Earth to Me

On June 12th, I had to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn to make it to my art history art final exam, which I ended up probably passing in the end. Also on June 12th, I started packing all of my crap so that I could haul it out of my dorm in two days, provided I didn’t die that night. Pretty soon, most everything was in boxes by two in the afternoon, and I even helped Tegan pack to kill some time.

To everybody who wasn’t attending college at the University of Chicago at that moment, though, Andy told them to get the least amount of sleep possible. According to what Mick told us when they finally got to our dorm, they were hopped up on coffee and energy drinks in order to stay sentient – Winter was the one who drove them over in Anthony’s little SUV.

And God, I was scared to death. My finals were out of the way, so that was one thing off my shoulders (I ended up with an A in my drawing class, for the record). Regardless, there was one big thing looming over my head, and if I haven’t made it obvious at this point, feel free to shave my head.

Chuck, Riley, and Shira were the first to actually make it to our dorm; Shira had flown all the way from Daltia to Gainesville and up to Chicago just for us. Upon stepping into my room, me and Murray’s crap everywhere in boxes, she cracked her knuckles and just looked around for a second.

“You and me, Oshie. We will be the ones to lead our sect to success,” she said firmly, sharply staring at me.

I just gulped and let out a nervous laugh. “Ha, we’ll see…”

Sooner than I could comprehend, me and Murray’s dorm was basically a party. Chuck and Riley were quiet, mostly because Chuck was always quiet, and Riley was exhausted from whatever he did the previous night. Shira was frickin’ meditating on the floor in front of the window. None of us could even muster up some small talk.

My knees were wobbling into each other by the time Put’emup, Put’emup showed up in packs, Andy and Anthony first. It was hugs and handshakes when they came in, unshaven and tired-eyed; Anthony grumbled something about wanting to pass out, while Andy was only slightly less chipper than usual. Twenty minutes later, Chance showed up by himself, holding an ice cream cone that nobody even asked about. He seemed pretty normal, too, but he always spoke like he was somewhere else, even when he wasn’t running on two hours of sleep.

Everybody gathered around and sat on the floor, save for me and Murray, who took up my bed, and Tegan and Chance, who claimed Murray’s bed. About an hour after Chance came, Mick, Brianna, and Winter knocked on my door, Mick’s smile only a little weary while Brianna and Winter looked like they had seen the ends of the earth.

When everybody was crowded in our dinky dorm room, sleeping bags aplenty and pillows few and far-between, it was just around seven at night. Everybody was pretty vocal about being absolutely starving at that point, and I think mostly everyone was cranky because of a lack of sleep.

Murray and I were sent to McRonald’s to get a metric ton of food – nothing specific, so considering the fact that there were twelve people in our dorm room at that very moment, we bought twenty-four burgers and a few large orders of fries. I think the employees hated us at that moment, and I understood – I worked at a sub shop two summers before then. I felt their pain, and I also felt another sort of pain brewing in my belly.

It was what made me quiet on the drive back with Murray, and he asked me once if I was okay. I shook my head; he asked if I wanted to talk about it. I just shrugged. I knew I’d break down in some way if I let it out again.

The whole thing was so weird. I’d heard of dorm parties, and I’d overheard my share of them, but to think that I was basically having one with one and a half bands was insane.

Of course, it wasn’t for a good reason, and I sure wouldn’t be enjoying myself that night. Any noise we made was because of chaos brewing in the universe – chaos that nobody other than us knew about.

We ate all of the food the best that we could, sharing little anecdotes about our days and catching up so casually that for a moment I forgot that we were all in serious danger. Despite the bags hanging under a few people’s eyes, they were all so animated. And like a thousand other times in my life, I was sitting to the side, too scared of everything to participate.

This was my team, the people who said they’d have my back. We’d all be there for each other in the end, and I’m sure after they’d wake up and find themselves exempt from having to go on and crush the enemy from the source, they’d crowd over me to make sure I was alive.

I couldn’t even finish one burger, even though I was too hungry to think properly. My world wasn’t even Earth anymore. It was my mind, space, time, Mom’s arms, everybody who cared about me, and finally, Earth. This planet was just a vessel that introduced me to much bigger things that I never really got the chance to be thankful for until right then.

So I sat back on my bed with my head against the wall and tried to close my eyes without slipping under.

Andy’s boisterous voice brought me back, though, snapping my head up so fast I thought I’d break my neck.

“Fellow guardians of Earth! And Shira! Our time is so close I can almost taste it,” he commanded, standing in the middle of the dorm amongst everybody else. “Who’s ready for this?!”

Mick whooped, Shira simply nodded, and Chance said, “Fuck yeah.” The rest of them just weakly said, “Yeah.”

“C’mon now, we’re gonna be great!” Andy insisted, adopting a power stance.

“I’m fucking tired and I have to take a shit. There. I can’t be the only one feeling like that,” Riley declared flatly.

Tegan side-eyed the bartender. “Bathroom’s down the hall. It’s communal, bro.”

He grunted something that I couldn’t hear and just crossed his arms.

Andy clapped his hands together, and it echoed through the whole room. “Anyways, back to the point! We’ve come a long way, guys. We’ve done this kind of shit before, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, we all saw it. You could write a stupid book about it,” Brianna interjected, rolling her eyes.

Winter smiled a little but she didn’t say anything. I don’t think she said a peep that whole night so far.

“That was a rough time,” Anthony spoke up, his skinny knees up to his chest. “And if we got through that and ended up better because of it, then this is gonna be fucking incredible.”

“Damn straight it is,” Mick contributed, nodding along. His hair was a mess and his beard was untrimmed; he didn’t have his lip studs in, either.

Meanwhile, Chance yawned so big that it spread to everybody.

