Earth to Me

College wasn’t much different from high school in the whole “school” part. The only difference was that I didn’t have to take a million pointless classes about math and science that I would never end up using in my hopeful career, but other than that, it wasn’t shaping up to be as horrible as I feared.

And I know I’ve said this before, but growing up does suck. You can grow older and still keep the same attitude and optimism all your life, but having to grow up and pay taxes and make sure you don’t go to bed hungry every night is a whole other ballgame. As the weeks melted by, I developed my own routines, my own ways of unwinding before going to bed. Even if most of my better ones involved eating ice cream in my boxers while watching cartoons on my laptop (provided Murray was home for the weekend), I was content to make myself happy.

Tegan was the same way. Her roommate was almost never in their room; she was always at party or at someone else’s dorm, and so Tegan had plenty of alone time if she wanted to stay in for the night. Most of the time, though, she’d just cruise down the hall and join me and Murray in our room. We’d hang out and watch movies and talk about music, and then just within a few weeks, we were three peas in a pod.

On Saturdays, though, me and Tegan had a routine that we kept ever since we first broke into the Internet. There was a bookstore nearby campus that, of course, sold comic books, and every day I thanked whoever was up in the sky for making it so. It meant that we could spend our Saturdays reading the latest issue of Johnny Cool and the Dudes, which was still speeding along as a webcomic, and even if the issues were always thin, it just meant Andy (or Anchor, as he was still signing his pen name) knew I was a broke college student and could sell them dirt-cheap.

At the end of every issue was a little blurb about how Johnny Cool was coming to the Cartoonigans network in summer 2013. Andy would write about how things were going from where he was, how well the series was coming along judging from the things the staff had shown him. It was all just to build hype and make people aware that it was happening, and even though he had assured everybody that it was all going to be monumental, there were still some folks who insisted that he had sold out.

Andy Allen, a sellout. Right. It’s not easy to make me furious, but reading comments on articles and Cooltube videos is one way to set me off. Tegan and I would sometimes traverse forums and comment sections just to tick ourselves off, and man, it worked. I don’t know if Andy himself read the things people sometimes said about him (it’s a wonder how he ever had time to get online), but he’d have probably laughed at all of them.

On the more real-life side of our lives, though, if me, Tegan, and Murray had a night where the three of us didn’t have night classes, we’d go to dinner together, and if our afternoons lined up right, we’d get lunch as a unit.

And to be honest, at first it was weird. Really weird. I’d spent my life having only one best friend, and now I had someone at my side who was shaping up to be even closer than Chuck and Riley, my only other friends my age. I would’ve been okay with having a roommate that just didn’t steal my stuff or pick fights with me, honestly – this guy was going the extra mile. He even added me on Facenook, which is something I’d read horror stories about online, adding your roommate there.

I didn’t think people were capable of even being as nice as Murray was. He never got snippy with me, and just like me, he’d spend most of his time on his laptop when he wasn’t in class or home for the weekend. (Granted, I had Tegan to talk to when she hung out at our room, but there were multiple times where I’d go to bed and wake up at two in the morning just to see him on his computer.)

Overall, yeah, things were going pretty well that semester. Despite all the fears bubbling up in my head, there were things that kept me grounded, and one of the biggest things was my art.

I had to take a music course as one of my general education requirements (not that I minded) alongside plenty of other art-related classes, and all of it was coming together in my head beautifully. I would take the things I learned about visual development and design and translate them into my sketchpads, drawing out characters for little stories I never wrote, gestures based on stock photos, and self-portraits I made from staring at the mirror and not my paper.

I was actually pretty proud of the things I was doing. Tegan was still keeping up with her doodles of girls in dresses, and she’d make logos for companies that didn’t exist, designs that would look great on t-shirts and buttons. We already knew what we were doing – we were just getting better at it.

Murray would always ask to see what we were working on for class, and he was always nice about it. He’d give us pointers and critiques, saying certain parts were “Warhol-esque” or he’d make a reference to an artist neither of us had ever heard of, and then he’d study for the horrible classes he had to take.

Shira didn’t let up with her weekly visits, even if she just meandered onto campus like some kind of suspicious criminal. Tegan would let her in and spend every Sunday with her tough-as-nails girlfriend, and while they went out for dinner, me and Murray would grab a bite and talk about anything and everything over a plate of decent buffet grub.

It was a nice little touch of home, even if it meant I’d be spending a day without my better half. Shira was her longest-running girlfriend so far, and even though Tegan’s past relationships were just limited to two-week flings in junior high and early high school, I could tell that it all meant something to her.

I’d have my laptop open as I did homework or studied in my room, and almost always, there was beeping coming from the Facenook messaging system. It was either Tegan or my dad, some nights it would be Riley sending me drunken questions that made no sense, and every so often Chuck would ask what was up with our lives. At least once a week, someone from Put’emup, Put’emup would spark up a conversation. It was a nice way to keep up with the regulars.

But one night in particular, everything seemed to happen all at once, and it meant a barrage of bloops from my laptop speakers at eight PM.

