(2712 words)
Even from my spot in the center of that room, in the center of Tré’s room, I could hear the unmistakable snap! of a quickly growing fire outside of the room. Pulling away from my boyfriend, I hastily ran to the window and looked outside, my eyes widening in shock and horror. There was a fucking fire outside my window. And it was quickly approaching us.
I breathed in and out deeply as I leaned back against the wall, trying to collect my nerves and trying to not hyperventilate as I realized just exactly what the hell was happening now. A fire. A goddamn fire. It was going to burn the whole apartment complex down, maybe. It wasn’t just going to kill me and Tré, but hundreds of innocent people.
“Billie Joe? Are you -- are you okay?” he asked me quietly walking over to where I stood. I just looked up at him, tears really on the brink of spilling over now, a panic attack on the verge in the corner of my mind.
“Tré…” I mumbled, wrapping my arms rightly around his stomach as he wrapped his arms protectively around me. “I don’t want to die.”
“What d’you mean? We aren’t -- not dead yet, are we?” Tré asked me.
“We will be,” I whispered. “There’s a fire out there.”
Tré stepped back, looking at me in surprise. We stood there, frozen, for just a moment, before Tré started saying just barely audible words: “A fire burns today of blasphemy and genocide… the sirens of decay will infiltrate the faith fanatics.”
“What the… Tré, where the hell did that come from?”
“I made it up a while ago…” Catching my confused glance, Tré added, “Right before you texted me about the meeting.”
The meeting. Dammit, that seemed so long ago, even though it was only a couple weeks past at that point.
“Wow,” I breathed, just trying to look at him, just trying to look anywhere but the window. The inherent fear of panic was rising in the pit of my stomach, a fire just as fierce as the one outside my window raging inside my mind, sending my senses alight with crazy and maniac panic. My heart beat like a miserably tuned, off beat drum, leading dogs into war and reprimanding the little shreds of innocence in my soul.
I looked back at Tré, guessing that my fear and panic were evident in my eyes. I guessed then that we had two options: to go down right there and then, to go down in supposed glory (Gloria?) -- or to run away, leaving everyone to think we’re dead, and just hide out forever.
Guess which option my high on fear and adrenaline brain chose?
“Tré, c’mon… come on -- let’s go. I have an idea… t-take my hand, okay?” As I said this, I held out my hand to him. It shook in midair, shaking with fear and insanity and hysteria. It shook like a flag in the midst of a summer windstorm. “Tré… come -- come on, we have to go.” My voice was choked with tears as I watched him just standing there, frozen to the spot with his reciprocal of my own panic. “Tré?”
He still refused to move. I reached my hand out to him again, trying to get a hold of his hand. However, Tré was frozen to the spot, his eyes wide, shaking ever so slightly like a leaf in the harsh winds of a frozen over winter. The only motion that I could see at all were the tears that streaked down his face so slowly.
“We can do this Tré! C’mon… we have to… have to get out of here!”
“But --” Finally, he spoke. “But what if we’re supposed to die here?”
“To hell with faith, we are getting the fuck right out of here, got it?”
Tré seemed indecisive for a minute. “Come on, do you want to die here, alone, in some fucking fire or with me in glory?” I asked him.
“Decide in gloriam…” Tré whispered. To die in glory. Latin. Of course.
“Then come on!” I shouted, grabbing his hand and wrapping my fingers around his palm. Unyielding, he let me pull him out the door and down the hall, showing no remorse for anything in my way. People were yelling outside in the long hall that connected all the rooms, and I pushed and shoved my way through the thick crowd. The elevators were packed tightly, and so were the stairs.
However, the windows that lead out to the front of the building -- the hall fire escape -- was unopened and unused. Without thinking twice about it, I half dragged Tré to the window and tried opening it.
It was either locked or jammed.
Using all the force I had, I rammed into the window pane with my shoulder, glass shattering on impact and flying mostly outward. Some of the bits that had shattered were embedded in my shoulder, but I tried ignoring the pain and the bleeding as I swung a leg carefully onto the top of the fire escape ladder. Quickly, I stepped down, looking up and at Tré’s worried face through the window.
“Come on!” I mutt have screamed, for he did exactly as I had and carefully started to climb down the ladder.
I grimaced as I kept going down, warm blood trickling down my back and the wound itself stinging like all hell. To distract myself, I bit my lip hard and looked out behind the building, and sort of off to the side. The fire was just barely visible, but it was there all right. That’s when I saw people walking around it and holding up bottles of… something. Liquor? No -- even worse. Fucking lighter fluid.
They were serious about burning down the apartment.
“Tré! Faster, faster dammit!” I screamed, my voice getting scratchy from overuse and breaking with my oh so evident panic. “They’ve got fucking lighter fluid, oh god, they’re gonna burn it down, shit shit shit.”
“Quiet, stop thinking about it, just move. Get the fuck off this ladder and then… I dunno, get the hell away from here, right? Sooner we stop panicking and starting going then the sooner we’ll be away from the fire, right?” Tré said, kind of rambling by the end of the statement.
“Yeah. I guess.” My throat was so dry. “I think we’re gonna get off this thing and run like hell to… like, a hotel or something. Wait -- do you have any money?”
“No,” said Tré, and my hearts sank all the way into my intestines or something squicky like that. “But… I can hack my way into my parent’s debit card shit and get some money there. You know how they always act like I’m not there. I know a lot of shit I shouldn’t.” I could practically see his grin, which pulled on my heart painfully, so I kept hurrying down the ladder -- just so I could see Tré again and make absolutely, one hundred percent sure that he was perfectly fine.
The metal was cold beneath my hands and slick with the sweat that was freely flowing from my nervous palms and fingers. I started to bite my lip again, each step feeling more precarious than the last. I didn’t dare to look down, knowing what sight would befall my eyes. I knew that if I even thought about looking down, that I would be overtaken by curiosity and I would actually fall.
My heart raced beneath my so fragile seeming bones and flesh, ricocheting freely in a bloody ballet. It was a gory image -- but it was better than imagning me going splat at the bottom of the fire escape ladder. Or the image of me burning in this damn fire. Either way, it was the best image I could bring up.
The sount of my heart drumming in my ears reminded me of a certain short story that I happened to like a lot -- The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. It was actually really interesting -- about a man who is insane (yet periodically denies it to the reader) and kills his father or master or whatever, trying just to get away from the gaze of a hawk like eye. He smothers the older man with a bed, before chopping the man up and putting the body beneath the floorboards. The police come and the character is ever so sweet and perfect, but is slowly being eaten from hearing what he assumes is the sound of the old man’s still beating heart. In a frenzy of panic and insanity, he reveals it all to the police officers.
That was totally random, but that was also better than imagining myself going splat or burning alive.
The trickle of blood was still uncomfortable though, and even though it had mostly stopped, my wound still stung.
Holy shit, I recall wondering mentally. If we’ve been climbing down long enough for the blood to have stopped… damn, this is one fucking long ladder. Huh.
“Tré…” I muttered, panting slightly. I guess we had been climbing longer than I had thought we had been climbing (fuck, was that confusing or what). “You… have you noticed that this ladder’s pretty damn long? I mean -- I think we’re almost at the bottom… but fuck, this ladder is long.”
“Yeah. I would really have to agree with you there. I mean -- fuck -- I can’t hear people screaming up there now. I hope they’re all right… woah, what the fuck dude, no way… they’re bitches,” Tré half muttered in reply to me (and himself, apparently).
“Talking to yourself… the first sing of madness,” I teased.
“Oh, Armstrong, don’t tell me you don’t do it too.”
“You fucking bet I do.”
“So we’re going mad together?”
“There’s no one I’d rather go mad with more than you -- oh shit, and I seem to have lost my ability to speak coherently.”
“Or the author just lost the ability to write coherently.”
“True.”
We both laughed a bit as we continued downward. Everything felt so surreal and distant now, my hands numb, my back numb, and I felt permanently blinded.
That was when I felt something soft and yet solid beneath my foot, instead of hard, flimsy metal ladder. “Tré! I made it!” I screamed in joy, watching his form slowly work its way down to join me. Finally, he was next to me again and he wrapped his arms around me, kissing my forehead. “Let’s go,” I whispered, grabbing his hand and starting to walk down the road to the town, away from the fire.
“Oh. Shit. Wait… Tré?” I said as I stopped, coming to a dreadful realization that lurked like cancer in the pit of my stomach. “Tré? How the hell are we supposed to get there? I’ve walked over the highway -- well, the highway… the long one, you know, when I was walking back here from the City -- and it takes ages -- days at least. So what the hell should we do?”
“Let’s see… we don’t have the materials to hijack a car,” Tré held up one finger. “No buses go down to the City from here, or from here to that other town.” Another finger. “No car.” Another one. “No bikes.” Yet another finger. “Nothing -- but I agree, we should go to the City and disappear.”
“Um, Tré? What the hell? How the fuck are we even gonna get to the damn City?”
“We could always hitch a ride.”
I slapped him. “You moron! We couldn’t do that!”
“Well, then I’m out of ideas.”
“So ‘m I.” I let out a long sigh. “We should just try getting some cast first or something, then see what we could do. At best… we could always hijack a bus or something.”
“Naw,” replied Tré, “it’s fucking impossible to drive a bus.”
“You’ve -- holy shit -- you’ve driven a bus?”
“Yep.”
“You get cooler and cooler and crazier and crazier every time we talk, did ya know that?” I asked him, playfully hitting his shoulder before interlacing my fingers in his.
“Mmhmm.”
“Narcissist.”
“I know I am -- but what are you?”
I didn’t have a reply to that. We just kept on walking, in silence, to the bank while trying to figure out what the hell to do.
Once at the bank, Tré hacked into his parents’ balance on the ATM thingy with barely any effort. Sometimes, being ignored pays off. He shoved around three hundred bucks in his pocket before heading back out with me in melancholy silence.
We made it to the highway then, and say down on the sidewalk, sitting with our legs crossed and our elbows leaning on our knees. We sat there in silence until we suddenly saw headlights and a car coming in from the old town, headed where we wanted to go. Inexplicably, it stopped right in front of us, and the heavily tinted front window rolled down to reveal a twenty five-ish girl with Italian features and short brown hair.
“Hey, need a ride anywhere?” she asked, grinning with straight white teeth. They seemed fake.
“Um… yeah.”
What was that rule about never taking rides from strangers, again?
“Hop in. Where ya headed -- the City, per chance?” she asked. As we stood up, she looked at us and our dirty appearances. “I’m Gina by the way.”
“Billie Joe,” I answered mechanically.
“Tré,” said my boyfriend.
“Well, then, come on in!”
“Why should we trust you? I mean -- you literally just drove over here and asked if we needed a ride. Seriously.” Damn me and my suspicious curiosity.
“Well, I think we’re in a similar situation. I’m headin’ over t’ New York eventually ‘cause I killed my -- er -- boyfriend, Vinnie. First I need to go down t’ Las Vegas, though, t’ pick my… friend, Virginia,” Gina said, a sparkle of mischief and glamour in her eye.
“Really?” It was Tré speaking suspiciously now. “And how d’ we know if you’re not just going to kill us or something if you get the chance?”
“Now -- why’d I do that? You look like ya don’t have much to either of your names, huh?”
Oh, if only she knew what would happen if she killed Gloria.
“Well, um, oh God…” I muttered. It was a serious dilemma -- first of all, our fire escape, well, escape would all go to ruins if this Gina chick really did kill us. But, on the other hand, we desperately needed a ride to the City. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and it was not fun at all.
“Oh, fuck, why not,” I eventually said, nodding at Gina and grabbing Tré’s hand once more. “We are desperate… even if we’re not helpless.”
“Come on in, then.”
The back door opened and Tré and I walked in, sitting down but not buckling in. We never did, really. What’s the use if we might need to get away fast -- right?
Yep, we’re so fucking paranoid that it makes no sense -- but oh fucking well.
The drive was mostly silent and didn’t take that long to me. She played a bit of music, not too loud, but the music was good. Some old pirate station, playing some old punk stuff. Finally, Gina dropped us off outside a run down hotel -- apparently, it was cheap but actually pretty damn nice. We thanked her and watched her drive away -- away from her murder and toward her friend, all in the name of misery.
Tiredly and in a daze, we checked in and retreated to our room. Tré insisted on looking at my shoulder and reluctantly, I let him. He deemed it bad, made me take a shower, and went out to get some gauze and other similar things. Tré was back before long and he quickly -- although messily -- bandaged my arm. Once he was satisfied with the way my shoulder was healing now, we turned off the lights and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Showing posts with label horseshoes and handgrenades. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horseshoes and handgrenades. Show all posts
11/24/09
Chapter Seventeen: American Eulogy
(2539 words)
(3rd POV)
It was a sad day in the small suburban town as the news of the death of two lovers spread. It wasn’t the pair themselves who were mourned -- no, it was definitely the way that they had gone out that had touched something in everyone’s hearts. Only a few people went to the funeral, but there was a certain shade of grey over everything and a raining cloud above the heads of everyone.
The first person to show up to the funeral of the two dead lovers was a twenty one year old man going by the name of Mike Dirnt. He was of an average height, and had a bit more muscle than most. His naturally brown hair was spiked in a fan similar to a peacock‘s tail, and it was tipped with blonde. A rusty old shovel was leaning on his arm, only dirtying his informal black clothing by just a bit.
The second person to show up was a seventeen year old now called Davey Havok, but who had once been called Whatsername. He was rather short for his age and sex, and he had fair skin that brought out his eyeliner outlined, dark brown eyes and dyed black hair. This attending member dressed rather femininely, wearing a flowing black shirt and just as flowing black pants over shimmery black boots. A thin arm was wrapped around the waist of the third person.
The third person to show up was the boyfriend of the aforementioned Davey Havok. This one was called Jade Puget, and although he hadn’t known the deceased, his lover had. Jade was quite tall, actually, and had warmly tanned skin, freckles dotting his face. He wore a crisp almost tuxedo. His grayish hazel eyes were also outlined by eyeliner, and were a lovely contrast to his light brown hair with his shaky blonde fringe.
A few more people also showed up after these first three. A girl by the name of Maria and her friend Haushinka. Another girl around their age hung out in the general vicinity -- she was called Taylore Mishell. A twenty something guy going by the name of Lance Shields, and another late teenaged girl who was called Kera. There was another guy standing near Kera -- his nickname was Crash, and no one knew what his real name was. There was a slightly younger girl there, too, and she was called Losty -- she was actually chatting somberly with Lance and another participant named Brighty, and yet another girl who was around the same age called Lilly. Lilly’s identical twin sister, Soundy, was also talking with Lance and Losty, seeming a bit distracted.
