Earth to Me

Tegan had no rust in her joints when she picked back up on her telekinesis. From the getgo, she was ready to start training again, and of course that meant hanging out in me and Murray’s dorm, rearranging our stuff right in front of us. She’d pick up my bed and flip it over while hardly even making a sound to raise suspicion, and when she was done for the day, she’d return everything back to its normal spot.

Murray, of course, was always amazed by it, begging her to do more out of sheer excitement, but we couldn’t do much outside of our room for fear of other people seeing. At one point she even lifted him up just with her mind, letting him float in the air, and let me tell you, he never shut up about how cool it was.

“You guys are superheroes! Literally fucking superheroes!” he had gushed.

I couldn’t do much beyond the controlled zap here and there, and even then, it took a lot of work to confine it. I had to balance all the air pressure and humidity present wherever I was in the room, and my aim had to be stellar. And I ended up frying a good chunk of the carpet, but it was nothing to shake a stick at.

In the end, I was able to turn our lights on and off without even leaving my bed, and I could turn my lamp off without hardly moving a muscle. I couldn’t get rid of the giant clump of static begging to come out, but I figured that time would come eventually. I already knew the little things, after all.

As it turned out, Put’emup, Put’emup never even got rid of their little workout room that Andy threw together when we were preparing for 2012. There were rubber dummies and fireproof targets that me and Anthony were able to practice on since we couldn’t go outdoors to practice, and one day Anthony called me up and asked if I’d be down with practicing there. So Tegan and I headed over one Sunday, and man, it felt nice to be able to fully shock something without risking murder.

Every other day, either Chance or Andy would come over to UChicago and invite us on a run, too. We’d accept the offer and shuffle around campus, horribly out of shape and wheezing like pigs from not doing it for so long, and we’d fit right in with the other students who did it on a regular basis. God, I always hated working out.

And it probably explained a lot about me, the fact that I hated running. I always just assumed that anybody who said they liked running was lying. But Chance was quiet when he jogged, and Andy always had a conversation up his sleeve, so maybe it was just me being bitter over my thunder thighs.

I didn’t know how it was supposed to make a difference anyway. Can’t run in space. Why did Put’emup, Put’emup seem to think it would be good for us?

There were a thousand things flying around my head at the moment, and one of those things were finals. They were quickly approaching, and although I was pretty confident about most of them, there was one for my drawing class that ended up kicking me right up my butt.

The assignment was to draw this elaborate still-life that our insane professor set up in the studio. Like, the entire thing, every single detail. The fact that it was filled with cow skulls, human ribcages, a few whole skeletons, metal stools, drapery, and the pipes in the ceiling didn’t make it any simpler. It was a hugely important drawing, and I needed something to blow everything else I’d ever done right out of the water.

So I decided that I’d draw the whole setup, and then I’d zoom in on one part and make a detail. Two drawings. It didn’t sound so bad in theory.

Well, I wanted to do it all in one go on the first Friday after the still life was set up, which was also conveniently the Friday before finals.

It was also the Friday before aliens from deep within the galaxy were set to try and destroy Earth and all the surrounding planets.

Put’emup, Put’emup was scattering about Chicago for a few radio shows, and they even flew Brianna and Winter from Violence Ladies up from Georgia. At first, I thought it was just a friendly gesture; they’d show their buddies around Chi-town, maybe we’d all hang out eventually. But it ended up going a little…um, weirder than that.

They were thinking ahead. Andy was apparently the one to realize that all of us had to be asleep to get to space, and so it was his idea to cram all eight of us guardians into my freakin’ dorm room and have some folks sleep on the floor. Because, of course, since I was the designated leader or something, we had to take up space in Breckinridge in me and Murray’s already-tiny room.

But with all of us asleep – they even invited Shira for extra support! – there had to be somebody watching over us. Murray would be a given. But who else could make sure we weren’t dead in our sleep? Who else knew about our ties and could be caught up to speed fairly quickly?

Brianna and Winter, apparently. They were musical geniuses, and Brianna had a degree in physics. According to the band, they didn’t believe a word of it until they just casually used their powers around the girls, but it was set – we’d have three guardians for the…um, guardians.

It was building itself in strange ways, just like the drawing that had been sitting in front of me since around six PM on the night I camped out in the studio with Tegan.

