Earth to Me

It took me a while to get used to being the talk of the town. The city, rather, since I’m from Chicago and it’s a little bigger than just a town.

Okay, well…maybe the whole country.

Oh, who am I kidding? If Put’emup, Put’emup was only on the rise before we all defended the planet from some giant alien bug that was bound to kill everybody, then after they pulled that stunt and called it “theatrics,” they were on their way to becoming rock legends. And they were only half of the guardian team that made up the eight of us, so that meant that the rest of us were left reeling from the secondhand madness that surrounded them after their incredible breakthrough.

It was the best day of my life, and it was also one of the worst. It was January 2nd, 2012, when it all went down, when all of our training had paid off in the form of defending Earth from a space cockroach sent out by a distant planet as a means of destroying all of the other heavenly bodies in its way.

Of course it happened during a concert that Put’emup, Put’emup was scheduled to be at, and of course it all happened during their set, meaning that while they rocked through their award-winning full-length album, the four of us teenage guardians were backstage until our time had come.

To make a long story short, everything ended well, and that following Monday, those of us who weren’t in the best pop-punk band of the 2010s had to go back to school.

Me and my best friend Tegan were used to being completely ignored by the rest of the student population. Even our teachers thought we were destined for namelessness, judging from the way we were never singled out for having decent grades (Tegan always did better than me, though), and even if we were both pretty good at art, our art teacher was never really floored by the things we produced in her class, either.

But since we were both struck by lightning at a Put’emup, Put’emup concert at the start of our 2011 summer, things just got bigger in scale – our group of friends, our constant worries, and after it all came to a head, the hollow chatter that echoed through the hallways of our high school seemed to multiply as well.

I can’t even begin to explain how weird it was to have all eyes on me when we walked through the front doors of our alma mater. Tegan had just laughed it off and elbowed me every so often when she caught my eyes getting a little too wide in shock.

I know I’ve said it before, but Put’emup, Put’emup became absolutely huge after that happening. The concert where we all showed our elemental powers was broadcasted on every major news station around the world; it wasn’t just confined to music journals on the Internet. People were calling it the best entertainment display of the new millennium.

So, when people kept asking us how they did it, how much it cost to pull it off, why they chose us to accompany them, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Mostly, I was just thrown off by the fact that my peers were actually talking to me. I’m a pretty tall guy, but I never went out of my way to make myself known, and the fact that I’m Mexican always sort of worked against me, despite our melting pot of Chicago.

“Oshie,” Tegan had whispered to me when we got to first period on the day we came back from our fateful winter break, “dude, this is the most attention we’ve gotten in the past four years.”

“I know,” was all I could say back to her.

Our lips were sealed. Not a single soul could know about our world-saving endeavor, save for our parents, and even if Put’emup, Put’emup played it up as if it was a real thing, it was just insane enough for people to not believe it at all. So we were in a pretty good position.

The rest of our senior years flew by in a blur. It was a mess of exams and prom and graduation, and then before I knew it, summer had invaded and I was stuck in a fast-food job to scrape together some cash for ramen noodles at college.

Tegan and I were still home in Chicago while our fellow guardian teens, Chuck and Riley, were still living in Gainesville, Florida, finishing their high school careers as well. Since we were on opposite ends of the country, we couldn’t see them very often, so we just relied on Facenook and text messages to keep in touch with them. Let me tell you, they were just as worlds-apart from us as they ever were.

From the things they told us every few nights, they were getting an apartment together downtown (does Gainesville even have a downtown?), and only Chuck was taking a crack at college. He was gonna do a few community college classes while keeping up his job as a waiter, and Riley was bent on breaking into either music or baseball. As it was, he was a bartender at a local venue. We didn’t get many specifics, and God knows we didn’t know how they could live together with all the bickering they did.

2012 was shaping up to make everything as back-to-normal as it could be. Even the summer was going as I expected, despite the absolute dread that loomed over my head, which was the painful reminder that I wouldn’t be living at home in just a few months.

And every time I cut open Subhero’s “freshly baked” bread to prepare yet another sub for one more suburban mom who was watching her waistline, I had to remind myself that it was all for the best.

I had to be an adult at some point, even if I already turned eighteen in May and was officially old enough to buy cigarettes.

“Um, hmm…okay, I’m not hungry enough for a twelve-inch, but I’m too hungry for a six-inch, but…”

The sudden voice snapped me out of thought – and just as a pointer, getting lost in a daze at work probably isn’t the best thing to do.

