Generation Why Bother

The very first thing I did when I got backstage and Put’emup, Put’emup exploded into the rest of their set starting with their song, “Mirror,” was call my dad.

I didn’t even wait to get to a relatively quiet spot; I could hear the line ringing on the other end for maybe four seconds, tops, and then it clicked and my dad’s voice rang as clear as day.

“Oshie! I saw it all – it was on TV! The music channel – they were showing the whole thing! Now even more news stations are talking about it!” my dad started, hardly even pausing between words. “Everybody thinks it’s the best thing in recent music history! There are even conspiracy theorists!”

“Dad – Dad! I get it,” I snorted. “That’s why I called – I wanted to let you know I’m fine and I got out unscathed. We’re all safe. Nobody got hurt. It was amazing.”

He started laughing real hard. “Caramba! The whole thing had Tracey and I on edge! Everybody’s talking about how amazing the special effects were and I just have to laugh about it because I know that nothing was simulated and it was all so real, and sitting there watching it was so…so…surreal, I guess you could say.”

“Good to get a second opinion then,” I said, not really sure of what else to say. All I wanted to do was let him know I was alive, because there wasn’t a lot of other things I could address – at least not over the phone. “I just wanted to let you know I’m alive and we should be back in Chicago sometime at the butt crack of dawn -”

My dad cut me off. “I knew you could do it, Oshie. I knew it all along since you had all that lightning shoot from you when I was in danger. And I want you to know that I’ve always been proud of you, but right now I’m even prouder of you and I’m going to brag to our entire family about this and tell you that you were in on those ‘special effects.’”

I was smiling so hard my cheeks hurt at that point; there was no way he could see it at the moment, so I had to say something to not be a freak. “Thanks, papá. That means a lot.”

Tegan had walked over and saw me chatting away with my dad, so she just punched my elbow and yelled into the receiver, “What’s up, Papa Olayos?!”

On the other line, my dad laughed and said, “I mean it, Oshie – I’m proud of you and I love you. And tell Tegan I said hello and that I’m proud of her, too!”

“I will,” I told him, looking at her and sticking my tongue out, “and I love you too, Dad.”

“I’ll talk to you later – call me when you get off the plane, okay?” he added, chipper as ever.

“Yup yup, I’ll call,” I assured, “I’ll see you later, Dad. Keep watching the news! Maybe they’ll mention me by name.”

He laughed again, and then we hung up.

Tegan was hanging onto my arm and when I put my phone away, she let out the most wicked squeal of happiness I’d ever imagined would come from her, and I knew the exact reason why. “We fuckin’ did it!” she gushed, cussing a little more directly than I thought she would.

For that reason, I had to laugh again and reply with, “You kiss your mother with that mouth? I mean, I get your point, but…”

She punched my arm again, but kept holding on in cheer.

Like they just saw us and were holding off on asking us the tough questions, half of the band Plaster Caster scuttled over to us and were gawking again, their mouths twisting around words but saying nothing coherent.

Finally, their guitarist just said, “How did you do it?!”

“An elaborate network of special effects too complicated to disclose,” Tegan said so smoothly.

“But it was so real and lifelike!” their singer gushed, his voice cracking. “And the thing you did at that concert a little while ago where you saved our bassist – was that some kind of foreshadowing?!”

Tegan pressed her lips together, her eyes wide. “Y-yes.”

“Well, everyone’s totally buzzing about it,” the guitarist gushed, excitement beaming from her face, “and this was a really good publicity move for Put’emup, Put’emup. You guys are really lucky to have won that contest, to be a part of this.”

They smiled at us once again and then went backstage again to prepare for their set, which was right after Put’emup, Put’emup’s.

After that, Tegan just had to glance up at me and then we both broke into the biggest laughs we shared in a long time. I felt like I didn’t have a tick in the back of my head that was keeping me from letting loose, nagging me at every moment that the biggest terror of my life was headed right towards the planet. And man, it felt good – almost as good as it felt to leap over that hurtle and set foot onstage for the first time after we jumped over it.

When Put’emup, Put’emup finished their most high-octane set of their young careers, they thanked the audience again for their composure and the way they handled the “chaos that had struck the planet at the wrong moment,” in Andy’s words.

As if to add more unnecessary theatrics to the mix, Anthony hopped on Andy’s back again and they sailed through the air off the stage, while Chance had Riley by his side as they surfed back to the scene, to the enormous crater they left in the ocean that needed some serious reworking.

Anthony was the one to burn the bug to a crisp using a constant flamethrower that dissolved its shell after a while of scorching, and that was when Andy whipped the ashes into a cyclone that Chance mixed with a water bubble and threw it way into the ocean. (The EPA had a field day with that, just so you know.) When the bug was completely gone, Riley took the responsibility of restoring the earth to its natural position underneath the ocean and flat on the floor while Chance kept the tides around the area under control.

Thus, the world as we knew it was back to its normal state, bug bits and all floating in the water far away from civilization, probably sunken into the depths of the ocean floor.

After all of the New Years partying that went on with bands coming and going off the stage and taking their rightful places, rocking the beach and just generally being awesome, it was time to head back to the plane and load our stuff back up to head back home. (Well, home for everyone except Chuck and Riley, who would have to go back to Gainesville soon.)

We didn’t have time or energy to party on the plane, since by the time we left it was midnight and we were all tripping over each other trying to stay awake enough to board it. So as soon as we hit the seats and we were flying, we slept like bricks. Nobody even had the energy to wake up and play some kind of prank on anybody else while they tried to sleep, because we’d come too far to pull that kind of crap, and besides – we had the entire next day to do that.