I started with a chalk backbone, capturing the gesture and essence of the still life. A box of bones on the right side of the drawing, a skeleton casually draped over the side over a cascade of dirty old sheets. A fake tree in front of a throne of stools, while cow skulls were stacked up in random places along a table. Ribcages in random places, intertwined with arm bones and feet, hands and legs.

It hurt to look at. The pale yellow chalk sketch I conjured up barely contrasted with the washed-out gray of the newsprint I was drawing on.

After laying down the base, I sighed. Tegan, next to me and already measuring proportions with a string, smirked and said, “It’ll be over before ya know it, Osh.”

Easy for her to say. She already had everything blocked out with rough proportions, boxes of guidelines that were already shaping up to look nice on paper.

I stared at my sketch for a while and then grabbed my string, doing what she had already done on hers. I scaled everything down to make it fit, and within half an hour I knew where the composition was going to fit.

Meanwhile, Tegan was hacking away at a ribcage, intricate details stemming from her charcoal pencil. It figured. She was always better at actual drawing than I was. Sometimes it just got discouraging, watching her at her easel while she marked the paper with her eyes glued to the subject. She could make a line perfect without looking at the page, the exact way our professor taught us. I had to glance back every second to make sure I wasn’t crooked.

My drawing style was different than the more exaggerated one I adopted when I wasn’t drawing something for class. My lines were heavy and dark, unlike Tegan’s light, intricate strokes with perfect line quality. Most of the time, my drawings ended up smudged so badly that I had to erase in order to build up a form. Professors thought it was sort of interesting; I’d gotten A’s in the drawing classes I’d taken.

They said it showed signs of thinking. Moving things around, tweaking compositions to make it look more interesting – all things I had done without even wondering about the outcome. I worked to get it done. According to them, a professional works to get it right. Maybe I tricked them into thinking I was a professional.

Tegan was a pro, but at least she always intended to be. When I watched her at the easel next to me, she was calm and cool with her pencil, her hand steady with her pinky anchored to the page so she could pivot her wrist and not smudge a thing. An hour in, she was done with a ribcage and moved on to a skeleton.

And I just drew a stack of cow skulls, something we started off drawing that seemed so simple that day. I had to tell myself that the whole page would be filled up before I knew it, and the hours would melt by, and the end result would make every bit of aching feet worth it.

My pastels smelled like old people and the charcoal was manifesting itself in my nostrils. Two hours in, I got sick of pushing my hair back so Tegan lent me a headband she kept in her backpack.

She also told me, “That’s already looking awesome. It looks like you’ve already been working on it for, like, two weeks.”

Smudged charcoal, red and blue guidelines, and pukey pastels all mixed together can work wonders, I guessed.

“Yeah, but at least yours is neat,” I nodded towards her art.

“Mine looks boring as hell,” she rolled her eyes. “I’m just trying to get it outta the way. I wanna get outta here before midnight, at least.”

Six hours on one drawing? It was definitely feasible for us. Our professors had told us horror stories of kids spending twelve hours drawing one skeleton, for crying out loud. We were good at bullcrapping, at the very least.

“Yeah, me too, but I wanna do a detail drawing, too,” I groaned, yawning. My feet were starting to kill me, and I couldn’t even sit down because my point of view would change and screw up all of the perspective in my drawing.

Tegan shook her head with a smirk. “You’re crazy, but you’re gonna get an A, at least.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” I mumbled.

The hours melted by. The sunset streaked pink through the high windows, and it eventually faded to navy blue, stars dotting in the distance. Cars rushed by and brought some life into the building, since me and Tegan were dead silent and weren’t even listening to music; nobody else was in the room following our insane example.

I had a few more things left to draw in my main piece, but Tegan was almost done with the skeleton she was carving out on paper. The imagery was vivid in her art, lines coming to life in 3D despite being on paper, while mine still just looked like static chaos, if that makes sense.

It was about ten-thirty when someone opened the door behind us, the door creaking open in a way that gave me goosebumps. Tegan and I looked behind us immediately.

But it was just Murray, all smiles, dressed down in gym shorts, flip-flops, and a faded t-shirt. He waved at us upon entry, carrying two bottles of fruit punch and two chocolate bars straight from the vending machine down the hall.

