As Far as the Sky

[tamcranver]

Title: As Far as the Sky
Fandom: MCR, with FOB, P!ATD, GCH, CS, the Dresden Dolls, and other various music-type people.
Rating: Perhaps PG-13, mostly for language and threats of violence
Pairing: Mostly gen, some Bob/Ray
Length: About 67,000 words
Notes/Summary/Disclaimer: Someday, I’ll write a story that isn’t based on a movie that had a formative effect on my young psyche. Today…is not that day. This particular story is based on the 1975 movie Escape to Witch Mountain, which is in turn based on a novel by Alexander Key—I make no pretensions as to having coming up with its amazing premise myself. In this particular reworking, Gerard and Mikey are rather strange orphans with super powers who catch the attention of businessman Pete Wentz and his assistant Patrick. A series of unfortunate events leads to them and their friend, Frank, hitching a ride with Bob and Ray to try and figure out where they really come from.

While I’m giving credit where credit is due, I feel I must praise my beta-reader, Fred at The Space City of a Thousand Teas, an awesome roommate and an encouraging editor. Many thanks to the mods who arranged this whole shebang, and to omphale23 for such a lovely fanmix. Also, I have to say that I got the idea of Jay-Z as an FBI agent from stereomer’s “Tie Your Monster Down,” and passe_simple’s “Forever, Now” and its sequels inspired my love for MCR kidfic. While I’m on the subject of kidfic, this is kidfic, so if that’s not your cup of tea, this story might not be either.

And finally, although I know it might seem to go without saying, I feel obligated to say that I don't own or have any rights over the real people on whom the characters in this story are ever-so-loosely based, and am using names and traits of public personae without permission. No offense or attempt to profit is intended.



**

It was way too hot to be in a car without air conditioning, Gerard thought. He could feel his face sticking to the window. They’d probably have to pry him off with a crowbar or something when they actually got there. At least the seats weren’t leather. Then he’d be sticking to those, too.

Are we almost there?

He didn’t bother looking over at Mikey. It was too hot. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Ask Mr. Ross.”

“What’s that?” asked Mr. Ross from the front seat. He didn’t seem too interested, but then, Mr. Ross hadn’t seemed too interested in about much of anything since he came to pick Gerard and Mikey up.

I don’t want to ask him. I’ll sound like a little kid.

“You are a little kid,” Gerard muttered, but he raised his voice to ask, “When do you think we’ll get to the group home, Mr. Ross?”

Mr. Ross blinked slowly in the rearview mirror. Gerard could just make out the bandana he wore to keep his hair out of his eyes. “Um. I don’t know. We’re close. Another ten minutes, maybe?”

Good, said Mikey. I’m getting carsick.

“Why don’t you talk out loud?” Gerard asked under his breath, giving his brother a poke in the shoulder. “Mr. Ross is gonna think I’m a weirdo.”

Like he’s one to talk. Mikey raised his eyebrows up over his glasses, somehow managing to look expressionless and mocking simultaneously.

Gerard wondered if Mikey’d be willing to teach him that trick—they did look sort of alike, and they were brothers, so it wasn’t fair that Mikey managed to hide himself so completely when Gerard sucked so bad at hiding anything at all. At least, it felt that way sometimes, especially now that Mikey’d retreated into himself and left Gerard to deal with all the strangers who’d popped up over the last week or so. Sometimes Gerard thought he’d burst from the pressure of convincing them all that he and Mikey were normal.

“So. Um, are you guys okay back there?” asked Mr. Ross. He sounded kind of nervous, which Gerard found strangely reassuring.

“We’re okay,” he said.

“Right, right, that’s good,” said Mr. Ross. He was a lot younger than most of the social workers on Law and Order, Gerard thought. Maybe that was why he looked like such a hippie.

“I know you guys are hurting right now,” Mr. Ross went on, and Gerard kind of wanted to put his fist through the window. It sucked enough that Mama’d died without people reminding them about it every five minutes. “But the guy who runs this place is, like, my best friend in the world, and he’s a great guy. You’re probably a little freaked, but trust me, you’ll be okay there, all right?”

He doesn’t know what to say, Mikey said. That’s why he’s rambling and stuff.

“I know,” Gerard said, both to Mr. Ross and to Mikey. It was kind of a pain having two conversations at once. He missed the days when he and Mikey and Mama would sit around in the living room and talk—Mikey talked out loud all the time then, and even when he didn’t, Mama seemed to get what he meant anyway and Gerard didn’t have to translate. Mama was so cool. Sometimes Gerard still hoped that he’d wake up, and find that it was all a dream, Mama hadn’t died, they weren’t on their way to some orphanage run by stupid hippie Mr. Ross’s best friend….

Mikey leaned over to put his head on Gerard’s shoulder. It’s okay, he said. Don’t cry, Gerard.

