Generation Why Bother

After rescuing New York for a second time, Johnny Cool still kept humble. He just assumed he was doing the right thing in his position, and that kept him from inflating himself to dangerous levels. He was still the same kid who wore powder-blue tuxedos out in public and combed his hair back in a pompadour – the paparazzi just took advantage of his strange outfits and called it stardom.

He still liked to visit Maryanne during her working hours, when she worked at the local 1950s-themed diner. He wouldn’t order anything most of the time; he’d just sit at the bar and smile at her until it was her break time and they could hold a conversation. Sometimes he’d come over near the end of her shift at closing time, in the wee hours between her restaurant closing and his near-nightly gig starting. That way, once everything was closed up, nobody would bother them and they’d have the place to themselves (with the exception of her boss, a kindly woman in her seventies).

That particular evening, he sat at a booth and calmly awaited her shift ending. When the patrons were ushered out and everything was cleaned up, Maryanne took a seat in front of her beau, and batted her eyelashes. Even though she worked a hard job, it was the little things that kept her smiling. The bubbling atmosphere of the diner kept her head up, and she always looked forward to Johnny dropping in.

“Can we split a milkshake or are you too off-duty to make one?” he smirked. “I’ll buy.”

So they ended up drinking a milkshake from two straws, the lovey-dovey cliché making its way into a comic that was otherwise not too sappy. (I let it slide since it was pretty cute, actually.)

Readers didn’t get to see what they actually talked about during that little number, since it went into a flashback of how Johnny and Maryanne met. As it turns out, Maryanne had been working at that diner since she was only 14 years old, and the two had been classmates in high school. Johnny was a dorky kid back in the day. He didn’t talk a lot and had been quick to screw up social situations, coming on way too strong, and when he got home from school, he did his homework and went straight to his guitar to perfect some more riffs he’d come up with by daydreaming throughout the school day.

We got to see that through a montage of him on the first day of school trying to talk to the people sitting around him while they totally blew him off. Over time, he tried less and less to make conversation, until eventually, he got the hint and knew it wouldn’t matter. Every day depicted would end with him sitting on his bed with his acoustic guitar, strumming away melodies that sadly couldn’t come through in a drawing.

But lo and behold, he ended up running late to his chemistry class one day – literally, he was running through the hallways – and in the most beautiful way, completely smashed into the prettiest girl he’d ever laid eyes on who happened to be in his English class: Maryanne Swanson. He scrambled to help her pick up her books and she laughed off his apologies, saying it wasn’t a big deal, he didn’t have to worry about it. No matter what, though, Johnny couldn’t stop kicking himself that whole rest of the day.

Walking home from school later on, though, he passed that cute little ‘50s diner he always did on the way home, and he peered inside. There were groups of friends gathered in there talking about God-knows-what over baskets of fries, couples of all ages smiling over milkshakes. He caught himself staring inside, longing for that kind of company.

Suddenly, something slammed into his backpack, sending him spinning. When the dizziness ceased, he saw the perpetrator – and of course, it was nobody other than Maryanne herself, rushing to put on her apron, her rosy lips in an O shape.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry Johnny!” she gasped, placing her hand on his arm briefly. “I’m just running a little late for work. Don’t mind me.”

Trying to be sly, he said, “Trying to get revenge on me for earlier?”

To his surprise, she smiled. It wasn’t a joking kind of smile that people gave him when he said something stupid in class, and it didn’t have an ounce of pity behind it. She just…smiled. And man, you could tell it made his heart soar, because he just kind of laughed awkwardly and turned bright red, gripping his backpack straps for dear life.

“No, I promise I wasn’t,” she said. “I’ll even give you a free milkshake to make up for it. Redeemable anytime.”

“How about tonight?” he slipped.

One of her eyebrows shot up and she smiled yet again. “That sounds good. I’ll be here.”

“I’ll, uh - I’ll be here too, then,” he stuttered ever so effortlessly.

And that was how the magnificent love story of Johnny Cool and Maryanne Swanson begun. The truth was, they weren’t just lovers. At its purest form, they were best friends first. That kind of relationship doesn’t bloom out of nothing.