“Hey guys,” he greeted, “I got bored, so I just decided to come down here and see what you were workin’ on.”

“Thanks, I need a break,” Tegan grunted, stretching as though we’d been sleeping the whole time. She took one of the candy bars and I took the other, wiping my hands against my dirty basketball shorts.

Murray looked around at the studio. He’d been in there a few times, being an art history major and also being a major art appreciator, but he’d never seen it at its creative peak. He stared at our art, stroking his chin in mock-thought before finally gushing, “Jesus Christ, you two are awesome.”

Tegan smiled confidently. “Thanks, dude. This piece of shit is a pain in my ass, to be honest.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s caused you any problems, Teeg,” he went on, observing her careful lines even closer. “Great line quality.”

“Jeez, now you sound like our professor,” she rolled her eyes, shoving him away. “Go look at Oshie’s, his is better. He needs a break, too.”

I made a whiny noise when he started to walk over to my workstation, charcoal pencils scattered along the easel with my string and pastels in random places on nearby stools. He scooted his way right in front of my art, leaning in and squinting, cocking his head like a real art critic, and then he stood up straight with his hands behind his back.

“Mother of God,” he whispered, “we have our Frida Kahlo.”

“As much as I love Frida Kahlo,” I grunted, “I think you’re only saying that because I’m Mexican.”

He mussed my hair, messing up the hair I carefully held back with the headband. “I’m just screwin’ with you, dude. I’m just saying, this is kickass. The composition is great, the lines are stellar, and it’s all coming together really well.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I couldn’t see what he saw.

“And he’s gonna do another one after he’s done with that,” Tegan boasted, already going back to work on hers.

Murray looked surprised. “He is? Damn, Osh. You’re killin’ me here. You know how boring it is in our dorm when you’re not there?”

“You could stay here and keep him company,” Tegan shrugged.

“I could…” He slowly turned back to me, a smile spreading across his face. “What do you say? Can I hang out here?”

“I mean, there’s no rule against it,” I laughed a little. Truth be told, I didn’t want to be alone in the studio after Tegan left, and Murray was one of my favorite people. It’d be a nice way to whisk away my second drawing. “You can stay, if you want. It might…I might be a while, though.”

“Ah, no problem,” he said without a care in his voice. “Anything beats bein’ alone, my main man.”

He was right. Tegan finished her drawing within half an hour while we all mindlessly chatted and complained about finals, and she packed up and washed her hands at the filthy sink. She closed her giant drawing pad, the 24x36-inch one we were all supposed to have, and she tucked it under her arm, bidding us adieu.

But Murray’s face twisted up as he stood up from the stool he was sitting on. He said he could walk her back to Breckinridge. Tegan looked at the wall for a moment before just nodding and saying it was probably a good idea. Thus, Murray left me alone for a few minutes while he walked Tegan back on the cusp of midnight, never a good time to be alone on an open college campus.

He came back about twenty minutes later, two more chocolate bars in his hands. I took one but I didn’t eat it; my hands probably had a good centimeter of charcoal and pastel caked to them at that point, even though my stomach was growling up a storm.

“You’re hungry, dude,” Murray deadpanned. “C’mon, I’ll feed it to you. I’ll buy you dinner when you’re done, too.”

I shot him a funny look, but in the end he peeled away the wrapper and we ended up in a very odd position that would’ve been hard to explain if somebody walked in. There’s no straight way for one man to feed another man a candy bar, that’s for sure.

Before too long, I finished up my first drawing and flipped back the page to see a blank one. I’d be zooming in on one of the skeletons, taking careful detail in sketching the ribs and spine, hoping to make it look as lifelike as possible. I didn’t hesitate – I scooted my easel closer, blocking out the gesture in chalk, measuring out basic proportions that would definitely change upon closer examination.

When the backbone was done (not the actual spine I was drawing, but the basic blocks of the piece), I gave in and grabbed a stool to sit in. The proportions hardly changed, anyway. I hadn’t even started drawing it yet, so it wouldn’t make a difference.

When my legs were busy cramping up a storm as I sat, I sighed for a long time and ran my gross fingers through my even-grosser hair.