After these few people had entered the small, dark room that smelled of incense and sweat, a whole rush of people around their age followed. They were tightly pack now, like sardines, and the mass of black wearing teenagers looked around nervously, trying to find some shoulder, or elbow, room. They stood in a silent and not so neat line, a semi circle around a neat little coffin inscribed with Frank Edwin Wright III and William J. Armstrong -- however, colorful graffiti near the names read Christian and Gloria -- well, the nickname St. Jimmy was also there, written right below Gloria. The coffin had been insured by a certain Mrs. Wright, even though she had outwardly hated her son and his boyfriend, and even though the whole funeral was really held by the strange assortment of teens from the next town over -- not a person over the age of twenty five seemed to be there.
Before anyone questioned the entire ceremony, that certain Davey Havok pulled away from the crowd, walking over to a familiar makeshift podium that had once occupied blank space on a certain old stage. He adjusted the microphone a bit, the long skin tight sleeves of his shirt moving fluidly over his lean, pale arms. Davey cleared his throat once or twice or three times to get the attention of the mismatched group of his peers.
“Well, hello -- you should all know me, right? My name’s Davey. And, um, as our very own Billie Joe -- or Gloria -- would have said,” he spoke into the old staticy microphone, breath coming out all too clearly over the speakers. “’Dearly beloved, are you listening?’”
There was a ripple of excitement through the crowd, and Mike visibly held back tears. Davey scanned across the room, meeting everyone’s glassy eyes and biting his lip quietly. He wasn’t entirely sure what to say next.
“I’m, uh, glad ya are.” He paused, recollecting his thoughts. “I was… appointed to speak up here, ‘cause me and Billie Joe, well, me and Gloria used to be pretty close. I’m not sure exactly what to say, to be completely honest with ya. I mean -- he was a wonderful person. He’d had his shortcomings, but don’t we all? I’m sure Tré -- well, all of us know him better as Christian, really -- was an awesome dude too. And, ya-- y’know, in the end, they went out… together… I mean, it was bittersweet, huh?”
Everyone nodded, a murmur of approval at Davey’s speech going through the crowd. Encouraged by the positive appeal, Davey looked back up at them, his eyes glimmering with tears. “They were really, truly in love, I bet. They had a fight -- you probably know some about it -- but then… in the end, they were… together, weren’t they?” A few tears fell down his face. “Me and Billie Joe -- we weren’t meant to be together, ya know -- well obviously. That’s why I left him over letter and didn’t see him for two or three years, something crazy like that.”
A shock of realization rippled through the crowd, and someone shakily asked the question: “W-well, then, like Whatsername and St. Jimmy? I heard that she left him over something she called a letter bomb or something.”
Davey smiled, replying with no haste. “Yeah, you’re right, ’cause I am -- I was, anyway -- Whatsername. And yea, I’m really a guy, but can’t ya just imagine me with long, really long hair? And a lot more makeup than just this? Honestly, people…”
“So that means that Gloria -- Billie Joe, whatever -- was the Saint Jimmy?”
“He was.”
Everyone gasped and Davey stepped back, at an honest loss for words. Helplessly, he glanced over at Mike, who met his gaze and just nodded. The older of the two took the place at the podium as Davey slipped back into the crowd, next to his boyfriend Jade. Raising his hands to silence them, Mike commenced the speech. “Billie Joe -- he was really, a really honestly great guy an’ he was just trying to get by in this hell of a town, ya know? He was just trying to make sense of all the chaos in his short life… and ya know what, I don’t believe in God or anything, but I think that he and Tré should rest in fucking peace.”
The crowd cheered at this remark, making Mike grin and have to raise his arms once more to silence them. “They fuckin’ deserve it, ya know? They were two of the coolest people ever -- no pun meant on Tré’s name -- and they really fucking deserve something for all the trouble they went through for us and all their pain. I didn’t know anything ‘bout Tré’s life, but Billie Joe’s was hard -- tough as hell -- that’s why he ran away, y’know.”
Everyone nodded at him somberly. Mike went on, his voice rising in intensity. “And you know -- the riot -- the riot back there that caused all this shit to go down -- he was doing what he knew! I mean -- Whatsername -- Davey’d once said that if you’re point’s not being made, then light things on fire! It was the only fucking way he knew how to make this shit work and you know what? -- I’ll tell ya what -- it ended up killing him and his fucking boyfriend, okay?!”
Even Mike started to cry now, at least a bit. “You -- you know what? Billie Joe Armstrong and Tré Cool were two of the bravest people I’ve ever fucking had the pleasure to know! They stood up for shit and they wouldn’t take no for a fucking answer! They -- they didn’t care what the fuck you thought about them! The only people that could hurt them were each other -- you know, the damn breakup and all -- then they got fucking killed, by such fucking cowards who burned everything down afterward! They were the real Class of Thirteen -- they were… they weren’t martyrs, they were fucking fighters. And they were brave -- so -- fucking -- brave! They were the bravest people I knew, and they didn’t run away! They would’ve come back if they were needed.”
There was a morbid, tearful cheer now.
“And -- well -- who the fuck are we?” Mike asked them.
“We are the Class of -- the Class of Thirteen!” they screamed once more to the heavens, a last tribute to their fallen leaders. “Born in the era of humility! We are the desperate in the decline! Raised by the bastards of nine -- teen -- sixty -- nine!”
And this time, no one gave them a disturbing peace ticket. No one told them to shut up. No one called them heathens, or anything else. They were just the Class of Thirteen then, damned as they all may have been, each of them pouring their heart and soul into these words that they screamed now. It was a last rallying cry, a last call to the leader called Gloria to save them all. It was their last hope. They were the last hope. And they were so pathetic…
Trying unsuccessfully to hide his freely flowing tears, Mike stepped down and blended back into the line as everyone present started shuffling to say their last words to the two deceased men -- to their ashes, anyway, as everything had been burnt after the shooting, and they couldn’t determine the remains of the pair who had died fighting, the pair who had died so very deeply in love.
Taylore Mishell passed by first, smiling bitterly. “Billie Joe -- well, Gloria, thanks for helping me figure my shit out. Thanks for helping me with my coming out stuff -- you were amazing at that. Thank you so much… rest in peace.” She passed by, followed by a girl called Ichigo.
“Thanks for being there, Tré. I really needed you -- well, you’d remember when… rest in peace, dude.”
A guy this time -- called Elske -- passed by and just nodded tearfully at the worn looking coffin, pale face obscured by ever lingering black hair -- rendering his expression unreadable.
And so this went on until the last person in the line stood near the coffin. He seemed to be around twenty four, and was wearing a grey tweed business suit, his general brown hair swept up under his very technical looking hat. He smiled and passed his fingers over the name of Frank Edwin Wright III.
Mike walked over to him, regarding his strange appearance. “What the hell’re you doin’ here, Mister Business Guy? Get the fuck out.”
The man looked up with a soft expression on his plain, very general face. “Oh, excuse my appearance.” His English was just right, his speech patterns boring and too regular to matter. “I was a… close friend of Mister Tré Cool’s, you see.”
“Oh? And your name is…?”
“Mr. Ian Woon,” the man stated, his brown eyes blank and emotionless. “And you are Mike Dirnt, yes?”
“So, Ian --”
“Please, call me… Mr. Ian Woon,” said the man mysteriously.
“So, Mr. Ian Woon, what was your relationship to Christian? -- well, Tré. Either way -- how’d you know each other?”
“Ah, that is -- rather classified business, sir. We were family friends, per say.”
And with that, Mr. Ian Woon winked at Mike, tipped his boring and plain grey hat, and walked away, carrying a neat looking, slim black suitcase at his side.
“There are some really weird people here, huh?” said Davey, walking toward Mike.
“Mmhmm,” Mike agreed.
“You ready to take the coffin out and bury it? I’ve got a small headstone -- Jade’s friend Adam made it -- and it’ll do for them… I think Billie Joe would have wanted something small, anyway. He never wanted to be famous.”
“I agree. C’mon Whatsername, let’s do this shit.”
Davey grabbed one end of the coffin and Mike grabbed the other, walking backwards out of the adapted room and following a well worn path deep into the very back of the graveyard. They carefully lowered it into a waiting, inviting hole, before covering it back up with all the dirt that had been dug up. Davey pointed to the small, white headstone. Its inscription read:
“Billie Joe Armstrong and Tré Cool.
Lost, but never forgotten.
Beloved Friends, Lovers, and Vigilante Extraordinaires.
(February 17th, 1994 - July 7th, 2013) (December 9th, 1993 - July 7th, 2013)
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.”
Mike smiled. “It’s perfect.”
“Yeah.”
“You ready to do the salute?”
“Mmhmm…”
“C’mon out, everyone!” Mike shouted.
And so nineteen of Mike and Davey’s closest and most trusted friends rushed out, each holding a cold, silver gun. They were somber, their eyes blank, as they circled the grave. In a circle, the twenty one assorted men and women, teens and twenty somethings, raised their guns to the sky.
“On three,” whispered Davey. “One… two… three.”
Twenty one gunshots rang out at the same time.
It was the twenty one gun salute, given to fallen military soldiers and now to those who especially deserved it. It was a tradition that had extended a long time, and it wasn’t like anyone there would remember -- all of them being high school or college dropouts, some of them never have been taught by the books. In the military, a lot of things had to do with twenty one. Now, it all had to do with the number of guns that had shot Billie Joeand Tré, the number of people who stood around their graves, and especially the nuber of the century. The twenty first century. And it was in fact, the midst of the twenty first breakdown when their fruitless war had broken out.
And the only people who had really paid were the two lovers who died in each others arms that fateful night of July the seventh, two thousand and thirteen. The two who had lasted through thick and thin, through years in the space of two months. The two who had broken up, and then had gotten back together. The two unlikely ones. The two who had, in a roundabout way, caused their own death, but the two who had meaninglessly died anyway for it.
Tré and Billie Joe.
Christian and Gloria.
(3rd POV)
It was a sad day in the small suburban town as the news of the death of two lovers spread. It wasn’t the pair themselves who were mourned -- no, it was definitely the way that they had gone out that had touched something in everyone’s hearts. Only a few people went to the funeral, but there was a certain shade of grey over everything and a raining cloud above the heads of everyone.
The first person to show up to the funeral of the two dead lovers was a twenty one year old man going by the name of Mike Dirnt. He was of an average height, and had a bit more muscle than most. His naturally brown hair was spiked in a fan similar to a peacock‘s tail, and it was tipped with blonde. A rusty old shovel was leaning on his arm, only dirtying his informal black clothing by just a bit.
The second person to show up was a seventeen year old now called Davey Havok, but who had once been called Whatsername. He was rather short for his age and sex, and he had fair skin that brought out his eyeliner outlined, dark brown eyes and dyed black hair. This attending member dressed rather femininely, wearing a flowing black shirt and just as flowing black pants over shimmery black boots. A thin arm was wrapped around the waist of the third person.
The third person to show up was the boyfriend of the aforementioned Davey Havok. This one was called Jade Puget, and although he hadn’t known the deceased, his lover had. Jade was quite tall, actually, and had warmly tanned skin, freckles dotting his face. He wore a crisp almost tuxedo. His grayish hazel eyes were also outlined by eyeliner, and were a lovely contrast to his light brown hair with his shaky blonde fringe.
A few more people also showed up after these first three. A girl by the name of Maria and her friend Haushinka. Another girl around their age hung out in the general vicinity -- she was called Taylore Mishell. A twenty something guy going by the name of Lance Shields, and another late teenaged girl who was called Kera. There was another guy standing near Kera -- his nickname was Crash, and no one knew what his real name was. There was a slightly younger girl there, too, and she was called Losty -- she was actually chatting somberly with Lance and another participant named Brighty, and yet another girl who was around the same age called Lilly. Lilly’s identical twin sister, Soundy, was also talking with Lance and Losty, seeming a bit distracted.
After these few people had entered the small, dark room that smelled of incense and sweat, a whole rush of people around their age followed. They were tightly pack now, like sardines, and the mass of black wearing teenagers looked around nervously, trying to find some shoulder, or elbow, room. They stood in a silent and not so neat line, a semi circle around a neat little coffin inscribed with Frank Edwin Wright III and William J. Armstrong -- however, colorful graffiti near the names read Christian and Gloria -- well, the nickname St. Jimmy was also there, written right below Gloria. The coffin had been insured by a certain Mrs. Wright, even though she had outwardly hated her son and his boyfriend, and even though the whole funeral was really held by the strange assortment of teens from the next town over -- not a person over the age of twenty five seemed to be there.
Before anyone questioned the entire ceremony, that certain Davey Havok pulled away from the crowd, walking over to a familiar makeshift podium that had once occupied blank space on a certain old stage. He adjusted the microphone a bit, the long skin tight sleeves of his shirt moving fluidly over his lean, pale arms. Davey cleared his throat once or twice or three times to get the attention of the mismatched group of his peers.
“Well, hello -- you should all know me, right? My name’s Davey. And, um, as our very own Billie Joe -- or Gloria -- would have said,” he spoke into the old staticy microphone, breath coming out all too clearly over the speakers. “’Dearly beloved, are you listening?’”
There was a ripple of excitement through the crowd, and Mike visibly held back tears. Davey scanned across the room, meeting everyone’s glassy eyes and biting his lip quietly. He wasn’t entirely sure what to say next.
“I’m, uh, glad ya are.” He paused, recollecting his thoughts. “I was… appointed to speak up here, ‘cause me and Billie Joe, well, me and Gloria used to be pretty close. I’m not sure exactly what to say, to be completely honest with ya. I mean -- he was a wonderful person. He’d had his shortcomings, but don’t we all? I’m sure Tré -- well, all of us know him better as Christian, really -- was an awesome dude too. And, ya-- y’know, in the end, they went out… together… I mean, it was bittersweet, huh?”
Everyone nodded, a murmur of approval at Davey’s speech going through the crowd. Encouraged by the positive appeal, Davey looked back up at them, his eyes glimmering with tears. “They were really, truly in love, I bet. They had a fight -- you probably know some about it -- but then… in the end, they were… together, weren’t they?” A few tears fell down his face. “Me and Billie Joe -- we weren’t meant to be together, ya know -- well obviously. That’s why I left him over letter and didn’t see him for two or three years, something crazy like that.”
A shock of realization rippled through the crowd, and someone shakily asked the question: “W-well, then, like Whatsername and St. Jimmy? I heard that she left him over something she called a letter bomb or something.”
Davey smiled, replying with no haste. “Yeah, you’re right, ’cause I am -- I was, anyway -- Whatsername. And yea, I’m really a guy, but can’t ya just imagine me with long, really long hair? And a lot more makeup than just this? Honestly, people…”
“So that means that Gloria -- Billie Joe, whatever -- was the Saint Jimmy?”
“He was.”
Everyone gasped and Davey stepped back, at an honest loss for words. Helplessly, he glanced over at Mike, who met his gaze and just nodded. The older of the two took the place at the podium as Davey slipped back into the crowd, next to his boyfriend Jade. Raising his hands to silence them, Mike commenced the speech. “Billie Joe -- he was really, a really honestly great guy an’ he was just trying to get by in this hell of a town, ya know? He was just trying to make sense of all the chaos in his short life… and ya know what, I don’t believe in God or anything, but I think that he and Tré should rest in fucking peace.”