Which brings me to my point of having a seemingly odd opening to a chapter that doesn’t have much to do with Johnny and Maryanne: there are literally all kinds of friendships. Some friendships are built so deep that the “ship” part is anchored to the ocean floor and can’t be pulled up. Some folks go through stormy seas and that anchor lifts itself every so often – not completely, but just enough to get it off of the sea floor. Sometimes, over time the chain that holds the anchor in place withers away after years of no contact. Every so often, a shark will come along and destroy the chain, snapping it into bits.

It’s weird for me to even wrap my head around friends who argue all the time. Let me just say that it was a bit of a wake-up call to realize that not everybody was tied tight like me and Tegan.

That night, I left a message on my dad’s cell phone telling him that me and Tegan would have to stay over for the night because the seventh and eighth guardians were found too late at night for us to make a safe trip home. I told him I could explain in better detail later on but for the moment I’d be crashing on one of the couches.

Despite the monitor shining brightly and buzzing with digital machinery, we slept like rocks on the couch circle, and I only awoke when the sound of Andy and Anthony eating their breakfasts woke me up bright and early.

I squinted to look at the nearest clock – it was barely past 6 AM and they were sitting at the counter eating cereal. As a reflex, I groaned and rubbed my eyes.

“Aw, shit, did we wake you?” Andy said, a spoonful of sugary wheat halfway up to his mouth.

“Might as well get up anyway,” I mumbled. Even I could hear the sleep in my voice.

“Go back to sleep. We’re gonna be heading out in a few minutes anyway,” Anthony reasoned. “We can’t keep our pilot waiting.”

Despite my cloudy mind, my thoughts snagged on that last sentence. “Pilot?”

“We blew a bunch of money on a private jet a while back. Which is why we don’t live in a mansion right now,” Andy told me.

I mumbled something just to let them know I was alive and listening, but after rubbing my face to try to get the sleep off, I found myself drifting off into sleepy-land again. I told myself just to rest my eyes for a little while, maybe a few minutes tops. The next thing I knew, the last words I heard were Andy whispering, “He’s going back to sleep. Look at that little angel.” I didn’t have the energy or consciousness to react to the weirdness of that statement, because I was knocked out yet again.

I got a few more hours of sleep, because when I woke up later on that morning, the clock read 10:18 AM. The sound of pots and pans clanging together jarred me out of dreamland, but it wasn’t a completely rude awakening, because the delicious smell of pancakes was there too.

Again, I rubbed my eyes and sat up. Tegan wasn’t on the couch across from me anymore; she was sitting at the counter with a mug of coffee next to Chance, who was eating pancakes with his bare hands.

Mick, standing at the stove and flipping pancakes, smiled at me and said, “Morning, sunshine!”

I squinted to get used to the bright light and groaned.

“We’re in charge for today, so if you guys are staying for the day, just know that in advance,” he added. “You might wanna call your dad, Oshie.”

“Ugh, I wonder if he got the message I left him last night,” I said to myself. My phone was on the coffee table; I reached over and picked it up to see if he’d responded. He did. The voicemail icon was alive with one new message. Not really looking forward to hearing it, I grudgingly pressed the button and held the phone to my ear.

“Hey, Oshie, call me when you wake up. I’ll probably be at work when you wake up, but I’ll try my best to answer. You guys are making progress, huh?” He paused to laugh a little bit. “Anyways, I got your message, I know you’re safe. Um…yeah. Talk to you later, mijo.”

Huh. There wasn’t an ounce of anger in his voice. Though I counted my blessings, I hesitated before dialing his cell phone number to let him know I was still alive, but then I had the phone to my ear again, ready to talk.

“Hello?” he answered, the sound of drills and engines in the background.

“Yeah, hey Dad,” I said, trying to sound awake. “Sorry, I just woke up. Just got your message.”

“I assume you got a good night’s sleep then, that’s good,” he spoke.

“I slept a little too much. Uh, anyways, I think we gotta stay over here a little longer. At least for a good chunk of today,” I informed him. “The seventh and eighth guardians were found, which is pretty big. So we gotta hang here and not get thrown out of the loop.”