“You alright?” Murray said, scooting his stool up next to me. His phone was out, playing some tunes on a low volume; we were cycling through a Modern Baseball album on shuffle.

“Yeah,” I sighed, cracking my knuckles. “You know, you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”

He shrugged a little bit. “But I wanna hang out here. I wanna keep you company, at least. That, and make sure you don’t pass out on the way back to our dorm from exhaustion.” He held up his arm and motioned it all around the room. “I mean, look at this. This place is a wasteland. Your only company is skeletons.”

I had to smile at that. “I do appreciate your company, so thanks for that, at least.”

He elbowed me, combing my tangled hair back away from the headband. “No problem. That’s a good look for you, by the way.”

“Quiet, you.” I glanced back at the bare-bones drawing I was about to tackle. “God, I don’t wanna do this,” I groaned, my voice sleepy even to me.

“You can do it. You got through one drawing, and you’re not doing as much for this one, so it’ll be even quicker,” he encouraged, giving me a thumb-up.

Before I even knew what I was saying, I was yawning and talking at the same time, letting something slip out of my mind. “I’m just stressed out, that’s all.”

“Yeah?” he said calmly, leaned forward in his seat, his arm propped up on my shoulder. “Tell me all about it, Oshie.”

It was too late to back out and I knew it, but I tried to salvage my dignity. “It’d just be me venting about everything. You don’t wanna hear about that.”

“If you need to get something off your chest, there’s no better way than venting about it,” he suggested, raising his eyebrows.

“Well,” I sighed loudly, “I guess the main thing is about this Thursday. The attack that all the guardians are supposed to team up for.”

“The one that you’re all gonna totally kick ass at, therefore saving the universe?” he said, winking.

I appreciated his optimism, honestly. But it didn’t really ring true to my tired state of mind. “Maybe. Or we get killed, or I get sent off on my own and completely screw everything up, even though everybody’s been telling me that I’ll be alright.”

Murray was quiet. He bit his lip and stared at me for a while.

“I mean, I don’t know anything about leadership. I don’t even like yelling at people, for God’s sake,” I rambled. “I haven’t intentionally really used my lightning in two years, and I’m not even good with it. When I did use it that New Year, I hardly even got to make a dent. It was mostly Anthony that actually killed the bug. I’m gonna screw up somehow, I just know it.”

“No you’re not,” he said weakly. “Just from what I’ve seen, you’ve gotten good at controlling it, at least.”

I slumped my shoulders, everything fully settling in. “It’s still scary. And it’s even scarier since my mom is the one who told me about it in the first place. Okay – if you hadn’t seen your dead mom since you were four, what would your first impression be if she told you that you had to defend the universe again? You’d be horrified, right? Well, that’s me times a million.”

Murray never seemed to know what to say about my mom, and I didn’t blame him. Even Tegan avoided the subject sometimes, and she was there for me when she died.

“I didn’t even think she knew I was a guardian. God, for a while I didn’t even think she was still somewhere in the universe. I thought she was just in the ground. When I stopped dreaming about her as a kid, that’s when I stopped thinking she was even a thought to God.” I didn’t even know what I was saying – my mind was faster than my mouth, and it explained the look of confusion across Murray’s pale face. “And it was hard enough to get my dad to believe in the guardian shit in the first place, but it was even harder to tell him that Mom was in with it, too.”

Murray squeezed my shoulder. “I get where you’re coming from.”

“Of all the people to ever exist, my mom and dad probably have the most faith in me. And it sucks, you know? I hate it when people have expectations for me. That’s why I never expect anything. If something goes good, it’s a nice surprise, and when things go badly, I can’t say I had my hopes up over it. I wish all of you thought I was as dumb as I know I am.”

I was looking him in the eye the whole time. Even though I was red-faced and probably spit everywhere in my venting, he was unfazed, his hand still glued to my shoulder.

“I just…don’t know what I should do, and there’s no one to tell me what to do. I’m used to getting directions, not being thrown in the middle of something and having to figure it out on my own,” I trailed off, reverting my gaze back down to my filthy hands.

Murray remained silent for a moment, but then he just nodded to himself and rubbed my back before standing up in front of me.

“Oshie Diego Avila Olayos,” he said in a firm tone, almost looking like he was holding back a laugh. “Look around you. Look at what you have here.”