After the yawn break, Tegan jumped up next to Andy, nearly a foot shorter than the singer, and took the reins. “The fact of the matter is that we’re all tired and we all wanna go to bed, but there’s something else we need to do tonight before we get to drool on Oshie and Murray’s floor, okay? And there’s a reason we’re the ones meant to do this. I used to think that it was all just a fluke, honestly. But after seeing us pull together in 2012 and do the impossible, I really honestly think that it wasn’t an accident. We were all meant for something a little bigger than just coasting through life and going to bed every night already bored of the next day. Lightning doesn’t just strike wherever it wants. There has to be just the right air pressure, the right humidity – just ask Oshie.”

God, Tegan, I love you, but when I felt eleven pairs of eyes lock on me, I wanted to scream.

I gawked at everybody and didn’t know what to say. What could I say? I could give them the same rehearsed pep-talk I’d seen in movies and in front of me right then, or I could apologize for the disaster I was bound to cause. I could unleash my inner built-up pessimism and recite how much of a failure I saw myself to be, and I could watch them either confirm it or scramble to make me feel better to no avail.

Invisible ropes were tightening around my chest; I was losing my breath.

“Are you alright, Oshie?” Andy said lowly, his eyebrows furrowed.

My answer was so immediate that I almost cut him off. “Yeah! Yeah.”

Mick cocked his head and said, “You sure? You don’t sound alright, buddy. What’s wrong?”

I was staring at my hands again, at the purple streaks that just barely extended past my elbows. I’d have to use those hands for something I was never very good at in just a matter of minutes, and just the thought of that was driving me insane.

“I’m scared.”

My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was clear and I’d managed to make it not crack, by the grace of whoever was watching over me.

“You’re gonna be fine, dude,” Andy said with a soft smile.

“No,” I whispered, “I’m not. I can’t do this.”

A hand was on my back – Murray’s.

“I don’t…I can’t. Like…it’s one thing to be in a group of other people to save the world. It’s another thing to have to go out on my own and do something I’ve only ever done with you guys.”

“You will not be alone at any point in this mission, human,” Shira said, somehow managing to sound encouraging yet spiteful. “In case you have forgotten, you will not be the only lead guardian in our sect of the universe. I am Daltian. I am a hop, skip, and a leap away from Earth. I will be joining you in the main brawl, and I respect you enough not to let you fall behind.”

I paused, trying to look in her fuchsia eyes for any sign of softness. “…Th-thanks. I, uh…sort of forgot about that.”

“And even if you were alone, which you’re not gonna be,” Anthony slid in, “you’re legally a weapon, Oshie. You and me both. We could fucking kill anyone in this room with our bare hands, just take solace in that.”

I don’t know why, but I laughed a little bit at that. Maybe it was the little smirk he had on his fiery face, or the fact that a few others chuckled too.

“Like we’ve said countless times, we’re gonna do everything we can to make sure you go through as little as possible,” Tegan explained, facing me directly. “We’re gonna do as much as we can to provide initial defense, so that you can use all your energy for when your time comes. We got you.”

“Can I get an amen?!” Riley wailed, raising his arms in the air.

“Shut the fuck up, Riley,” Anthony spat.

“And as soon as we get sent back to Earth, we’ll all be making sure you’re okay in your sleep, we promise!” Andy affirmed, turning a blind eye to the short argument right next to him. “If anything looks wrong, we’ll do all that we can to help. Well, shit – we will help. We’re gonna make sure everybody gets out alive and well. Nobody has to get hurt.”

The way they were all simultaneously smiling at me brought me on a trip down memory lane, back to when we had just finished destroying the bug that threatened our planet. We were so relieved that for a moment we forgot how to be sad, and right then it was like nobody knew how to look on the dark side of things.

Fake it ‘till you make it, I guess. Cockiness is just confidence that someone is jealous of, and since we were alone in our shoes, we didn’t have anybody to be jealous of us.

I tried believing on for size. Thinking that I was born to save the universe in some weird comic-book sort of way, like I was destined for stardom in that I was meant to keep the stars from being destroyed. I was a mere speck on the planet, but I was a speck with seven other specks that was about to keep distant warmongering aliens from conquering an existence that wasn’t theirs.

And my stomach was still churning, and my hands were still shaky, and my heart rate would probably never slow down.

But I took pride in myself. There were things in my memory that no other human being could have gone through, and yet there I sat, fairly healthy and surrounded by friends.

I was alive for the moment. That meant something, and it was a good start.

“Alright,” I weaseled out, clearing my throat. “I think I’ll be okay.”

Murray rubbed my back while everyone kept on smiling. “There are a lot of people who’re gonna make sure that holds true. You’re not alone, Osh.”

There wasn’t much left to do at that point, other than take our spots and fall asleep once and for all. It was nine at night at that point, and after Shira bolted out of the dorm to go back to Daltia, it was just us earthlings left to fend for ourselves.

Tegan and I shared my bed, while Chance and Mick shared Murray’s. The remaining four slept in a row between the beds. When it was all said and done and we were tucked into optimal sleeping positions, Winter turned off the lights.

Brianna said in a weak voice, “Goodnight, guys. I have faith in all of you, even though I still think you’re all fucking nuts.”

Winter shushed her. “She’s kidding. Go kick some ass and tell us about it when you wake up.”

Murray didn’t say anything, probably out of nerves, but I heard him take a seat at my desk chair.

Barely five minutes had passed before my natural human instinct had dragged me under. My eyes drooping in their sockets, limbs weak from a lack of energy, I was sucked into slumber and projected into a dream-world that I could never possibly conjure within my own mind.

I guess that’s how I knew it was all for real. My brain was no match for all of the galaxies and planets that swirled around me in the depths of space.