Generation Why Bother

The other reason why I couldn’t sleep that night was because of the huge thud that sounded in my backyard and shook the entire house, of course solidifying the fact that whatever was on that monitor was not a glitch.

Before the thud, though, there was the excruciatingly loud sound of my ringtone reverberating through my room and jerking me awake at 2 in the morning on a school night. My favorite Promise Ring song smashed through my dream and snapped me out of my world, and before I could really wake up, I reached over to my bedstand and picked up my phone, not even paying attention to the number.

“Hello?” I mumbled, holding it to my ear. Huddled under the covers, not a single bone in my body wanted to say goodbye to such a wonderful sleep.

“Oshie! Oh, God, I’m glad you answered,” Andy gasped on the other line. “Listen – you really need to watch out and I’d strongly recommend that you get out of your house as quickly as possible, because whatever was on the monitor looks like it’s headed straight for your house.”

I sat up in shock. Was I still dreaming? “Wait, what?” I slurred.

Andy couldn’t answer, because that’s when the giant thud sounded in my backyard and shook the house, effectively pulling me completely out of slumber. I heard him yelp and I’m sure he heard me scream my head off too, jumping off my bed with the covers still partially wrapped around my legs.

“Oshie, are you okay? Please say yes!” Andy pleaded, his voice shaking and cracking just like the earth near my house.

My throat was dry. It was like the sun had blazed outside my window, shining brightly into my room, illuminating the various posters and drawings plastered to my walls. I choked out, “Y-yeah…yeah, I’m fine.”

“We’ll be there as quick as possible, dude. We just gotta wake Mick up and we’ll be there. Keep safe and don’t get too close to whatever the hell it was,” Andy instructed, sounding panicked yet collected.

“O-okay,” I whimpered. “I’ll…be here. See you.”

After I hung up, I didn’t really know what I should’ve done. If I stayed there, standing dumbly in my room, whatever it was could’ve set fire to my home and really screwed everything up; if I went outside to look closer, I could’ve gotten hurt. So I stood there for a moment, thinking about all the outcomes, when suddenly, I heard the back door slam open and my dad’s muffled voice rambling Spanish swear words at the sight.

I darted out back as quick as I could to come face-to-face with the blazing fireball that left a huge skid mark right over our backyard. Dirt was strewn everywhere, thrown across the back porch and clumping in the branches of our only tree; the ditch went deep. And at the far corner of our backyard sat that fireball, burning bright with such intensity that it even broke down the fence that separated our yard from the Thompsons’.

My dad would have been a funny sight if the destruction didn’t threaten our home. Standing in long johns with his hands gripping at the cropped hair on his head, he screamed, “Look at this mess! My lawn! My lawn is destroyed! Hijo de mil putas, chingate!”

Boy, he sure had a mouth on him. God, those were the things he only said when he hit his thumb with a hammer or when I made a mess as a kid. I relied on the Internet to translate them when I got older, and that’s exactly why I flinched when I heard him say the words.

“Papá,” I said quietly.

He twitched and whirled around, his face turning bright red at the sight of me. “Oshie!”

“Are you okay?” I asked, knowing the physical answer.

Dad paused, but then he walked over to me and pulled me into a hug. “Yes, I’m fine. The lawn…that’s…that’s petty. More importantly – are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I coughed, a bit taken off-guard by my dad’s seemingly sudden change of emotions. I hugged him back for what it was worth, and then it dawned on me – if the band was coming over to see what happened…it would be the first time my dad would meet them. And…this was the first time he’d experienced something related to our situation. He probably didn’t know what was going on, and neither did I, really, and then what happened next definitely wasn’t what I had in mind.

The orb of flames wasn’t just that – it was a meteor. I’d figured that when I got a good look at it upon walking out. Apparently, it wasn’t just a meteor either, because the flames died down and the rock within had cracked right down the middle.

Both halves fell away from each other.