An empty art studio. Okay, whatever.

He jabbed a finger at my easel, careful not to touch the smudges. “You’ve got amazing artwork up your sleeve, you have an incredible amount of talent, and you’re definitely going to ace your drawing exam. You’ve already studied for your other exams from what I’ve seen, and even if you haven’t, you’re going to study really well because you’re getting this one out of the way early. You’re gonna ace the semester, so you shouldn’t worry about that.”

I don’t know why, but I was smiling a little bit.

“You’ve been training with your lightning – which, might I add, is still completely fucking awesome – and you can turn things on and off without even getting up. You’re a weapon. If anybody tries to harm you, you can just go all electric and murder them without even trying. You have nothing to worry about when it comes to saving the day, dude,” he continued.

“Don’t remind me, I’ve been careful about not killing anybody,” I sort of laughed.

“And really, this in itself is a milestone, Oshie. You just talked to me about the stress on your mind. You hardly ever wanna say what’s bothering you, and I never minded that – I figured it made you uncomfortable, so I never pushed it – but you just did it and let it out.”

By then, I was full-on grinning, especially since he was doing the same and it was so contagious.

He placed both hands on my shoulders, and then he said, “You’re only going up, Osh.”

And I’d have been perfectly fine with that ending, but he didn’t stop there. No, while we were busy staring at each other after such a weird pep talk, he just randomly leaned over and pressed a big fat kiss to my cheek.

I laughed my butt off and tried to lean away, but I couldn’t go very far without falling out of the chair. His goatee tickled my jawline and I felt his breath while he snorted along with me, grabbing my arms to make sure I didn’t fall, and when he let up, his lips smacked and echoed all through the lifeless room.

I was tongue-tied. My first instinct was the one I went with – I covered my face with my hands to hide the horrible blush that never seemed to let up, and only too late did I realize that my hands were, in fact, grubby with charcoal.

Meanwhile, Murray was laughing his pretty little head off, and it got even worse when I jerked my hands away after noticing the grime on my fingers.

For a moment I actually felt like crying. I was shaking after venting all of that to Murray, and I squished it all to bits by falling on my face when he tried to do something good for me. To keep any tears from coming, I just let go of everything and rubbed my face, knowing that I was only making matters worse.

“God, I’m a mess,” I choked out.

Two arms wrapped around me, and my dirty face was soon buried into Murray’s chest. He patted my back and rested his chin on my head, whispering, “No, you’re not. You’re awesome, Oshie.”

I sighed for a long time, nuzzling into the nice smell of whatever laundry detergent he used. “Sorry for staining your shirt right now.” I’m sure my voice was muffled, but he definitely heard me.

“Dude, that’s the last thing I care about. You can get all the charcoal you want all over it,” he reassured, tracing tiny circles on my back.

So, I hugged him back, even though my hands were probably poisonous and my arms were streaked with stray charcoal marks. And I held on for a long time, until I had to come back up for air and look him in the eye again.

He broke down laughing again as soon as he saw my face.

“Okay,” he chuckled, “you’re almost done, man. You got this. I’ll be your cheerleader – when you’re done, we’ll go grab some burgers and you can pass out and sleep for as long as you want.”

It was an enticing deal, and eventually I just had to suck it up and get it all over with.

An hour and a half later, I had a quick scribble of a ribcage on my paper that looked just dynamic enough to look like the mess was on purpose, and as I packed up, Murray kept gushing about how awesome it supposedly looked. He slung my backpack over his shoulder and took my drawing pad under his arm, even though I said I could carry it all, and then after dropping off my supplies at our dorm and washing my face and hands, we drove off-campus to McRonald’s.

I was so hungry that I ended up eating three burgers and a bunch of fries, and even Murray seemed like a bottomless pit with twenty chicken nuggets and a burger. We scarfed it all down and even got some grub for later, maybe, and then we left to go back to our home-away-from-home.

After showering and changing into clean clothes, my bed was warm and welcome. I hardly even slurred out a goodnight to Murray before I was drifting off into a deep sleep, dreaming of a world where goats were lawyers and trees were hollowed out to house tiny cities. It was a nice night. It was even nicer to wake up and see Murray at the foot of my bed, a book on his lap and his legs on top of mine.

Maybe things could be alright.