By “everything,” I don’t mean that the world was ending again, though you’d think it would be, judging from the fact that some genius in Put’emup, Put’emup had decided to assemble a massive group chat that involved every one of Earth’s guardians.

And in the very top of that little chat window, it read, “Andy Allen created the chat. Andy Allen named the chat ‘Cool Kids Only.’”

Andy himself graced the chat with a few opening words. “Hey guys! Finally got around to making a big group chat. So, what has everyone been up to?”

Seconds later, a little line of text read, “Everyone has seen this.”

A bloop sounded, and Anthony ended up being the second person to grace it with his presence. “im soooooooooooo hornyyy”

I stifled a laugh and caught Murray glancing over at me.

“where is ur chill,” Riley messaged.

“up ur ass with broken glass,” Anthony responded.

“i’m sorry guys. Anthony’s drunk,” Mick soon mediated.

More silent seconds passed without a single bloop, and then out of nowhere, Chuck added, “hey guys! :)”

“hey Chuck :)” Mick replied.

“im here,” Chance said, two words perfectly declaring his presence.

“yoooooo,” Tegan butted in. I could practically hear her vibrating in happiness from down the hall. “OSHIE WHERE ARE U”

I actually jumped a bit after realizing that I hadn’t shown my words yet. “hey, I’m here”

“GOOD! Now let me start this off with a question: how is everybody?!!?! How’s college?!?! How’s life?!???? TELL US!!!” Andy demanded, taking everything by the reigns.

That was when all hell broke loose, honestly.

It started off as a steady barrage where I could actually see everybody’s individual messages as they came in, and then it started going faster and faster, so quickly that I couldn’t even distinguish what kinds of conversations were happening between which people.

“life is good, we’re doing alright,” Chuck started.

“i have seen too many barfights to count,” Riley went on.

“classes just started and it’s all going pretty well but our apartment kinda looks like its falling apart tbh,” Chuck told us.

Tegan leaped in triumphantly and declared, “i’m in love and me and oshie’s classes are AWESOME and there’s SO MUCH FOOD here”

I didn’t even have anything to add, so I stayed quiet for the moment. Then, Mick jumped in with, “tegan’s in love?!? Awwwwwwwwww<3”

“gIRL PWERRRRRRRRRRR,” Anthony contributed. (Sort of.)

“i am so gay, shira brings out the gayest gay in me i s2g,” she typed.

“WERE ALL KINDA GAY, IM GLAD U OWN IT GIRL,, , WOO,” Anthony added. Then it all went downhill.

“Some of us are gayer than others, though!”

“and no hetero or anything but oshie’s roommate is FINE as hell”

“where can I meet him. chuck is wonderful but to be honest he’s almost never here and I just need affection, yaknowwhatimsayin??”

I choked on a laugh, right as Murray was glancing over. He asked, “What’s so funny?” and I told him nothing was funny, and he just smiled like he thought I was insane. I typed, “he’s a ginger tho, just throwin’ that out there.”

“oshie if You end up being NOt strait LET ME KNOW BC YEA”

“Anthony, leave him be!”

“so how r ur grades guys”

“how is music??? How are you guys doing???”

“my grades are pretty good from what i saw so far, chance”

“im so gay but im so in love jfc I wanna scream it sometimes tbh”

I lost control of what was going on at that point. I stopped looking at the little icons that showed our profile pictures, and instead I just paid attention a certain few messages that lingered longer than others, and even then, I had no clue what context they went into.

Bundled up in my long johns and a hoodie, I sat underneath the covers with my laptop screen lighting up my face. I read a few words that scrolled past my vision, words concerning updates with my friends that I hardly ever talked to all at once, and every so often I’d throw in my two cents, even if it just got lost in the madness.

With all of the endless bleeps and bloops echoing through the dorm, I thought Murray would at least get a little irritated, but when I looked over at him, he smiled at me from the corner of his eye.

“That doesn’t bother you, does it? The noise?” I whispered.

“No, you’re cool,” he assured. “Sounds like you’ve got a boomin’ social life over there.”

“Yeah, this is helping out my confidence a lot,” I joked. “All the sounds make me feel like I have friends.”

His face fell and his eyes softened. “You have friends, dude. I’m hearing them right now.”

I stumbled over some words. “Y-yeah, I know, but, uh…we don’t always keep in touch. And then this happens.”

“That doesn’t make it any less special,” he smiled again. “And if it makes you feel any better, I consider you a friend. And I’m right in front of you.”

I didn’t know what to say so I just smiled right back at him and nodded.

People play off long-distance friendships as being weak and unstable, but I never thought that. Even if seeing them in person after months of no face-to-face contact was a little weird, the bonds that were forged never got any weaker over time.

It was like that party we went to at the end of summer. It was like we never even dropped contact – and maybe it was because we were only typing words over the Internet, but it just felt so simple again. We seemed like normal people, a totally generic group of friends. Though even if things felt like we were back to basics again, everybody knew that the circumstances in which we came into each other’s lives was anything but.