My dad let go to look at what the source of that splitting noise, and we both stared like fish at the wonder unfolding right in our backyard.

Some kind of creature stepped out of the shell of rock. At first glance, it looked remarkably human – but what kind of human just hurtles from the sky like that and lands intact? Upon second glance, whatever it was looked more like a girl, blonde and red hair pulled up in a short ponytail with bangs swooping over their hidden face.

The creature stood up straight, tilting her head up to face my father and I, and that’s when I saw her face: feminine and youthful, but with a scowl so deep. Out of instinct, I flinched.

From the corner of my eye I saw Tegan and her mom standing at the edge of their backyard where the fence would normally separate us. Both of them in their pajamas with mouths wide open in shock, Tegan looked at me and nodded and we both knew the universe was in on this.

I looked back at the creature. Her fists began to glow with pale green auras surrounding either one, along with the narrow slits that were her eyes. For such a humanoid being, her strange appearance was unsettling.

She pointed directly at me with one of those hands, and she hissed, “I hear you’re one of the little shits who still doesn’t believe in being a guardian.”

Although it was such an outright wrong statement, I didn’t have the time or mental capacity to explain why to her. “Wait, what? I -”

A blinding white light was suddenly sailing right towards me at breakneck speeds, and I was so paralyzed with fear in that moment that I didn’t even think to move out of the way. My dad had to push me and throw me down on the cement porch so that I wouldn’t be harmed by it, but as my elbows scraped the rough texture of rock and my hipbone bounced against it, the mild pain was blocked by a more urgent feeling.

My dad cried out in anguish as he hit the floor right next to me after taking the hit for me. Immediately, disregarding the blood trailing down my elbow, I jumped over and saw that the left side of his torso had been lacerated, the skin scraped and bloodied so badly that it was forming a pool under him. His face pinched up in agony, veins popping out along his neck and forehead, he clutched at the area surrounding his wound.

I may not have been able to control my mother getting cancer, but the fact that my dad was in so much pain because of me freezing up and being stupid was more than enough to make me kick myself.

Bent over his body, I looked back at the creature and growled, unable to form a sentence to express my anger. She looked absolutely dumbfounded – like she wasn’t expecting any of us to get hurt at all. Well, what the hell was she expecting? If she expected bunnies to start frolicking when her energy beam hit my chest, she had another thing coming. If she thought a kitten would sprout from the ground when my dad was hit, I don’t know what the hell she was thinking.

The growl turned into a scream, and the force of my lungs propelling the negative energy building up inside of me for so long had forced my eyes shut. I didn’t see what happened. Tegan told me it was incredible, how sparks just absolutely flew from my body and never seemed to hit my dad once. I didn’t even hear the popping; I was too loud for me to even think about what I was doing.

Whoever first came up with that theory that discovering our powers was linked to emotions was right. There was such a rush of feelings that overcame me in that moment, in that scream, that I unlocked my ability. Even though it was harsh and probably caused power surges all along our street, I was an official guardian…with the ability to control lightning.

(Boy, that would’ve helped back at the beginning of summer.)

Like a popular Japanese mouse-monster character that I can’t directly name because I might get sued, I was shooting lightning bolts from every inch of my body. All I wanted to do was cause pain to that creature who had harmed my dad. I never expected I’d discover my power or even have it be in public or at two in the morning, but what happened happened and I certainly couldn’t undo it.

As the oxygen trickled into a slow stream from the volume of my scream, I finally felt the sparks prickle at my fingertips, dying down. I opened my eyes. White-hot branches like the ones imprinted on my arms and chest were flailing from the palms of my hands, and I must’ve blinked a thousand times before I let myself believe what was going on.

A warm feeling flushed over me and even blocked out the sounds of my dad yelling at me as I focused more and more on the dying sparks. Like a dizzy movie, I could have sworn I was still dreaming.

Slowly, though, I felt my dad’s rough hands shaking my shoulders, bobbing my head back and forth.

