Permanent Adhesives (20 page)

“It’s fine,” he said softly.

“I should probably go in.”

He nodded. “Night.”

And I left him standing there. He had a totally indifferent look on his face, and he blinked his eyes at me. He didn’t wave, just stood there staring, not at me specifically going up the stairs—at some unknown origin in the dark distance.

Well, I’m pretty sure I confused the heck out of Elias, or just really pissed him off, because he didn’t stop by the next morning before school like he had the previous two, and when I did see him, there wasn’t that pep in his step towards me like there was the morning after our first kiss. That pep from when we had our second kiss, where he landed a quick sweet one on my lips and bounded down the steps. Maybe it was the energy drinks he had that morning that gave him the boost, or he was high on the prospect of starting a relationship, whatever it was, it was all but diminished, and he just looked at me blankly and gently nodded his head in acknowledgement to my stare as he walked into our English classroom. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him during class because he slept through it all. Cheese and rice, perhaps Kate was right, maybe I just needed to ignore that nagging feeling in my gut; the one that kept saying beware. Maybe I over analyzed situations; I wasn’t sure if kissing him on occasion was going to cut it.

*************************

At lunch Kate sat with her arms crossed glaring at me. I had just given her the rundown of mine and Elias’ evening, including what I told him about our relationship status. Roberto sat next to her eating a double-decker taco. His mouth was full, but I could tell from his eyes that he was feeling the same way as Kate. Nicki bounded up and slipped into the seat next to me.

“What up?” she asked.

“Molly told Elias that she pretty much didn’t want to date him.”

“What, why?”

“She has issues,” Kate said.

I crinkled my nose up at her.

“You two look so cute together,” Nicki said.

Kate spoke on my behalf. “She’s still hung up on that evening,” Kate said, emphasizing evening with finger quotes in the air.

“Oh pish posh, that’s so how many weeks ago?” A smile crept across Nicki’s face. “Kate was telling me he’s like a pint sized secret stud and has washboard abs.”

“One, I’m not going to go out with someone strictly based on the fact that he has nice abs and two, I might be kinda regretting what I told him.”

“Where is he anyways?” Kate asked.

I shrugged because I hadn’t seen him since English.

“Hmm, okay, oh, oh, invite him over to Brian’s tonight,” Kate said. “Oh, wait, no, I will. I’ll text him now.”

Before I could get out the words
he’s working
, Kate was busy texting away and about forty seconds later she got the response: I’m working.

“Oh pooh,” Nicki said, cracking off the back half of Roberto’s taco, just helping herself to it.

“Just go over to his house after he gets off work and then profess your true love,” Kate told me.

“I’ll consider it. Won’t be professing true love, but maybe I can at least tell him I want to give it a shot,” I said.

*************************

After school we all headed to Brian’s house. I’m almost embarrassed to say what for, but I’ll just come out with it. We were at Brian’s for
The Society of Prodigious Superbness
live action role playing. We were LARPing. There was about thirteen of us in Brian’s backyard and in those thirteen was the whole Society of Superbness, along with the villains, and some ornery teens. Most were in costume because it’s not as fun to LARP if nobody’s dressed up. Carly was Sasha. Even though she went to our school, she only showed up to out of school activities. It was like she didn’t want anybody at school to know she was a secret nerd, and LARPing is about nerdy as you can get—nerd to the extreme, but it was fun, so most of us didn’t care. Dave was with her and he was dressed like T3, well a white version of T3 because in my comic he was African American, but he had the outfit down. Cuffed up jeans, a vintage tee under a cardigan with pockets, some desert boots, and a driving cap—T3 was a total hipster. Dean probably would have made a better T3 seeing that he was actually African American, but he was actually dressed like The Home Wrecker. He had on some tight sweat pants, a beer tee-shirt, and a bathrobe (it served her like a lab coat). He even had on some dirty canvas shoes. It was pretty darn funny. Brian was dressed as well, Brian; a too tall teen wearing a flannel and some faded black jeans. He was acting as the Game Master.

Reynaldo was Dranyan. He had his hair up on end and pointing in every which crazy direction, a zipper up kind of tight track jacket, with a white collared shirt underneath and a tie. To top off his look, he had on some skinny jeans with one of those wallet chains. In my comic, it didn’t have a wallet on the end though, it was like this spiked ball, and he spun it around on the chain as a weapon. Don’t worry the spikes and ball collapsed in when he put it back in his pocket, so he didn’t stab his fictional little hiney. We then had Kate as Becky Gonzalez. Kate had her hair up in a high ponytail—one of the rear occasions where she wasn’t wearing braids—a plaid pleated skirt, a navy v-neck sweater with a white shirt with a Peter Pan collar underneath, knee-highs, and some flats. If you couldn’t guess, Becky went to private school, a parochial one.

