Generation Why Bother

See, Johnny Cool was kind of destined to be huge right when he was born. According to the first issue, he was born in a bathroom at an Elvis concert and grew up learning how to play any musical instrument that he could get his four-fingered hands on. His folks wanted him to be a classical musician, but like the rebel he was, Johnny couldn’t hang with that and instead pursued a career as a rock star, playing gigs in New York with his band The Dudes. He was alright with his life and his fame as a charismatic crooner and radical guitarist, but even though he was already a star, the stars had something else in mind for him.

The guy lived in a pretty lackluster apartment in the heart of New York City. He didn’t have groupies to follow him home, even if he had a sweet girlfriend who was a waitress at a local ‘50s diner. So when he went home every night after each gig, his mind was set on the next one and what he could have done better to make it rock even more. He was a simple dude. Carried a little bit of familial angst ‘cause he didn’t go the career path they wanted him to, but that was it. He was a happy little guy.

Then one night, he fell asleep after being especially exhausted, but only for a few minutes. He felt some kind of pressure on his chest. When he opened his eyes, there was a cat sitting on his chest, staring into his bug eyes, into his soul. The cat wore a t-shirt and high-top sneakers along with a baseball cap, and before he could notice its little grin, he screamed and tried to throw it off. He backed away from it, though it followed him around, and that was when he noticed a neat hole burned into the door, right at a cat’s height.

The cat meowed loudly, over and over again as if it were trying to talk. Johnny, freaked out by the apparently fire-breathing cat that had found its way into his apartment, kept moving back. The cat, though, acting so normal even though it was wearing human clothes, didn’t even notice his nerves.

He was backed into a corner, scared and feeling a bit ashamed of himself for being scared of a seemingly harmless cat. He could tell very clearly that something was astray, and that inkling was confirmed when the cat’s collar began to beep and glow, shining a projection in front of its face.

The cat squirmed at first but then became engrossed in the lights, shutting up.

It was just a screen, though. Johnny himself found himself staring at it, until words showed up on it, typed, scattering across it so fast he could barely read it in time.

“WE APOLOGIZE FOR HOSHIKO’S INCOMPETENCE. HE WAS A LAST RESORT, IF YOU WILL. BUT HE HAS A LOOSE IDEA FOR WHAT HE IS DOING FOR YOU.”

Johnny knew nobody would hear, but he grimaced and said, “What?” anyway.

“HOSHIKO IS THE CAT THAT IS BRINGING YOU THIS NEWS. HE WILL BE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE FOR AS LONG AS YOU HOLD THE POWER OF THE STARS FOR PLANET EARTH.”

He slapped himself, believing in his heart that he was either dreaming, or still incredibly drunk.

“YOU WILL DISCOVER THOSE POWERS SHORTLY. BUT FOR NOW, STAY CALM. AND FEED HOSHIKO. HE’LL EAT LITERALLY ANYTHING.”

That issue ended with a panel of Johnny’s face looking like a mixture of terrified and trying to laugh, and the dreaded text box that said “Tune in next time!” sat in the lower right corner. Full of dynamic linework and popping color schemes, that issue hooked Tegan and I from the start.

From that moment on, we’d be loyal readers, and of course it was kind of pathetic in hindsight, but the whole time I was sitting in that hospital bed, I couldn’t help but think about Johnny – how he was called upon by the stars to do something that he never thought he could do. I had this dumb plotline playing out in my head where I was being called upon by the lightning gods to save the world, and even though it was childish and stupid, I couldn’t stop myself from daydreaming. In lieu of tragedy, you always think about how you could get out of it a different person, even if it’s a total fantasy. What’s the harm in that?

The thing was, my arm still hurt like hell. I noticed the sharp pain when I first regained consciousness after slipping out of my dreamworld, and when my eyes fluttered open to show me the blank whiteness of my hospital room, I could practically hear my dad’s anxiety coming to a head.

I saw him come up from his sitting position with his head buried in his hands, and he just gasped and whimpered, “Oh, thank God you’re alive,” and then he got up and squeezed me in probably the tightest hug I’d ever gotten from anybody, ever.

I wasn’t quite conscious enough yet to string together a coherent sentence, so I just hugged him back and hoped he wasn’t crying. That would get a bit uncomfortable if he was crying.

