Chapter Text
There were some things in Buck's life that he liked to keep a secret. One of these secrets was that Buck could sing. And write. It really wasn't something he shared with the people he knew except for a few chosen ones and none of the ones who knew him as Buck. Singing and writing had been, and still are, ways for Evan to express the thoughts and feelings that gathered inside without a real escape. The music he shared with "some" people. The YouTube channel Omens on the road with a couple thousand, hundreds of thousands actually, subscribers and the monthly plays on Spotify were proof of that. This would all have been really great but there was one small problem. No one knew it was him. None of them knew that he, Evan "Buck" Buckley, was the singer and songwriter Omens on the road.
Buck could easily tell you when music started to become an escape and a way to express his feelings without having to actually talk about them. Since he left Hershey to explore the country, or maybe more specifically to escape his parents, music had always been present. It was a means to escape, just like Maddies Jeep had been. Through written and sung lyrics Evan could be vulnerable, experiment, and explore his thoughts without any pressure or judgement. The first time he actually played music, and not only sang along to a song on the radio, was the night he found an abandoned guitar in a barn in Montana. Having worked on a ranch with music playing daily while working, it was easy for him to try, and try, and try, until his fingers played a melody that kind of sounded okay.
When Evan left the ranch with the guitar safely packed in his trunk, he kept driving until he found a quiet place along a long stretch of road with free acsess to the internet. There, it was easy to look at some tutorials on how to actually play the guitar. The melodies and songs, if you can call them that, that he had played back at the farm had not been the most beautiful things, but the ability to create music of his own had felt right. It had felt like one puzzle piece in the puzzle that was his chaotic life had found its right place. Soon Evan’s fingers jumped along the strings of the guitar like he had done it since he was a little boy. Eventually playing the songs he heard on the radio was no problem. One especially quiet night, parked in a small town in the middle of nowhere, he started playing random chords, then singing, and eventually writing. And rewriting. The next morning he had a song. He, Evan, had actually made something he could call a song. He had made something that was his, that represented him, and he truly felt happy for the first time in a long, long, time.
Buck likes to call an act of spontaneity that caused him to record himself singing the song with his phone, but deep down he knew the real reason. If there would ever come a day where he met Maddie again, he would like to show her that he could make things. That he did not only destroy things, like he had their family. The possibility that a stranger could listen to the song also made him feel less alone during his travels. Maybe there was someone out there that would listen and understand him, understand his pain and fear of the future. The phone was forgotten as soon as the first chords were played and the first words were past his lips. Not long after having recorded the song, Evan created a YouTube channel and posted his first ever song as Omens on the road. (And isn't that an interesting choice of pseudonym.) The video was nothing spectacular and only showed a picture of the mountains he had taken while working in Montana. For him it was nice little homage to the start of his musical journey that only he understood. For others he hoped it was a nice picture to look at while the song played, truly sounding like it had been recorded by a crappy phone microphone just like it had. Evan knew then and there that even if only one other person listened to his song, he would be pleased.
I'm not easy to please,
Birds and honeybees
You can't tempt out monkeys from high up in the trees
I'll make you blue,
I'll make you bad
Oh, I'll make you mad
His parents had never really paid attention to him. The amount of times they told him they loved him couldn't be counted on one hand, because they never even said it. Every time he hurt himself, unintentionally or not, he would be met with disappointed looks instead of caring or concerned ones. It may seem weird to some people that his first song would be from his parents perspective, the people who had caused him so much pain, but to Evan, it made sense. This was his song and his story, and he was allowed to write it however he wished. Evan knew that his mentality had not come out of his childhood unscathed. Parents mourning a lost son and never paying attention to the one they still had would do that to a person. He was sad and lonely. He had acted out and tried everything in his power to get attention from the people who were supposed to love him no matter what.
You got bruises on your knees
Scratches on your hands
Ain't you heard Frankie singing, "Walk like a man"
Bad bruised knees
You're crawling with your hands
Ain't you heard Frankie say, "Walk like a man"
Run if you can, run if you can, ha!
They could never love him- When he realized that he ran away to save himself.
I throw things away when they get too old
There's coals in the fire but I'm still dead cold
So cold because they had one son left, and he was not the one they wanted.
I'll make you hurt, yeah, I cause you pain
Oh, every day
Oh, as you say
His parents really had caused him pain every day.
You got bruises on your knees
Scratches on your hands
Ain't Frankie ever told you to, "Walk like a man"
Bad bruised knees
You're crawling with your hands
Ain't you heard Frankie singing, "Walk like a man"
Run if you can, run if you can
Keep 'em running, yeah
[...]
You got bruises on your knees
Scratches on your hands
Ain't Frankie ever told you to, "Walk like a man"
Bad bruised knees
You're crawling with your hands
Ain't you heard Frankie singing, "Walk like a man"
Run if you can, run if you can
The morning after having stayed up way too late to finish and post his first song as Omens on the road, Evan wakes up to his first subscriber and a comment telling him to “Please, get a better microphone” to do his voice justice.