Earth to Me

Have I told you about the time when Shira threw a guy out of one of the concerts? No? Okay, well, yeah, that happened.

She came down to Earth for one Sunday, and it just so happened to be a show day, meaning that she couldn’t spend as much time with Tegan as she would’ve liked to. We were in San Diego that day, and the amount of snark in her tiny alien body was incredible, so we all just decided to let her stay for the concert since her complaining definitely wouldn’t have subsided if we kicked her off the planet.

It started off like any other show. Violence Ladies stormed through their set with an undying amount of energy, Brianna headbanging along with the songs that Winter wrote and shredded. When they were done with their encore (“How the Losers Get Their Kicks”), it was a ten-minute interlude between bands. Chuck and Riley scuttled all around the stage to help set up as usual, and Tegan and I were once again swamped with customers while Shira stood next to our booth with her arms crossed.

I should’ve seen it coming sooner or later, but there was one guy who was pretty obviously a complete dick. He had a t-shirt that read, “If you don’t like my attitude, why are you looking at my shirt?” and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. When it was his turn in line, he just stared at Tegan with beady little glassed-over eyes, and I anticipated something horrible.

“Can I help you?” Tegan said. There was an exhausted edge to her voice, which was understandable.

“Um, yeah, sweetheart,” he chortled, “grab me the boxing glove shirt in a large, and let me see you bend over while you do it.”

When the situation called for it, Tegan could definitely bore holes into anybody’s head with her stare. “…Excuse me?”

“You heard me, cutie pie.” God, the confidence in his gross voice was just disgusting on so many levels.

I stood up next to Tegan and hoped that the fact that I was a head taller than her intimidated the guy, but I didn’t really plan out much of anything beyond that. “Please go away, sir. Your creepiness really isn’t appreciated here.”

Once again, he laughed and managed to sound like a garbage disposal. “Yeah, whatever.”

I guess Shira got the memo and had picked up on that guy’s earthly insulting words, and that’s what cued her to jump clear over the merch table and grab him by the shirt collar. Since she was tiny compared to him, she had to drag him down in order to bring him to her level, but somehow, it seemed like she was the one rightfully stooping down.

“What did you just say to her?” she spat angrily, the words coming from a locked jaw.

“Hey, what the fuck is your problem, bitch? I was complimenting her!” he retorted. “Get off me!”

“That is not a compliment, and until you learn how to be nice, I think your time here is over,” Shira continued, a death grip on his stained t-shirt. “I do not want to see you ever again, and I especially do not want to see you harassing any more of my Earth acquaintances. Do you understand?”

“What the f -” he began, but he was immediately cut off by two things – a knuckle sandwich courtesy of Shira herself, and the giant roar of the crowd as Put’emup, Put’emup entered the stage.

He toppled to the floor and everybody around the area had jumped back, creating what looked like the world’s tiniest mosh pit, only less violent. I caught a few swear words buzzing around my head as it happened, and Tegan was actually laughing along with the people who saw what had gone on.

Of course this caught the attention of the band currently onstage, and Anthony was the first one who spoke up about it despite Chance being the first to point.

“Creepy pervert?” Anthony had said into the mic, his first words of the night. Boy, he caught on fast.

Tegan nodded furiously and pointed at Shira, who had lifted the guy up by his shirt and was then dragging him out of the venue.

Anthony snickered as he put his hands on his hips. “Good, I’m glad that’s taken care of. Let’s hope he doesn’t try to come back in, ‘cause his ass isn’t coming anywhere near here again.”

That prompted yet another big applause that nearly shook the house down with its volume. Tegan glanced over at the scene as Shira literally threw him out of the front door, which was just in a corner that led to the outdoors. When it was all said and done, she smiled up at me and said, “God, she’s the best.”

She really was. Anybody who could hurt someone harmful in cold blood was alright in my book, that’s for sure.

Shira walked back over to the merch booth and snaked an arm around Tegan’s waist, pulling her close and kissing her on the forehead. Needless to say, nobody was even remotely rude to either of us for the rest of the night.