“Hey, I’m the big brother,” he mumbled into Mikey’s hair. “I think I’m the one who’s supposed to say that.”

You said it last night when we were packing up our stuff. My turn now.

Mr. Ross looked uncomfortable in the rearview mirror, but Gerard didn’t really care. “Hey, Mikey, Gerard,” he said, “there it is.” He pointed.

Gerard hadn’t been paying much attention to the scenery, but he detached his face from the window to pull back and look outside. They were driving up a long driveway in a big, bright green lawn. Gerard could see a basketball court by a small parking lot, and a bunch of kids were playing on it. A lot more kids were playing frisbee and soccer on the lawn, and it looked like a group was getting a kickball game together. Gerard felt part of himself freeze with nervousness inside. He’d never seen so many kids in his life, except maybe at school assemblies, and now he was going to have to live with all of them.

I hope we get our own room, Mikey said, and Gerard felt a little better to know Mikey was nervous about it, too. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Mikey.

Mr. Ross pulled up in front of a huge white building. A sign by the door said, “Smith Children’s Home,” and a guy with longish hair and a goofy-looking beard on his round face was standing by the sign. When the car stopped, the man came and opened Gerard’s door. “Hey,” he said. “You must be Gerard.”

“Yeah,” said Gerard, stepping out of the car. The guy shook his hand.

“And you must be Mikey,” he said, and he waved at Mikey. “I’m Spencer Smith. You can call me Mr. Smith, or Spencer if you want. I don’t really care. Did you have a good trip?”

“I guess,” Gerard said. It really hadn't been that exciting. Mikey nodded and looked around, and Mr. Smith—or maybe Spencer, people usually didn’t ask you to call them by their first names unless they actually wanted you to—looked over their heads to grin at Mr. Ross.

“How was traffic?”

“Ha, ha,” Mr. Ross said sarcastically, and Gerard felt a little embarrassed. He loved Monroeville and everything, but it was super-small, and he felt kind of like a hick when people pointed that out. It wasn’t like this place was in some huge city, either. “I’ve got their stuff in the trunk,” Mr. Ross went on. “You want to give us a hand with it?”

“Don’t I have people to do that?” Spencer asked, but Gerard thought he was probably joking, and when Mr. Ross opened up the trunk, he took a suitcase along with the rest of them.

“You two lucked out,” Spencer said as they carried their stuff up the stairs. This place was totally cool, Gerard thought. It was a big old-fashioned house with intricate wood-work everywhere and high ceilings, the kind a ghost might haunt. It was brighter than most haunted houses, but Gerard thought it still had that creepy feeling of living history about it. And best of all, it had air conditioning. “Mostly we have four kids to a room,” Spencer went on, “but we actually just lost a few kids—I mean, we didn’t literally lose them, a family wanted to adopt them, but you totally don’t care. The point is that you guys’ll get a room to yourselves, at least for a while.”

Yes! said Mikey, and Gerard said, “That’s awesome,” feeling relieved. The idea of sharing a room with somebody who wasn’t Mikey or Mama kind of freaked him out.

It was a little room, with two sets of bunk beds against one wall, two desks against another, and four little chests of drawers against the wall with the closet. The walls were plain white, and all the furniture was brown fake wood. Gerard felt kind of like an ungrateful jerk for missing the gray and black wallpaper and the wrought-iron bed in his room back home, but he couldn’t help it.

“I know it’s looking kind of boring right now,” said Spencer, “but if you want, you guys can put posters or pictures up. As long as you don’t actually mess up the walls, anything goes.” Something about Mikey caught his eye and he said, “Wow, that’s really cool.” He bent over and tapped Mikey’s starcase.

It was a little box made of thick metal with two stars on the lid. Mikey kept money and his Gameboy games in it. Sometimes Gerard thought the two stars were supposed to be him and Mikey, but there really wasn’t any way of knowing.

“Thanks,” Mikey said, holding it up so Spencer could look at it better. Spencer’s eyes widened, and it took Gerard a minute to figure out that it was because Mikey’d spoken out loud.

“That’s Mikey’s starcase,” he said. “He’s had it as long as we can remember.”

“Oh, man, it opens?” asked Mr. Ross. “A starcase. That’s awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case like that before.”

Mikey shrugged, and Spencer straightened up. “Well, you guys can leave your stuff here,” he said. “I know you’re probably tired, but we have some paperwork to fill out downstairs.”

Mikey made a face, and Spencer laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s not too bad. Just some basic information and stuff. And after you’re done, it’ll be just about time for dinner, and you can meet everybody else.”

Gerard actually preferred the idea of filling out forms to the idea of meeting all the kids he’d seen outside, but it wasn’t like they got a choice in the matter either way. He looked wistfully at the backpack with his sketchpad and comic books in it before grabbing Mikey’s hand, the one that wasn’t holding the starcase, and being ushered downstairs by Spencer and Mr. Ross.