The crowd cheered at this remark, making Mike grin and have to raise his arms once more to silence them. “They fuckin’ deserve it, ya know? They were two of the coolest people ever -- no pun meant on Tré’s name -- and they really fucking deserve something for all the trouble they went through for us and all their pain. I didn’t know anything ‘bout Tré’s life, but Billie Joe’s was hard -- tough as hell -- that’s why he ran away, y’know.”
Everyone nodded at him somberly. Mike went on, his voice rising in intensity. “And you know -- the riot -- the riot back there that caused all this shit to go down -- he was doing what he knew! I mean -- Whatsername -- Davey’d once said that if you’re point’s not being made, then light things on fire! It was the only fucking way he knew how to make this shit work and you know what? -- I’ll tell ya what -- it ended up killing him and his fucking boyfriend, okay?!”
Even Mike started to cry now, at least a bit. “You -- you know what? Billie Joe Armstrong and Tré Cool were two of the bravest people I’ve ever fucking had the pleasure to know! They stood up for shit and they wouldn’t take no for a fucking answer! They -- they didn’t care what the fuck you thought about them! The only people that could hurt them were each other -- you know, the damn breakup and all -- then they got fucking killed, by such fucking cowards who burned everything down afterward! They were the real Class of Thirteen -- they were… they weren’t martyrs, they were fucking fighters. And they were brave -- so -- fucking -- brave! They were the bravest people I knew, and they didn’t run away! They would’ve come back if they were needed.”
There was a morbid, tearful cheer now.
“And -- well -- who the fuck are we?” Mike asked them.
“We are the Class of -- the Class of Thirteen!” they screamed once more to the heavens, a last tribute to their fallen leaders. “Born in the era of humility! We are the desperate in the decline! Raised by the bastards of nine -- teen -- sixty -- nine!”
And this time, no one gave them a disturbing peace ticket. No one told them to shut up. No one called them heathens, or anything else. They were just the Class of Thirteen then, damned as they all may have been, each of them pouring their heart and soul into these words that they screamed now. It was a last rallying cry, a last call to the leader called Gloria to save them all. It was their last hope. They were the last hope. And they were so pathetic…
Trying unsuccessfully to hide his freely flowing tears, Mike stepped down and blended back into the line as everyone present started shuffling to say their last words to the two deceased men -- to their ashes, anyway, as everything had been burnt after the shooting, and they couldn’t determine the remains of the pair who had died fighting, the pair who had died so very deeply in love.
Taylore Mishell passed by first, smiling bitterly. “Billie Joe -- well, Gloria, thanks for helping me figure my shit out. Thanks for helping me with my coming out stuff -- you were amazing at that. Thank you so much… rest in peace.” She passed by, followed by a girl called Ichigo.
“Thanks for being there, Tré. I really needed you -- well, you’d remember when… rest in peace, dude.”
A guy this time -- called Elske -- passed by and just nodded tearfully at the worn looking coffin, pale face obscured by ever lingering black hair -- rendering his expression unreadable.
And so this went on until the last person in the line stood near the coffin. He seemed to be around twenty four, and was wearing a grey tweed business suit, his general brown hair swept up under his very technical looking hat. He smiled and passed his fingers over the name of Frank Edwin Wright III.
Mike walked over to him, regarding his strange appearance. “What the hell’re you doin’ here, Mister Business Guy? Get the fuck out.”
The man looked up with a soft expression on his plain, very general face. “Oh, excuse my appearance.” His English was just right, his speech patterns boring and too regular to matter. “I was a… close friend of Mister Tré Cool’s, you see.”
“Oh? And your name is…?”
“Mr. Ian Woon,” the man stated, his brown eyes blank and emotionless. “And you are Mike Dirnt, yes?”
“So, Ian --”
“Please, call me… Mr. Ian Woon,” said the man mysteriously.
“So, Mr. Ian Woon, what was your relationship to Christian? -- well, Tré. Either way -- how’d you know each other?”
“Ah, that is -- rather classified business, sir. We were family friends, per say.”
And with that, Mr. Ian Woon winked at Mike, tipped his boring and plain grey hat, and walked away, carrying a neat looking, slim black suitcase at his side.
“There are some really weird people here, huh?” said Davey, walking toward Mike.
“Mmhmm,” Mike agreed.
“You ready to take the coffin out and bury it? I’ve got a small headstone -- Jade’s friend Adam made it -- and it’ll do for them… I think Billie Joe would have wanted something small, anyway. He never wanted to be famous.”
“I agree. C’mon Whatsername, let’s do this shit.”
Davey grabbed one end of the coffin and Mike grabbed the other, walking backwards out of the adapted room and following a well worn path deep into the very back of the graveyard. They carefully lowered it into a waiting, inviting hole, before covering it back up with all the dirt that had been dug up. Davey pointed to the small, white headstone. Its inscription read:
“Billie Joe Armstrong and Tré Cool.
Lost, but never forgotten.
Beloved Friends, Lovers, and Vigilante Extraordinaires.
(February 17th, 1994 - July 7th, 2013) (December 9th, 1993 - July 7th, 2013)
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.”
Mike smiled. “It’s perfect.”
“Yeah.”
“You ready to do the salute?”
“Mmhmm…”
“C’mon out, everyone!” Mike shouted.
And so nineteen of Mike and Davey’s closest and most trusted friends rushed out, each holding a cold, silver gun. They were somber, their eyes blank, as they circled the grave. In a circle, the twenty one assorted men and women, teens and twenty somethings, raised their guns to the sky.
“On three,” whispered Davey. “One… two… three.”
Twenty one gunshots rang out at the same time.
It was the twenty one gun salute, given to fallen military soldiers and now to those who especially deserved it. It was a tradition that had extended a long time, and it wasn’t like anyone there would remember -- all of them being high school or college dropouts, some of them never have been taught by the books. In the military, a lot of things had to do with twenty one. Now, it all had to do with the number of guns that had shot Billie Joeand Tré, the number of people who stood around their graves, and especially the nuber of the century. The twenty first century. And it was in fact, the midst of the twenty first breakdown when their fruitless war had broken out.
And the only people who had really paid were the two lovers who died in each others arms that fateful night of July the seventh, two thousand and thirteen. The two who had lasted through thick and thin, through years in the space of two months. The two who had broken up, and then had gotten back together. The two unlikely ones. The two who had, in a roundabout way, caused their own death, but the two who had meaninglessly died anyway for it.
Tré and Billie Joe.
Christian and Gloria.
Chapter Sixteen: 21 Guns
(4431 words)
I walked into his room for the first time in exactly fourteen days (oh, don’t worry, I definitely counted -- I mean, every day I’d spent after the breakup, I’d put a giant black X over the date, just to torture myself -- misery does love company, you know), at the somewhat late but also regular for us hour of eleven thirty seven, post meridian. It was just like I’d remembered it, but so different, too. For one, the shockingly white carpet was actually clean for once -- clean as in I could see all of it. Along with that, the surfaces were a lot clearer. There were a few boxes in one corner of the smallish room, giving me the impression that he was moving out. The second thing I noticed was on the walls, and it was something that really drew your eye.
Large, messily Sharpied words. Poetry, really, or lyrics if you thought hard enough about it. They rhymed, and really, they had a distinct rhythm to them too. They didn’t seem all that professional, more like the rhythmic ramblings of some random teenager than the writings of an actual author. That fact in and of itself was true -- as they were some random teenager’s writings. They were mine.
The first one I noticed was from something I’d written -- really, something I’d written about my past experiences with drugs and how I stopped so I could keep going on -- called See the Light. What he’d put up there -- and I could definitely see why -- were the simple words: “I’ve been wasted -- pills and alcohol. And I’ve been chasing down the pool halls. Then I drank the water from a hurricane. And I set a fire just to see the flame. Well, I just wanna see the light. And I don’t wanna lose my sight. Well, I just wanna see the light. And I need to know what’s worth the fight.”
Don’t we all? I asked myself, reading the last line. Don’t we? Just look at what happened with you, Billie Joe -- what happened with Gloria -- with the Class of Thirteen. Maybe that would never have happened if you only knew what was worth the fight. Or maybe, you know, how to fight for something. Or what about the difference between something worth fighting for and something worth dying for?
I guess that might as well have been the question to ask me. Do you know what’s worth fighting for? Do you know what’s worth dying for? Would changing the government -- which, honestly, I don’t think I would ever have a chance at accomplishing -- be a cause worth dying for? It was certainly something that I thought was worth fighting for -- but how far did that go? I wasn’t sure how far it went -- I wasn’t sure if I would die for it, just like millions had before. I -- the same me who wasn’t just Gloria, or St. Jimmy, or Whatsername’s boyfriend, but also definitely intimate with the cause at question -- was doubting the one thing that had been my everything for, what, four years or so.
Tré, noticing that I had seemingly flown off to Wonderland in my thoughts once more, coughed. Concernedly, he said, “Billie…? Um, Billie Joe? You here?” His voice was soft and timid, and a bit scratchy as if he hadn’t used it in a while. He sounded just like I could remember him sounding, even though that seemed to be a far off memory. Despite the fact that he’d broken up with me exactly two weeks before then, he apparently missed me, seemingly almost as much as I’d missed him. I half hoped that he had felt the same pain, that same dull ache in your chest, that I had felt for those two weeks. Part of me knew he had -- well, the subconscious “oh I forgot to tell you this?” part of me, anyway.
“Yeah, I am… I’m just a little spacey today, well right now, ya know?” I answered, showing signs of life once more. “I mean -- it’s not every day that your ex-boyfriends text messages you and asks to talk things out.” Wait -- for me, that was a flat out lie. It had happened with both of my ex-boyfriends in a period of two weeks. “Well, um, unless you’re me, then Whatsername -- well, Davey -- calls ya and you end up pissing off your other ex-boyfriend.” Oh fuck. I was babbling again and I knew it. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“That was Whatsername?!” Tré asked me, eyes wide in surprise.
“That was Whatsername,” I affirmed, simultaneously echoing him. “Well -- his real name is Davey, and ya know, he’s not really Whatsername anymore -- if ya think about it and… ‘nd all.” I sounded like a nervous freak. I sounded like I did when we first talked after the graduation, when I was torn between melting and screwing him. Actually, right then, I was in the same position as I’d been at the graduation: babbling, melting, horny, and lonely. And to add onto that, I missed Tré so much since I’d last seen him, that it almost hurt. Hell, it did actually hurt. It hurt like a mother--
“That’s kind of crazy. To add on to how crazy you and your life are already,” Tré said with a snicker. I glared at him good naturedly and shook some of my hair out behind my head, leaning against the wall near an old window. Noticing this, Tré stood up. “Here, I have a seat --”
“Don’t worry, Tré, I’m fine,” I said, smiling at him. This was already going well. Tré just shrugged and sat down in the aforementioned chair near the old, dented, stained antique mirror that was practically embedded in his wall. I shifted slightly, tucking some loose hair behind my ear, before I started speaking once more. “So… why did you call me here, again? I mean --” I paused, shuffling slightly with my nervousness. “-- you seemed pretty damn mad at me after the riot. And when I was, um, officially ending my relationship with Whatser-- Davey.”
“My head’s been a lot clearer,” Tré admitted.
“What do you mean by that?” I ventured, half expecting the answer.
“Well, soon after we, um, broke up, I ran out of Opal. I didn’t want anyone to see me out there -- out on the streets -- not looking how I was looking, anyway… not knowing hoe instrumental I’d been to the riot. So, I just laid down here and waited out the withdrawal,” Tré answered a bit slowly. He paused for a tactful moment, taking a quick breath in. “Um, it actually wasn’t all that bad -- I’ve not been using too long, and I take -- I took it in a less severe way than most -- Opal’s not meant to be smoked, ya know.” He laughed. “After that… I cleaned up my room a bit. I had nothing better to do, really. Whenever I remembered you -- our relationship -- I’d write the words -- your words -- on my walls. I, um, hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind? Why the hell would I, Tré?” I asked in shock and awe. “I mean -- really -- it’s a great honor. I feel… special, heh. But wow. That’s pretty amazing… I mean, I’m glad you were able to get over the whole Opal thing, ya know?”
“I’m still suffering from a bit of withdrawal symptom stuff,” he admitted.
“Oh, well. It’s better than nothing, right? It’s better than still being addicted.”
“Yeah, I’d have to agree with you there.” He sighed. “And sorry for reacting like that -- back at the café ‘n all. I was still pretty low from the Opal and shit. Just going out for ice cream and bam! Ya see your ex-boyfriend who you’ve been moping over kissing another random guy literally a week after the breakup. It kinda hurt, y’know?”
“Aw, Tré…” I said. “I really didn’t mean for it to be like that -- I mean, I didn’t mean for you to see it or anything. It wasn’t romantic. It was a goodbye kiss. It was closure, really. I wanted to make sure that we both know that it’s over… that what once was will never be again.”
“That makes sense, I guess. I mean -- I really didn’t know he is -- was? -- Whatsername. If I knew, I’d probably have blown up. Or something drastic and involving long words like spontaneous and combustion like that.”
“You know what, Tré,” I told him. “You are so cute when you’re clean. You’re all, like ADHD. And adorable.”
“No one’s ever said that,” Tré muttered darkly.
“I’m no one?!” I asked, faux hurt. “I’m hurt… I mean I just said it, too, ya know.”
“Oh, you’re definitely not no one,” he added quickly, smiling at me -- he was totally in on it, I knew it. “I just forgot about you for a minute there, that’s all.”
“How could you forget about me?! I’m fuckin’ Billie Joe Armstrong, bitch and I’m right in fucking front of you!”
Tré laughed, doubling over and grinning from ear to ear when he looked up. “Ah, and this is why I fell in love with you in the first place, Billie Joe Armstrong. Your fiery spirit and sappy poetic shit like that.”
“Awh. I love guys who complement me using flowery purple prose.” (so does the author -- it adds words, right? just like me breaking the fourth wall, like I am right here!) “I think it’s cute. You’re the cutest, though. The hottest, too. And the best in bed.” I winked at him. Tré grinned back at me, running his fingers through his hair. Damn, is he cute when he’s nervous.
“So, um, really -- it’s okay?” he asked quietly. “You’re not like, mad at me or anything? ‘Cause, I mean, I regretted it right after you left. I had a nightmare about it. I wrote your poetry on the walls -- your lyrics and shit like that. I mean, I thought it was a mistake. But I also thought that that could have been the… um… withdrawal talking, I guess.” He laughed nervously, continuing to be so damn cute.
“Not, well -- not really. I was being a serious bitching pain in the ass yesterday about us, but then again -- well, my internet bills haven’t been paid, I guess. The Class of Thirteen doesn’t trust me. I thought -- I was pretty damn convinces, actually -- that you fucking hated me. I dunno, I had serious male PMS or something,” I said, explaining the past two weeks to him in a matter of only a few run on sentences.
