Sweltering tears trample my skin as they're bombarded by the breeze from the door when it's shoved open, and the world suddenly isn't so exquisite anymore.

The birds' tongues have been severed, then deposited into a roaring flame so that they may no longer sing. The trees are stationary, their roots' purpose finally discovered as one to hold the oaks in place. The air screams in anguish for a reprieve that is more permanent than it hoped for.

You're going to a mental hospital, psycho, right where you belong.

I fucking know, but I know after the middle-man told me. My own mother wants to lock me up, as if that's not what I've been doing to myself for five years, and she didn't even inform me of the plan. Am I not entitled to my own future?

Ever since I was a kid, I dreamt of what life would be like as a young adult, and not once did I consider what it's like for me right now. Not once did I think I'd be forced into daily medication and doctors. Not once did I think I would hallucinate voices in my head. Not once did I think I would be under continuous surveillance. Not once did I think I would be sent to a mental institution.

I familiarized myself with football teams and school dances, with movie nights and laughter. I didn't ask for this.

And through all of the pandemonium catapulting around the mind that turned out much different than I would've desired, a crimson-haired lad of eighteen approaches me, a smile chiseled into his feline lips that soon disappears due to my obvious strife.

Gerard fucking Way, the life-ruiner as a result of his chronic grin — and the last person I'd expect to see standing outside of a psychologist's office at four in the afternoon.

"Hey, Patrick!" the teenager greets, sliding his hipster frames farther up his slim nose with the same fingers he employs to shake my hand, not bothering to mention my tears throughout the journey, because I'm sure he recognizes that I'll never open up to anyone.

After the formality, my fists condense and camouflage in my pockets, awaiting the direction of the conversation. "Is there a reason why you're here? I don't mean to be rude, but my friends usually don't show up after my psychology sessions."

Who are you kidding? You don't even have friends, you psycho.

Gerard clasps his hands together to signal the call into discussion. "Ah, yes, right, sorry. Seeing as it's winter break, I'd like to invite you to my lake house in Caribou (that's in Maine, just in case you were wondering)."

The Ways aren't particularly rich, surfing on the spectrum of the middle class, but they managed to score a deal — whose specifics are beyond me — and won the house, but Maine is a couple hours away, so the property hasn't been utilized often.

Now Gerard's unearthed the perfect chance, but my requital isn't so proclaimed in my demeanor as it should be.

"You've been such a great friend to me, with picking up Mikey from daycare and being amazingly supportive of my art, so I wanted to thank you," the guy elaborates, fortifying himself to hear the final verdict, but the ambition flickers on and off. "What do you think? Are you coming?"

My stomach twists into an immovable knot, but a compromise is speedily regurgitated. "Can my friend come?"

I had predicted an uneasy expression from Gerard, but all that's projected is surprise. "It's fantastic that you've met someone else, and as my mother always says, a friend of you is a friend of me." The boy laughs jovially. "Of course he can come. Do you want to text him?"

I fetch the phone from my pocket, unlocking it with a sheltered geography near my chest so that no one can see what I typed. Searching through my contacts until I find a one named "the neighborhood gay kid", I draft a brief message to him, vague enough to keep him intrigued.

Hey, Pete. Please meet me by the coffee shop in ten minutes or so. I have something to ask you.

At the sign of the text's voyage, Gerard's face glows with yet another beam, and I somehow never grow tired of seeing it. The beam alone is enough to douse me with titillation.

This trip is not only a fun time with friends, but it's a respite from my mother, from my old classmates, from my doctor.

"I should probably text my mom, too, but you can pack your things. After I tell Pete, my new friend, about the trip, we'll go to your house when we're ready."

Gerard nods, smiling again and dashing off to prepare for our vacation to the lake, rendering me alone and outside of a sketchy psychologist's building.

I divert my phone's usage to write a message to my mother.

Gerard invited me to Caribou, Maine for the rest of holiday break. Sorry that it's not the mental hospital, but it'll have to do.

I slam the send button before I realize what I'm doing, but it's already too late, so I attempt not to introduce any fresh guilt.

My mother's text is displayed a moment later.

I don't know what you're talking about, Patrick, and frankly it's scaring me, but if you want to go to Maine with Gerard, that's okay by my standard. He's a nice kid.

Innocence is the most onerous emotion to fake — only a select few can master it — and so far, my mother isn't doing a very good job of it. So many holes have punctured her depiction that it represents nothing at all, and now that she's presented this terror to me, she will never be able to pull it off.

It's not like I haven't known this about her before, though.

She did tell Dr. Saporta that she was considering checking me into a mental facility, and I heard her say it. There's no eluding this one.

I can't bear to analyze the text any further, so I shove my phone deeper into the pocket of my jeans.

And with that, I set out for the coffee shop.

~~~~~

Pete's perpetuating his job of washing the tables when I arrive, but that's all paused when the chirping of the bells alerts him to my ecstatic figure shaking from excitement in the doorway. His spine elongates as he jogs slightly towards me, equipped to embrace me but doing so implicitly in case I panic in the middle of his workplace.

"Did you get my text?" I inquire, the breath snatched away by the exertion of my sprint to the shop, or maybe just being so close to my friend.

Pete's lips part to unveil pearly teeth set amidst an ocean of rose. "Sure did. What did you want to tell me?"

"This guy who used to be in the grade above me at school — Gerard, the art geek whose brother I had to return home — has invited us to his lake house in Caribou, Maine for the remainder of our break." My arms cuddle my chest vertically, vibrating with fervor.

The room thins as I wait for an answer, condensed to a planing line of nothingness, and the only three-dimensional figures are us. Fanaticism hammers plaques above the register to assert its authority over me, enslaving my emotions in favor of itself, and yet the imperceptible clock strides forward without misgiving.

When Pete doesn't amplify his disposition towards the subject, I ask, "So what do you think?"

And that's where it gets tense. Pete's hands squirm by his side, eyes trace the edges of the amber walls, gathering his thoughts. "Um, I..."

I somehow take the hint, even though I'm fatally awkward in social settings. "Pffh, yeah, of course. You don't have to come. I just assumed—"

"Patrick, don't beat yourself up over this," Pete chuckles, a recent countenance of jocularity snapping his trachea into shards of obsidian. I aspire to study them, but that's apparently not appropriate for the mood, according to my mother, but ever since I overheard her considering a place at a mental asylum for me, her trust is insignificant in my mind.

"Then are you going?" The expressions of a puppy plunder my eyes' prior storage of prospect to install the modern appliance titled begging, and Pete is smitten enough to play along with it.

Embers of many mentalities scald Pete's skin, but after a few seconds of upholding my pleading method, the guy finally cracks. "Okay, fine. I'll go, but only because you're so damn cute."

Through my lips' broad extravaganza of zeal, I get down to business. "I have an emergency bag packed at Gerard's house, so we only need to go to yours, and then we can drive with Gee to the lake house." That's a solid route for me, but for my companion...not so much.

I've never witnessed so much fear in my life.

~~~~~

A/N: this chapter is a mess bye

but aye u finally got to meet gerard

current vibe: when my friend calls the book we're reading in english class "bull shit" instead of "bull run"

~Dacuddle