“This place doesn’t seem so bad,” he whispered to Mikey.

It’s too big. And our room’s too small. Mikey squeezed his hand tighter. He had a pretty tight grip for such a skinny kid. I wanna go home.

Me too, thought Gerard. He’d never had the knack Mikey did for talking without his mouth, but maybe if he thought loud enough, Mikey’d know what he meant, anyway.

They came to a hallway with a lot of closed doors—classrooms or offices, maybe. Another man poked his head out of one of them. “Oh, hey, new kids!” he said with a broad smile. “And Ryan Ross!”

“Hey, Brendon,” said Mr. Ross with an easy smile. “This is Gerard and Mikey.”

“Awesome,” said Brendon, walking out into the hall. He had purple, sparkly shoes, and Gerard couldn’t help staring at them. Seriously, sparkly shoes?

“Cool, aren’t they?” Gerard jerked his head up, embarrassed, but Brendon didn’t seem mad. He was still smiling, and there really wasn’t anything mean about the smile, either. Gerard tentatively reached out with his mind, trying to feel things the way Mikey did all the time, and didn’t feel anything but curious welcome coming from Brendon.

“I’ve never seen shoes like that,” Gerard said.

Mikey added, At least, not on someone who wasn’t a little girl, and Gerard frowned a little at him. Mikey liked unicorns, so he totally wasn’t in any position to be making fun of other people.

“And you probably won’t again,” said Spencer dryly.

“You laugh, Smith,” said Brendon, “but these are totally one-of-a-kind shoes.” He turned to Gerard and Mikey and explained, “We did a craft day with the little kids once where we decorated shoes, and I made these babies.”

Now that he was looking closer, Gerard could see that the sparkles did look kind of haphazardly glued on. “That’s cool,” he said hesitantly, and Brendon’s smile got even bigger.

“Well, I can already tell that you’ve got good taste!” He held out a hand. “I’m Brendon. Pleased to meet you.”

Gerard took it and shook hands, feeling a little overwhelmed. “I’m Gerard,” he said, “and this is my brother Mikey.”

“Pleased to meet you, too,” said Brendon, waving at Mikey, who was still holding onto Gerard’s other hand. “You guys down here for the forms and stuff?”

“Yeah,” said Spencer before Gerard could answer. “But they’ll be done in time for dinner. Make sure they don’t end up sitting by themselves?” Gerard couldn’t decide whether he was more pissed off at the idea that he couldn’t make friends by himself or the idea that he wasn’t going to be able to escape sitting with other kids at dinner.

Brendon didn’t seem to pick up on his irritation, though. He just said, “You know it! Good seeing you, Ryan, and it was nice to meet you, Gerard and Mikey.” With a final wave, he went down to the end of the hall and disappeared as he went around the corner.

“Speaking of paperwork,” said Mr. Ross, “I’ve got to get back to CPS and fill out some forms, too.”

Spencer sighed. “Yeah, okay. Give me a call this weekend about movie night.”

Mr. Ross nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He gave Gerard and Mikey an awkward little wave and said, “Good luck, you guys.”

“Um, thanks,” Gerard said. They watched as Mr. Ross’s spindly form went the way of Brendon’s.

He’s like a scarecrow, Mikey said. A scarecrow from the 1960s. Gerard couldn’t help but giggle.

Spencer gave them a little smile. “He does kind of look like a hippie Amish dude these days, doesn’t he?” He rolled his eyes. “Swear to God, that guy gets weirder all the time. He’s pretty awesome, though, and he’s a good social worker.” He jerked his head towards one of the doors. “Wanna get going on this paperwork?”

No, said Mikey, but he went with Gerard and Spencer into what looked like a school library.

There was already a kid in there, writing at a round table. He had bleached blond hair shaved in a weird pattern and his tee-shirt was dirty and ripped. When he looked up, he gave Spencer—or maybe Mikey and Gerard—a grin that made Gerard a little nervous.

He looks like one of those kids in the D.A.R.E. videos, Mikey said. The ones that try to make you do drugs with peer pressure. Gerard nodded, not wanting to say anything that might piss off Spencer or the D.A.R.E. video kid.

They walked over to the table with Spencer, who produced a couple of packets of paper from a folder in his messenger bag. “Frank,” he said, “this is Mikey and Gerard. They’re gonna be filling out some forms, but just because they’re here doesn’t mean you can blow off that paper.”

“Yeah, I know, Spencer,” said the kid—Frank—with a smirk. “Don’t worry about us.”

Spencer snorted. “Right. Well, just remember, I’m gonna be in my office, right down the hall, and the walls in this place aren’t that thick.” With a kinder look at Mikey and Gerard, he said, “They shouldn’t take you too long. My office is the second door on the left, so when you’re done, just bring the forms back and we’ll go to dinner.”

Gerard nodded, and Spencer smiled and left. With a sigh and a nervous look at Frank, he picked up the packets and handed one to Mikey.