“Oshie! Mijo, Oshie, talk to me!” he barked, bending down so that we were eye-to-eye.

Suddenly, I locked eyes with him and felt myself regain consciousness. He smiled when he saw the fog lift from my gaze, but I couldn’t move a muscle other than the ones in my head. When I stared at his wound, he smacked my arm a few times and just panted, “It’s just a scratch. Big scratch, but just a scratch. Do not worry about me.”

My mouth still parted, I glanced at him again and then turned around, scared of what I’d see standing in place of the creature.

She was still there, however. Blackened by soot and smoking, the being still stood.

“Well…uh…I appear to have been mistaken, then…” she spoke, her voice high yet strong. “But…I believe I’ve solved one problem here…”

Everything was still, silent. Despite the fact that a few neighbors were gawking from out their windows, nobody dared to speak.

Except Ms. Tracey.

“Um, ma’am, I think you’ve mistaken him for somebody else!” she yelled, waving her hands to get the being’s attention.

Just like her mother, Tegan pitched in, a little nervous at first but still clear as daylight. “Yeah, we’re not the ones you wanna go after. It’s those two dudes in Florida who are giving us trouble.”

The alien walked closer to me, slowly, shaking the soot from her body. Dried grass crunching underneath their shockingly human skate shoes, mesh shorts that reached just above the knee caked in ash, powder blue t-shirt more gray than blue, and a bandanna tied around the neck. She wasn’t human. Nobody could have survived that.

She stared at me, narrowing her eyes like she didn’t trust that I had truly signed on.

I’d gotten into a staring contest with my hands yet again, watching them shake and quiver despite the action being over for the moment. I’d discovered a huge power just because some random space chick flew out of the sky and landed in my backyard, and all I could think about was how weird that was. Even though I felt my dad rubbing my back and patting my shoulder, trying to comfort me in the daze I’d yet again slipped into, I felt the sparks return to my fingertips and pop against my skin.

“Oshie, mijo, are you in a right mind?” my father demanded, getting louder.

My tongue dry, I replied, “Yeah…yeah. I think I am, anyway.”

The alien-girl, standing above us, smirked and mumbled, “Well, I’m just gonna…go…now. My work is done for now…”

She even turned around like she was going to jump back into the sky, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Wait, hold on. Wait a second,” I called out, my voice trembling. “Who are you?”

The chick looked at me over her shoulder, slowly turning the rest of her body around to face me again. “My name is Shira. My father sent me to Earth to kick your rear-ends into gear and make you realize that this issue is not just fiction.” She leaned and put a hand on her hip. “I’m multitasking as the princess and guardian of my home planet, Daltia. We’ve had it together for almost a year, and the time has come for you to quit being so slow.”

“Well, you could’ve done without attacking us!” I didn’t care if yelling at someone was out of my normal tone. Even if she was a stranger, she didn’t deserve my default manners.

She grinned. “Ah, but when I attacked one of your loved ones, I elicited a beneficial response, did I not?”

From across the yard, I heard Tegan laugh. Even though I kept my eyes on Shira, making sure she didn’t pull any more funny business, I heard the dead grass give way to the Thompsons as they walked over to my dad and I, Ms. Tracey kneeling down to get a good look at my dad’s wound. Tegan gently laid a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it as if to reassure me that everything was going to be fine.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes, already sick of Shira. “God…you might wanna get in touch with the others and let them know you’re not trying to kill us.”

So sure of herself, she let out a dry laugh. “Oh, I’m sure they already know that.”

Suddenly, Anthony’s voice cut through the freezing air, piercing and powerful just like the singing voice he sometimes lent to the band. “How the hell we were supposed to know that when you literally just tried to kill one of us?!”

I whipped my head around to the source of his voice, and sure enough, the entirety of Put’emup, Put’emup was standing at the edge of the porch. I didn’t even care if they hopped what was left of our fence. After that night, literally nothing seemed strange anymore.