------

In retrospect, I should’ve seen it coming. It had happened so often before that it was weird to have it not happen, so when it finally returned, I should’ve been all eyes and ears, ready to face it once again.

It was right after the halfway point of the tour when I got the first nightmare I’d had in a while. Until then, it was all blank dreams, ones I either didn’t remember or just didn’t happen, and I had chalked it up to the fact that I was pretty happy and stress-free for once in my young life.

I was sleeping on one of the bottom bunks in the bus, and it was going so well. Everybody was snoozing peacefully or whispering quietly amongst themselves, and while I slipped into slumber, my limbs were unusually heavy in my descent into dreamland. I didn’t realize it until it was too late – I couldn’t jerk awake and stop it from happening altogether, and then I was locked back into my own personal hell.

I was still in Hitchcock Hall for some reason, in my same old dorm, and there was still nothing around me except my bed. I blinked awake in the dream and saw the moonlight pierce through the window, guiding my hazy eyes to the familiar object I had seen too often to count.

The alarm clock, still flipped over, still read, “hELL.”

At least, I thought it did – I blinked, my eyes shutting at a sloth-like speed, and it changed. In a flash, it read, “hELP.”

A brilliant white flash had set me into panic mode in the dream, and in an instant, I jumped out of bed and tried to scream while no sound came out. My legs were jello and I fell over when I leaped down, and my head hit the floor, knocking me out of the nightmare and sending me careening through universes back to my own reality.

As usual, I woke up breathless and in a cold sweat that was only worsened by the air conditioning. This time, though, it was speedy – I was awake quicker than ever.

That meant that I could see Tegan kneeling by my bed, her hands on my arms, faster than I ever could before.

It dawned on me that she had never even seen the nightmares in action or what happened when I had them, and for a while I just stared at her without blinking. She was in her pajamas, looking just as tired as I felt; her jaw practically touched the floor.

In that same moment, I realized just who else was gathered outside my bunk: the entirety of Put’emup, Put’emup, Chuck and Riley, and Brianna, rubbing her eyes. The motor in the bus wasn’t running and it felt like we were just pulled over into a random rest stop.

I sat up the best I could in the bunk, propped up on my elbows. “What…”

“There was a power surge,” Tegan whispered, panic in her face.

I honestly, truly wanted to cry. There was probably nothing stopping me from doing it, too, but the words had simply shook me like an earthquake and left me spinning again. I just weaseled out, “Oh, God…”

Andy, his five-o-clock shadow coming in nicely, looked on in horror. “That – has this happened before?”

I couldn’t look anybody in the eye anymore; I just nodded slowly and wiped my face with the collar of my shirt.

The air was quiet. Riley was the one to break it again. “That’s been happening, hasn’t it?” No malice in his face, no joking in his words. He brought up what I thought he brushed off.

My heart could’ve stopped beating and I wouldn’t have known it – I hadn’t said a word about it to anybody in the band, simply because I knew what the reaction would be. My eyes were wide at first, then I gave in and just nodded. If I said anything, I might have cried.

“Jesus, Oshie,” Andy sighed, touching my arm, “why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

I just bit my lip, feeling my throat tighten up. There are very few dignified ways to cry, and doing so after everybody finds out one of your secrets is not one of them. I focused on happy things while Tegan took the fall, hugging me around the shoulders.

“He didn’t want anyone to worry,” she spoke quietly.

“Oh, joy, look everyone, we got a martyr over here,” Riley groaned, low enough that he probably thought nobody would hear him.

Anthony snapped his head back and could’ve stabbed him with the daggers in his eyes. “Can you fuckin’ stop being a dildo for, like, two seconds? I’m gonna fucking strangle you.”

“Guys, chill, okay? We’re all fine, the bus is fine, nobody’s hurt, and – Oshie, are you okay?” Mick finally spoke up, shuffling between Andy and Tegan on his knees. “You didn’t zap yourself, did you?”

I shook my head; my breathing was getting better. “I don’t know why it happens. It – it – it happened out at college.”