The questions didn’t seem that hard. There were some about their parents that he couldn’t answer, but it wasn’t like this was a test. Nobody knew about their parents, so Gerard and Mikey couldn’t get into trouble if they got the questions wrong. Some of them were about school, and those were pretty easy to answer. A lot of them seemed like questions you’d ask if you were getting to know somebody, and they went pretty quickly.

What should I put for “sports?” Mikey asked.

Gerard shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m putting ‘spectator.’”

Mikey grinned at that. Ha. Spectator, that’s good.

From across the table, Frank gave them a weird look. “Dude. You thinking out loud, or what?”

“Oh,” Gerard said. “I was just….” He glared at Mikey and scribbled on the back of his form, TALK OUT LOUD!! THIS GUY’S GONNA THINK WE’RE FREAKS!!! Mikey gave no answer, vocal or otherwise, pointedly ignoring Gerard as he wrote out answers. Gerard sighed, smiled apologetically at Frank, and went back to trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“Introductory forms, huh?” Gerard looked up again at Frank, who shrugged. “They’re not so bad. So what happened, your foster parents get sick of you?”

Gerard frowned. “No. Our mom died.”

Frank’s face fell at that. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said Gerard, shrugging uncomfortably. He didn’t want to talk about it. Just thinking about it made him want to cry, and he didn’t want to cry in front of this kid.

“It’s just, most of the kids here,” Frank said with an expansive gesture, “well, you know, we’re kind of the rejects. Like, if you get thrown out of a bunch of foster homes and they can’t find any more for you, they send you here.”

Great, said Mikey.

Gerard shrugged again, not sure how to respond to that. “Um, okay.”

“They’re into, like, therapy and all this new-age discipline shit.” Frank pointed to the paper he was writing. “Like, okay, I broke this kid’s arm, right? I mean, I didn’t mean to or anything, but he was calling Greta a whore, and that shit won’t stand, you know what I mean? So, anyway, we started fighting, and I pushed him down, and he broke his arm. And most places, they’ll give you a lot of grief for that, but Brendon, we just sat down and talked about it for like a half an hour and then he said I had to write a paper about how I felt about breaking stupid fucking Paul’s arm and why I did it and how I’d solve my problems better in the future.”

Frank sure cussed a lot for someone who looked like he was about ten, Gerard thought. But then, if he went around breaking people’s arms, maybe that wasn’t so surprising. He gave Frank an appraising look. He was really little, littler than Mikey even. Maybe Gerard could beat him in a fight. Maybe the kid whose arm he’d broken was, like, six, and he wasn’t really as intimidating as he seemed.

“What are you staring at?” asked Frank with a frown.

Gerard could feel himself flushing, scrambling for an answer that wouldn’t lead to a fist fight or whatever, when the sound of the door opening saved him. “Yo,” said Spencer, walking in. “Didn’t I just tell you I could hear everything from my office?”

“Hey, I’m practically done!” said Frank.

Spencer gave him a flat, unimpressed look. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Why don’t you go finish in Brendon’s office and call him in when you’re done to go over it?”

“Why don’t you bite me?” muttered Frank.

“Frank,” said Spencer, a warning in his voice.

Frank got up. “Fine, I’m going, I’m going,” he said, and he left the library without even looking back.

Gerard heaved a sigh of relief. Spencer raised an eyebrow at him, but he was smiling. “Frank’s a good kid,” he said, “just has some issues with impulse control.” He sat down where Frank had been sitting and said, “How are those forms coming along?”

Mikey slid his over without a word. Gerard frowned at his, but really, there was a limit to how much you could write about your favorite class in school, so he said, “I’m done, too,” and handed the packet over to Spencer.

Spencer looked over them for a long minute, then set them on the table and breathed out loudly. “Now, I’m not gonna pretend to know how you guys feel,” he said, “but I’m gonna guess you’re kind of scared and missing your mom right about now.”

Gerard nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Mikey reached a hand over to grab at Gerard’s.

Spencer scratched at his beard. “That’s gotta be really hard, and if there’s anything I can do to make you guys feel better, I hope you’ll let me know. We have a really great counselor—Brendon, you met him earlier—and he’s awesome at talking about this kind of stuff.” He pulled out another packet of papers from his bag and made a kind of uncomfortable face at them. “I feel terrible asking this, but the state likes having their records as complete as they can get them, and for all we know, you might have relatives out there looking for you. Now, you guys are legally Mikey and Gerard Minnelli, after your mom. Would you maybe have any idea what your last name was before then, or anything about your parents?”

Gerard had asked Mama about that stuff a million times, until she’d snapped and said, “Gerard! Hon, I can’t tell you what I just don’t know!” He and Mikey were like those two stars on Mikey’s starcase, coming randomly together out of space dust. Like they’d just appeared one day from nowhere. But he couldn’t say all that to Spencer, so he said, “I don’t remember. I was, like, five, and Mikey was three when Mama adopted us.” That was Mama’s best guess, anyway.