“I missed you,” I added in a whisper, “I missed you a lot, did you know that? You were my everything. I fell for you hard and fast and it stuck with me like a damn tattoo. I wasn’t sick of it, but… it felt like the tattoo was sick of me or something.”
Tré looked up at me, his eyes clear (however, I could see the beginnings of tears). “I missed you, too. I missed you a lot as I laid in bed, in pain and throwing up. I wanted you to hold me. I wanted to you kiss me full on the mouth and say that it would all be okay.”
“I wanted to, that whole time,” I assured him. “I wanted to hold you again, and feel your sticky, sweaty skin against mine, and I wanted you to say that you love me again. I felt like… like… I can’t even describe how it felt without you.”
Tré, smiling tearfully now, stood up. I pushed off the wall and started walking toward him, as he walked toward me. We wrapped our arms around each other, like every other time, like it was any other day before the riot and the resulting breakup. And I kissed him, and he kissed back, and it was beautiful. When we broke apart, both of us were crying just a little, of joy.
That’s when the phone rang. Tré picked it up, still holding my hand, and nodded worriedly. “Okay, um, here he is,” he said, passing the phone to me.
I can’t replicate exactly what was said in that short phone conversation to Gloria from an unnamed caller, but what was stated was, in fact, horrific. Threats. The end of the Class of Thirteen. Very damaging things about me and my mental health.
I hung up in a dreadful, thick like soup silence.
“Tré? We’re not… we’re not safe anymore. Tré… Tré, the Class of Thirteen is over. IT’s done with… it’s all my fault.”
I didn’t care that much, though, for some reason. I just didn’t.
“Well, you know what I’d have to say about that?” Tré asked in more of a statement than a question. “I think that as long as there are people who believe in this whole Class of Thirteen shit, if they believe in the Underbelly, if they believe in what they’re fighting for -- then I think that there will always be something like this. There’ll always be a Class of Thirteen somewhere. There’ll always be some sort of an Underbelly. A Whatsername, a Gloria. It’s like… it’s just a line of succession. You came after Whatsername. Now someone will come after you -- someone will be hailed as the new Gloria. It’ll never die as long as people keep fighting for this. As long as some are crazy and keep dying for it.”
“But…” I trailed off, thinking about my earlier questions. “But… how do you know what’s worth fighting for, and what’s worth dying for?”
“I dunno… it’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it? I mean -- some people think it’s worth not just fighting for, but ya know, dying for this damn war. And we don’t, do we? They must feel the same way ‘bout the sacrifices in the Class of Thirteen, and ‘specially the Underbelly, right? They might think that this country, and how it is now is something t’ be protected, right? Some people do… some people really think that Bush ‘s the Second Coming… some people think he’s the Anti Christ. I mean, it boils down to opinion, huh?”
I shrugged and looked away. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Don’t worry too much about it. You can die for what you want to die for. But you can also fight for what you think isn’t worth dying for, but it is worth fighting for.” Tré paused before continuing, his voice much softer now, “Do you… d’you remember the ruins in the middle of the town after the riot? All the dead, old guns, grenades ‘n all? Did it take your breath away?”
I couldn’t reply. A few tears worked their way up to the edge of my vision.
“That’s when you figured out that the Class of Thirteen -- it’s not something worth dying for, is it? For some people -- yeah, it is. They’re the people who’ll eventually lead this kind of shit. You know, I’m betting that this was part of why Whatsername -- Davey -- quit, huh? He didn’t think that he would want to die for this -- right?” Tré asked. “At the riot -- in its aftermath, that’s when you realized that the pain… when the realization hit you that you did that all, it was your fault, the pain started to outweigh the pride, huh?”
“It… it did,” I admitted.
“You ran away… I think that part was my fault though… I mean -- I’d lied to you, huh? I told you that I’d stick with you through it all, didn’t I? Before the riot… I did. I said I wouldn’t leave you. Did that break your heart? It broke mine when I realized what I’d done. After the dream I had…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “You said that if you lost everything in the fire, you’d be sending all your love to me, right? That… that all your love… was -- it was for me, right? You said that in that one text. I didn’t quite get it, but I think I do now. That was when you first started to think about the riot, huh? And part of you… part of you know that something would go wrong.”
“M-maybe I did.” It wasn’t a lie.
“You were in ruins afterward, huh? Your mind. Your heart. You… you were worse off than me, huh? You had the guilt of the riot. You had the guilt of making me so mad at you that I broke up with you… oh, Billie… that must have been so much… so much… too much to handle,” Tré whispered, pulling me back into a warm embrace.
I looked up at him, grasping his hand tightly as we broke apart. “Then you… well, I know what happened there. You were mad -- so, so mad at me, huh? You lost all your control and kicked me out. I know it wasn’t you -- I think I knew it then, too. But… dammit, it hurt either way. We were both over thinking it, weren’t we? Your faith in me… it shattered. My faith in me, in everything I’d ever believed in then -- it all shattered too. I felt like… us… you, and me, and the Class of Thirteen… that none of it was meant to last. But… was it, now? Since were… back here, again?”
“I -- I dunno, Billie Joe… fuck, that rhymed. But I think we’re supposed to last… I mean… we would still be pissed off at each other for all this, right? We would’ve felt miserable… but satisfied, huh? I dunno. I’ve never really… this has never really happened to me… I bet… has it happened to you?”
“Not really. It was different with Davey -- with Whatsername. That needed to happen… we -- it just didn’t make sense for us to be together, I think. I mean… it may have been a lesson for us… that… I dunno. For me to not do drugs, certainly. It was, like, some sort of lesson, and um… I dunno what would‘ve become of me if I‘d never met him… you know, one of those really important events that just have to happen, you know?”
“When did you get all religious?”
“When did you get all philosophocl -- fuck, I can’t say it.”
Tré stuck out a tongue at my inability to fucking say philosophical.
“So much for your philo-fucking-sophocality, Mister Laughing at my Mispronunciationing. Fuck, that came our wrong.”
“Hm… it did.”
We just grinned at each other, kissing once more before the phone rang, again, sending shivers up my spine. We didn’t pick it up this time. It went right to the answering machine, the dark and daring message resounding through the room. It was twelve ante meridian exactly. Such a cliché and yet so perfect time to call us and make a death threat, am I right?
“Christian and Gloria… you aren’t safe anymore. They’re coming… we’re coming.” The voice was dark and dangerous with a slightly metallic hint to it, as if it was going through a soup can and some string. Well, that mixed with Darth Vader. So, basically, it sounded like Darth Vader talking through a soup can and string. “It’s the end of the road.”
They hung up.
My breath caught in my throat before I could scream, and the room started spinning.
“Oh my god, Tré.” I finally got my voice back precious seconds later, though it was a bare whisper. “Tré -- we’re -- we’re gonna die. Tré, Tré, Tré… I love you, Tré, I fucking love you.”
He sounded just as scared as I did when he replied with, “I love you too, Billie Joe. Fuck. I love you so much.”
That’s when we heard the sirens. And the lights flashed through the windows, cutting through the night and the glass like a bullet through tissue paper.
“Shit. We’re.. gonna -- gonna die, Tré.”
He nodded.
“And as Whatsername would say… then… it’s not over till you’re underground, it’s not over before it’s too late.” I paused, gulping. “It’s over, Tré, it’s too -- it’s too late.”
“Yeah. Billie Joe…” he trailed off. “Billie Joe… if there’s anyone who I’d want to die with, then… fuck, it’s you. I love you.”
A gunshot cracked the fragile silence, leaving it like broken glass as one bullet broke through the wall. It soared past us. I froze, pressing my self to Tré and crying softly into his shoulder. More bullets followed, from all over, shooting through his bed and through the walls. I heard yelling from outside the house. I heard yelling from inside the house.
“Tré…”
“I love you,” he whispered softly.
“I love you, too.”
More bullets rained in on us, shattering the glass and the mirror. Feathers dropped down from the ceiling, flying away from the bed on impact. And, somehow, we weren’t shot. I guess the guys had really shitty aim.
“I want one last thing before we die,” I whispered.
“What’s that?” he asked me.
“This.”
I stood up on my tip toes and wrapped my arms around his neck, my forehead pressing against his. Catching on, Tré wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed me flush against him. He pressed his mouth on mine and kissed me. I kissed back. The pounding of blood in my ears and our heavy breathing drowned out the sound of gunshots and the sound of bullets penetrating through the walls. One of them hit the light fixtures on the ceiling, shattering the bulb and plunging us into darkness. The red and blue lights reflected all around us on the broken mirror, refracting on the walls eerily.
Still, I deepened the kiss, adrenaline soaring through my veins at unprecedented speeds. My heart beat faster and faster and faster, pounding against his in perfect unison. Some of my hair fell in both of our eyes. We didn’t care as the seconds turned to minutes, and minutes into what felt like hours. Shattered glass and bullets lay at our feet like demented offerings to sacrilegious gods, although it was too late for all of us.
As we broke apart panting, I whispered between our close breaths: “We’re not safe anymore. I love you, Tré, and I’m so fucking glad that my last words are saying that to you.”
“I love you, too, Billie Joe. I’ll love you forever.”
I pulled him into yet another kiss, relishing our very last moments together. I didn’t care that we only had precious minutes left to live. I only cared that Tré and I were together then, in our very last moments, that we were kissing and that we were so very deeply in love them. I was satisfied that he didn’t hate me. The rest of the world could hate me for all I cared, but since Tré had forgiven me, I was just fine. Now that we were together again, nothing else mattered.
As the bullets kept on falling in there, and as we broke apart again, I looked up at him, everything blurry from my tears.
“Tré… will you still love me in the morning?”
“Forever and always baby, forever and always.”
As long as he loved me, I was going to be okay. Silently, I let go of his hand and walked to the window once more, looking out from the shattered glass. The night below was dark and showed me none of its secrets, just the heartbeat rhythm of the flashing lights and sirens. I looked back at Tré, walking back to him and wrapping my arms around him.
“If I lose everything in the fire, I’m sending all my love to you,” I whispered.
He smiled at me, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his tears.
“We’re goin’ down with a fight, Billie Joe,” he whispered in my ear, warm breath soothing over my skin. “We’re going down the same way everyone else before us did. We’re going down like the heroes and heroines before us. Our minds are clear. Our eyes are teary and we love each other.” He coughed before continuing. “I’m glad we’re together, Billie Joe, because I don’t know what I would do if we weren’t together as we died. I’d… I’d be alone if it weren’t for you. You’d be alone, too… you know that, huh? I love you, Billie Joe.”
“It is pretty fucking obvious.” Was all I could whisper in reply, kissing him once more, kissing him chastely this time. “I think… I think I saw twenty one of them. The guns, I mean. Twenty one exactly. Isn’t it weird? You know… the whole twenty one gun salute given to fallen soldiers in the military -- I mean, well, you know -- we’re like fallen soldiers too, in the military of the Class of Thirteen, dying at the front called the 21st Century Breakdown, right?”
Tré just nodded and I sighed, grasping his hand once more and interlacing our fingers smoothly. “One, twenty one guns,” I whispered to him. “Lay down your arms, give up the fight.”
Tré wrapped an arm protectively around my waist, pressing us even closer. I looked up at him once more, meeting his eyes full of fear and bravery. A few tears had already fallen down his cheeks, and I could tell that I’d been crying, too. I mean -- who wouldn’t? We were about to die, dammit, and even though we were both satisfied… honestly, who really wants to die at the age of 18? Or the age of 19? Neither of us would live to see the age of fucking 20.
One more gunshot cracked out, silencing us. “One, twenty one guns,” I whispered. “Throw up your arms into the sky. You and I.” Another one rang out -- as far as I could tell, the last one. And then -- all was silent. I was shaking, and Tré was shaking as every second that ticked by felt like an hour -- our precious last few seconds.
And before anything else could happen, before that last fragile silence could be broken by, well, anything, I whisper asked to Tré: “If I lose everything in the fire… did I ever make it through?”
I walked into his room for the first time in exactly fourteen days (oh, don’t worry, I definitely counted -- I mean, every day I’d spent after the breakup, I’d put a giant black X over the date, just to torture myself -- misery does love company, you know), at the somewhat late but also regular for us hour of eleven thirty seven, post meridian. It was just like I’d remembered it, but so different, too. For one, the shockingly white carpet was actually clean for once -- clean as in I could see all of it. Along with that, the surfaces were a lot clearer. There were a few boxes in one corner of the smallish room, giving me the impression that he was moving out. The second thing I noticed was on the walls, and it was something that really drew your eye.
Large, messily Sharpied words. Poetry, really, or lyrics if you thought hard enough about it. They rhymed, and really, they had a distinct rhythm to them too. They didn’t seem all that professional, more like the rhythmic ramblings of some random teenager than the writings of an actual author. That fact in and of itself was true -- as they were some random teenager’s writings. They were mine.
The first one I noticed was from something I’d written -- really, something I’d written about my past experiences with drugs and how I stopped so I could keep going on -- called See the Light. What he’d put up there -- and I could definitely see why -- were the simple words: “I’ve been wasted -- pills and alcohol. And I’ve been chasing down the pool halls. Then I drank the water from a hurricane. And I set a fire just to see the flame. Well, I just wanna see the light. And I don’t wanna lose my sight. Well, I just wanna see the light. And I need to know what’s worth the fight.”
Don’t we all? I asked myself, reading the last line. Don’t we? Just look at what happened with you, Billie Joe -- what happened with Gloria -- with the Class of Thirteen. Maybe that would never have happened if you only knew what was worth the fight. Or maybe, you know, how to fight for something. Or what about the difference between something worth fighting for and something worth dying for?
I guess that might as well have been the question to ask me. Do you know what’s worth fighting for? Do you know what’s worth dying for? Would changing the government -- which, honestly, I don’t think I would ever have a chance at accomplishing -- be a cause worth dying for? It was certainly something that I thought was worth fighting for -- but how far did that go? I wasn’t sure how far it went -- I wasn’t sure if I would die for it, just like millions had before. I -- the same me who wasn’t just Gloria, or St. Jimmy, or Whatsername’s boyfriend, but also definitely intimate with the cause at question -- was doubting the one thing that had been my everything for, what, four years or so.
Tré, noticing that I had seemingly flown off to Wonderland in my thoughts once more, coughed. Concernedly, he said, “Billie…? Um, Billie Joe? You here?” His voice was soft and timid, and a bit scratchy as if he hadn’t used it in a while. He sounded just like I could remember him sounding, even though that seemed to be a far off memory. Despite the fact that he’d broken up with me exactly two weeks before then, he apparently missed me, seemingly almost as much as I’d missed him. I half hoped that he had felt the same pain, that same dull ache in your chest, that I had felt for those two weeks. Part of me knew he had -- well, the subconscious “oh I forgot to tell you this?” part of me, anyway.
