Act I: And I Think It's Gonna be a Long, Long Time

Act I, labeled as "And I Think It's Gonna be a Long, Long Time", in all lowercases, is the first page of Chapter 1 of The Revival, and is the page in which Chloe is introduced, as well as Charlie, Brandon, and Cory are first mentioned. The page, similar to most others, bleeds into it's neighboring page, Act II: Room 429.

#### Content

It had been a long time, nearly forever and a day since I had seen him, but as I sat myself down on the couch with my daughter and a bowl of popcorn, the phone rang.  Oh?  Something that I had heard just months ago, had become such a distant memory that it actually managed to catch me off-guard.  I looked over at my daughter who had already been looking to me for comfort.  With our history, this could be a spam call or possibly a call that could contain a good portion of all of the horrors of our life.  It wasn't the latter.

I stumbled to the phone with my can of ginger ale grasped in my right hand, before switching it to my left hand and using my open hand to pick up the phone off of the wall, no matter how much I didn't want to.  I  hesitated, before looking back at my daughter and just picking up the phone.  As I pressed the cold plastic up to my ear, once so familiar, remained somewhat distant in my head.  The temperature shocked my earlobe as a familiar voice spoke over the line, asking if he had reached me.

"Yeah, yeah, it's me.  You need something?" I answered, only hoping that he could hear me over the nearly prehistoric piece of plastic that was my wall-hung phone in the kitchen.

"Heya, buddy!  Long time no see--  Or I mean, hear, I guess?" He answered, before waiting with a pause to ask me a question, which I knew was coming.  I just didn't know exactly what he wanted, but I knew he'd want something.

He took a moment to piece together a convincing sentence in his mind before going ahead and shooting the question at me.  His voice nearly pierced my ear as it came over the other line

"Here, buddy, I've been thinking, it's been a long time since me and Carl seen 'ya..." He started, before pausing again.  He knew this had a 90/100 chance of being a losing game so he had to state his lines very carefully, knowing I was excellent at reading between them despite not being supposed to more than half of the time.

"Well.. I picked up a little 12-pack of beer today, and it got me thinking..." He resumed, before I spoke again, looking back at my daughter, who was still sitting on the couch picking at her fingernails.  I placed a hand over the microphone so Rick couldn't hear me speaking to her.

"Chloe, you keep picking at that and soon enough you not gon' have nothing left to pick at", I raised my voice, so she could hear me, but she only side-eyed me and started picking at the skin of her elbow.  I sighed, and returned my attention to the phone after removing my hand from the microphone to resume the conversation.

"Norman giving you trouble, eh?" He asked, over the line.  I sighed and felt a bit disgusted at the name, but he didn't know what happened, and I didn't have the whole day and a pack of colored crayons to even begin to try and explain the situation.

"Uh-- Uh, yeah, sure.  What were you saying?" I answered, twirling the phone cord in my hand as I watched the bowl of popcorn get cold on the counter in real time.

"It got me thinking, would you like to come over and see us?  You could spend the night if you wanted to, like old times?" He asked, a small twinge of hope remaining in his otherwise deep, husky voice that rang out distinctively.  If it wasn't for the low level and the bass in his voice, I would've just hung up, not recognizing him over the loud yet distorted ringing of the old phone.

"Let me guess, you drank the whole 12-pack already?"

"No-.. *No*!  Come on, man?" He answered, I could tell he really had put a lot of hope in whatever more caring version of myself he had made up in his mind before calling all the way up in Michigan to see if I would be willing to come over.  I felt horrible, it really had been a long time since I'd seen him, and to be honest, I missed the stupid stories that I'd be able to tell after an exhaustive day of dealing with their nonsense.

"That's the only thing that would give you the courage to ask a stupid question like that, but...  You know what?" I started, unsure of what to say myself.

"What?" He asked, in response to me asking him if he knew.

"That doesn't sound half bad, but you know how the economy is.  You guys are a state away."

"You've always lived on the border.  Just--- Come over, I don't wanna argue on this." He started, having more of a sound of desperation than ever before, which nearly caught me off-guard.  My gut churned at the sound of him getting his hopes up, because.. to be honest, I'd never heard him get like that before.  I looked back at my daughter.  It was a Friday, after all, and she hadn't seen a friend of her own in a while either.

"Look, I'll try to make it, okay?" I answered.  I could nearly hear the smile spread across his once so familiar face.  After I hung up, I played with the opening tab of my can of ginger ale, looking back at my daughter periodically as I tried to make up a sentence that wouldn't be bound to be question-inducing for her.  I felt like Rick at that moment more than I'd ever want to admit.

"Hey, baby, are you okay with going to Charlie's tonight?" I spoke up, catching myself in a fit of courage.  She looked back at me and raised her eyebrow as she continued to pick at her elbows.  I caught myself wondering if she had picked up on that from me, but that was a painful thought to have in itself, even more painful than realizing I might not see her again tonight if I go to spend the night with Rick.

"Okay, girl, remind me...  Who is Charlie?" She asked, braiding and unbraiding the dark brown coils of hair that were the top of her head.  She looked to me with curiosity.

"Guzman."

"That doesn't help, girl--- CORY AND THEM??" she answered, her voice raising towards the question part of the sentence, mostly in horror.

"No, just Charlie.  Cory fell out with him after what went down in Brandon's garage."

"Okay, girl... But, what's going on?"

I sighed, I knew she would ask this, and I knew she had gone steady with her internalized dislike of both Rick and his son, but it was well-deserved with the history that we had.  Despite this, I did still miss them occasionally, and this was a bad night.  One that somebody could convince me on.

##### Trivia

The name of this page is confirmed to be a direct reference to Elton John's song, Rocket Man. It, unsimilar to many other pages, plays into the overall theme of the book, whereas many other pages play into the happenings occurring in them, (It's Been Awhile, Cabaret), and other pages reference sayings or doings by or from characters IN the page (Girl in the Picture, Let the Good Times Roll)