“Five?” Spencer frowned. “You don’t remember anything before then? I’m not trying to push, but just…if you remember anything at all….”

Sometimes Gerard thought he dreamed about before, where he and Mikey had come from, but he never remembered it in the morning. Mikey, though…

Cold. Wet. His clothes are weighing him down, he can feel them dragging him down through the water, into the cold darkness beneath, but he’s clinging to a piece of driftwood, a man’s holding his hand, keeping him from floating away—

They weren’t Gerard’s memories. They were sort of emanating in a wave of cold fear from Mikey, who was just staring out into space like he did sometimes, like he was looking at something in some other dimension that ordinary people couldn’t see.

“Mikey?” Spencer asked, sounding worried. “Are you okay?”

Mikey nodded slowly, and then, to Gerard’s surprise, he said out loud, “I’m sorry. I can’t remember anything.” And then to Gerard’s horror, a couple of tears slipped from under his glasses.

Before Gerard could grab him and wrap him in a hug, Spencer was already out of his seat and putting his arms around Mikey. “Hey, hey. You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Mikey sniffled into Spencer’s shoulder, and Gerard found himself wishing Spencer would hug him, too.

As if Mikey’d heard his thoughts—and knowing Mikey, he probably had—he reached an arm out towards Gerard, laying it on his shoulders and pulling him closer. Spencer seemed pretty willing to include Gerard in the hug, too, so Gerard went with it and maybe, just for a minute, he pretended he was home in his living room hugging Mama.

After a long moment, Spencer pulled his head back. “You guys all right?” he asked. Mikey nodded. “You gonna be okay to go to dinner?”

“I guess,” Gerard said. Somewhere in all the stuff that had happened that afternoon, he’d gotten really hungry.

“Well, okay then.” Spencer stood up, keeping an arm around Mikey’s shoulders. “Let’s go eat.” And they walked, the three of them, to dinner, Mikey holding Gerard’s hand the whole way.

**

Frank loved summer. It wasn’t like he hated school or anything, but summer was awesome. You could do anything—you could go play tag, if you could get enough other people to do it with you, you could sit around and play video games, you could lie in the grass and just feel the sun on you, you could even sit in the library and read, if that was your thing.

This summer, Frank’s thing was kickball. It was like baseball, except you didn’t have to screw around with a lot of equipment, and the ball was easier to catch. You didn’t necessarily have to be good at anything to play kickball, which was why Frank was sort of hoping he could get Gerard and Mikey to play.

He didn’t even know why he cared. They were sort of weird, and it wasn’t like they went out of their way to talk to him or anything. In fact, he wasn’t sure Mikey even could talk. At least, he’d never heard him. And Gerard seemed kind of afraid of Frank—well, Frank and everybody else at the Home. Neither of them ever wanted to hang out with anybody; the two of them spent all their time huddled together in the library or in the woods, never talking to anybody but each other. Frank kind of regretted telling Mikey and Gerard on that first day about how the Smith Home was like the House of Misfit Kids or whatever, but how was he supposed to know they’d be such little pricks about it?

Still, Frank wasn’t a dick. He knew that they had to be real freaked out, if this was their first time in a group home, and he was perfectly willing to hang out with them even if they were super weird. They just had to let him.

So Saturday morning, he sat next to Jamia at breakfast and planned out a big kickball game. Jamia was the coolest girl ever. Frank wanted to have her on his team, but she wanted to be the other captain, and since she was actually better at kickball than Frank, he figured she probably ought to get her way.

They went out to the baseball diamond and Frank looked around for the Minnellis. It was still early—they couldn’t have wandered out too far. He finally spotted them sitting under the slide on the playground and he nudged Jamia. “Hey,” he said, “I’ll take Gerard if you take Mikey.”

“Why?” asked Jamia. “It’s not like they’re gonna play, anyway.”

“They might if we pick them,” said Frank. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t think they’d ever been picked for a team since they’d gotten there. And if you weren’t much of a sports person, you might never play if you didn’t get picked.

Jamia frowned like she was thinking about it. Finally she said, “Fine, but you get Mikey.”

“Fine, whatever,” said Frank, though he’d been hoping to maybe start a conversation with Gerard, and Mikey was kind of a shrimp. Not that Frank could talk, but still.

They shook hands on it and then picked teams. It was kind of a mixed bag—Frank got Darren and Ashlee, who were pretty good, but he also got Chris, who had asthma, and Bill, who tripped over his own feet sometimes. At least Jamia got stupid Paul, whose arm was still in a cast. Frank wasn’t in the mood for another fight.

Finally, they were down to the Minnelli brothers. “Hey, Mikey!” Frank yelled. On the playground, Mikey looked around like he was trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. Frank yelled again, “Mikey, over here! Come play on my team!”

