Sequel: Earth to Me

Generation Why Bother

Burnt Out

All of a sudden, the specifics came in. According to the omniscient universal monitor present in Put’emup, Put’emup’s apartment, finally, a concrete amount of time was given.

We were gonna get caught up in the universal destruction on January 2nd, 2012.

Yup, as the rest of the world would be celebrating the new year and what was supposedly gonna be the year civilization would end (that wasn’t meant to happen until late 2012, though), we’d be taking care of business and ridding the world of immediate destruction.

As of the day that the events of this chapter happened, December 10th 2011, we had less than a month. That meant that there was less than a month for both Andy and Chuck to discover their powers, and they were taking it in quite different ways, to say the least. One was increasingly jumpy and avoided the subject whenever it came up. The other didn’t acknowledge it. Take a guess at who had what reaction.

Well, with tensions high and fear in the air, it was Riley who decided to invite Tegan, Chuck and I back down to Gainesville to relax that Saturday. He said he was gonna take us to this bonfire pit back behind his house a ways, and Chuck had chimed in and said it was a great idea to chill out and get some time away from everything. When we asked if he was going to let his folks know he was in town, he laughed and outright said, “No, I don’t want them hounding me. I’m the happiest I’ve been without my mother around. I’ve got means of communication with the people I actually care about.”

Chuck even halfheartedly agreed and said he didn’t want to deal with his mother being overbearing and wanting him to stay home for even just a night. It was weird, imagining a life without wanting to see your parents. I tried to wrap my head around it and gave up. They were different people with different lives.

Courtesy of Put’emup, Put’emup, they lent us their private jet that night to hang out in Florida for a little while as long as we’d be back by sunrise, and my dad even agreed to it as well. The band agreed that it’d be nice to give us some time off since we were all under quite a bit of stress with midterms coming up and the training regimens getting rougher; we were all putting that workout room to good use. Even Tegan.

So we landed at the nearest airport and took a crammed taxi to the neighborhood, where Riley told the driver to drop us off at the entrance. That’s when he led us into that same forest Shira took us when we took them to Chicago for the first time, and since the sun was setting, we had at least a little bit of light and a box of matches to light the way and start the fire.

“I only got a few left, though,” Riley had warned. “My mom uses ‘em to clear the house when she smokes cigarettes.”

As we walked further into twisting rows of trees I’d only seen once and never again, I just had to ask. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Don’t worry, we make bonfires out here all the time and we never get attacked by anything,” Chuck assured, sounding sure for once.

“How many people usually come to your bonfires?” Tegan questioned.

“It’s just me and Chuck,” Riley answered, breaking the branches in front of him.

Chuck replied to the question that hit our heads at the same time. “And I swear, nothing gay happens.”

“Well, I’m here, so something gay is already happening,” Tegan said under her breath. I caught it anyway and laughed, poking her arm.

As the sun set and the only light given off was from my cell phone since apparently I was the only one who charged my phone before we left, we reached a little clearing. Inside that clearing was a huge circular pit filled with wood, burnt papers, and all sorts of other crap that was too far gone to be identified, and around that pit sat a few huge logs, probably where they sat as it all burned. Not far from the site was a small stream and a bucket right next to it.

Riley lit a match and threw it into the mess, and after he used them all up, the fire burned bright and illuminated the circle of vegetation surrounding us.

He then sat next to Chuck on the log opposite Tegan and I and smirked like he always did. There was a silence among us. He was the one to break it. “So, since this feels like some kind of double date…how long have you two known each other?” he asked, giving his voice an effeminate inflection.

The wicked eyeroll Chuck gave him probably would’ve started an argument if he saw it, yet we bit anyway for the sake of making use of time. “Uh, forever,” I stated, probably exaggeration in their eyes but truthful to mine.

“Yeah, sounds about right,” Tegan smiled.

Riley continued the annoying stereotypical voice as he said, “Well, me and Chucky – well I like to call him Siege because his other name is CJ, but Siege just sounds cooler – we met our sophomore year of high school.” That last word ended on a squeak as he crossed his legs and throw an arm over Chuck’s shoulder.

He wasn’t particularly thrilled with Riley’s way of telling it, and so he continued it. “We only met because I used to live in New Jersey, but my parents divorced so I was forced to move down here with my mom.”

“I think it was fate when our Spanish teacher paired us up for that stupid project, don’cha think?” Riley added, looking up at him with his arm still around his neck.

“Yeah, we had to get paired up because we both were late in getting assigned partners,” Chuck explained grudgingly, grimacing a tad. “Like that’s not the dumbest thing ever, right?”

“Could be dumber,” Tegan shrugged. “One of you could’ve saved the other’s life. Maybe one of you would’ve ran into traffic and a bus would come and then the other could’ve pushed you out of the way.”