“Yeah, I am… I’m just a little spacey today, well right now, ya know?” I answered, showing signs of life once more. “I mean -- it’s not every day that your ex-boyfriends text messages you and asks to talk things out.” Wait -- for me, that was a flat out lie. It had happened with both of my ex-boyfriends in a period of two weeks. “Well, um, unless you’re me, then Whatsername -- well, Davey -- calls ya and you end up pissing off your other ex-boyfriend.” Oh fuck. I was babbling again and I knew it. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“That was Whatsername?!” Tré asked me, eyes wide in surprise.
“That was Whatsername,” I affirmed, simultaneously echoing him. “Well -- his real name is Davey, and ya know, he’s not really Whatsername anymore -- if ya think about it and… ‘nd all.” I sounded like a nervous freak. I sounded like I did when we first talked after the graduation, when I was torn between melting and screwing him. Actually, right then, I was in the same position as I’d been at the graduation: babbling, melting, horny, and lonely. And to add onto that, I missed Tré so much since I’d last seen him, that it almost hurt. Hell, it did actually hurt. It hurt like a mother--
“That’s kind of crazy. To add on to how crazy you and your life are already,” Tré said with a snicker. I glared at him good naturedly and shook some of my hair out behind my head, leaning against the wall near an old window. Noticing this, Tré stood up. “Here, I have a seat --”
“Don’t worry, Tré, I’m fine,” I said, smiling at him. This was already going well. Tré just shrugged and sat down in the aforementioned chair near the old, dented, stained antique mirror that was practically embedded in his wall. I shifted slightly, tucking some loose hair behind my ear, before I started speaking once more. “So… why did you call me here, again? I mean --” I paused, shuffling slightly with my nervousness. “-- you seemed pretty damn mad at me after the riot. And when I was, um, officially ending my relationship with Whatser-- Davey.”
“My head’s been a lot clearer,” Tré admitted.
“What do you mean by that?” I ventured, half expecting the answer.
“Well, soon after we, um, broke up, I ran out of Opal. I didn’t want anyone to see me out there -- out on the streets -- not looking how I was looking, anyway… not knowing hoe instrumental I’d been to the riot. So, I just laid down here and waited out the withdrawal,” Tré answered a bit slowly. He paused for a tactful moment, taking a quick breath in. “Um, it actually wasn’t all that bad -- I’ve not been using too long, and I take -- I took it in a less severe way than most -- Opal’s not meant to be smoked, ya know.” He laughed. “After that… I cleaned up my room a bit. I had nothing better to do, really. Whenever I remembered you -- our relationship -- I’d write the words -- your words -- on my walls. I, um, hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind? Why the hell would I, Tré?” I asked in shock and awe. “I mean -- really -- it’s a great honor. I feel… special, heh. But wow. That’s pretty amazing… I mean, I’m glad you were able to get over the whole Opal thing, ya know?”
“I’m still suffering from a bit of withdrawal symptom stuff,” he admitted.
“Oh, well. It’s better than nothing, right? It’s better than still being addicted.”
“Yeah, I’d have to agree with you there.” He sighed. “And sorry for reacting like that -- back at the café ‘n all. I was still pretty low from the Opal and shit. Just going out for ice cream and bam! Ya see your ex-boyfriend who you’ve been moping over kissing another random guy literally a week after the breakup. It kinda hurt, y’know?”
“Aw, Tré…” I said. “I really didn’t mean for it to be like that -- I mean, I didn’t mean for you to see it or anything. It wasn’t romantic. It was a goodbye kiss. It was closure, really. I wanted to make sure that we both know that it’s over… that what once was will never be again.”
“That makes sense, I guess. I mean -- I really didn’t know he is -- was? -- Whatsername. If I knew, I’d probably have blown up. Or something drastic and involving long words like spontaneous and combustion like that.”
“You know what, Tré,” I told him. “You are so cute when you’re clean. You’re all, like ADHD. And adorable.”
“No one’s ever said that,” Tré muttered darkly.
“I’m no one?!” I asked, faux hurt. “I’m hurt… I mean I just said it, too, ya know.”
“Oh, you’re definitely not no one,” he added quickly, smiling at me -- he was totally in on it, I knew it. “I just forgot about you for a minute there, that’s all.”
“How could you forget about me?! I’m fuckin’ Billie Joe Armstrong, bitch and I’m right in fucking front of you!”
Tré laughed, doubling over and grinning from ear to ear when he looked up. “Ah, and this is why I fell in love with you in the first place, Billie Joe Armstrong. Your fiery spirit and sappy poetic shit like that.”
“Awh. I love guys who complement me using flowery purple prose.” (so does the author -- it adds words, right? just like me breaking the fourth wall, like I am right here!) “I think it’s cute. You’re the cutest, though. The hottest, too. And the best in bed.” I winked at him. Tré grinned back at me, running his fingers through his hair. Damn, is he cute when he’s nervous.
“So, um, really -- it’s okay?” he asked quietly. “You’re not like, mad at me or anything? ‘Cause, I mean, I regretted it right after you left. I had a nightmare about it. I wrote your poetry on the walls -- your lyrics and shit like that. I mean, I thought it was a mistake. But I also thought that that could have been the… um… withdrawal talking, I guess.” He laughed nervously, continuing to be so damn cute.
“Not, well -- not really. I was being a serious bitching pain in the ass yesterday about us, but then again -- well, my internet bills haven’t been paid, I guess. The Class of Thirteen doesn’t trust me. I thought -- I was pretty damn convinces, actually -- that you fucking hated me. I dunno, I had serious male PMS or something,” I said, explaining the past two weeks to him in a matter of only a few run on sentences.
“I missed you,” I added in a whisper, “I missed you a lot, did you know that? You were my everything. I fell for you hard and fast and it stuck with me like a damn tattoo. I wasn’t sick of it, but… it felt like the tattoo was sick of me or something.”
Tré looked up at me, his eyes clear (however, I could see the beginnings of tears). “I missed you, too. I missed you a lot as I laid in bed, in pain and throwing up. I wanted you to hold me. I wanted to you kiss me full on the mouth and say that it would all be okay.”
“I wanted to, that whole time,” I assured him. “I wanted to hold you again, and feel your sticky, sweaty skin against mine, and I wanted you to say that you love me again. I felt like… like… I can’t even describe how it felt without you.”
Tré, smiling tearfully now, stood up. I pushed off the wall and started walking toward him, as he walked toward me. We wrapped our arms around each other, like every other time, like it was any other day before the riot and the resulting breakup. And I kissed him, and he kissed back, and it was beautiful. When we broke apart, both of us were crying just a little, of joy.
That’s when the phone rang. Tré picked it up, still holding my hand, and nodded worriedly. “Okay, um, here he is,” he said, passing the phone to me.
I can’t replicate exactly what was said in that short phone conversation to Gloria from an unnamed caller, but what was stated was, in fact, horrific. Threats. The end of the Class of Thirteen. Very damaging things about me and my mental health.
I hung up in a dreadful, thick like soup silence.
“Tré? We’re not… we’re not safe anymore. Tré… Tré, the Class of Thirteen is over. IT’s done with… it’s all my fault.”
I didn’t care that much, though, for some reason. I just didn’t.
“Well, you know what I’d have to say about that?” Tré asked in more of a statement than a question. “I think that as long as there are people who believe in this whole Class of Thirteen shit, if they believe in the Underbelly, if they believe in what they’re fighting for -- then I think that there will always be something like this. There’ll always be a Class of Thirteen somewhere. There’ll always be some sort of an Underbelly. A Whatsername, a Gloria. It’s like… it’s just a line of succession. You came after Whatsername. Now someone will come after you -- someone will be hailed as the new Gloria. It’ll never die as long as people keep fighting for this. As long as some are crazy and keep dying for it.”
“But…” I trailed off, thinking about my earlier questions. “But… how do you know what’s worth fighting for, and what’s worth dying for?”
“I dunno… it’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it? I mean -- some people think it’s worth not just fighting for, but ya know, dying for this damn war. And we don’t, do we? They must feel the same way ‘bout the sacrifices in the Class of Thirteen, and ‘specially the Underbelly, right? They might think that this country, and how it is now is something t’ be protected, right? Some people do… some people really think that Bush ‘s the Second Coming… some people think he’s the Anti Christ. I mean, it boils down to opinion, huh?”
I shrugged and looked away. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Don’t worry too much about it. You can die for what you want to die for. But you can also fight for what you think isn’t worth dying for, but it is worth fighting for.” Tré paused before continuing, his voice much softer now, “Do you… d’you remember the ruins in the middle of the town after the riot? All the dead, old guns, grenades ‘n all? Did it take your breath away?”
I couldn’t reply. A few tears worked their way up to the edge of my vision.
“That’s when you figured out that the Class of Thirteen -- it’s not something worth dying for, is it? For some people -- yeah, it is. They’re the people who’ll eventually lead this kind of shit. You know, I’m betting that this was part of why Whatsername -- Davey -- quit, huh? He didn’t think that he would want to die for this -- right?” Tré asked. “At the riot -- in its aftermath, that’s when you realized that the pain… when the realization hit you that you did that all, it was your fault, the pain started to outweigh the pride, huh?”
“It… it did,” I admitted.
“You ran away… I think that part was my fault though… I mean -- I’d lied to you, huh? I told you that I’d stick with you through it all, didn’t I? Before the riot… I did. I said I wouldn’t leave you. Did that break your heart? It broke mine when I realized what I’d done. After the dream I had…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “You said that if you lost everything in the fire, you’d be sending all your love to me, right? That… that all your love… was -- it was for me, right? You said that in that one text. I didn’t quite get it, but I think I do now. That was when you first started to think about the riot, huh? And part of you… part of you know that something would go wrong.”
“M-maybe I did.” It wasn’t a lie.
“You were in ruins afterward, huh? Your mind. Your heart. You… you were worse off than me, huh? You had the guilt of the riot. You had the guilt of making me so mad at you that I broke up with you… oh, Billie… that must have been so much… so much… too much to handle,” Tré whispered, pulling me back into a warm embrace.
I looked up at him, grasping his hand tightly as we broke apart. “Then you… well, I know what happened there. You were mad -- so, so mad at me, huh? You lost all your control and kicked me out. I know it wasn’t you -- I think I knew it then, too. But… dammit, it hurt either way. We were both over thinking it, weren’t we? Your faith in me… it shattered. My faith in me, in everything I’d ever believed in then -- it all shattered too. I felt like… us… you, and me, and the Class of Thirteen… that none of it was meant to last. But… was it, now? Since were… back here, again?”
“I -- I dunno, Billie Joe… fuck, that rhymed. But I think we’re supposed to last… I mean… we would still be pissed off at each other for all this, right? We would’ve felt miserable… but satisfied, huh? I dunno. I’ve never really… this has never really happened to me… I bet… has it happened to you?”
“Not really. It was different with Davey -- with Whatsername. That needed to happen… we -- it just didn’t make sense for us to be together, I think. I mean… it may have been a lesson for us… that… I dunno. For me to not do drugs, certainly. It was, like, some sort of lesson, and um… I dunno what would‘ve become of me if I‘d never met him… you know, one of those really important events that just have to happen, you know?”
“When did you get all religious?”
“When did you get all philosophocl -- fuck, I can’t say it.”
Tré stuck out a tongue at my inability to fucking say philosophical.
“So much for your philo-fucking-sophocality, Mister Laughing at my Mispronunciationing. Fuck, that came our wrong.”
“Hm… it did.”
We just grinned at each other, kissing once more before the phone rang, again, sending shivers up my spine. We didn’t pick it up this time. It went right to the answering machine, the dark and daring message resounding through the room. It was twelve ante meridian exactly. Such a cliché and yet so perfect time to call us and make a death threat, am I right?
“Christian and Gloria… you aren’t safe anymore. They’re coming… we’re coming.” The voice was dark and dangerous with a slightly metallic hint to it, as if it was going through a soup can and some string. Well, that mixed with Darth Vader. So, basically, it sounded like Darth Vader talking through a soup can and string. “It’s the end of the road.”
They hung up.
My breath caught in my throat before I could scream, and the room started spinning.
“Oh my god, Tré.” I finally got my voice back precious seconds later, though it was a bare whisper. “Tré -- we’re -- we’re gonna die. Tré, Tré, Tré… I love you, Tré, I fucking love you.”
He sounded just as scared as I did when he replied with, “I love you too, Billie Joe. Fuck. I love you so much.”
That’s when we heard the sirens. And the lights flashed through the windows, cutting through the night and the glass like a bullet through tissue paper.
“Shit. We’re.. gonna -- gonna die, Tré.”
He nodded.
“And as Whatsername would say… then… it’s not over till you’re underground, it’s not over before it’s too late.” I paused, gulping. “It’s over, Tré, it’s too -- it’s too late.”
“Yeah. Billie Joe…” he trailed off. “Billie Joe… if there’s anyone who I’d want to die with, then… fuck, it’s you. I love you.”
A gunshot cracked the fragile silence, leaving it like broken glass as one bullet broke through the wall. It soared past us. I froze, pressing my self to Tré and crying softly into his shoulder. More bullets followed, from all over, shooting through his bed and through the walls. I heard yelling from outside the house. I heard yelling from inside the house.
“Tré…”
“I love you,” he whispered softly.
“I love you, too.”
More bullets rained in on us, shattering the glass and the mirror. Feathers dropped down from the ceiling, flying away from the bed on impact. And, somehow, we weren’t shot. I guess the guys had really shitty aim.
“I want one last thing before we die,” I whispered.
“What’s that?” he asked me.
“This.”
I stood up on my tip toes and wrapped my arms around his neck, my forehead pressing against his. Catching on, Tré wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed me flush against him. He pressed his mouth on mine and kissed me. I kissed back. The pounding of blood in my ears and our heavy breathing drowned out the sound of gunshots and the sound of bullets penetrating through the walls. One of them hit the light fixtures on the ceiling, shattering the bulb and plunging us into darkness. The red and blue lights reflected all around us on the broken mirror, refracting on the walls eerily.
Still, I deepened the kiss, adrenaline soaring through my veins at unprecedented speeds. My heart beat faster and faster and faster, pounding against his in perfect unison. Some of my hair fell in both of our eyes. We didn’t care as the seconds turned to minutes, and minutes into what felt like hours. Shattered glass and bullets lay at our feet like demented offerings to sacrilegious gods, although it was too late for all of us.
As we broke apart panting, I whispered between our close breaths: “We’re not safe anymore. I love you, Tré, and I’m so fucking glad that my last words are saying that to you.”
“I love you, too, Billie Joe. I’ll love you forever.”
I pulled him into yet another kiss, relishing our very last moments together. I didn’t care that we only had precious minutes left to live. I only cared that Tré and I were together then, in our very last moments, that we were kissing and that we were so very deeply in love them. I was satisfied that he didn’t hate me. The rest of the world could hate me for all I cared, but since Tré had forgiven me, I was just fine. Now that we were together again, nothing else mattered.
