Chapter Two: 21st Century Breakdown

(2890 words)
(Billie Joe's POV)

It was a dark and stormy night as I lay in bed, reminiscing about the year I had just spent in the twelfth grade.

Well, if I said that last line seriously, I’d be lying. Not that I haven’t lied before, but that would be a totally pointless lie. I don’t even know why I’d lie like that, with that particular lie. Those last few sentences were totally the product of the Redundancy Department of Redundancy, but I didn’t -- and I still don’t -- really care. They’re my thoughts, anyway.

Anyway, I was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, totally random thoughts running through my head at a million miles an hour. Who I was and who I was becoming. How the hell I was supposed to get into college with a 2.0 Grade Point Average.

As I remembered that essay, I groaned and sat up, rubbing non-existent sleep out of my eyes and further smearing my eyeliner. I stumbled across the room, three fourths awake and zombie-like, before flicking on the overhead lamp and having my eyes burned out by the light.

“Damn bright lights,” I muttered, my voice rough from lack of water and sleep. On the corner of the desk that I was aiming for, a stack of old, coffee stained papers sat on top of my half dead, 10 year old laptop. The first paper on there was my essay -- the same essay that I wrote at 1 AM and ended up with a C- from. That bitch of a 12th grade director marked me down for “incorrect facts.”

Incorrect facts my ass. I knew that Alice Melare hated me with a passion through the year, and that my graduation essay was the perfect time for her to strike. She gave me a freakin’ C- on something I poured my heart and soul into, just so I could graduate and get into college. God knows how hard I had to work through 10th grade to make up for missing most of 9th.

…missing most of ninth grade. Not something I like talking about much, but, of course, Melare knew what I’d been up to when I was fifteen. For one, as soon as I came back, rumors of where I had been for a whole year spread around quickly. Had I finally committed suicide? Did I run off and join a circus? Did someone else kill me? Did I run away with a secret lover -- male or female? Of course, the principal of the goddamn school sat me down and made me explain it all.

I did explain it all, all of it except for the part where Whatsername was really a guy and I was his boyfriend for a year.

Yeah. More topics I really would rather not be talked about, thank you very much.

I looked over the essay again, and for something written at 1 AM, at the very last minute, it was a work of goddamn pure genius. Einstein’s 1 AM ramblings wouldn’t have been better than this piece of new classic American literature.

Well, you know what, Alice Melare could jump in a hole and die and I wouldn’t care. I would just point and laugh at her, celebrating in my own way as she fell to her death in a fifty foot deep hole. I wanted to see her go splat.

Unconsciously, I’d started to draw that on the back of my essay using a pencil that I’d gotten out of nowhere -- well, off my desk, I assumed. A badly drawn hole, with a badly drawn splattered version of my evil teacher at the bottom of it. A badly drawn stick figure version of me stood on the edge of the hole, pointing and presumably laughing.

Yeah, I’m kinda a little insane sometimes, but that’s why people love me.

With a sigh, I put the paper back down on the mountainous stack of crap on my poor computer and sat back down on the bed, burying my head in my hands.

How the hell was I supposed to ever get into a respectable college -- no, not even a damn respectable college -- with such shitty grades? I worked my ass off for three years straight and I ended up graduating highschool with a freaking C-. A Grade Point Average of 2. I was severely screwed in the aspect of college and ready to kiss my scholarship to UCLA good bye.

Good bye, dreams of a decent future. At this rate of decline, I’d either end up flipping burgers for some corporate giant trans fat run company like McDonald’s for the rest of my life, or I’d end up as that one hobo on the side of the road who looks like a gay emo kid.

Well, there was always the Class of Thirteen to fall back on, and my so called friends -- more like acquaintances -- that I could hang with for a while. Or, you know, the rest of my life.

Yeah, I could live the last 82 years of my whole life as a worthless piece of crap in someone’s basement, kinda like my mom. Well, you know, assuming I’ll even live to 100. It’s more likely that I’d die at the age of 37 than live to see fifty. Kind of sad, but, you know -- die young and save yourself, right?

I sighed again and looked up, glaring at the lamp that glared back with retina burning and eye killing intensity and light.

