Hey guys, I decided to finally start putting this up here! There are four chapters fully written of this one, three of which are up and posted to my LJ. As always, one day between the postings of each chapter that already exist. Now, shall I let you get to the reading...hmmm...alright, I will. Enjoy. (The first chapter sucks a little so feel free to flame away for this one. However, I happen to like the second chapter so that will be up the moment I get on a computer tomorrow.)

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November Thirtieth

It’s been a long time, journal...do you even remember me? I haven’t had to write to you in ages. I thought things were going great, and up until the beginning of this year they were. That was when things fell apart.

Linkin Park. We were one of the most successful punk rock bands around. We had great fans, and we probably still do, there’re probably still thousands of fans out there just waiting for us to come back. But I doubt that’ll ever happen. Not unless Mike comes back.

See, after their wives divorced them and Mike moved in with Chester, they finally figured out that they had feelings for each other. It was funny, because I won the bet – we’d had a bet going on how long it would take them to finally hook up, and I won. It was nice. And they enjoyed being together…they were so happy, the band was going great, we had our new album out, we were ready to go on tour. And then it happened, something we’d thought could never, ever happen.

They broke up.

Well, no, they didn’t really break up. It was more of Mike accusing Chester of cheating on him, calling him a whore and getting all angry, Chester screaming back at Mike that he was an asshole to think that about him, and them throwing insults at each other before Chester finally screamed at Mike to get out. We think Mike might have even hit him…we’re still not sure, to this day. All four of us heard. We were standing outside the Bennington house’s front door. We were going to hang out…instead, we all left and went back to their homes the moment we heard Chaz screaming for Mike to “get the fuck out”.

We were scared, all four of us. We didn’t know what was going to happen, to Mike, to Chester, to the band. Brad had begun a relentless search around LA for Mike throughout the rest of January. He didn’t find him. Through February, I was constantly calling Mike, leaving messages on his phone. He never responded. Phoenix and Joe tried their hardest to keep Chester’s spirits up. They didn’t succeed. At the beginning of March, not long before we were supposed to go on tour, Chester slit his wrists. We almost lost him. That was when we cancelled the tour and withdrew Linkin Park from the world. In April we hunted down Anna, now living with her new husband and year-old daughter in Mike’s old house. She was a total bitch to us, and the prospect of Mike possibly being dead didn’t have any affect. She was remarried and already had a child, only confirming our earlier suspicions that Anna had been cheating on Mike throughout their marriage. We left. In May we found Sam, who we’d still remained on decent terms with, living with Draven and a friend of hers in an apartment. She couldn’t help us either.

It’s been a long year. Chester recovered and we thought things were okay. Mike’s birthday…that was one of those days when things were very edgy, when Chester was floating between being alright and collapsing again. It was still February then, and we still had the hope of finding him…but it didn’t change how hurt he was all day. We spent the whole day with him. Recently, though, he’s seemed to be going back to that early edginess. The four of us got together again and decided to spend the month of December with Chester, just in case he breaks down during the month that was the last he spent with Mike. So tomorrow I’m going to be moving into Chester’s for the month. Speaking of tomorrow…

Tomorrow’s Brad’s birthday, and I have no idea what I should do for him. The other guys all got him stuff – Joe bought him a giant poster of Britney Spears, since he’s always said he thinks she’s hot. Phoenix probably found him something Linkin Park related – for my birthday he’d bought me a gorgeous pair of drumsticks, in a black wood, with “Rob Bourdon – Linkin Park” set into each one in silver. There’s likely a nice new guitar sitting over at Phe’s right now, with Brad’s name on it. Chester scrapped up loads of photos of us, from Xero until the end of Linkin Park, for each of our birthdays. He even did it on his own and on Mike’s. Somehow he managed to find the best pictures of me I’d ever seen for mine – from professional and serious to a picture of the time I kissed Brad on the cheek when we played Spin the Bottle. That’s the picture I’ve looked at the most…it confuses me. I still haven’t puzzled out the look on Brad’s face, because it was anything but the disgust or dislike that our straight-as-a-perfect-line Brad should have had…sometimes I wonder if he enjoyed it.

I think that’s why I’m so worked up over figuring out what to give Brad. I think I might like him…and I’m afraid that despite his straightness, he likes me too. And I’m afraid of what that means, and what it could to Chester if he saw two of his band mates – both Mike’s childhood friends – together.

Oh my God, that’s it. Childhood…I wonder if I still have all my photo albums of us from high school…wow, I wonder why I didn’t think of this before.

Later,

Rob

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Go ahead. Tell me how majorly sucky that was. However, I wrote this 'chapter' when I still thought this was going to be a standalone...like, five pages or something. It's already passed twenty-five pages. So the suckiness of this one...yeah. Don;t expect the whole story to suck this badly.

~-~Rachel~-~