As the bullets kept on falling in there, and as we broke apart again, I looked up at him, everything blurry from my tears.
“Tré… will you still love me in the morning?”
“Forever and always baby, forever and always.”
As long as he loved me, I was going to be okay. Silently, I let go of his hand and walked to the window once more, looking out from the shattered glass. The night below was dark and showed me none of its secrets, just the heartbeat rhythm of the flashing lights and sirens. I looked back at Tré, walking back to him and wrapping my arms around him.
“If I lose everything in the fire, I’m sending all my love to you,” I whispered.
He smiled at me, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his tears.
“We’re goin’ down with a fight, Billie Joe,” he whispered in my ear, warm breath soothing over my skin. “We’re going down the same way everyone else before us did. We’re going down like the heroes and heroines before us. Our minds are clear. Our eyes are teary and we love each other.” He coughed before continuing. “I’m glad we’re together, Billie Joe, because I don’t know what I would do if we weren’t together as we died. I’d… I’d be alone if it weren’t for you. You’d be alone, too… you know that, huh? I love you, Billie Joe.”
“It is pretty fucking obvious.” Was all I could whisper in reply, kissing him once more, kissing him chastely this time. “I think… I think I saw twenty one of them. The guns, I mean. Twenty one exactly. Isn’t it weird? You know… the whole twenty one gun salute given to fallen soldiers in the military -- I mean, well, you know -- we’re like fallen soldiers too, in the military of the Class of Thirteen, dying at the front called the 21st Century Breakdown, right?”
Tré just nodded and I sighed, grasping his hand once more and interlacing our fingers smoothly. “One, twenty one guns,” I whispered to him. “Lay down your arms, give up the fight.”
Tré wrapped an arm protectively around my waist, pressing us even closer. I looked up at him once more, meeting his eyes full of fear and bravery. A few tears had already fallen down his cheeks, and I could tell that I’d been crying, too. I mean -- who wouldn’t? We were about to die, dammit, and even though we were both satisfied… honestly, who really wants to die at the age of 18? Or the age of 19? Neither of us would live to see the age of fucking 20.
One more gunshot cracked out, silencing us. “One, twenty one guns,” I whispered. “Throw up your arms into the sky. You and I.” Another one rang out -- as far as I could tell, the last one. And then -- all was silent. I was shaking, and Tré was shaking as every second that ticked by felt like an hour -- our precious last few seconds.
And before anything else could happen, before that last fragile silence could be broken by, well, anything, I whisper asked to Tré: “If I lose everything in the fire… did I ever make it through?”
11/22/09
Chapter Fifteen: The Static Age
(2247 words)
Why didn’t he listen? Why didn’t Tré ever listen to me? Why couldn’t he just listen to a fucking word that I fucking said every once in a fucking while?!
Those three question plagued my mind as I walked back to my old house on the outskirts of the suburban hell that was temporarily my home. I wanted to know, dammit, why he was so insistent on his opinion. Why he never listened to mine. Why he seemed to think less of me… well, not that really, but more like he didn’t trust me.
I couldn’t get why -- well, I sort of could, but it was an accident.
The whole damn riot was an accident, and Tré should’ve known that. Dumbass.
It was bad enough that the only thing television and radio could be good for was static. But, seriously, our relationship was built on static airwaves of communication too. It was getting insane, this static age of really shitty communication. (fucking hell, am I redundant or what?!)
Sighing, I sat down at my desk and opened up my 10 year old laptop. The screen fizzed slightly as I turned it on, before a greenish sign came up:
"Batteries required. Please plug in your laptop or charge the batteries."
Goddamn it, I thought, grumbling as I pulled out my laptop cord and plugged it into the old hole in the wall. Little blue electric sparks cascaded in there between the metal and the outlet. I smiled as my computer booted up, smiled as the first signs of lights flicked onto it. It was perfect. I loved being on my computer, because I could just get lost in pointless internet memes and weirdness in general. It was a lot of fun to read the really, really fucking strange news articles that came up once in a while... you know, like the weird cow ones. It was also fun to browse around on Amazon for the really strange products, like the weird Jesus Milk or whatever. You know, the stuff that was supposedly Really Good and cost a whole fuckin fortune for one gallon -- more or less a hundred buck a pop.
Totally not worth it for the milk, but totally worth it for the lulz.
Wait -- you don't know what LULZ are?! You must be crazy. Like, seriously crazy... and out of touch... and you must live in a hole. I mean, I have a fucking summer home in Narnia (I'm still mostly in the closet, bitches!) but even I know about teh lulz.
Lulz is the vocalized pronunciation of LOL -- as I explained in chapter nine, "laugh out loud." And so we got teh lulz from the lovely forum of 4-chan. Which is the asshole of the whole fucking internet, but still pretty damn funny to look at -- well, unless you're looking at /b/. /b/ is scary. Really scary.
Okay, well I can't hate on 4chan too much -- I mean, we get most of our memes from there. You know, so i herd u liek mudkipz, and O RLY (and YA RLY) and LOL cats (I Can Haz Cheezburger?) and stuff. Oh, yeah, and "all your base are belong to us." And Rickrolling. And I'm pretty sure that they introduced The Game (hahahahahahahahahahah you just lost it!!! -- well, I did too... fail) and epic fail, I think. And, you know, half of the rest of the internet funnies. Like Rickrolling.
You know, if you don't know what Rickrolling is, you need to like kill yourself. Or get online more. Either or, or one might as well lead to the other... people have died of starvation while playing World of Warcraft (seriously, your damn raids are not that fucking important). But really, Rickrolling is only the biggest funny lulz ever.
Basically, someone sends you an email with a YouTube link -- saying that it's the best video ever, right? You click on it and you get...
...
"Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. The whole damn music video. It drives me batshit whenever I get one of these damn emails. Well, it's funny -- since I always make them lose the Game right afterward. It is kind of funny to watch them say "GODDAMMIT I should never Rickroll this dude ever ever again. I HATE LOSING THE GAME." And well, they better not try again... oh, yeah, don't you fucking dare steal my tactics -- I mean, they're not even mine. I got them from the author's mom... I'm not kidding. I got it from the author's mom... and so what, I'm kinda crazy... but this is supposed to get Suki to her word count today, right? Right. Back on schedule...
So, basically, the whole ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US thing came from a shittily translated Japanese video game. It was translated to fast that the fucking words got all screwed up. Resulting in a hilarious conversation including the famous (infamous?) line -- ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
By the way, all your soul are belong to us.
... back on schedule now, right?
And so, reflecting on the memes of the then current internet society -- everything from harmless things like "so i herd u liek mudkipz" all the way to painful, nightmare inducing screamer videos -- I watched as my computer turned on and glowed like a fucking orange sunset in my dark and crowded room. Oh, yes. I logged onto it -- username Gloria, password amereul-2013 -- and waited for it to load. Barely thinking, just going through the motions considering how distracted I was, I clicked the little Mozilla Firefox button and opened up my internet browser (well, everyone knows that Internet Explorer -- and Microsoft in general -- is awful) to Google.
Whoops, well, AT LEAST I FUCKING TRIED.
I came up with a "Page Not Found" blank tab thing. And looked in the corner of my computer to see the issue. Oh, great. My internet must have been shut down. Goddamn internet bills... goddamn no money... goddamn friendlessness. I barely let my friends cover my internet costs, but seriously here -- they wouldn't now since the riot. They flat out wouldn't. It stung -- and still stings a bit to this day -- how they just brushed me off like that and said "pshhh, screw you for being a fuckin' liar, Gloria. you're one smart dumbass. not." It wasn't funny. It hurt and made me sink further into my depression. I was so seriously broke and running out of minutes on my phone. Great... I'd need to get a job soon, I realized. Oh, yeah, not like anyone would hire me between the display at my graduation and the riot, and being Gloria. And I was definitely not going to the next town over just to get a goddamn job -- I mean, I was desperate, but not that goddamn fucking desperate. I wasn't crazy. Besides, they'd just turn me down, too.
Oh, sweet, sweet rejection and loneliness and heartbreak.
Sighing to myself, I stood up and walked into the so called living room, where Mom normally hung out, somewhat drunk and mostly catatonic. It was crazy how dysfunctional my family was, even though we never talked. As far as I knew, as far as I was told, my dad had died -- or killed himself, maybe -- right after he's left, when I was ten.
It was seven years ago at the time, but that coming September (September of 2013, smart people) it would be eight years.
I could almost taste the twenty year anniversary of his death, when I would be 38. Assuming, you know, I'd live to be 38... again, much more likely that I'd die at 37 than live to see 100. The drugs, the fucking up my body in general, not to mention me possible killing myself before then, or actually on then. It was crazy, but with Tré it was an escape -- I almost believed that we'd grow fairly old together, throwing hand grenades and exploding sporks at retirement homes.
Just thinking of Tré and our former, our beautiful, romance made me choke up, so I forced myself to sit down and so I laid back on the small, tattered loveseat. Oh the fuckin' irony. I was moping on the loveseat of all damn seats. Loveseats... Tré never sat there with me -- hell, he'd only been to my place once, right before the riot -- but still. Just thinking about the word loveseat -- well, love, really -- made me want to die. Or cry. Something tingly and sad that rhymed with those to words. I also wanted to throw Tré off a cliff then, but I couldn't. For one, there were no cliffs in that city. For second, he was somewhere -- somewhere I didn't know where the hell my ex-boyfriend was. And third, he was much stronger than me, and much heavier (oh, trust me, I knew by then exactly how mush pressure his weight put on me). I'd be more likely to fall off the cliff than to throw him off it.
But still. It was fun to mentally maim him for all he'd done to me.
So, trying to distract myself with news that would infuriate me in a totally different and hopefully more healthy way, I turned on the television. You see, there wasn't very much normal programming -- mostly news. Well, propaganda. Evil, evil propaganda infiltrating the faith fanatics and turning them against honest people -- you know, like me. Compared to them, I was a fucking saint.
So what, I used to be called the Patron Saint of the Denial (with an angel face and a taste for suicidal). The so called Saint Jimmy was never a real saint anyway.
I meditated on this as I watched the TV flicker on, watching as the images came into focus.
A low pitched, whining beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep sounded from the TV and I plugged my ears immediately. The noise still penetrated, reverberating in my skull, as the automated woman's voice announced that this was just a signal test. In case a riot like, you know, the one that made me lose like everything, ever happened again. To be completely honest, I'd rather have killed myself than to relive that humiliation. I hated what happened... I hated what I'd, what Gloria'd, become in the eyes of the public. In the eyes of my friends. In the eyes of my ex-boyfriend.
Of course, Mom didn't care. I was glad, because otherwise, I don't know what could have happened to me following the riot. I'd probably be forced to feel the pain of the hundreds. You know -- also known as she'd kill me. Or she'd make me kill myself. I shuddered just thinking of that. I wanted to live my life for as long as I could, because I knew that I had much shorter a time than everyone else who existed... you know, the normal people who never did Novacaine, who didn't dabble in every drug imaginable, who never threw a hand grenade or had tried to change something as drastically as I had. It was all kinds of insane, my life, and it was crazy just thinking "hey world, I lived through it all."
The TV's image was a rainbow of flickering, epileptic seizure inducing static. Rainbow static. Beautiful static in this fucking static age, where consumerism was emphasized. Where you were judged on how you looked, how much money you had -- which went hand in hand, as you could buy fancy schmancy three thousand dollar dresses with all your fucking money.
Remind me again on why I was so pissed off all the time about the state of people -- oh yeah! -- because they were materialistic bitches and judged so harshly based on how you acted, appeared, loved, looked, where you were born. They did it in the name of their gods, sometimes -- but I never got it, because weren't they taught that only the fucking Lord could judge, and that those who judged would go to Hell? Oh, wait, same God that said if you believe in him, you'd get a one way ticket to Heaven, even if you were a fucking, I dunno, serial murderer child rapist who was convicted and pleaded guilty to countless crimes that were also again common morality (and, supposedly, the Bible).
Oh, yeah, that's why I was so damn pissed off at the world. The static and the damn people.
I sighed and walked back to my room, laying down on my bed and flipping open my cell phone that was switched off. I turned it on, pressing the red hang up button till I saw images on the screen.
Low battery, read the little graphic in the corner. Yep, just like my laptop.
I sighed once more and flipped it closed, closing my eyes and. --
Being shocked back awake by an all too familiar ringtone. Tré. Dammit, why the hell would he be texting me at two ante meridian? I guessed that he'd mistyped the number, or something. It couldn't be him.
So I opened it... and it was definitely for me.
Oh shit, I thought. Oh shit. No way in fucking hell...
I groaned, and flipping of my phone, I fell asleep once more, severely pissed off and feeling like an overly hormonal girl.
Why didn’t he listen? Why didn’t Tré ever listen to me? Why couldn’t he just listen to a fucking word that I fucking said every once in a fucking while?!
Those three question plagued my mind as I walked back to my old house on the outskirts of the suburban hell that was temporarily my home. I wanted to know, dammit, why he was so insistent on his opinion. Why he never listened to mine. Why he seemed to think less of me… well, not that really, but more like he didn’t trust me.
I couldn’t get why -- well, I sort of could, but it was an accident.
The whole damn riot was an accident, and Tré should’ve known that. Dumbass.
It was bad enough that the only thing television and radio could be good for was static. But, seriously, our relationship was built on static airwaves of communication too. It was getting insane, this static age of really shitty communication. (fucking hell, am I redundant or what?!)
Sighing, I sat down at my desk and opened up my 10 year old laptop. The screen fizzed slightly as I turned it on, before a greenish sign came up:
"Batteries required. Please plug in your laptop or charge the batteries."
Goddamn it, I thought, grumbling as I pulled out my laptop cord and plugged it into the old hole in the wall. Little blue electric sparks cascaded in there between the metal and the outlet. I smiled as my computer booted up, smiled as the first signs of lights flicked onto it. It was perfect. I loved being on my computer, because I could just get lost in pointless internet memes and weirdness in general. It was a lot of fun to read the really, really fucking strange news articles that came up once in a while... you know, like the weird cow ones. It was also fun to browse around on Amazon for the really strange products, like the weird Jesus Milk or whatever. You know, the stuff that was supposedly Really Good and cost a whole fuckin fortune for one gallon -- more or less a hundred buck a pop.
Totally not worth it for the milk, but totally worth it for the lulz.
Wait -- you don't know what LULZ are?! You must be crazy. Like, seriously crazy... and out of touch... and you must live in a hole. I mean, I have a fucking summer home in Narnia (I'm still mostly in the closet, bitches!) but even I know about teh lulz.
Lulz is the vocalized pronunciation of LOL -- as I explained in chapter nine, "laugh out loud." And so we got teh lulz from the lovely forum of 4-chan. Which is the asshole of the whole fucking internet, but still pretty damn funny to look at -- well, unless you're looking at /b/. /b/ is scary. Really scary.