The other line went quiet for a second before my dad said, “Uh, what?”

“Me and Tegan were the fifth and sixth guardians found, and the last two were recruited last night, which is pretty big. Two of the others went down to Florida ‘cause that’s where they are, and they’re gonna talk to them,” I explained further.

“O-okay, I can’t say I understand,” he stuttered, sounding like he was at least trying to crack a smile. “But just call me if anything comes up, Oshie. And let me know if you’re going to be back for dinner.”

Well, that was easier than I imagined it would be. He must’ve been in cahoots with Tegan’s mom. Ms. Tracey probably convinced him to loosen up a bit, though I don’t really know how she could chip that away from him. (Obviously, there was a possible way, but I’m really trying not to let that thought cross my mind, because I don’t want that image in my head.)

“Alright, that sounds good,” I said, pleasantly surprised. “I’ll talk to you later then.”

“I love you, mijo,” he said, almost like it was a candid slip of the tongue.

“Love you too, papá,” I said back. I didn’t even try to hide my smile. Then we hung up.

Breakfast smelled good, so I put my phone back on the table next to Tegan’s and made my way over to the counter just in time – Mick placed a plate of blueberry pancakes right in front of me with a grin.

“Do you like cooking, or do they just force you to do it?” Tegan asked him, her chin resting on her hand.

Mick leaned against the counter. “I was in the Culinary Club in college. It’s always kind of been a secondary hobby of mine.”

I had a mouthful of pancakes due to hunger and hoped nobody would notice. Luckily, nobody looked in my direction while I wolfed them all down, and Chance turned the conversation in a different, more pertinent direction.

“So how do you think Andy and Anthony are doing on the plane right now?” he brought up, a slight smirk on his mug.

Mick made an anxious face and laughed nervously. “Um, that can be answered in way too many ways, dude. Like, I hate to be a pessimist in this situation, but there’s a 90% chance that they’re gonna get to the hospital, argue in front of those kids, and scare ‘em off.”

“Or Anthony’s gonna end up backhand-insulting one of them,” Chance added, drinking orange juice.

“They don’t get along, do they?” Tegan said sarcastically. Though Andy and Anthony seemed to gravitate towards each other from what we’d seen, it wasn’t often we saw them speak happily to one another.

Mick pointed at her as he answered, “No, what’s up with them is that they get along too well. When the four of us met in college, me and Chance only vaguely knew each other in high school since we went to the same one. Andy and Anthony went way back to junior high and ended up going to a different high school than us, so none of us really know each other as well as those two do. They just know how to get to each other.”

He walked around the counter and smiled at Tegan, ruffling her hair, then he patted me on the arm.

“They argue like a married couple sometimes. It’s funny when it’s not serious,” Chance said.

“I’m just glad you two don’t annoy the piss out of each other like they do,” Mick sighed, nodding to me and Tegan. “It’s nice to witness a great friendship where half of your time isn’t spent cussing each other out.”

“Then what’s our friendship?” Chance pouted.

“What friendship?” There was sarcasm dripping from Mick’s voice and a smile behind his beard, but Chance still puffed out his lower lip.

“Well, me and Oshie have known each other since we were in diapers,” Tegan explained, swiveling on the barstool. “I think if I tried to annoy him, I’d succeed but then we’d hate each other and God dang it, I just can’t hang without this dude in my life.”

“Aw,” I cheered, poking her in the side. Ironically, she hated being touched there and immediately slapped my hand away. “I don’t get why people do that to each other on purpose.”

Chance couldn’t hold in his laughter as he said, “Anthony can be a dick, that’s why.”

“Chance, shush,” Mick said, but he was snorting too. “…He’s just got a tough exterior.”

“And interior,” Chance added.

“Well, he’s smart and nice to you as long as you’re nice to him, and that’s all I gotta say about that,” Mick blurted, folding his arms and smiling nice and big. His lip studs glimmered.

Chance didn’t bother arguing with that; he just shrugged and nodded. There had to be at least some amount of respect between the members of Put’emup, Put’emup, after all; they were one of the leading pop-punk acts in the country, and a band doesn’t get that far on just tolerance of one another.