Chapter 12: Viva La Billie Joe? (Little Boy)

(2682 words)
(Tré's POV)

As I walked into his room, I could see him shying away from me, as if knowing what I was going to say, as if knowing how fucking pissed off I was. Quietly, cautiously, he looked up at me, his normally clear and calm green eyes dark and cloudy, not to mention bloodshot. Thick rivulets of eyeliner ran down his cheeks, like the black tear mark like images on the face of a cheetah or other large cat. I glared at him for a moment, before he looked away from me and sighed silently, to himself.

"Tré..." he muttered faintly.

"Billie Joe." My voice was certain, hard and stony as I confronted my ex-boyfriend to be.

"W-well, that went pretty badly, huh?"

"Damn right it went pretty badly. Pretty bad is a fucking understatement, in fact. You know that, don't you, Gloria?" I called him his alias almost mockingly, too tired to truly mock him but too angry to say it softly.

"I guess..."

He started fumbling with the hem of his dark and burnt at the edges shirt. At the edge of his ragged sleeves, I could see the hardening red scabs.

Serves him right, I thought as I looked at him. He's a wreck. He deserves it, what, for killing all those innocent and gullible people.

He looked up at me once more, biting his lip nervously, his eyes glassy with tears that were about to fall.

"This was all your fault. You know that, right?"

"Y-yeah. I know that. I know it so damn well. It's all my fault... I can't--!"

I cut him off quickly. "Can't what? Can't believe it? Well, I sure as hell can't believe that you could actually do this! Where the hell did you get the idea to do this?" I was almost yelling now as I said that. "Why did you go through with it?! I mean -- what the hell? Seriously... I thought that you were a peacekeeper, not a fighter. I thought that you wanted to fight fire with --!"

"Fight fire with a damn riot," he muttered darkly. "And for the fucking record --" His voice was bitter now. "-- it was Whatsername's idea. He was the creator of the Underbelly, and all... he's my inspiration..."

"Oh, let me guess, you've fucked him, haven't you?"

Billie Joe glared back at me and stood up, fire in his reddened eyes. "You don't know the fucking half of it!"

"So I was right?" I asked him smugly.

"Fucking hell you were right. And you don't even know what happened!"

"I figured out you used to be the Saint Jimmy tonight -- actually, I didn't know that, till I talked to your old buddy, Mike. Dirnt. You know him, don' t you? I asked him about you when everything started falling apart at the riot. He told me. He told me that you were the one who drove Whatsername over the edge--"

"Shut the fuck up!"

I ignored him. "And you made him break up with you over a letter, right? Didn't you?"

"So what if I did? Back then -- you don't even know what I was on back then!" he shouted back at me.

"Novacaine, hm? Wasn't it, Billie Joe?"

"So what if it was? It's not nearly as bad as, I dunno, smoking fucking Opal!"

"Novacaine, right to your arm. Injected, right there, right?"

I grabbed his arm and turned it over, looking at the scars -- the tracks, really -- that ran up and down his veins. Roughly, I ran my fingers over them, even as he cried out in pain. "So it was true. I never thought that I'd meet someone nearly as crazy as I am, but apparently I've found him, and his name is Billie Joe Armstrong. He stands right now in front of me, and he's about to become my ex-boyfriend and all out fucking good times are going to be swept into the closet with our pictures."

I dropped his arm then, disgusted. "I can't fucking believe you. I thought you were a good person."

Billie looked back up at me, his tears dangerously at the point of spilling over. "I thought you were, too. You also supported this idea at the meeting the other day! Or do you not remember, Mister Tré fucking Cool, the guy who smokes Opal with his pot!"

"Oh, yeah. Right. I was going with it because in theory, it's a great idea. Isn't it?"

"It worked for Whatsername!" he argued, his voice torn between a sob and a full out angry scream.

"And what was Whatsername, I wonder?! Was Whatsername a fucking con artist, like you seem to be? Was he a fraud? How do you know that he was really for real? He never revealed his actual gender, did he? I bet you never knew his real name, did you? Did you?!" I screamed back at him, my hands curled into fists at my sides.

"I knew it!"

"Knew!" I yelled. "You knew it, but do you know it now?! No?" When he didn't respond, I just added, "Well, that's what I thought. You obviously don't remember his real name, like I won't remember yours. You'll become a face without a name in my hall of nameless photos of good and bitter times."

"Oh fuck you!"