“Burn in hell,” I groaned as I sat down on my creaky wooden desk chair. Okay, I technically was burning -- well, my eyes were, anyway -- and this goddamn town might as well have been Hell, so I was actually close enough to burning in Hell. All I had to do was stay glued to this seat for the rest of my life, and never move, and hey! I’d be burning in Hell for all eternity!

Yeah, fat chance of that ever happening.

For the moment, however, I was perfectly fine with just sitting there and waiting out my usual insomnia. I didn’t dare check the time, just in case it was really three in the morning and I was still only one fourth asleep. It was just too hard to sleep. The anxiety for the coming day weighed on my chest like that damn house weighed on the chest of the Wicked Witch of the East.

Because in around 15 hours or something, I was going to finally graduate and be done with high school, also know as the worst four years of your life. Well, it is the worst four years of your life if you happen to live where I did and think like I do. That would make it the worst four years of your life. It would make you want to run away and never come back.

Well, some people do that. Some people also run away and end up coming back a year later. Some people run away and get hitched and have kids and never come back. Some people run away and get killed. Some people flat out commit suicide.

Yeah, this old town has the ability to drive people mad. It also has the ability to empower the true idiots and let them take charge over the actually intelligent people. The other idiots who aren’t yet adults are hailed as the top of the class, or grade, or whatever the hell the favoritist teachers decide they should be on that particular day.

I never got anything like that. Since I was brave enough to speak my opinion, I was the worst student as this goddamned highschool. I was probably the worst student in the whole town. I was probably the worst student in the whole world, in their eyes.

Just because I thought differently than all of them.

Well, I guess I had a small advantage in the fact that there was a group of students that were all my age in the next closest town who all thought along the same lines as I did, and along the same lines as I still do. And I was like their leader in this Revolution that we’d started.

It was my idea. Modeled after the Underbelly from the City, I created the Class of Thirteen. No one in this godforsaken suburban hell wanted to join, so I biked for a few hours and made it with like minded people in the other town. I became their leader, and in the style of being a rebel guy who wears eyeliner (like Whatsername is or was), I took on a female alias.

And thus I became Gloria. Latin, or Spanish, for ‘glory’ and I became the shining light of the Revolution, the avatar for change, and the leader of the slowly becoming iconic Class of Thirteen.

Once Whatsername completely disappeared in early 2010, the Underbelly disappeared and faded out of the eye of the mainstream media. It left a vacant hole that was empty for a few years before I made the Class of Thirteen.

The Class of Thirteen…we had taken that name from the year all or most of us were going to graduate high school, 2013. A few of us were younger, a few of us were older, and the spectrum ran from around 15 to around 21, give or take a couple years on both. The average, however, was 18, the ones in classes that were going to graduate in 2013. And that’s where we got our name, and thus our chant.

“We are the Class of, the Class of Thirteen! Born in the era of humility! We are the desperate in the decline! Raised by the bastards of 1969!”

We chanted that at all of our protests, screaming mean averages about our group. We were truly desperate, all trying to get jobs in this era of economic decline that was getting close to the harshness of the Great Depression. Most of us were raised by parents born in or around ‘69.

So, just imagine 200 or so teenagers chanting that as one huge crowd, holding signs and looking angry. Imagine this group with a short 18-ish guy, wearing more makeup than a regular 18 year old guy should be, at the front, leading them. Once you can see that, then you can see one of our average protests. And, of course, I’m the 18 year old at the front, so unselfishly leading them all.

I looked across my messy and cluttered desk at a rather recent group photo of us all. In it, I stood at the front of them all, grinning this stupid grin and throwing my arms in the air. Everyone else behind me was also grinning, some in totally stupid poses and others also throwing their arms in the air. A banner held by a few members in the middle said, “The Class of Thirteen!” and was thrown in the air with pride.

Looking more closely, I noticed the rainbow wristband on my wrist and smirked at the photo of myself. The Class of Thirteen certainly did not discriminate. I noticed, again, the diversity of the people standing behind me -- all different skin tones, all different religious beliefs (or lack thereof), all different sexualities and gender identities.