Out at college, it was just one person waking me up: Murray. He would text me every so often and shoot me a message on Facenook, but it was like he didn’t want to bring it up again – he never mentioned the nightmares. Now I had a whole team of people at my side, on their knees next to my bunk.

“Well, I’m going back to bed. Be safe with…whatever it is you’re doing, guys,” Brianna yawned.

Chance aimlessly said, “Goodnight, Bri.”

She climbed back up into her bed like the rest of her snoozing bandmates, leaving just the guardians to fester over my horrible luck.

“Is it, like…what happens? Do you get sleep paralysis or something?” Mick gently asked.

“Nightmares,” I just said. “The same one all the time. And it always causes a power surge. I dunno why, but at least at this point I know for sure that I’m the one causing them.” My mouth was running on its own motor; I was sorting my thoughts before I could even think them.

My scars were bright purple along my arms, somehow seeming to stretch even further. Every inch of me ached, inside and out.

“Maybe it’s built-up electricity,” Chance suggested. He sat criss-cross on the bus floor. “You never use it, do you?”

“I don’t have a reason to,” I said.

“That’s probably it, then,” Andy shrugged. It made sense, after all.

Chuck finally said something. “But then what about his nightmares? What’s causing those?”

Tegan and I looked at each other; her lips were pressed firmly together like she was thinking real hard.

“It might be stress,” Mick said. “They say if you’ve got a lot on your mind, it makes you have weird dreams.”

I nodded along, not really taking it all to heart but keeping it in my head to make myself feel better.

Andy nudged my elbow with his own and laughed, “Maybe we can hook him up to a hamster wheel and use him as a generator for a little while. That might take a little electricity off his hands.”

I tried to smile back at him, but I really didn’t feel like doing anything, so I’m sure it came across as contrived.

“Or, maybe he’s just screwing with us and he’s really just having a bunch of wet dreams and he covers his ass by saying he’s having nightmares,” Riley said flatly. “I know how it is. You lose control of a lot of stuff when you’re in the moment.”

“Riley, please shut the fuck up,” Anthony hushed him again.

Andy glanced over at the scene and put his hand on Anthony’s before saying, “Okay, I have an idea.”

Before he even started talking, I dreaded what he was going to say.

“How about we keep an eye out for Oshie every night? One of us stays up for a few hours, makes sure he’s alright, and then someone else can do it for the rest of the night. We’ll rotate.” His face was dead tired, and when we met eyes for a second, I got the feeling he wasn’t just tired in general but tired of me.

I looked around; everyone looked tired of me at that moment.

Mick had bags under his eyes, Riley looked bored out of his mind, Chuck was twiddling his thumbs – it was unanimous. I was a burden. I had woken everybody up with a power surge that even freaked out the tour bus driver, who was still sitting up front. I was the reason why we were getting an hour behind schedule, the reason why they were losing precious sleep.

So I stared at my hands, my dumb hands that couldn’t even draw a straight line. There was nothing I wanted more than to chop them off and prevent myself from ever throwing another spark again, even if it meant being helpless if the world ever needed another rescue, even if it meant never being able to draw again.

“No,” I said stiffly. “You guys can go back to sleep. I can wake up on my own.”

“If we let you sleep through that, you could’ve hurt yourself,” Mick murmured. “That’s the last thing we need to happen. I dunno what’s going on, but we need to be as safe as possible right now.”

“Exactly,” Andy agreed. “Even if we don’t know what it is, we can still try to fight it.”

My hands were folded firmly in my lap, and I realized that if I didn’t say anything, I would just be losing without a reason. “I don’t want you guys to babysit me.”

Seven pairs of eyes were locked on me at that second, perplexed expressions on everybody.

“Babysit? What?” Chance said, crossing his arms.

“We’re not babysitting you, Oshie,” Anthony reassured me. “If we were babysitting you, you wouldn’t have any control over anything. We’re just making sure you don’t get hurt, okay?”

