Generation Why Bother

August 30th couldn’t have come fast enough. That Tuesday, Tegan and I had already made plans to stop by the apartment after a long boring day at school, and all day long we were excited. We’d finally be seeing Chance’s powers in person! We’d be seeing the band after what felt like the longest tour in the history of forever! It was a beautiful feeling.

Things were just looking up in general, too. We were back in the swing of school and I was well underway with my concentration for art class – I chose 12 figures of speech and I was illustrating each one literally – and it just felt like our senior year should have been according to everybody’s words that high school is the best time of your life. I wasn’t sure if it was the sudden optimism clouding my head, reminding me that I’d soon see our partners in this intergalactic mess, but it still counted for something.

After school on the 30th, Tegan and I piled into my car and I zoomed us over to the apartment, the sun shining bright through a cloudless sky. Things even seemed to sparkle even more when we knocked on the door and nobody other than Chance answered the door, smiling so wide upon seeing us.

“Aw, sweet! I’m glad you dudes came over, I got a ton of stuff to show you!” he cheered, ushering us in immediately.

Mick and Anthony saw us enter from their spots on the couches; Mick waved and said “Hey!” while Anthony just nodded and smiled. On the coffee table in front of them, there were two glasses…full of water.

“You guys want something to drink?” Chance offered, leading us toward the kitchen and grabbing two cups from the cupboard. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we only have water right now, though!”

He literally just flicked his wrist, and a steady stream of clear and crisp water was shooting from his fingertips. He filled one glass and handed it to Tegan, and filled the next one up with a cheesy smile across his face and gave it to me.

I paused, peering into the cup, still trying to process what I had just seen to make sure that an actual human being had just done what he had done.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe,” Mick assured, taking a sip from his own glass.

I figured there couldn’t have been any harm in downing it, so I just tipped it back and drank it, and Tegan did the same. God, it was the best water I’d ever had. It was like when you run a mile and sweat your heart out and you’re craving any kind of liquid, and when you get it, it’s like the worlds have opened up in your favor. Except I wasn’t really thirsty when I drank that water – it just satisfied a thirst I didn’t know I had.

Tegan finished her glass pretty quickly and set it down on the counter, and then for some reason Chance put his arm around her waist and started dancing with her in circles. She laughed but her face was red, probably out of shock since Chance wasn’t really a…dance-y kind of person. I even had to give them a second look.

“I’m sorry, I’m just really happy right now!” he excused himself, letting her go. He still hadn’t stopped smiling.

Always the realist, Anthony jumped into the cheerful-fest and said, “It’s a free-for-all at this point. Anybody can discover their power at any time, basically, if Chance is any indication.”

“So since we’re getting elemental powers from the universe, Chance’s element is water?” I asked. It sounded like a dumb question when I said it out loud, but I had to make sure.

Anthony furrowed his brow and answered, “That’s what it looks like, anyway. Makes sense. He’s probably the most go-with-the-flow out of all of us.”

“And it’s a good thing we can all swim, or else we might’ve drowned by now,” Mick gibed. Chance waltzed over to him and filled up his glass with crystal-clear water again, perpetually excited.

While he was topping Mick off, a door opened in the hallway and suddenly Andy popped out, smiling like a goof with graphite-stained hands held up. He didn’t even have to say anything and everybody’s eyes were on him; that’s how loud he made his silent entrance.

“Guess who just finished the storyboard for ‘Strawberry Jam’ and will be sending the frames to the animators to complete!” he sang, his natural vibrato carrying the sentence melodically. As he said it, he made his way toward the kitchen, where he opened the fridge and grabbed a root beer, which I always found kind of weird. He didn’t even ask for water from The Human Fountain himself.

I smiled and said, “Can’t wait to see it all come together.”

He nodded in my direction with a slight grin of gratitude, and when he walked by me after popping the tab on his can of soda, he patted me on the shoulder.

The happiness that swam throughout the air kind of died. Everything seemed to fall flat as Tegan, Andy and I stood at the counter, Andy sipping his drink. Mick and Chance were still latently bubbly from what I could see, but Anthony wasn’t even turned around to look at Andy. He didn’t seem to acknowledge his presence when he made his announcement, either. He just sat there with his legs crossed, holding the glass of water and taking big gulps from it.

You could probably measure the distance between Andy and Anthony with a big fat elephant.

After a few moments, Anthony set the glass upon the coffee table, got up, and walked down into the hallway, probably into his room. Nobody said anything about his exit, but Mick and Chance frowned at each other and I couldn’t help a cringe.

A door slammed.

Chance got up from his seat on the couch and headed over to the kitchen, saying, “Uh, well, I’m gonna go refill the water jug in the fridge…”

Right then, Andy downed the rest of his soda and let out an earth-quaking burp, one that reverberated throughout probably the whole apartment. He even laughed so hard afterward that he snorted into next week while we just kind of chuckled a little bit. I was still cringing from that secondhand awkwardness.

Andy didn’t catch any of it, though, or he was just ignoring it, because he threw the empty soda can at the back of Chance’s head while he stood at the sink and dripped fresh water from his hands into the water jug. Even though the soda can bounced off his head and into the trash can, it still didn’t prevent it from looking incredibly fishy.

Chance squeaked and whipped his head around when he felt it ricochet, but when he saw that Andy did it, he just smiled. Then he went back to filling it up, the smile disappearing.

Andy left the room with much less vigor than he entered.

“Uh…you sure it was a good day for us to stop by?” Tegan asked quietly, playing with her left plug out of awkwardness.

Mick caught on and said, “Yeah, it’s fine. It just happens sometimes.”