Something flickered across Riley’s face – a look of sadness. It was too brief to mean anything, though. He bit his thumbnail.

“Nah, we’re pretty much just friends because misery loves company and we hate almost all of the same things,” he dished.

“You guys must hate a ton of stuff together if you’re best friends, though,” I laughed airily.

Chuck shrugged. “I hate some stuff he likes and he hates some stuff I like. It all kinda balances out.”

“Is that why you fight so much?” Tegan jumped in again.

Riley adjusted his hat and smiled. “I just like getting a rise out of good ol’ Chuck here.”

“And there’s the fact that you hate me,” Chuck muttered. “You know, it’s weird. When we hang out with you guys, you never seem to argue…like, at all. How does that even happen?”

Tegan elbowed me and leaned her head on my shoulder for a moment. “Oh, that’s because Oshie doesn’t like being mean. He just bottles stuff up and gets all awkward when he’s confronted about it.”

Boy, that hit the nail on the head. I liked those little reminders that Tegan knew me better than anybody else. Kept me bound to the ground.

We shot the breeze after that. Asked them what life was like living in America’s penis; they asked us how we could bear to live so close to a city and how the hell we dealt with freezing.

We even managed to get to know Riley a little bit more since Chuck never told his Mumblr followers about his tragic backstory (probably for a good reason). He said he never met his real father because he jetted out of his life when he found out his mom was pregnant, and growing up he’d gone through way too much racist crap to handle, what with him being black and white. His little sister was born to his stepdad and his mom mere years ago and since then he had an anchor in his family aside from his stepdad, who he looked to as more of a parent than his apathetic mother. He told the whole thing with a cheeky forced half-smile and leaned forward as he did.

Chuck didn’t even interject or roll his eyes – not even once. He even patted his back a few times out of sympathy. For once I got the feeling that Riley wasn’t lying or being sarcastic. It was probably a huge step for him, saying more than one sentence without making fun of someone.

The whole thing was just…nice. It was peaceful and calm, just the way it was intended to be.

Eventually, though, the fire dwindled out on its own, leaving us in complete darkness. My phone wasn’t bright enough to light the path or help us see how to get out of where we were, and since it was nearing eleven at night, it was starting to feel like a pretty dire situation. The embers smoldered in the pit while I tried to adjust my eyes to the sheer lack of light. I could hear the others, but I sure as heck couldn’t see them.

“Um, who’s bright idea was it to not bring a flashlight?” Riley deadpanned as we sat on the logs in dismal darkness.

Nobody answered.

Instead, though, a little whimper sounded, a bit like a quiet wounded puppy, against the sounds of buzzing bugs and snapping leaves underneath our feet. At first I couldn’t tell who did it, what with us being bathed in night and all. Suddenly, however, a blinding light shot out from somebody’s hand and pointed directly at Riley, who was so taken off-guard by the beam that he screamed and fell off the log he was sitting on.

Chuck, who was the source of that light, also screamed, still keeping his balance and he just stood up, waving his hands to create light patterns on the forest ground. Nothing was damaged – just illuminated.

When he calmed down and Riley sat back on the log, he turned his hands around and looked right into his palms, flinching and shouting, “Sweet Jesus, that’s bright!”

All of us were literally brightened by the light coming out of his hands, and when he saw us gawking at him, he feebly crossed his arms, dimming the brightness.

“What in the hell – what…” Riley stuttered, standing up and staring at Chuck.

“I guess…is this my power…?” he replied, trying to explain but doing so insecurely. “I’ve got, like, light or the sun, I guess…”

Riley just burst into laughter and had to lean on him to stay standing up. “Oh my God, that’s the fucking dumbest shit I’ve ever heard! Oh, I can control the earth, so of course the universe just has to recognize the fact that we’re opposites and give you the power of the sun! Like, really? Are you kidding me?!”

Tegan and I would’ve probably congratulated him if it weren’t for the look of disappointment on his face, eerily lit from below. Sure, illumination was a good defense and could probably be a distraction, but…could it hurt anybody? On the other hand, Mick’s power of greenery was kind of in the same boat, though…

“Well, he can blind someone at the very least,” I bargained, trying to be positive.

Chuck said it like it was. “I feel gypped.”

Before it could turn into a total pity party, Riley walked over to his friend and draped an arm around his shoulder for the umpteenth time and brightened the mood with his sarcasm. “Aw, don’t worry, at least you got your power now, buddy. Now let’s go home and you can start training to shine that shit in somebody’s eyes.”
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Riley's sass gets to be a little much for me, too. Better than the straight-up asshole he was in previous stories, though.