Mikey and Gerard both stood up then, Mikey looking confused and Gerard looking suspicious. “We’re playing kickball!” Frank added.

The two of them had one of their weird silent discussions, and for a minute Frank thought they were just going to sit back down under the slide. Finally, though, Mikey shrugged and walked over. Slowly. God, he was really gonna suck at kickball, Frank could already see it.

“Gerard, you can play on my team,” said Jamia, and Gerard bit his lip and followed his brother. It didn’t look like he was exactly Speedy Gonzales, either.

As it turned out, they were both really bad. Not like Frank had suspected any different. The first inning, Gerard totally whiffed on the ball and almost fell over. Bill, who was catching, laughed, and Gerard sighed and rolled his eyes. Mikey wasn’t any better. Frank put him in the outfield, where he didn’t even look at the ball, but just stared at the sky and periodically pulled out some blades of grass.

Still, even with Mikey’s nonexistent left field abilities, Frank’s team managed to keep Jamia’s from scoring throughout the whole inning, which was pretty good considering how hard Jamia kicked the ball. They switched sides, and Frank, who was the first in the kicking lineup, assessed the field. Greta was pitching. She was good, but pretty short, so Frank could probably get it over her head. The Butcher was playing shortstop, and his arms were like eight miles long, but Frank was pretty sure if he kicked it more towards third base, the Butcher wouldn’t even notice because he was wiggling his eyebrows at Adam, who was on second. Yeah. Yeah, he was totally getting at least a double out of this one.

Greta let the ball go and Frank’s foot connected with it solidly. Oh, man, he thought as he watched it fly over the Butcher’s head, that’s a home run! And he ran.

He didn’t take the time to watch it as he rounded the bases, but out of the corner of his eye he saw it head over to the woods behind center field. Gerard was the only one covering the field out there, so Frank wasn’t too concerned.

But then Gerard jumped, and Frank actually stopped running for a second to look. Because he’d never seen anyone jump like that. Not even in the Olympics on TV. Gerard was actually up near the top of a fucking tree, and not a little tree, either. And while he was up there, he caught the ball before falling back through the shorter trees to vanish in the brush.

“Ha!” said Jamia. “You’re out, Frank!” Like she hadn’t even noticed Ripley’s Believe it or Not going on in the woods back there.

“No way,” said Frank, trying to think of how Gerard could have possibly caught that ball. Finally, he said, “He climbed on something, that’s cheating.”

“How’s that cheating?” asked Greta. “I mean, if he did it before the ball hit the ground, it still counts, right?”

“No, no, no!” Frank was getting a little pissed, now. “There’s no trees on a real baseball field. You can’t just climb on something to catch a ball. It’s like—like using a prop or something, it’s cheating!”

Gerard came stumbling out of the woods with the ball under his arm. “Hey, I caught it,” he said with a little smile. “Does that mean you’re out?”

“Oh, screw this!” said Frank, and he ran over to knock the ball out of Gerard’s arm. Shit, he’d put up with weirdness, he’d put up with Gerard Minnelli being an antisocial judgmental asshole, but he was not gonna put up with being cheated and then being made fun of about it.

“What?” Gerard looked surprised and kind of scared. “I caught it.”

“Nobody can jump that high, you prick,” Frank said. “You stood on something.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Gerard, and Jesus, he was the worst liar in the world, chewing on his lip and giving his brother nervous glances the whole time.

“Yeah, you did!” Frank was so pissed off he could barely speak, and he shoved roughly at Gerard. “Cheater!”

“I’m not a cheater,” said Gerard indignantly. “I don’t even like this stupid game. You’re just mad because I got you out.”

And there was something smug about the way he said I got you out that made Frank even angrier. He didn’t care if Brendon made him write a hundred stupid essays, he was gonna teach this kid that nobody cheated Frank and lied about it and then got away with it. “You didn’t get me out!” he bellowed, barely even paying attention to Jamia’s rolling her eyes and the interested crowd gathering around. “I was safe. I scored. You’re the one who should be out!” And he threw a punch right to Gerard’s stupid smug face.

But it didn’t hit Gerard’s face, it hit the ball. The ball, which was suddenly floating in the air in front of Gerard’s head, and didn’t move when Frank hit it. And Gerard’s head was about fifteen feet further back than it had been, as if in the blink of an eye Gerard had managed to jump backwards farther than Frank had ever jumped forwards in his whole life.

“The hell?” Frank heard Bill mutter. There was something genuinely weird going on here, but that thought didn’t totally penetrate the haze of anger around Frank’s brain, and he ran forward and struck out with his fist again.

The ball hit him in the stomach, pushing him down and knocking all the air out of him with a painful whoosh, and Gerard was staring at him with a weird, creepy look of intense concentration in his eyes. There wasn’t any noise—Gerard hadn’t hit or kicked the ball. It had just flown on its own into Frank’s stomach.