Within the same room, I heard Ms. Tracey laugh and say something to somebody, who also laughed, and then I recognized the other voice as Tegan’s. When my dad eventually let go, I turned to face them and smiled weakly at her.

“They stopped the show when you were struck,” Ms. Tracey told us. “The band even refunded everybody and said they’d plan another show on a better day.”

“Well that’s good at least,” I said, my voice gravelly at first.

Dad patted my hand and squeezed it, staring at me with only a hint of a smirk. “What’s good is that you’re alive, Oshie! You and Tegan could have been dead!”

Tegan shrugged. “But we’re not.”

Her mom elbowed her. “Hush, that’s not the point.”

“She’s right,” I said aimlessly. When I glanced at her again, I saw branches of pink skin all along her arm, going up into her shoulder and becoming hidden by those awful hospital gowns we had to wear. Then I looked at my own arm.

“You’ve got lightning scars,” my dad told me, flat as a pancake.

“That’s what these are?” Tegan asked. “I just thought they were cool battle scars or something.”

“Tegan, honey, you were struck by lightning. Those scars are a reminder of a near-death experience,” she said, but it sounded like she was half-joking about it.

“It’s just weird that it’s so bold,” I said. I ran my fingers up my arm. Patterns seemed to follow the veins, acting like little trees reaching towards my fingers. Even when I looked down my gown at my chest, I could see the weird little branches.

My dad leaned forward in his seat again and stared at the wall. “The doctor said it was abnormal.”

A silence fell on the room, but I was still staring at my dad.

“You’re lucky that band was so quick to see you two and notice what was wrong – one of them called an ambulance immediately. They said they didn’t know what they could do when you were brought in,” Dad went on. “Neither of you had a big chance of surviving, they said. It was such a powerful strike and nobody else got hit by it.”

I looked at Tegan and her face looked hollow and sunken-in, and it was kind of scary. Then again, the subject matter itself was terrifying. There I was, taking it all so lightly…but I almost died. My life could have very well ended so easily, and my first thoughts after waking up had to do with nothing that directly pertained to the situation. Guilt washed over me.

“Oshie, I don’t know what I would ever do…si te perdiera,” he whispered, starting it in English and then going off in Spanish. (He did that sometimes. Usually when he got emotional in some way.) “If I lost you…I’d have nothing.”

I wish I could have said something back to him that carried a lot of meaning, but I was never good at that kind of stuff. It would only come across as contrived or fake even if I didn’t mean it to be. So I just smiled at him, even if it pained me and only reminded me of how awkward the situation was. He squeezed my hand again and smiled right back.

Of course, Tegan had to break that little moment by folding her hands together and saying, “Awww,” and of course, her mom had to do the same thing and chime in with a, “Joshua, you’re so sweet.”

My dad wrung out a little laugh and wiped something from his eye, but I stuck my tongue out at Tegan.

Things probably would have gotten a lot more sentimental and cheesy after that, but there are a lot of pros and cons as to why that direction of conversation didn’t end up happening. The four of us were cut off from wallowing around in realization that two of us had escaped narrowly from the hands of death. If it were a doctor that had cut us off, that would be a heck of a lot more normal than what actually happened, and I likely wouldn’t be writing this story.

But it wasn’t a doctor that came skidding into our hospital room, breathless and scarlet-faced, with their normally neat jet black hair slicked back messily. Nope, I was pretty sure that wasn’t a doctor, and it wasn’t just the lack of cleanliness that gave it away. I recognized that mug, and so did Tegan.

Andy freaking Allen, the same guy who was singing at the concert we almost got killed at, and the same guy who uttered a swear word as the last phrase I’d hear before waking up in a hospital, was standing in the doorway to our hospital room.

He paused to catch his breath, since he was panting like a dog in heat, and held a finger up while he did so. That went on for a good thirty seconds.

Then he coughed, cleared his throat, and announced, “I need to speak to Tegan Thompson and Oshie Olayos as quickly as possible. Am I at the right room?”

He stared at us for a moment expectantly, and not a single word was uttered.

“Okay, yes I am, good. I recognize you now. Shit, where was I?”

My dad wrinkled his big eyebrows together and spoke the words on everybody’s mind. “Uh, sir, what exactly do you want with my son?”

Andy held up a hand and closed his eyes, still doubled over from being so out of breath. “I’ll get to that, I swear. Point is, your lives just aren’t gonna be the same anymore.”