Okay, well I can't hate on 4chan too much -- I mean, we get most of our memes from there. You know, so i herd u liek mudkipz, and O RLY (and YA RLY) and LOL cats (I Can Haz Cheezburger?) and stuff. Oh, yeah, and "all your base are belong to us." And Rickrolling. And I'm pretty sure that they introduced The Game (hahahahahahahahahahah you just lost it!!! -- well, I did too... fail) and epic fail, I think. And, you know, half of the rest of the internet funnies. Like Rickrolling.
You know, if you don't know what Rickrolling is, you need to like kill yourself. Or get online more. Either or, or one might as well lead to the other... people have died of starvation while playing World of Warcraft (seriously, your damn raids are not that fucking important). But really, Rickrolling is only the biggest funny lulz ever.
Basically, someone sends you an email with a YouTube link -- saying that it's the best video ever, right? You click on it and you get...
...
"Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. The whole damn music video. It drives me batshit whenever I get one of these damn emails. Well, it's funny -- since I always make them lose the Game right afterward. It is kind of funny to watch them say "GODDAMMIT I should never Rickroll this dude ever ever again. I HATE LOSING THE GAME." And well, they better not try again... oh, yeah, don't you fucking dare steal my tactics -- I mean, they're not even mine. I got them from the author's mom... I'm not kidding. I got it from the author's mom... and so what, I'm kinda crazy... but this is supposed to get Suki to her word count today, right? Right. Back on schedule...
So, basically, the whole ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US thing came from a shittily translated Japanese video game. It was translated to fast that the fucking words got all screwed up. Resulting in a hilarious conversation including the famous (infamous?) line -- ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
By the way, all your soul are belong to us.
... back on schedule now, right?
And so, reflecting on the memes of the then current internet society -- everything from harmless things like "so i herd u liek mudkipz" all the way to painful, nightmare inducing screamer videos -- I watched as my computer turned on and glowed like a fucking orange sunset in my dark and crowded room. Oh, yes. I logged onto it -- username Gloria, password amereul-2013 -- and waited for it to load. Barely thinking, just going through the motions considering how distracted I was, I clicked the little Mozilla Firefox button and opened up my internet browser (well, everyone knows that Internet Explorer -- and Microsoft in general -- is awful) to Google.
Whoops, well, AT LEAST I FUCKING TRIED.
I came up with a "Page Not Found" blank tab thing. And looked in the corner of my computer to see the issue. Oh, great. My internet must have been shut down. Goddamn internet bills... goddamn no money... goddamn friendlessness. I barely let my friends cover my internet costs, but seriously here -- they wouldn't now since the riot. They flat out wouldn't. It stung -- and still stings a bit to this day -- how they just brushed me off like that and said "pshhh, screw you for being a fuckin' liar, Gloria. you're one smart dumbass. not." It wasn't funny. It hurt and made me sink further into my depression. I was so seriously broke and running out of minutes on my phone. Great... I'd need to get a job soon, I realized. Oh, yeah, not like anyone would hire me between the display at my graduation and the riot, and being Gloria. And I was definitely not going to the next town over just to get a goddamn job -- I mean, I was desperate, but not that goddamn fucking desperate. I wasn't crazy. Besides, they'd just turn me down, too.
Oh, sweet, sweet rejection and loneliness and heartbreak.
Sighing to myself, I stood up and walked into the so called living room, where Mom normally hung out, somewhat drunk and mostly catatonic. It was crazy how dysfunctional my family was, even though we never talked. As far as I knew, as far as I was told, my dad had died -- or killed himself, maybe -- right after he's left, when I was ten.
It was seven years ago at the time, but that coming September (September of 2013, smart people) it would be eight years.
I could almost taste the twenty year anniversary of his death, when I would be 38. Assuming, you know, I'd live to be 38... again, much more likely that I'd die at 37 than live to see 100. The drugs, the fucking up my body in general, not to mention me possible killing myself before then, or actually on then. It was crazy, but with Tré it was an escape -- I almost believed that we'd grow fairly old together, throwing hand grenades and exploding sporks at retirement homes.
Just thinking of Tré and our former, our beautiful, romance made me choke up, so I forced myself to sit down and so I laid back on the small, tattered loveseat. Oh the fuckin' irony. I was moping on the loveseat of all damn seats. Loveseats... Tré never sat there with me -- hell, he'd only been to my place once, right before the riot -- but still. Just thinking about the word loveseat -- well, love, really -- made me want to die. Or cry. Something tingly and sad that rhymed with those to words. I also wanted to throw Tré off a cliff then, but I couldn't. For one, there were no cliffs in that city. For second, he was somewhere -- somewhere I didn't know where the hell my ex-boyfriend was. And third, he was much stronger than me, and much heavier (oh, trust me, I knew by then exactly how mush pressure his weight put on me). I'd be more likely to fall off the cliff than to throw him off it.
But still. It was fun to mentally maim him for all he'd done to me.
So, trying to distract myself with news that would infuriate me in a totally different and hopefully more healthy way, I turned on the television. You see, there wasn't very much normal programming -- mostly news. Well, propaganda. Evil, evil propaganda infiltrating the faith fanatics and turning them against honest people -- you know, like me. Compared to them, I was a fucking saint.
So what, I used to be called the Patron Saint of the Denial (with an angel face and a taste for suicidal). The so called Saint Jimmy was never a real saint anyway.
I meditated on this as I watched the TV flicker on, watching as the images came into focus.
A low pitched, whining beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep sounded from the TV and I plugged my ears immediately. The noise still penetrated, reverberating in my skull, as the automated woman's voice announced that this was just a signal test. In case a riot like, you know, the one that made me lose like everything, ever happened again. To be completely honest, I'd rather have killed myself than to relive that humiliation. I hated what happened... I hated what I'd, what Gloria'd, become in the eyes of the public. In the eyes of my friends. In the eyes of my ex-boyfriend.
Of course, Mom didn't care. I was glad, because otherwise, I don't know what could have happened to me following the riot. I'd probably be forced to feel the pain of the hundreds. You know -- also known as she'd kill me. Or she'd make me kill myself. I shuddered just thinking of that. I wanted to live my life for as long as I could, because I knew that I had much shorter a time than everyone else who existed... you know, the normal people who never did Novacaine, who didn't dabble in every drug imaginable, who never threw a hand grenade or had tried to change something as drastically as I had. It was all kinds of insane, my life, and it was crazy just thinking "hey world, I lived through it all."
The TV's image was a rainbow of flickering, epileptic seizure inducing static. Rainbow static. Beautiful static in this fucking static age, where consumerism was emphasized. Where you were judged on how you looked, how much money you had -- which went hand in hand, as you could buy fancy schmancy three thousand dollar dresses with all your fucking money.
Remind me again on why I was so pissed off all the time about the state of people -- oh yeah! -- because they were materialistic bitches and judged so harshly based on how you acted, appeared, loved, looked, where you were born. They did it in the name of their gods, sometimes -- but I never got it, because weren't they taught that only the fucking Lord could judge, and that those who judged would go to Hell? Oh, wait, same God that said if you believe in him, you'd get a one way ticket to Heaven, even if you were a fucking, I dunno, serial murderer child rapist who was convicted and pleaded guilty to countless crimes that were also again common morality (and, supposedly, the Bible).
Oh, yeah, that's why I was so damn pissed off at the world. The static and the damn people.
I sighed and walked back to my room, laying down on my bed and flipping open my cell phone that was switched off. I turned it on, pressing the red hang up button till I saw images on the screen.
Low battery, read the little graphic in the corner. Yep, just like my laptop.
I sighed once more and flipped it closed, closing my eyes and. --
Being shocked back awake by an all too familiar ringtone. Tré. Dammit, why the hell would he be texting me at two ante meridian? I guessed that he'd mistyped the number, or something. It couldn't be him.
So I opened it... and it was definitely for me.
Oh shit, I thought. Oh shit. No way in fucking hell...
I groaned, and flipping of my phone, I fell asleep once more, severely pissed off and feeling like an overly hormonal girl.
11/18/09
Act Three: Horseshoes and Handgrenades :: Chapter Fourteen: Horseshoes and Handgrenades
(2138 words)
(Davey/Whatsername’s POV)
I was looking down at the Starbucks cup that held my soy chai latte (you know, only the best things ever) when I heard the little bell above the colorful doors rig. I paid no mind to it, just staring at my neon blue painted fingernails. Quiet, unsure footsteps increased in noise as they came closer to my table. My head snapped up as that figure stepped in front of me.
“You better not be fucking around Whatsername, ‘cause I didn’t come out here for nothing.”
Whatsername… no one had called me that in years, not since I had cut my hair and actually went to high school. I knew immediately who stood in front of me, even though he looked much different.
“Of course I’m not fucking around, Saint Jimmy.” I paused. “Or, should I say Gloria, now?”
“Dammit, you’re starting to sound like Tré.”
I watched as Billie Joe Armstrong, my ex-boyfriend and now apparent equal, pulled out a chair and sat down across from me, green eyes focused beneath a shock of greasy blonde hair. Then, quietly, he spoke once more: "Why'd you call me up here? I've been kinda trying to hide out, you know."
I sighed and looked back up at him from behind my long black fringe. "You know, I just happened to be around, so I wanted to talk to you... I mean, I broke up with you over a damn letter."
"True enough," he stated calmly.
I sighed and looked up at him. “So, um…”
“What about?” he asked, and even though his voice was casual and somewhat subdued, it felt as if he was challenging me to tell him.
“Well…” I started. “I’m sorry.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” I admitted. “The letterbomb… it was sent on a destructive, hateful, self protecting impulse.”
Billie Joe nodded solemnly. Silently, he pulled out a crinkled piece of worn notebook paper – a piece of paper that I immediately recognized as the so called letterbomb that I’d sent him. My eyebrows shot up, my eyes widening as I gently took the letter. This paper was indeed the letter bomb, covered in tearstains and what appeared to be dried blood. My real name was scratched out, illegible – and it seemed to be signed by only Whatsername.
“Wow, you still have this?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I do… I mean… I just can’t get rid of it. It’s the last thing I have… I had from you, you know? And you were my first real thing… my first real love. Dammit, I sound so fuckin’ sappy.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry, I feel the same way.”
“I mean --” he continued. “-- I mean, I even wrote a song after what happened… well, lyrics, a tune, but a song all the same.”
“Really…? Could you, um, sing it, maybe?” I asked.
Billie Joe sighed. “Yeah, I guess. It’s called Whatsername… obviously, heh.”
And so he started to sing it to me. It was soft at first…
“Thought I ran into you down on the street. Then it turned out to only be a dream. I made a point to burn all of the photographs. He went away then I took a different path. I remember the face but I can’t recall the name… now I wonder how Whatsername has been.”
The beat continued through the second verse stanza thing…
“Seems that he disappeared without a trace. Did he ever marry, oh, whatshisface? I made a point to burn all of the photographs. He went away and then I took a different path. I remember the face, but I can’t recall the name. Now I wonder how Whatsername has been…”
He paused for a moment, as if counting out beats or a guitar solo in his head. His singing started again, crescendo-ing to an epic sound…
“Remember, whatever, it seems like forever ago. Remember whatever… it seems like forever ago. The regrets are useless in my mind, he’s in my head, I must confess. The regrets are useless in my mine. He’s in my head, from so long ago…”
His singing voice calmed again, heading into one last peaceful declaration, directed toward me…
“And in the darkest nights… if my memory serves me right. I’ll never turn back time.” He paused. “Forgetting you but not the time…”
“You wrote that?!”
“Um, uh huh. Yeah.”
“Wow… that’s just… amazing. You’re also really, really good at singing.”
He smiled at me, sadly this time. “I’m glad you like it.”
“And, by the way, yeah. Me and Jade are, um, official now.”
Billie Joe laughed faux lightly. “I coulda guessed.”
I smiled back at him, flicking some of my long black fringe out of my face. “So, you know Billie Joe, you’re like… well… Gloria’s like the new Whatsername, almost.”
“I can tell. Did you really fail as badly as I did, your first time around?” he asked. I just nodded.
“I did,” I confirmed with another short nod.
“A thousand, like me?”
“Well, more like two and a half thousand,” I laughed, “but yeah, pretty much.”
“That’s… wow… just… wow. Heh. Yeah. I didn’t expect quite that much, but you know, yeah… couldn’t say that I really… dammit, I’m babbling, right? Not again.”
“Naw, don’t worry. It’s one of your endearing traits,” I said, smiling at him. That’s when I noticed the tired black bags under his eyes. “Don’t worry. It’s not too noticeable… I mean… well… how tired are you? Have you been sleeping okay?”
“Yeah. Well, I guess. I haven’t been able to sleep well since… well, um… since…”
“The riot?”
“You could say that,” he answered. “And I stopped taking the sleeping meds because they made me forget stuff and really screwed me up.”
“Try melatonin or something. It’s natural.”
He just smirked. “Nah, it’s fine… the sleeping pills are. Ambien. You know. Pretty damn terrible but not as bad as Novacaine, at least.”
“I can understand,” I agreed with a nod. “Well, sort of. I only really do, ya know, natural stuff… I mean…”
He laughed quietly. “You’re still that suspicious of poisoning?”
“No,” I whispered, barely audible to anyone outside of me. “I mean… you know, Novacaine’s a doctor’s medicine. You wouldn’t expect to get hooked on it, not as bad as you were.” He tensed. “I mean… you’ve made me sorta paranoid, Billie Joe Armstrong.”
“That’s just… plain… weird. I’m sorry, but… I’m more sorry to me for… um. Yeah.”
“It’s okay,” I told him, quietly covering his hand with my own. “I get what ya mean. I mean… it was pretty damn traumatic, huh?”
“Must’ve been.” He just shrugged, slipping his hand away. “I mean… I was so fucked up back then, I mean… I’m still so fucked up now but in a different way. It was bad though, really bad. This bad addiction and the other me, you know, St. Jimmy… you saw St. Jimmy more often than you saw me, didn’t you?”
I didn’t reply. But in truth, he’d practically read my mind.
“… it drove you over the edge, didn’t it? And you left. With a simple letter -- a letterbomb. Just askin’ where all the excitement went. And then you told me what I needed to hear to get better -- did ya know that? When you told me that I wasn’t the Jesus of Suburbia… that I wasn’t the Saint Jimmy either… I recognized what’d happened to me. It was a moment of clarity, brief but true. And… and before I went clean -- I…” He trailed off, looking around suspiciously. “I tried to kill myself. I thought I’d dug myself a hole so deep that I couldn’t get out of it. I took a gun. I almost shot myself. Right. Here.”
He pointed to the clear center of his left temple, and I shuddered.
“I threw the gun -- it was my gun, remember? The Saint Jimmy’s… I threw the damned gun into the water. And that’s when Jimmy died. And I was finally free. I was finally me again… and then I started home on foot, getting cleaned up on the way with a few more members of the Underbelly. Jimmy… he haunted… my steps, he followed me until I was back here.” Billie Joe smiled, pained. “Back here in the town that don’t exist… the land of make believe… the city of the dead.”