“Holy crap,” Jamia muttered. “You okay, Frank?”

“Yeah,” Frank managed, staring at Gerard. How was Frank supposed to fight with someone who could…what, control kickballs with his mind? Jump a thousand feet? What the hell else was he gonna do?

Not that much, apparently. The look of concentration faded from his eyes, replaced by a scared expression. He ran over to grab his brother’s hand, and the two of them ran off into the woods. Nobody tried to stop them. Nobody said a thing.

Nobody felt much like kickball after that, so they went to the lounge and watched Animal Planet until lunchtime. Frank looked around the cafeteria for Gerard and Mikey, to see if they might do other weird stuff, but they weren’t there, not even sitting alone in the corner like they did sometimes.

After lunch, Jamia wanted to play capture the flag, but Frank begged off. He wanted to figure out what the deal was with the Minnelli brothers. He couldn’t believe that everyone didn’t want to find out what the deal was, actually, but he wasn’t gonna complain. Maybe this could be something that was just his, a secret that nobody else knew about.

Of course, he had to find Gerard and Mikey first, which proved to be harder than he’d originally thought. They weren’t in any of the places Frank usually saw them, in the library or the lounge or on the playground. He even went to their room, which he’d never seen. It looked pretty much like all the other rooms in the Home, except they’d hung some cool drawings of comic book characters and vampires and dragons and stuff on the walls. He stopped to admire them for a minute before continuing the search outside. He didn’t want one of the adults to catch him in another kid’s room without permission.

He wandered around the woods behind center field for a while, and then the woods behind the basketball court on the other side of the house. It was a nice hot day, with warm sunshine filtering down through the leaves and making overlapping shadowy patterns on his skin. He wondered if anyone had ever tattooed leaf shadows on themselves, and if not, why not? They looked really cool, and it’d make a pretty kickass camouflage.

He was kind of getting bored, though, and he was about to go join Jamia’s capture the flag game when he heard voices murmuring from one of the clearings a little ways away.

“You should have let him hit you. It’s just a stupid game,” said a kid’s voice. Frank didn’t recognize it, but it had to be Mikey, right? Apparently he could talk, after all.

“Mikey, he broke a kid’s arm!” And Frank knew that voice, he’d know Gerard’s scratchy, nasal voice anywhere. He felt a stir of indignation—he’d explained to them about why he broke stupid Paul’s arm, and how it’d been an accident--but he smothered it. This was way more important than rehashing that dumb fight again.

“Well, you should have made it look like he was winning, then,” said Mikey. Frank crept a little closer, until he could see them. Gerard was curled up against a tree stump, drawing on a big pad of paper, and Mikey was leaned up next to him, reading a comic book. Frank hid behind a tree so he could watch them without being seen. “You promised, Gee,” Mikey said solemnly. “We both did, we promised Mama. We weren’t gonna do any weird stuff in front of people.”

“Yeah.” Gerard put down his pencil and let out a loud sigh. “I know. You’re right. But it’s not like you’re any better at being normal. Everybody thinks you can’t talk.”

“That’s dumb,” Mikey said, turning a page. “Just because I don’t want to talk to them doesn’t mean I can’t talk.” He made a face. “You know he’s hiding behind a tree listening to us, right?” Oh, shit, thought Frank.

“Who is? Frank?” And Gerard looked right at the tree Frank was hiding behind and frowned. “What are you doing?” he said, sounding sort of mad and sort of scared.

There wasn’t any point in hiding anymore, Frank figured, so he stepped out from behind the tree and waved, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. “Hey,” he said. “I just wanted to say…sorry about before. I guess if you can actually jump that high, it’s not really cheating, so I shouldn’t have tried to hit you. Truce?” He meant it, too—he wasn’t one to hold a grudge, especially not against a kid who had super powers.

Gerard twisted his mouth into a weird frowny pout and stared at Frank through narrowed eyes before shrugging. “Yeah, I guess.” For a long moment it was totally silent except for the leaves rustling and the birds chirping while Frank tried to figure out a way to say what he wanted to ask. Finally Gerard said, “Um. Did you want something else?”

Screw tact, Frank thought. You didn’t see this kind of magic powers shit every day. “How’d you do that?” he asked. “With the jumping, and moving the ball, and stuff?”

Gerard winced, and he and Mikey had another silent conversation. Frank wondered if maybe they were psychic, too. That would explain why Mikey never talked. “I don’t--” Gerard said, “It’s not—it’s nothing, it’s not a big deal. I’m just a good jumper, is all.”

“Are you kidding me?” Frank said incredulously. “You jumped, like, thirty feet in the air. That’s not just being good at jumping, that’s practically flying. And that thing you did with the floating ball—what’s that called, telekinesis or something?”

