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Gerard stood outside of the graveyard gates, the wind blowing through his chin length black hair. All he heard was the whooshing of the wind as it rattled the fall leaves into the street behind him. He looked up into the sky, filled with the black rain clouds that never seemed to leave. He stepped forward, red and yellow leaves crunching under his feet. Yanking open the rusty iron gate to the graveyard was no simple task. The doors were incredibly heavy, but Gerard had opened them many times before and he yanked hard, wrenching so that they opened with a horrible screech.
As he closed the gates behind him he went to look for his backpack which he had left there yesterday. He walked briskly through the piles of leaves no one bothered to clear for the pathway that winded through the entire large graveyard. His long legs carried him to the stop where he had left it, right next to the tree stump he had been sitting on doing his homework. He even left his notebook and pen on the stump. He slipped his composition book into the main pouch of his backpack, and he slipped the pen into his pants pocket.
Why had he left these here? Ah yes, he remembered. Yesterday, while sitting on the stump studying, he had suddenly remembered that he had to be home for his younger brother Luke. He had looked down at his backpack realizing that it was too heavy to carry all that way. He would have to run, and it was just too heavy. He took the notebooks that he would need for the next day’s classes and left the other books he didn’t need in his backpack. The notebook he had been using, his history notebook, was forgotten on the stump. That notebook he had needed the most.
It had been 6:00 in the morning when he reached for his backpack (which he kept beside his bed) and discovered that it wasn’t there. He didn’t have time to go back to the graveyard, so he grabbed his jacket, the notebooks, a pen and left for school.
Gerard spent a lot of time in the graveyard since it was his thinking spot. When he needed to be alone or to think he went there. He usually walked around for a while, and when he was through thinking, he would sit on the stump to do his homework or write. He wrote stories and songs, and sometimes poetry. It was also a place he used to get away from people, because most people taunted him, that is, people in school. And as far as Gerard was concerned they would always taunt him.
In school Gerard had one friend, a geeky sophomore named Edison who wore brightly colored striped shirts and Woody Allen glasses. Edison was obsessed with computers and scientific calculators. He was an A student and had the tendency to be overly dramatic once in a while. He liked classical music, had no idea who Nirvana was and loved broccoli. He also talked too much. Way too much. And he was the only African-American in the entire school.
Gerard was quiet, mild mannered, and liked music, art, and writing better than anything else. He had a knack for croquet (a game Edison claimed to be old-fashioned). Gerard was very shy around people at school expecting to be made fun of for something, which was usually what happened. He stuck out like a sore thumb. While the other guys were 6 feet, short hair, preppy clothes and muscular arms, Gerard was the opposite.
Gerard was 5’10“, jet-black hair cut past his chin, a piece of it off to the side. His skin was very pale, he had high cheekbones and a small pointed nose. He was neither fat nor thin, but certainly not muscular. He dressed in worn out clothes he had bought from Hot Topic. His Iron Maiden T-shirt was incredibly worn, but he refused to let his mom throw it away. He always wore his leather jacket, which he had bought in New York. He pulled his jacket around himself tighter. It was getting really chilly, and also really late, so he decided to head home, immediately thinking of Luke. He picked up his backpack ad headed home, the only sound he heard was the leaves crunching under his feet. He was very lonely.