“But that’s the thing, I can’t control it. If I could, I wouldn’t have almost killed us just n-now.” It was a valiant effort, but my voice finally cracked. And when it did, everything else just shattered – the dam in my eyes broke down and I finally let out one big, pathetic sob. It was horrifying.

Tegan wrapped her arms tighter around me and I just buried my face in my hands, trying to hide the shame in my blubbering face. Voices were whispering all around me, hush-hush; I felt a hand smooth over my hair and suddenly everything went soft. I was a baby again, that was definitely set in stone.

“Shhh, you’re okay, c’mon, you’re alright,” Tegan whispered in my ear. (I couldn’t remember the last time I cried around her that wasn’t caused by a sad movie.) “Osh, we gotta make sure you’re safe.”

“Yeah,” Mick jumped in. My hands were still glued to my face, but judging from how close his voice sounded, I guessed he was the one mussing my hair. “Shit, I’d rather lose three hours of sleep and keep you alive than sleep on a crappy bed and risk you getting hurt.”

I took deep breaths and tried to stop sobbing like a lost kid in a department store. It took a while and we sat there for a good few minutes, but when I got the courage to peel my hands away from my face, everybody’s expression had changed from tired to…to something else. Sympathy, maybe?

Mick was smiling and so was Chance, but Andy’s eyebrows were pinched together in worry. Tegan was resting her head on my shoulder so I couldn’t see her. Anthony looked alert and so did Chuck, and Riley was gnawing on his lip. Okay, maybe it wasn’t sympathy. Still, it beat tired pity.

“I could just stay awake all day,” I finally mumbled. “I’ll drink coffee.”

Andy shook his head. “No, you’re getting some sleep. You need it, buddy.”

I opened my mouth to defy it all again, but nothing came out. It was like I was stuck back in my silent nightmare. My throat was sore and my muscles were on fire; I couldn’t speak and I didn’t want to argue in circles just to cry again.

“I’ll stay up tonight,” Tegan said, lacing her fingers together on the other side of my shoulders.

“Alright,” Andy added lowly. “Wake me up next, though. I’ll pick it up when you’re ready.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m gonna watch him the whole night. I wasn’t even tired anyway.”

I slowly blinked and tried to process it all. Everything was happening around me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“Are you sure?” Mick asked.

Tegan just nodded and shook me a little bit. When I made eye contact with her again, her blue eyes were all shiny, the same as they always were.

“Oshie, please don’t think we hate you for this,” Andy spoke, patting my knee. “It’s not your fault this is happening. And even if it was, we’d still wanna make sure you’re alright.”

“We can look into it a little more when we get home,” Anthony elaborated.

Mick said, “You’ve got us, dude. We’re here for you.”

Chance didn’t say anything but he just nodded, and so did Chuck and Riley, who both looked like they were also nodding off.

Again, I tried to smile, but it just wasn’t working. Tears were prickling at my eyes again and I blinked them away as quickly as I could.

Eventually, the group dissipated, everybody staring at me as they walked out of view, climbing back up into their bunks. The things they said to me on their ways out had blurred into each other; I was still stuck on the fact that I was an enormous baby who couldn’t handle a few weeks without screwing something up. I got a few hugs and that was it. The night was back to normal.

This time, though, Tegan sat in front of my bunk and kept the curtain pulled all the way open, the way I found it when I woke up. Her legs crossed, she ducked in order to see me on the floor.

I tried smiling at her, but it was no use. I had to wrench my eyes shut and a few tears slipped out.

She reached over and brushed the hair out of my face, gently shushing me, and all I could manage was, “I hate myself.”

“You shouldn’t,” she said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear her. “We’re gonna take care of you. I love you, Oshie. You’ll be okay.”

Minutes later, I was asleep. I had tear trails all over my face and I was probably sobbing well into my slumber, but Tegan held my hand all night, and that made it all worthwhile. Someday I would be fine, I told myself. Maybe not tonight. Probably not tomorrow night, either. But eventually I would be able to look back on everything and wonder why I was so scared in the first place.