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Gerard spun a tale at the ER about trying out Frank's skateboard and hitting a rock and falling on a piece of broken glass and that was how he got a weird cut on his shoulder right above his collarbone.
The nurses didn't look like they believed him, but they stitched him up and sent him home with antibiotics and Gerard cringed at the idea of explaining the hospital bill to his parents when it arrived in the mail.
Frank drove, speeding like he always did, back to Gerard's house. His parents were in the living room watching TV and his mom called out to them as they tried to sneak down to Gerard's basement bedroom.
"Where have you boys been all day?" she asked, muting the TV. Gerard's dad made an annoyed sound and reached out for the remote.
"Um, at the mall," Gerard said.
"Which one?" his dad joked.
Frank and Gerard chuckled awkwardly, like he hadn't made that joke a thousand times already.
"All right, well," his mom said, looking back at the TV, "dinner's soon. Frank you're welcome to stay."
"Thank you, Mrs. Way," Frank said cheerfully, shoving Gerard down the hall.
They stomped down the basement stairs and into Gerard's room. Frank cleared off the layer of comics and sketch books and pencils before tossing himself on the bed.
"It's so surreal, right?"
Gerard sat down at the foot of the bed and let Frank put his feet in his lap.
"Yeah, a bit."
Frank nodded at his shoulder. "Does it hurt?"
"Kinda."
They sat in silence for a few minutes with no idea what to talk about. Frank had said on the way to the ER that he didn't want to talk about the Drac and Gerard wasn't really sure that he wanted to talk about Kobra Kid.
"We're gonna have to wait," Frank eventually said. "You know, before we go to another world."
"Why?"
"Because you're hurt. Who knows where we'll end up? You can't have an open wound while exploring, you could get some weird infection that they've never even heard of in our universe."
Gerard shivered at the thought. "Okay, yeah. Good idea. What do you wanna do in the meantime?"
Frank squinted at the dark ceiling and thought it over for a few seconds.
"We could go through all the stuff in the house that William left behind. Maybe start our own journal about our travels."
Sunday afternoon found both boys sitting on the floor of the study in the old house, journals and paintings and rolls of parchment scattered all around them.
"Why didn't he write about any of it?" Gerard asked for the third time.
"Maybe he was worried about someone finding it and thinking he was crazy."
"Like painting mermaids and spaceships wouldn't do the job," Gerard muttered.
"Okay, here's everything I could find about world number three," Frank said, piling two books, a painting, and one scroll between them on the floor.
Gerard looked at the painting first.
"It's... a horse in a field," he said slowly.
"Yeah, not much to go on," Frank agreed. He grabbed one of the books and flipped it open. "Okay, here we go... There's a farm, a horse and carriage, a man smoking a cigar, a woman with an umbrella..."
Gerard leaned forward to look at the drawings. "That's a parasol, Frankie."
Frank gave him a I-can't-believe-you-even-know-that look and went back to the drawings.
"There's not really anything here."
"I think maybe we got lucky with the first two on how easy they were to figure out," Gerard shrugged, picking up the other book.
"This one just looks boring though," Frank sighed, flipping through more pages.
"Well, these were drawn almost two hundred years ago, how do we know it's not totally different by now?"
"True, it could be. Just, the last two haven't been too different from what William drew."
"Yeah, I wonder why that is." Gerard set his book down, picked up the parchment and unrolled it to find a detailed drawing of a mansion, half covered in climbing ivy, with a small 3 in the bottom corner.
"Our universe has changed a ton in the last two hundred years. The most change I noticed about the desert was the weapons got better." Frank looked at a few more pages before stopping. "Do you think Kobra Kid will really tell us what's going on there?"
Gerard nodded. "Yeah, he will. He said I probably won't like it, but he'd tell me anyway."
"Okay." Frank closed the sketchbook and put it aside. "There's not really anything in these that's gonna give us a hint, so do you want to start on our own journal?"
"Sure." Gerard pulled his bag into his lap and started fishing out pencils and markers. He had brought a new sketchbook as well. Frank, meanwhile, was pulling a brand new journal from his own bag.
"Where'd you get that?" Gerard asked, eyeing the fancy cover.
"Barnes and Noble," Frank grinned. "I'll write and you draw, okay? We both know my handwriting is way better than yours."
Gerard stuck his tongue out at Frank a bit but smiled as he flipped open his sketchbook.
"Should we write it as like, a summary of events, or as a guide to future travelers?"
"A guide sounds like more fun," Gerard said. "Plus, if anyone finds it we can just say we're making up a story or something."
"Okay so, World Number One," Frank said slowly as he wrote in the journal. "The Desert."
By the time the sun had begun to set, Frank and Gerard had compiled a list of 'characters' and slang words from the desert, along with locations, a drawing of the map, and their account of what they had done there so far.
"We should leave it here," Frank said as they were putting everything back on the shelves. "We can come back next weekend to start the ocean entry."
"Should we just leave a few blank pages for after we go back, or should we just have a different journal for each world?" Gerard wondered.
"This journal was ten bucks," Frank said.
Gerard smiled. "I can get the next one."
Frank plopped down in the seat next to Gerard and nudged him with his elbow.
"Frank!" Gerard whispered, conscious of the librarian giving them a stern look. "You almost messed it up."
"Sorry," Frank said, glancing down at the detailed drawing of Fun Ghoul's laser gun. "It looks good, but check it out...."
Gerard looked over to where Frank was pointing; a boy from their grade who always sat in the front row of English class and who wore thick glasses was sitting a few tables away from them.
"What about him?" Gerard whispered.
"Imagine him without the glasses," Frank said, "and with long curly hair, and a black leather jacket...."
Gerard squinted at the boy. "Holy shit!" he hissed.
"Yeah, no kidding," Frank grinned. "It's fucking Jet Star."
"Wow, what are the odds?"
"That he lives near us and even goes to our school? Probably astronomical." Frank sounded delighted.
Gerard frowned at him. "Frank, you're not thinking of talking to him, right?"
"Why not?"
"What are you gonna say? Hi we met in an alternate universe where you have a sweet laser gun and don't get made fun of for carrying a Batman action figure around in your backpack?"
"Um... I was maybe going to say something like that, yeah," Frank chuckled.
"We can't tell anyone," Gerard said, shaking his head. "Besides, even if he believed you, what would you do if he wanted to go meet Jet Star?"
Frank scrunched up his nose and Gerard looked away, trying not to find it adorable. He hadn't told Frank what Jet Star had said about them while Frank was asleep, but Gerard had hardly been able to think of anything else since Monday.
"I mean," Frank continued, oblivious. "I mean, how do we know he'd even be able to go there?"
"Do you think he wouldn't be able to be in the same universe as Jet Star?" Gerard wondered.
"Who knows," Frank shrugged. "But you're right, we shouldn't tell anyone."
Just then a few guys in unnecessary camo jackets walked by and shoved the guy's books to the floor.
"Okay," Frank added, "but maybe we should invite him to sit with us at lunch anyway."
"Good idea," Gerard smiled.
They both got up and went to help the Jet Star look-a-like pick up his books.