For what it was -- a group of like minded but minority thinking teenagers -- the Class of Thirteen was pretty freaking amazing. It was open and everyone was at least semi decent to eachother. We were a somewhat functional family, and to me, more functional than dysfunctional. It was a relief for most of us who had come from severely dysfunctional families, or had raised ourselves. Some of the members had been kicked out of our families when we were younger. Some of the members were kicked out as soon as they joined the Class of Thirteen.

It was sad how families were deteriorating so quickly over such small thing as religion (or lack thereof), political beliefs, and sexual attraction (or, sometimes, lack thereof as well). Divorce rates were soaring, and same sex marriage still wasn’t accepted. People were marrying for money over love, or sometimes for sex over love. Some people married and divorced to steal from their ex-spouse for all they were worth.

It was a shameless and repeating cycle of sex, pain, heartbreak, and greed, with the occasional prison sentence resulting from death that came from a BDSM session gone wrong.

It was sickening, saddening, and maddening how wrong the country had been running at that point in time. And that is exactly why I created the Class of Thirteen -- to try and change something, to try and change anything. We were trying to stop the government from becoming even more dictatorial than it was. The government was destroying the nation, the whole world one corrupted person at a time. I thought that it was high time for us to stop that from happening.

So, as one cohesive group, the Class of Thirteen would go out into a public place -- any public place, really -- and yell and scream and kick and try to bring it all down. We would fight it all until something was done.

By then, there were hundreds of YouTube videos on the Class, even though we had only been active for half a year at that point. We were quickly attaining celebrity status. In particular, so was I. Not as Billie Joe Armstrong, some naysaying nobody from the middle of nowhere, but as Gloria, the world and life changing leader of a huge group that bordered on a political party in its own right.

Yeah, look out for it on the next census: the political party option of "Class of Thirteen."

But really, it wasn't me. I had to owe it all to Whatsername and her group. They were my inspiration (not to mention the fact that Whatsername was my first real boyfriend), but an inspiration that I preferred not to talk about. If it wasn't for the Underbelly and some of the stuff that they did, the Class of Thirteen wouldn't exist. The persona of Gloria that I donned whenever I left this hell of a town wouldn't exist. I would still be an 18 year old nobody who had just barely -- and by barely, I mean by one freaking percent -- graduated the twelfth grade.
So, I really truly owed it all to Whatsername.

The Class of Thirteen was really a force of nature in its own right, and by that point in time, it was reaching the heights of closeness to changing something and the heights of popularity and reach as the Underbelly.

Just thinking about the Underbelly, and not even Whatsername in particular, made me feel sick, so I put the picture away and stood up, pacing the room and passing all the random band posters on the way. It really was strange, that only three or four years ago I'd been a delinquent in the City, fighting in what really was the largest revolution to ever exist, and that I was now in my room, looking around and wonder where I screwed up so badly that I just barely passed all of high school.

Sometimes, even years later, I still think of the contradiction of those two people -- the person I'd been in 2009 compared to the person I was in 2013 -- well, Gloria, really.

Willing myself not to think about the Underbelly or Whatsername at all, I just thought about what had driven me to run away all those years ago, as a fairly young and quite insane 15 year old. It was really the persecution I had faced in the suburban hell that I would sometimes call home -- or my fake home. It was the intolerance of people who were different from them that had driven me to run away, the sheer force of hatred that rained down on me from all over, that seethed out of the pores of my peers and teachers. Especially the hatred and contempt held for me by my old counselor, Doctor Diana Crawford. Well, I was the reason that Dr. Crawford ran away -- not exactly ran away, but left nonetheless -- this little town in the middle of nowhere.

I still felt an odd sense of pride thinking that I had been the reason that she'd fled the town.

I sighed and turned off the light -- whose radiance I had finally gotten used to -- and flopped down on my bed, resigning myself to staring at the ceiling once more as darkness pressed down on my like a thick, silencing blanket.

Then, I had an idea of what to do with my insomnia.

I grabbed some paper and my old flashlight, along with the pencil that lay on my beside table, and sketched out what I would say as my graduation speech. It was going to be simply brilliant, and everyone here would know I was Gloria. Everyone would finally know that their enemies weren't people like the Class of Thirteen, but the government and their lies.

It was an essay about knowing their enemies, and I fell asleep at 4 AM while writing it.