Change The Past

Later that night, around three in the morning, I fell into my room and onto the covers of the bed. Basically, after Mike and I had our agreement on keeping our “sibling bonding” on the down low, it was all downhill from there.

The three of us did nothing, really; I showed them my pipe and my stash- which was so strong to them (due to the fact that it contained almost 20 years of scientific advancement) that they spent half the time coughing up a storm.

There was one point where Billie Joe got so out of it he took Mike’s bass and attempted to throw it out the window, claiming that because of its shape and aerodynamics it would float on the Californian air currents. Mike almost shit a brick, but Billie ended up just dropping it on the floor instead before he even got close to the window.

I even convinced them that joints were a waste of money, telling Mike he could borrow my piece anytime; I couldn’t stop myself from smiling the whole time, thinking that I was hanging out with musicians who were well-known for smoking pot, before they got famous.

Now in bed, staring at the light on the wall, the smell of pot almost visible as it wafted off my clothes, I thought about Sam.

Where was she now? She couldn’t have just disappeared; that was like murder, sort of. There was a definite possibility that we switched places, which made me optimistic.

I knew we both didn’t like who we were and where we were; and I was, though with guilt, enjoying myself, so she must be too. I could imagine Sam happily being rebellious for once, starting out nervous but just going with the flow, like I was. Or maybe she was turning my life around.

"Oh god," I said to myself in the darkness.

If I ever did come home, and she had made it like it was here before, I would have to deal with setting up my name all over again. But, then again, wasn’t I changing up her life too?

“Damn, I’m hungry,” I said out loud, rolling out of bed. Any worries I just had completely disappeared with the distraction of my stomach.

In the kitchen I found Billie, sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hand, staring at piece of paper, chewing on a pen. He looked up when I came into the room, smiled and pushed the chair across from him out with his feet.

“Watcha doin’?” I teased, grabbing an orange off the gray counter before I made my way to the kitchen chair.

Billie looked down at his paper.

“Uh,” he scratched his face, “Mike passed out on me, and I thought you did too, so I’m down here.” He stared some more at the paper. “I can’t come up with a title for this song.”

I jumped at the word ‘song’, remembering who I was with. I was here, with Billie Joe, watching the creation of history.

“For your band?” I asked, a little too quickly than I wanted it to come out.

His head shot up excitedly, his eyes filled with obvious curiosity. “You listen to our band?”

“God, I was going to be his first teenie,” my mind said as I blushed and nodded.

“Yeah,” I answered as wheels turned in my brain and I got my facts right, “Sweet Children, right?”

“Yeah!” He exclaimed; I was surprised to see him this excited – but in 1989 a fan was probably hard to come by.

“That’s fucking awesome that you listen to our band, Mantha. I mean- god-” He stopped himself abruptly, his face going blank. I actually think I saw his cheeks go red, but it might have been the lighting.

Shifting in his chair uncomfortably, he shrugged and wiped his nose like he just snorted a line of cocaine. “I meant, yeah, that’s cool,” He offered, looking up at me from under his eyebrows. “So… what do you think of it?”

I blinked. What was I supposed to say?

“Oh yeah! I love Tre and my favorite album is Insomniac and, oh yeah, and how’s Adie”?

I didn’ t even know if they had released any EP’s yet; and I took a running jump at the Sweet Children bit - he could have still been deciding on a name for all I know. If he was going to ask me what my favorite song was, I was screwed; he was going to think I was some lunatic.

But I decided to just jump into the pit with a blindfold on anyways- if I mentioned something that hadn’t happened yet, I was a quick thinker, I could come up with something, I hoped.

“Uh,” I paused, “well, you really have something unique, Billie. The band is awesome, the lyrics are great, the guitar is great, the bass is great, I mean,” I threw my hands down on the table, making myself stop before drums, “really, Joe, words can’t explain how much I love it.”

It was the truth, anyways.

Billie looked smug but then he crinkled his brow in confusion. “What about the drums?”

I was hoping he wouldn’t notice how I left out the drums being great, but I guess he was too quick for that. Sweet Children still had Al Sobrante; someone I greatly believed they could have done without, even though “I was There” was a pretty good song.

“Uh, well, I dunno,” I shrugged, trying to act cool, “He’s not the best.”

“I guess,” Billie sighed, looking hurt. “But who else is there?” He laughed half-heartedly, as if Al was the best he knew. Had he met Tre yet?

Why couldn’t he realize that Tre was what he needed? “Not Al, Tre, god damnit!” my mind screamed. I felt the urge to make him discover this.

