part of them.

Then when they finally arrived at the hospital there was a swarm of people, bright lights and noise everywhere, and it took him a moment to register that he wasn’t still dreaming, that that really was his mom’s voice shouting somewhere off in the distance, and then a set of double doors came bursting open and Donna Way stormed in, Mikey on her heels. There was a crowd of people shouting behind her, but all Gerard saw was her for a moment.

Her hair was flat and lopsided and her make-up had run down her face in raccoon tracks, and it was his mom.

Gerard struggled to sit up, holding out a hand towards her, but he was still mostly strapped down.

“Mom,” he said, thick and choked, and the paramedic said, “Ma’am, if you’ll just—we only want—okay, but briefly, we have to—”

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23