When we landed in Chicago and the pilot woke us up with the announcement, I looked out my window since I had taken the window seat from Tegan, and the sun wasn’t even out. There were faint hints of magenta sprinkled near the horizon, but other than that, it was still high time for us to be sleeping. That was probably why it took so long for us to get off of the plane and back to the band’s apartment, because we were so groggy we could hardly even tell whose bags belonged to who.

I had to wake up in order to drive Tegan and I back to our houses to drop off our bags and finally greet our parents for the first time since we all thought we were heading to our deaths. I called my dad in advance and he wasn’t awake to hear my voice, so I just left him a voicemail telling him I was coming home at barely 5 in the morning. The band told us to go home and take showers, take a nap and eat a good breakfast before we came back to the apartment to just chill out all day at their place.

After I said goodbye to Tegan for the morning, I slammed my duffel bag on the couch as soon as I walked through my front door. I knocked on my dad’s door to get him awake, and when he answered, a huge smile spread across his tired face and I just kind of fell into his arms, half out of exhaustion and half out of complete joy that I made it out of that alive.

“I’m proud of you, mijo,” he repeated. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, and then I mumbled, “Yeah, just super tired. I’mma go shower then I’m gonna take a nap. Then I’m gonna go to the band’s apartment.”

I followed through on my word and passed out in my bed for a good five hours, waking up at ten in the morning to the smell of coffee and the sight of bright white snow falling outside my window. Stretching and yawning to wake up even more, I got up and put on a shirt, heading outside to see my dad sitting across from Ms. Tracey at the dinner table, a mug of coffee in his hands. Also sitting at the table was Tegan, her hair a bit wavy from not straightening it, though I doubt that was the first thing she cared about at the moment. She smiled at me when I walked in, and I let out a roar of a yawn again, scratching my stomach.

“Good, you’re awake,” my dad said, grinning warmly. “The band called Tegan earlier. Apparently they’re having a big party that’s gonna start anytime, and you’re invited, of course.”

Could that day have gotten any more perfect?

“And these two old farts are coming along with us,” Tegan joked, pointing to our parents.

Her mom rolled her eyes while my dad just shot her a dirty look.

And as I rolled the thought around in my head that morning, getting dressed and suiting up for trudging through the beautiful snow on the way to my car to drive us all to the apartment, I had to take a moment and think about all of the imperfections that built on each other to form what might have been the most perfect time of my life.

All those times of worrying about the future and practicing accordingly, all that tension I had to watch between not just Andy and Anthony, but Chuck and Riley and Shira and everyone, all of those times I had to look to a comic book character to be a sort of role model. None of us were perfect despite how much we strived to be, under the impression that it was necessary to be successful. Yet somehow, that made victory taste that much sweeter.

Maybe that was why the band got completely drunk in the afternoon when the party got officially underway. Maybe that was why Shira showed up again, surprising us all with a voluntary visit that had nothing to do with Mick organizing it, and the fact that she looked at us as equals in that moment. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel so awkward and like I didn’t have to force a conversation with anybody to feel comfortable. Everything just came so much more naturally to me.

I could still make sparks on command if I wanted to. The band was doing stupid stuff with their own powers when they were busy being drunk and friendly again, like how Andy was making flurries of snow on the balcony or how Anthony was melting them with fire, how Mick was giving everybody flowers and Chance was trying to see how long he could keep a stream of water outside before it froze.

I guess the rest of us weren’t into that kind of stuff. It may have been the fact that they were drinking or how we were all loaded down with so much more high school crap looming ahead of us that we just didn’t feel like revisiting one more thing that gave us pressure, even for one night. I mean, I had even found out later on that week that I’d gotten accepted into the visual arts program at the University of Chicago alongside Tegan – if there was anything better that could’ve happened at that moment, I would’ve sworn I was dead and in Heaven.

Well, I guess it was pretty funny to watch Ms. Tracey and Mick duke it out in Dance Party Evolution after they beat everyone else at the game. And it was awesome when the band not only ordered pizza to celebrate, but also got cinnamon sticks and garlic bread to go with it. I won’t even lie and say that my dad’s karaoke duet with me as we sung a Cher song wasn’t completely hilarious. Most of all, I can’t deny the fact that the epic hugs that were passed around that night were amazing on so many levels. Seriously, I got seven hugs in a row from each of the other guardians, even Riley, who had vehemently expressed his distaste with human contact.

When I got to Andy, he even whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry, Johnny’s coming back real soon. I’ll make sure of it.” I could smell the alcohol on his breath, and still, there was a genuine edge in his voice that made me really and truly believe it. It was probably his huge contagious smile, too.

It wasn’t a goodbye so much as it was a see-you-later. We’d come too far as guardians to just go our separate ways at that point. Plus, with Tegan and I living minutes away from the band and with Riley and Chuck just a few clicks away after we added them on Facenook, there was no reason to believe we couldn’t knit back up and wow the world yet again.

There were sparks tingling my whole body when I left the apartment that night with Tegan and our parents. The lightning scar was still etched into my skin and would continue to raise questions from a ton of people for as long as I lived, yet somehow, it didn’t look so out-of-place. I even kind of liked it as I looked down at it when we went down the elevator in the building. Static electricity popped against my fingers as I opened my car door and that’s when I realized that I’d been buzzing for a few minutes in excitement, at the world of possibilities I discovered at my fingertips after I’d gotten past such a daunting task.

If I could do that, I could do anything. And for that, I just had to smile.