Please, Won't You Push Me for the Last Time

~Vic~

After Kellin dropped me off, I was faced with a conflict. My mom didn’t remind me to take my cures. She knows she doesn’t have to because I always remember. But should I take them? And if I don’t what do I do? Do I just leave it in the bottle and hope nobody notices? Do I take it out and hide it somewhere? How do people even do this?

I had a great morning, and I kind of want to explore what my mind is like by itself for a while, so I take out one pill and take it to my bedroom. I put it under my pillow and figure I will get rid of it after I talk to Kellin about how exactly I am supposed to do that. I wonder what he is up to right now. It’s probably best not to bother him since we’ve been spending so much time together, and I could use a nap anyway. I have lunch with my parents and tell them about my night, the alibi of course, and Mike gets home, tired as I said he would be. According to our story, we were having so much fun we continued losing track of time and missed a few hours of sleep, which is healthy to do on a rare occasion as long as you have time to catch up on sleeping.

After lunch, we both head to our rooms for a nap without a word, Mike seems especially thankful for this. He didn’t wake up until after Kellin and I left, so he’s probably got major after effects from the alcohol right now. It’s kind of weird to me. I never considered the idea of anyone I knew ever getting drunk, not after everything I learned in school about it. My little brother is the absolute last person I would have suspected to be up to something anti-government. But I suppose being so patriotic all the time probably convinced him he couldn’t talk to me about it, oh wow that kind of stings. My emotions are all very intense today, and I can’t even seem to get to sleep, I wonder if it’s like this for everyone. Maybe I should have mingled more at the party. I guess I will ask Kellin later. I really want to sing with him more. He’s showing me all these new things and I love it.

Kellin is all I can think about for two hours until my mother comes to wake me up, I try to start a conversation to buy Mike a few more minutes to sleep, but she doesn’t seem in the mood. There’s not really anything to do, and I’m tired of sitting around with my thoughts, so I tell my mom I’m going for a jog, and get dressed accordingly. I don’t go too far though, I just head into the tunnel where I met Kellin. I pick up one of the notebooks at random and start reading it.

It’s kind of haunting, reading something that was left here by someone who died long ago, someone who probably suffered when things started to go, what I thought was, well for everyone else. This journal was written by a young girl all the way back when the world was still plagued with illness. As I read, I start to notice that she probably has a couple of the mental disorders they teach us about in school, but she doesn’t seem to mind it. She has a little trouble with things, but she seems pretty happy. It really confuses me. I thought everyone back then was miserable.

She was a musician, coincidentally enough, and she wanted to be famous, which was nearly impossible back then. I hear even once you made it it was a really hard life. It wasn’t like Entertainers now, who just fit in and do their job like everyone else. You got a higher status and more money and more expectations thrown on you. I don’t know if she ever made it though, when the journal finished she was 22. There’s a note in the end that’s been taped in, still in the same handwriting:

“Dear future reader, if you ever find this,

I am leaving you this because I want to show you that you can be happy without medicine, if the world ever gets as bad as my group leader says it will, you might not know that. I wrote this when I was young and stupid, but I was a lot more interesting than I am now, and I haven’t journaled in a long time.
- Love, Abby, 25 years later.”

I wonder who her leader is and how they knew that almost 200 years ago. It did help me a lot though, I think I have more hope. Next, I pick up one of the old guitars, and one of the instruction books for it. It’s been here a long time, so it’s a little out of shape and a lot out of tune, but I can deal with that. It doesn’t take me long to pick up on the differences between this one and the ones I had in school. It’s way thinner and a little longer, and it has to be plugged in, but I’ve worked with some similar ones before in Music History, and the book is a lot of help. I start playing some of the things I’ve memorized before moving on to the music in some of the books.

There’s some really fun things to play here. I love how my fingers can dance between notes quicker than I ever have before, though it is a bit challenging, and how a lot of them change key and hand position like it doesn’t matter. It’s so complex I can hardly keep up, but it’s probably the most fun I have ever had with music. I finally decide I should head home before it seems suspicious, I’ll probably say I ran into some people and got distracted, normal teenager stuff.

“Vic, oh I thought you might be with Kellin, his mother called, says she can’t find him,” my mom says when I enter the house, on a normal day I’d say she looks distressed, but she mostly looks zoned out, like she’s in her own little world. Is that how she always looks? Anyway, Kellin. I have no idea where he might be. He wasn’t in the tunnel, at least not his usual one, but considering he isn’t somewhere he can tell his mom about he probably needs a cover story. I can’t believe what I’m about to do.

“Oh yeah, I was just with him, we ran into some people at the park, I think he went to their place to help them with a song or something. I just came back to check with you if I can go too, because we might go past curfew and have to stay the night,” I say innocently, trying to make the lie as realistic as I can.

“Oh thank goodness! I don’t know why he couldn’t do the same! Thank you for being such a good kid, Victor,” she says and hugs me. Yeah, that’s what guilt feels like. I hope I can find somewhere to stay for the night. My first goal, however, is to find Kellin.

I don’t have to look very far, because he is heading back to his house and I catch him as he is crossing the street into our neighborhood. He looks excited to see me but I am not so happy with him.

“Your mom is looking for you, Kellin,” I say, and he looks a bit concerned.

“I told her I was at the museum… did she call your parents?” he asks me.

“Yep. I told my mom we were paying music with some people we met,” I wink, so he knows that’s the alibi, not to be too suspicious in case anyone is around or there’s security cameras, “and that we are going over there, possibly for the night, I assume you decided to talk to yours too?”

“Oh, uh, right yeah that’s what I decided,” he says awkwardly before continuing to his place. I take a seat here and hope he comes back soon. After a few minutes he is here again and says he has to be back before curfew, which is in an hour and a half. We walk to the tunnels so we can talk.
“Where were you really?” I ask.

“I was… I was at a meeting. With Alex and Jack and some other revolution members…” he says quietly.

“Oh,” I respond slowly, “why didn’t you mention that?”

“I don’t know,” he replies quietly before looking up and his expression is so serious and concerned, “I’m not sure if I am supposed to tell you this, but I am gonna be a part of something kind of dangerous, and I want you to promise you’ll be okay if… if something happens.”