“Wow,” I breathed. It was the only thing I could say. He looked at me, then away from me, and continued describing what had happened in the three years since we’d last seen each other -- when I was just over 15, and he was on the edge between 15 and 16. Now he was 18, and I was still 17 until the coming November.
“After I fixed myself up, I went back to school. Barely finished 9th grade, scraped through 10th and 11th, barely lived to see 12th… I mean, I graduated with a fuckin’ C-, Grade Point Average of two.”
“Wow…” It seemed like it was the only thing I could say.
“I started the Class of Thirteen at the beginning of twelfth grade. I mean… I was still wondering what you’d been wondering. Where have all the riots gone?”
He directly quoted my letterbomb goodbye, and it was unnerving to hear his echoing voice, his slightly older but still the same vocal chords reading out my departure.
“If you were wondering,” he muttered, “then yeah. I’ve memorized the letter.”
I didn’t question him. It seemed like he had.
“And… graduation night. That’s when Tré came along. We got together. He became Christian. And then, after the riot…” Billie Joe just cut off abruptly. He took a deep breath in, trying to restrain tears, to no avail. They streamed quietly over his cheeks, bringing some of his eyeliner with them.
He couldn’t continue what he was saying.
I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around him, yanking him out of his chair and pulling him into a real hug.
“Billie Joe Armstrong… you know what I have always wanted but never asked for?”
Before he could answer, I answered my own question. “I’ve always wanted a real goodbye. A goodbye kiss. It’s all I need, you know… just give me this. Just give me something cold and clear. The love spent there, as I had feared, means nothing… dear…”
I pulled him into me, before he leaned up and chastely kissed me on the lips, hugging be in return. It was soft and simple, more of a courtesy than true love. It was closure, the closure that we both needed to move on with our lives. Neither of us hated each other.
“Billie Joe?” a shocked and angry, a hurt and betrayed voice asked. Billie Joe pulled away from me and turned around, just as shocked.
“Tré!” he shouted.
“What the fuck?! How -- how the hell did you replace me, so fast?” the other man, who had slightly greasy and half slicked back reddish hair and wide blue eyes, asked. “How?! I mean… just wow…”
“Tré, this isn’t what it looks like…!”
Before Billie Joe could explain, the one who had been called Tré spun around angrily on his heel and left. My once boyfriend’s expression softened, and he turned to look at me one last time.
“Give me something I can take to make the memories fade… poison kiss, remember this: I never was meant for this day,” he whispered, sliding a slip of paper into my hand and walking out, hiding his tears.
Shocked, I opened the paper.
It was the letterbomb…
“Dear Billie Joe, or St. Jimmy,
Nobody likes you, everyone left you, they’re all off without you having fun…
Where have all the bastards gone? The Underbelly stacks up ten high. The dummy failed the crash test, collected unemployment checks, he fucking only went for the ride. Where have all the riots gone? As the City’s motto gets pulverized. What’s in love is now in debt, on your birth certificates, so strike the fucking match to light this fuse.
“The town bishop’s an extortionist, and he don’t even know that you exist. Standing still when it’s do or die -- you better run for your fucking life. Because it’s not over till your underground. It’s not over before it’s too late. This City’s burning. It’s not my burden.
“Where will all the martyrs go when the virus cures itself? And where will we all go when it’s too late?
“And don’t look back.
“You’re not the Jesus of Suburbia and the Saint Jimmy is a figment of your father’s rage and your mother’s love -- maybe the idiot America.
“I can’t take this place, I’m leaving it behind.
“I can’t take this town. I’m leaving you tonight.
“xoxo Whatsername…”
(Davey/Whatsername’s POV)
I was looking down at the Starbucks cup that held my soy chai latte (you know, only the best things ever) when I heard the little bell above the colorful doors rig. I paid no mind to it, just staring at my neon blue painted fingernails. Quiet, unsure footsteps increased in noise as they came closer to my table. My head snapped up as that figure stepped in front of me.
“You better not be fucking around Whatsername, ‘cause I didn’t come out here for nothing.”
Whatsername… no one had called me that in years, not since I had cut my hair and actually went to high school. I knew immediately who stood in front of me, even though he looked much different.
“Of course I’m not fucking around, Saint Jimmy.” I paused. “Or, should I say Gloria, now?”
“Dammit, you’re starting to sound like Tré.”
I watched as Billie Joe Armstrong, my ex-boyfriend and now apparent equal, pulled out a chair and sat down across from me, green eyes focused beneath a shock of greasy blonde hair. Then, quietly, he spoke once more: "Why'd you call me up here? I've been kinda trying to hide out, you know."
I sighed and looked back up at him from behind my long black fringe. "You know, I just happened to be around, so I wanted to talk to you... I mean, I broke up with you over a damn letter."
"True enough," he stated calmly.
I sighed and looked up at him. “So, um…”
“What about?” he asked, and even though his voice was casual and somewhat subdued, it felt as if he was challenging me to tell him.
“Well…” I started. “I’m sorry.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” I admitted. “The letterbomb… it was sent on a destructive, hateful, self protecting impulse.”
Billie Joe nodded solemnly. Silently, he pulled out a crinkled piece of worn notebook paper – a piece of paper that I immediately recognized as the so called letterbomb that I’d sent him. My eyebrows shot up, my eyes widening as I gently took the letter. This paper was indeed the letter bomb, covered in tearstains and what appeared to be dried blood. My real name was scratched out, illegible – and it seemed to be signed by only Whatsername.
“Wow, you still have this?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I do… I mean… I just can’t get rid of it. It’s the last thing I have… I had from you, you know? And you were my first real thing… my first real love. Dammit, I sound so fuckin’ sappy.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry, I feel the same way.”
“I mean --” he continued. “-- I mean, I even wrote a song after what happened… well, lyrics, a tune, but a song all the same.”
“Really…? Could you, um, sing it, maybe?” I asked.
Billie Joe sighed. “Yeah, I guess. It’s called Whatsername… obviously, heh.”
And so he started to sing it to me. It was soft at first…
“Thought I ran into you down on the street. Then it turned out to only be a dream. I made a point to burn all of the photographs. He went away then I took a different path. I remember the face but I can’t recall the name… now I wonder how Whatsername has been.”
The beat continued through the second verse stanza thing…
“Seems that he disappeared without a trace. Did he ever marry, oh, whatshisface? I made a point to burn all of the photographs. He went away and then I took a different path. I remember the face, but I can’t recall the name. Now I wonder how Whatsername has been…”
He paused for a moment, as if counting out beats or a guitar solo in his head. His singing started again, crescendo-ing to an epic sound…
“Remember, whatever, it seems like forever ago. Remember whatever… it seems like forever ago. The regrets are useless in my mind, he’s in my head, I must confess. The regrets are useless in my mine. He’s in my head, from so long ago…”
His singing voice calmed again, heading into one last peaceful declaration, directed toward me…
“And in the darkest nights… if my memory serves me right. I’ll never turn back time.” He paused. “Forgetting you but not the time…”
“You wrote that?!”
“Um, uh huh. Yeah.”
“Wow… that’s just… amazing. You’re also really, really good at singing.”
He smiled at me, sadly this time. “I’m glad you like it.”
“And, by the way, yeah. Me and Jade are, um, official now.”
Billie Joe laughed faux lightly. “I coulda guessed.”
I smiled back at him, flicking some of my long black fringe out of my face. “So, you know Billie Joe, you’re like… well… Gloria’s like the new Whatsername, almost.”
“I can tell. Did you really fail as badly as I did, your first time around?” he asked. I just nodded.
“I did,” I confirmed with another short nod.
“A thousand, like me?”
“Well, more like two and a half thousand,” I laughed, “but yeah, pretty much.”
“That’s… wow… just… wow. Heh. Yeah. I didn’t expect quite that much, but you know, yeah… couldn’t say that I really… dammit, I’m babbling, right? Not again.”
“Naw, don’t worry. It’s one of your endearing traits,” I said, smiling at him. That’s when I noticed the tired black bags under his eyes. “Don’t worry. It’s not too noticeable… I mean… well… how tired are you? Have you been sleeping okay?”
“Yeah. Well, I guess. I haven’t been able to sleep well since… well, um… since…”
“The riot?”
“You could say that,” he answered. “And I stopped taking the sleeping meds because they made me forget stuff and really screwed me up.”
“Try melatonin or something. It’s natural.”
He just smirked. “Nah, it’s fine… the sleeping pills are. Ambien. You know. Pretty damn terrible but not as bad as Novacaine, at least.”
“I can understand,” I agreed with a nod. “Well, sort of. I only really do, ya know, natural stuff… I mean…”
He laughed quietly. “You’re still that suspicious of poisoning?”
“No,” I whispered, barely audible to anyone outside of me. “I mean… you know, Novacaine’s a doctor’s medicine. You wouldn’t expect to get hooked on it, not as bad as you were.” He tensed. “I mean… you’ve made me sorta paranoid, Billie Joe Armstrong.”
“That’s just… plain… weird. I’m sorry, but… I’m more sorry to me for… um. Yeah.”
“It’s okay,” I told him, quietly covering his hand with my own. “I get what ya mean. I mean… it was pretty damn traumatic, huh?”
“Must’ve been.” He just shrugged, slipping his hand away. “I mean… I was so fucked up back then, I mean… I’m still so fucked up now but in a different way. It was bad though, really bad. This bad addiction and the other me, you know, St. Jimmy… you saw St. Jimmy more often than you saw me, didn’t you?”
I didn’t reply. But in truth, he’d practically read my mind.
“… it drove you over the edge, didn’t it? And you left. With a simple letter -- a letterbomb. Just askin’ where all the excitement went. And then you told me what I needed to hear to get better -- did ya know that? When you told me that I wasn’t the Jesus of Suburbia… that I wasn’t the Saint Jimmy either… I recognized what’d happened to me. It was a moment of clarity, brief but true. And… and before I went clean -- I…” He trailed off, looking around suspiciously. “I tried to kill myself. I thought I’d dug myself a hole so deep that I couldn’t get out of it. I took a gun. I almost shot myself. Right. Here.”
He pointed to the clear center of his left temple, and I shuddered.
“I threw the gun -- it was my gun, remember? The Saint Jimmy’s… I threw the damned gun into the water. And that’s when Jimmy died. And I was finally free. I was finally me again… and then I started home on foot, getting cleaned up on the way with a few more members of the Underbelly. Jimmy… he haunted… my steps, he followed me until I was back here.” Billie Joe smiled, pained. “Back here in the town that don’t exist… the land of make believe… the city of the dead.”
“Wow,” I breathed. It was the only thing I could say. He looked at me, then away from me, and continued describing what had happened in the three years since we’d last seen each other -- when I was just over 15, and he was on the edge between 15 and 16. Now he was 18, and I was still 17 until the coming November.
“After I fixed myself up, I went back to school. Barely finished 9th grade, scraped through 10th and 11th, barely lived to see 12th… I mean, I graduated with a fuckin’ C-, Grade Point Average of two.”
“Wow…” It seemed like it was the only thing I could say.
“I started the Class of Thirteen at the beginning of twelfth grade. I mean… I was still wondering what you’d been wondering. Where have all the riots gone?”
He directly quoted my letterbomb goodbye, and it was unnerving to hear his echoing voice, his slightly older but still the same vocal chords reading out my departure.
“If you were wondering,” he muttered, “then yeah. I’ve memorized the letter.”
I didn’t question him. It seemed like he had.
“And… graduation night. That’s when Tré came along. We got together. He became Christian. And then, after the riot…” Billie Joe just cut off abruptly. He took a deep breath in, trying to restrain tears, to no avail. They streamed quietly over his cheeks, bringing some of his eyeliner with them.
He couldn’t continue what he was saying.
I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around him, yanking him out of his chair and pulling him into a real hug.
“Billie Joe Armstrong… you know what I have always wanted but never asked for?”
Before he could answer, I answered my own question. “I’ve always wanted a real goodbye. A goodbye kiss. It’s all I need, you know… just give me this. Just give me something cold and clear. The love spent there, as I had feared, means nothing… dear…”
I pulled him into me, before he leaned up and chastely kissed me on the lips, hugging be in return. It was soft and simple, more of a courtesy than true love. It was closure, the closure that we both needed to move on with our lives. Neither of us hated each other.
“Billie Joe?” a shocked and angry, a hurt and betrayed voice asked. Billie Joe pulled away from me and turned around, just as shocked.
“Tré!” he shouted.
“What the fuck?! How -- how the hell did you replace me, so fast?” the other man, who had slightly greasy and half slicked back reddish hair and wide blue eyes, asked. “How?! I mean… just wow…”
“Tré, this isn’t what it looks like…!”
Before Billie Joe could explain, the one who had been called Tré spun around angrily on his heel and left. My once boyfriend’s expression softened, and he turned to look at me one last time.
“Give me something I can take to make the memories fade… poison kiss, remember this: I never was meant for this day,” he whispered, sliding a slip of paper into my hand and walking out, hiding his tears.
Shocked, I opened the paper.
It was the letterbomb…
“Dear Billie Joe, or St. Jimmy,
Nobody likes you, everyone left you, they’re all off without you having fun…
Where have all the bastards gone? The Underbelly stacks up ten high. The dummy failed the crash test, collected unemployment checks, he fucking only went for the ride. Where have all the riots gone? As the City’s motto gets pulverized. What’s in love is now in debt, on your birth certificates, so strike the fucking match to light this fuse.
“The town bishop’s an extortionist, and he don’t even know that you exist. Standing still when it’s do or die -- you better run for your fucking life. Because it’s not over till your underground. It’s not over before it’s too late. This City’s burning. It’s not my burden.
“Where will all the martyrs go when the virus cures itself? And where will we all go when it’s too late?
“And don’t look back.
“You’re not the Jesus of Suburbia and the Saint Jimmy is a figment of your father’s rage and your mother’s love -- maybe the idiot America.
“I can’t take this place, I’m leaving it behind.
“I can’t take this town. I’m leaving you tonight.
“xoxo Whatsername…”
11/16/09
Act Three :: Horseshoes and Handgrenades
Chapter Fourteen: Horseshoes and Handgrenades
Chapter Fifteen: The Static Age
Chapter Sixteen: 21 Guns
Chapter Seventeen: American Eulogy
Chapter Eighteen: See the Light
Well, you missed me, kissed me
Now you better kick me down
Maybe you're the runner up
But the first one to lose the race
Almost only really counts in
Horseshoes and Handgrenades...
Chapter Fifteen: The Static Age
Chapter Sixteen: 21 Guns
Chapter Seventeen: American Eulogy
Chapter Eighteen: See the Light
Well, you missed me, kissed me
Now you better kick me down
Maybe you're the runner up
But the first one to lose the race
Almost only really counts in
Horseshoes and Handgrenades...
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