I jerked my head up to see who was ordering, since I was stationed at the front of the line to make the bare-bones of the subs while my manager was stationed at the vegetables. This guy was the only customer there at the moment.

Wait a second. He was tall – taller than me – and his messy blonde hair and orange lightning scars just absolutely gave him away all at once.

I hesitated before saying his name. “…Chance?”

His freckled face broke into a knowing smile, and he stepped forward. “I was waiting for you to remember me, man. Andy said you were working today so I figured I’d stop by.”

(Of course he’d tell Chance I was working today.) I nodded ahead at the pizza restaurant in same plaza as the Subhero I worked at. “Tegan’s almost done with her shift over at Pizza Plethora. Are you gonna swing by there, too?”

Chance opened his mouth to say something, but as luck would have it, he was cut off by the door’s chime as Tegan strutted in like she owned the place.

“Honey, I’m home! What’s up, Osh -” she started. Then, she caught sight of Put’emup, Put’emup’s guitarist standing in the middle of the deserted restaurant, one of the very same people who teamed up with us to save the world, and she stopped dead in her tracks. “…Chance? Is that you?”

Chance glanced at the wall before looking back at her. “Uh, yeah, it’s me.” Not a twinge of sarcasm, either. It was like he had to think about his own identity.

Okay, if this is starting to sound like a family reunion, that’s because in all honesty, we hadn’t seen Put’emup, Put’emup nearly as much as we had all throughout the course of 2011. They were getting to be pretty coveted on late-night TV shows and magazine photo-shoots, and from what they told us over Facenook, they were even starting to write new songs amongst all the hubbub.

The strings that tied us together never completely withered away, though, and that’s what kept me from stuttering like an idiot around somebody who seemed a little too famous to be eating at a fast-food restaurant.

Tegan walked right over to Chance and hugged him, asking, “How’s it been, dude?”

“Same old, same old,” he laughed. “You live in an apartment with your band mates, everything gets a little old after a while. I didn’t know you worked at Pizza Plethora. Make me a free pizza.”

She just hip-checked him while he stared at Subhero’s menu some more. My manager was making herself busy by wiping down the counter, polite enough to not interfere on what probably would’ve been a very weird conversation if she was one of the millions of people who knew about our saving-the-world incident.

“How are you guys? I feel like I haven’t seen you in years,” he went on, scratching at the peach fuzz on his chin. “Same thing with Chuck and Riley, but at least you guys live in the same city as us.”

I just shrugged. Nothing too important had happened, except maybe graduating, and all of the guys already knew about that; they sent us cards and a couple of bucks each. “We leave for college in a few months, but there’s nothing else really going on.”

Chance’s green eyes got wide all of a sudden. “Oh, damn, that’s right! What school are you guys going to?”

At the same time, Tegan and I both said, “University of Chicago.”

He just smiled real wide at us for a few seconds before nodding and saying, “Good choice, good choice. That’s where all of us in the band met.”

I was about to say, “I know,” but then I realized it might be a little bit creepy. When I was around the band, I had to dial back the knowledge I had from reading too many music websites late at night.

Chance aimlessly tapped on the glass as he looked at the menu again. The smell of bread and preserved lunch meats filled the air, which was enough to make anybody mad with hunger, and yet it seemed to be the last thing on his mind. “Listen, guys, do you wanna meet at our apartment sometime? Like, before the end of summer? We’ll get Chuck and Riley up, too. We’ll make time for it since it’ll be after we do a few shows with Fire Motion in July.”

Tegan and I shared a look of complete approval before she eagerly answered, “Hell yeah! That’d be awesome!”

He grinned at us again and folded his arms over his lanky chest. “Awesome. I’ll let Andy and Anthony and Mick know you’re into it. Shira can come too, if she wants.”

“I’ll tell her about it,” Tegan smiled, blushing. Shira was Tegan’s alien girlfriend. No, seriously – she was a freak in more ways than one, but she was also literally an alien from a different planet. Daltia, to be exact. She helped us out last year and, well, things snowballed from there.

“Alright, cool,” Chance said coolly, walking towards the front door. “I’ll see you guys later, then! Keep in touch!” Turning back to us to wave goodbye, he exited the restaurant, leaving me, Tegan, and my manager to just kind of stare at him.

Tegan was squinting at me when she finally broke the silence. “He never actually ordered any food, did he?”

“Nope,” I smirked.

Honestly, I can’t say I was surprised.

Although, considering the things that had uprooted me in recent times, it was getting harder and harder to surprise me. It would take another lightning strike to shake me loose – but I wasn’t about to jinx myself and wish for even more crap on my plate.