"I wonder what happened to our plans to do exactly the same thing tonight, Mister I'd Gladly Fuck You."

"I wonder who started this damn argument in the first place!"

"Oh, really? Well -- I wonder whose grand idea it was to go out with a bunch of random teens, some hand grenades, and a few guns. You know, just to have some fun, right? To try and make a fucking difference?" I glared down at him. "I really wonder whose fucking idea it was to stop being a pacifist and burn half the damn town down!"

"Whatsername's idea, moron! Have you been fucking listening to me?!" he screamed back. Spurred on by the adrenaline (and other substances) flowing through my veins, I started to yell back at him.

"And Whatsername was a faker. He wasn't a saint. He was a whining martyr, hanging from his self-made burning cross and heading to his own self made destruction!" I screamed, stepping forward quickly and glaring at him eye to eye.

"What the hell are you saying? Whatsername --" Billie Joe's voice caught on saying Whatsername. Like always, it seemed. "--Whatsername was the most sincere fucking man I've ever met... I thought you were, but as far as I can see -- you're not!"

"What the hell are you saying, Armstrong?"

"What the hell do you think I'm saying?!"

"I think you're fucking defending a charlatan masquerading as a saint, huh?" I asked him, still screaming.

Billie Joe glared defiantly up at me as I accused his former boyfriend -- or, well, as far as
I could tell, his former boyfriend and possibly his only other outside of me -- of being a fake. I didn't believe it, of course, but then again, I was trying to reduce him to tears over this. I was so mad at him... I was so mad that I honestly didn't know what to do outside of taking it out on him. The cause of my misery, it appeared.

He looked up at me for a few more seconds, before his glare turned into more of a softly questioning stare. Quietly, slowly, he fell back onto the bed -- my fucking bed -- and buried his head in his hands, sobbing frantically, which was exactly what I had wanted.

"Little boy, why are you crying?" I spat. "It's all your fault this happened. You know that. I know that."

He didn't reply, he didn't even look up at me as he kept sobbing.

"Little one, your soul's just purging... of love and razor blades, your blood is surging."

Softly, demurely, in a way totally unlike him, he stood up and started walking across the room. "It's just like when he -- when Whatsername broke up with me, huh? I must have been screaming at him like this. I must've passed out drunk, and he must have written me that letter -- the letterbomb. He must've hated me for what I'd become. He did. I'm sure he did."

"I'm not surprised! It's so easy to fucking hate you and all your fucking guts, Saint Jimmy. Not much of a saint, are you now?"

"I'm surprised to be in the position he was in then," Billie Joe whispered, leaning against the closed door, looking down. Tears still streamed down his face. "It's a lot worse than I thought it would ever be. It is... it's so... I feel so hurt, Tré -- I'm beyond hurt, in fact. I thought you were the one, even more so than I thought that Whatsername was the one."

I ignored what he was saying. "So what? So... fucking... what?!"

He didn't reply.

"I guess you know how I feel. Betrayed. Angry. Like killing the person who stands in front of you, like killing the one you once loved dearly. It's that bad, isn't it, little boy? Isn't it, Gloria? Isn't it, Saint fucking Jimmy?"

"Yeah. I do..." His reply was barely over a whisper.

"Huh. So I guess you can see why I'm so mad at you."

"I guess you can see why I'm so mad at myself."

"I can see it, in fact -- it's written all over your damn face, little one."

"Little one? What the hell?"

I ignored his question. "Is it your calling to follow the charlatans and saints? You seem to love them. You worship them, don't you?"

"I don't." He didn't even say that, he mouthed it. I could barely see what he'd been saying, but I could just barely make it out.

"Hmm... really?"

Billie Joe nodded once more, tears still falling down his face.

"You're one of them, now. Everyone looked up to you. I did, too, and you deceived all of us... looks can be deceiving, huh? They sure can be deceiving... it's your escape, isn't it?" He still refused to reply to me. "It's like a lifeboat, built of deception and lies, or trickery and blood. Without rhyme, without reason."

He looked up at me now, and I looked directly into his bloodshot eyes. "Your bloodshot eyes will show your heart of treason."

"I didn't want anyone to die, Tré --!"

"You dirty liar. You're... you're -- you're just a junkie preaching to the choir. Run away now, won't you? You coward."

"At least I'm not saying my final goodbye in a damn letter."