“Frank….” And Gerard looked really scared now, like he might actually cry, the kind of look some of the kids had when they got out of really bad foster homes. Mikey didn’t look quite as scared, but his eyes were huge in his face and his mouth was drawn up in a short, quivering line. “Please,” said Gerard. “Please don’t…make it a big deal. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

“Dude, no!” said Frank. What the hell did he think Frank was gonna do, turn him over to some government agency to be dissected? As if. “I’m not gonna tell anybody, swear to God, but seriously, that’s the most awesome thing ever. Of course it’s a big deal!”

Mikey gave him a serious look, which was a lot funnier coming from a skinny kid with glasses than when it was coming from Spencer or Brendon or somebody. “You gotta keep it a secret,” he said slowly. “Some kids found out back home and it sucked. Mama had to pull us out of school for a year.”

“I just said I wouldn’t tell anyone, didn’t I?” said Frank, plopping down on a soft patch of moss near the Minnellis’ tree stump. “What happened?”

“They thought we were devil-worshippers or something,” said Gerard with a little half-shrug, like sure, totally natural to have people think you’re a devil-worshipper. “They threw rocks at us and stuff.”

Frank had to raise his eyebrows at that. Where’d they come from, Salem or something? He said firmly, “Well, you clearly went to school with stupid kids.” He looked at Mikey, who’d drawn his knees up to his chest and was hugging his legs. He was wearing jeans, even though it was like a million degrees out. He and Gerard both were, actually, covered in jeans and dark hoodies like they didn’t want anyone to see them, and Frank maybe got a little bit why they seemed so freaked out by all the kids at the Home. He reached out a finger to poke Mikey in the leg. “So do you have superpowers, too?”

Mikey flushed and smiled crookedly, which was kind of awesome. Frank didn’t think he’d ever seen Mikey smile, at least not like that. “Kind of, yeah,” he said. “I can sort of talk to animals and, like, open locks and stuff.”

“With your brain?” Frank asked, and Mikey nodded. “God, that’s so cool.” Frank sighed happily. “So are you guys mutants, or what?” Usually the people in X-Men only had one superpower, but not always, and Frank didn’t know enough about genes and DNA and stuff to say how accurate X-Men was. He’d always thought it was totally made up, but then, he’d never met any actual superheroes before.

“I don’t know,” said Gerard. “I guess.”

“Did your mom have super powers, too?” Maybe they were a whole family of superheroes. Maybe their mom had died saving people from a burning building or something.

“No,” Gerard said sadly. “But we weren’t Mama’s real kids. She adopted us when we were little.”

“What about your biological parents?”

Mikey sort of shrugged with his eyebrows. “We don’t remember them,” he said.

Frank nodded, because that was something he understood. “I don’t remember mine, either,” he said. “They died in a car crash when I was two, and my grandpa raised me.” Grandpa hadn’t been a superhero, but he had been awesome. “He was a musician,” he added, because that might not be as cool as being able to move shit with your mind, but it was still pretty sweet.

“Mama did musical theater,” Gerard said, and Frank laughed. Not that musical theater wasn’t cool, but it just figured that two kids who never talked to anybody and hid in the woods to read comic books would have a mom who got up on stage and sang and danced.

Before Gerard’s frown could turn into another psychic fist fight, Frank said, “That’s cool. Do you guys sing or anything? I’m trying to get a band together.” So far he’d only succeeded in getting Bill to come sing, and then only if he played stupid Monopoly with Bill and Adam and the Butcher.

“I play the harmonica,” said Gerard, and Frank nodded approvingly. Bob Dylan played the harmonica. They could work with that. “I can sort of sing, too,” Gerard added, which was even better.

“What do you play?” asked Mikey.

“The guitar.” Frank’s grandpa had given him his guitar on his sixth birthday, had sat him down and shown him all the chords and how to tune it. It was the only thing he still had from the time he’d lived with his grandpa, aside from some photos.

Mikey said, “Awesome,” sounding kind of wistful.

Now, Frank wasn’t psychic like the Minnellis, but he had a pretty good guess why Mikey sounded like that. “You wanna learn how to play?” he asked. “’Cause I could show you, if you wanted.”

“Really?” asked Mikey, looking about as excited as Frank had ever seen him. Not that that was saying much, because he mostly looked really bored or kind of scared.

“Yeah, sure,” said Frank. “I mean, I’m not Jimi Hendrix or anything, but I know some songs and stuff. It’s no trouble.”

Mikey gave him another crooked smile, bigger this time, and said, “Thanks, Frank.” He closed his comic book and looked at Gerard with an expression that Frank was starting to think of as his psychic message look.

Whatever he was saying, Gerard must have agreed, because he smiled, held out his sketchpad and said, “We’re making a comic book. Wanna see?”

And at that point, Mikey and Gerard went from being the annoying antisocial kids, who were secretly cool because they had superpowers, to being friends. And being friends with them was gonna be awesome, Frank could tell already.

Part 2