“What about that kid, uh,” I faked a pause, “Frank? From the Lookouts, I think. He hangs out at Gilmans, supposedly. What about him?”

“Tre?” Billie asked, looking surprised. “He’s cool, sure, but a little younger than me and Mike.” He shrugged, changing the subject.

“I don't know," he said as he suddenly dropped his hands in exasperation, "Al just pisses me off. He acts like this band is just some high school thing, but it isn’t. This is what I want to do with my life, Sam, you know?” He sounded like he was going to cry, as if the thought was so painful.

I nodded sympathetically, feeling his pain as I remembered how Al left the band. Oh, how shitty he must have felt when Green Day made it without him.

“I do know. But you shouldn’t let him get to you. Even if his mind isn’t in the right place, yours is. You’re going to make it big some day, trust me, with or without him. And, if you ask for my opinion, you would be able to make it without him. You are going to make it without him.”

My foreshadowing wasn't very obvious, I hoped.

Billie snorted, embarrassed. “Thanks, Sam. Maybe if Al leaves, I’ll ask Tre. You like that idea?” He asked, throwing the pen at me playfully.

“Yeah, I do,” I answered seriously, throwing the pen back him.

Because of me, Tre Cool was going to be part of Green Day. I dropped my head and tried to smile as secretly as I could.

“So,” Billie started, picking up the pen and sliding the paper he was working on earlier towards me, “since you like our band so much, help me come up with a title for this.”

I glanced down at the sheet and my heart rapidly sped up. Instantly, I knew that the lyrics were from the song “At the Library”’.

I didn’t think it was so hard to come up with a title for it; maybe he was just stuck in a rut, but I couldn’t just blurt out, “Name it ‘At the Library!’” It isn’t cool when you made people think you were some psycho who can read minds.

“Well,” I said, sliding the paper back, swallowing nervously, “where does the song take place?”

He stared at the paper for a while, biting his thumb. He looked up at me and grinned. “At the library.”

I grinned. “There ya go. Easy as pie.”

“Hah,” Billie chuckled, “I feel really dumb; I couldn’t even come up with that.”

“You’re not dumb, Joe,” I laughed, “just a little stoned, that’s all.”

Billie paused before he spoke. “You know what, Mantha?”

“Hrm?” I was suddenly paying more attention to the uneaten orange on the table I just re-grabbed; I was still starving.

“Mantha kind of sounds like ‘anthem’ to me.”

“It does…” I trailed off, oblivious. The orange was so pretty, and delicious, so...distracting.

“Are you cool with Anthem?”

“Suuure,” I slurred, stuffing pieces of orange in my mouth.

“And Sam?” Billie asked, taking a slow breath.

“Hrm?”

Juice was sliding down my chin, and I’m sure the noises I was making, but not paying attention to, weren’t too attractive either.

My mind was on autopilot. “Yummy, yummy orange. Oranges should be able to talk. But then they would scream when we ate them, so never mind," it said.

“You’re really gorgeous, just so you know.”

Then something clicked in my brain and I stopped breathing, a piece of orange getting caught in my throat, making me start choking. I felt as if I was inside a sand timer, and someone had just flipped me upside down.

Did he really just say that? And not only that, I was embarrassing myself in front of him, suffocating on food, but he just started laughing. He started to swat me on the back, which helped me recover, but I was still speechless.

But then I remembered: he was calling Sam gorgeous, not me. What was I supposed to say?

“Um,” I tugged at my freshly chopped hair, feeling awkward, “thanks?”

Billie snickered. “Not to be weird or anything,”

He paused, folding the song up and putting it in his pocket. He stood up, and, not to feel demeaned, I stood up too. “I’m gonna get home so I can make some chords for this,” he said, patting his pocket. I nodded; too bad I already knew the song by heart.

Awkwardly brushing my hair behind my ear, I followed Billie to the door, both of us stopping when he stepped outside, my twitchy hand on the doorknob.

He grinned, “Thanks, Anthem,” he laughed, “for the help… and everything.”

I smiled and nodded again, and watched him walk to his car. He stopped right before he opened the door to look back and give me one last smile, which I returned with a school girl’s excitement, it bubbling up inside my chest like peroxide on a wound.

He was even better looking than I thought he would be at age seventeen. At the sound of him zooming off, I made myself stop staring off in his direction and closed the door and went up to my room, sighing into the sheets of Sam’s bed.

Instead of killing him like I would have before, I considered baking cookies for the hobo man if I ever saw him again.