"So what? You're just the same as Whatsername was! You're a coward. Except you gave up far too easily. You lied to us, then you gave up right away," I answered his challenge quite darkly.

"I was planning on staying over here tonight. But, you know..." He looked at the door, then back at me. "I might just go back home."

"That's your only option."

"Oh, is it really?" he asked sarcastically. "I really had no clue."

"You're not welcome here anymore."

"I'm fucking glad!"

"Well, so am I."

Harshly, Billie Joe flung the door open and turned away from me and muttered something that I could just barely hear. "There is no place like home... when you've got nowhere to go."

"Oh yeah, I'd agree with that."

"Bye, Tré, have a great life. I used to love you."

And as he said that, he ran out and slammed the door shut, leaving me aslone. I could hear his angry footsteps down the hall, and the sobs that started to tear from his throat as he left my shoddy apartment. At the pit of my stomach, I could feel the beginnings of regret. I shook it away and walked over to my desk, grabbing a black Sharpie and going to the plain, off white wall.

"Remember to learn to forget..." I murmured. "Whiskey shots and cheap cigarettes."

As I said that, I wrote it down on the wall. His words, on my wall.

It was the beginning of an obsession. The words from what I assumed was some sort of poetry that he once wrote was a reminder to forget him.

After I wrote that on my old wall, over peeling paint, I threw the foul smelling Sharpie to the ground and lay down on my bed and stared up at the popcorn ceiling, my thoughts drifting between angry, pensive, and slightly guilty. I wasn't sure if the guilt was from breaking up with him, or from actually being part of the riot in the first place, but I still felt guilty.

Eventually I fell asleep, dreaming of atomic bombs and a sinisterly cross-dressed Billie Joe. His spindly, spider-like arms were wrapped around a further demented version of Whatsername. Billie Joe, his freakishly vampire pale face made up in darkened pastel colors, grinned at me with a sickeningly sweet and sharp smile. Slowly, he turned back to Whatsername, and they kissed.

Behind them, a bomb went off in a rainbow of twisted colors, all bleeding into each other like a wound or a sunset. Billie Joe and Whatsername just deepened the kiss, twisting around each other. My former boyfriend's bright leather boots reached up under his short denim skirt, the skirt melting into a black striped dark hot pink shirt that was underneath a familiar leather jacket. However, the jacket was cut and now only reached just below his arms.

In sharp contrast to Billie Joe's more modern appearance, Whatsername was dressed traditionally, in a gothic style. A flowing black skirt pooled around his ankles, glimmering in the harsh light with what appeared to be silvery spider webs. He also wore a thin black corset, and long, curly black hair spilled over his shoulders and down his back.

Their kiss lingered, as they ripped at each other's mouths, alternating between soft and forceful. It was more than I could bear, even before people I recognized as the dead from the riot started running around the pedestal upon which Billie Joe and Gloria stood. Mike -- who hadn't died at the riot -- walked out from the crowd, blood dripping like sweat into his eyes.

"It's like I told you, huh?" he whispered, his voice like a raspy dead leaf. "He's Saint Jimmy. And that... next to him, that's Whatsername. He was only the best... the best, and still he failed before.

Everything faded to something cold and black, and then in front of me stood my now ex-boyfriend, dressed the same as he had been before, except his hair was now a shocking whitish blonde color. His red lips moved.

"That's what you get..." a voice whispered from between those deceitful lips. I recognized it as my own, my own voice from my abandoned love's lips. "That's what you get... what you get..."

The nightmare version of Billie Joe walked toward me, black mascara tears running down his cheeks again, red rivers of blood spurting frantically down his arms from his wounds. He reached out, and he leaned toward me, leaning in for a kiss.

"Remember whatever... it already seems like forever ago... so long ago... the regrets... are useless... in my mind... from... forever... ago..." Billie Joe whispered into my mouth. I recognized it as a tentative song he'd shown me, about a past love, about betrayal. "From so... long... ago..."

He leaned in further, pressing his lips to mine...

And before my subconscious could reveal anymore cryptic wisdom to me, I awoke in a cold sweat. I stood up and grabbed the Sharpie again, writing the word's he stated on my wall, opposite from the poetry I'd already written.

"Remember whatever, it seems like forever ago.
The regrets are useless in my mind.
He's in my head, from so long ago."

I capped the Sharpie and laid it down on my bedside table, before laying down myself.

And still, Billie Joe's distinct smell lingered on my sheets.