Anna brought with her boyfriend Clark. He was one of the newest club members. A recent convert as Anna said. They were dressed as Cecile and Emile. Anna had on a light blond wig that had long straight bangs. Honestly, I don’t know why I knew so many people who owned wigs. I didn’t even know where to buy one. Maybe, there was like some discount wig depot close that I didn’t know about. She also wore a striped shirt with a little backpack, tight little pants, and tall lace up Chucks. Clark didn’t have on a wig, but I had a feeling Anna did his hair. It normally was a shaggy, stick straight do, but it was now all flippy and sprayed a yellow color. He also had on a tee-shirt with a hoodie partially zipped up (just how Emile always wore it), some tight, tight skinny jeans, and low top Chucks.

And as for me, I was just kind of a society extra. Roberto was an ornery teen, as was this kid Eric. He only showed up when we were LARPing. I don’t even think he was in high school. I believe he lived in Brian’s neighborhood or something. Okay, so that’s the rundown of who, what, and whatnot. Oh, wait. I forgot. Nicki was also there as Sasha, so we had two Sashas.

This is where Brian as Game Master came in. The Game Master was the one who came up with what exactly it was that we were going to play out; essentially, our game, even though it usually resulted in us just running around acting goofy. He decided it was
The Society of Prodigious Superbness
against
The Band of Ornery Teens
. The ornery teens were to be led by an evil Sasha that Dranyan and The Home Wrecker got together and somehow made. A shield of superbness was involved and whichever team had possession of the shield at the end would win. If the Team of Superbness won, the evil Sasha would be vanquished. If the Ornery Teens won, well, they triumphed and took over the city with evil. So in a way, it was a game ala keep away. And when we were LARPing, we would throw in fake fight scenes, which sometimes turned to real, ran and jumped fences, bounded down steps, and hid in alleys. We were officially about to start, which was a battle to gain possession of the shield, when Elias popped into the backyard. He leaned his bike up against the house, gave a wave then stuck the tip to his pointer in his mouth and started gnawing on his nail.

“Hi Elias,” Nicki and Kate said in unison.

He took his finger out of his mouth and gave another wave.

I galloped on over to him.

“Hey,” I said. “You rode all the way over here?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were working?”

“They messed up the schedule, so I was sent home. I hope you don’t mind that I showed up. I kinda wanted to talk to you.”

“Of course not, and I wanted to talk to you too,” I said and then looked over my shoulder. “Start playing. We’ll be with you guys in a minute.” I took Elias’ hand and led him down the gangway next to Brian’s house.

“How’d ya know where Brian lives?”

“Texted Kate.”

I raised an eyebrow at him wondering why he didn’t text me.

“I didn’t know if ya’d want me showing up here.”

I sighed. “Listen,” I said. “You know I like you, right?”

Elias shrugged, which was totally understandable because I was the queen of mixed signals.

“I do, and it’s more than a friend kinda like or kiss on occasion kinda like. It’s the kinda like where we’ll do things together in secret under the covers kinda like.”

Elias looked down at the sidewalk.

“Maybe we should go on an official date.”

He tilted his head to the side and drew in his eyebrows as if examining me to see if I was messing with him or not. Probably wondering why the change of heart? Thing he didn’t know was that I wasn’t listening to my heart before, I was listening to my fear. The fear I had burrowed down in my gut. I couldn’t let my life be led by fear anymore.

“Sunday night, just me and you, on a date. Hand holding, kissing, whispering sweet nothings or what not.”

Elias cracked a smile. “Sure ‘bout that? You seemed a little…”

“Unsure, flaky?”

Elias nodded.

“I’m 100% sure. I might still be flaky, but not about us. Okay?”

“Okay,” he whispered.

“Was
us
what you wanted to talk about?” I asked, realizing I didn’t give him a chance to say what he showed up to say.

Elias nodded.

“Good and we’ll save our next kiss till then. Ready to LARP?”

Elias smiled. “You do lead an army of nerds, dontcha?”

“Hey, you’re participating, so that means you’re crossing over to the nerd side, and we’re going on a date, so that means you’re officially dating me, and since I’m the Commander in Chief of the nerd army that makes you nerd by association, so either way you’re doomed.” I led him across the yard towards the garage, so he could pick his weapon if he wanted any. I pushed open the door and showed Elias the two large plastic bins full of fake foam swords we bought for like a buck, and hacky sacks that we used to whip at each other, somebody’s old batons, and other odd assorted goods that could serve as weapons. Elias started sifting through, but was distracted by a couple of lawn chairs sitting on top of some newspaper. Well actually, I think he was more interested in the spray paint sitting on the ground next to the lawn chairs. Elias looked at me with an eyebrow raised.

“Ask Brian about it. Pick your weapon first, okay? Please.”

Elias picked out a nice fat yellow plastic bat. “This should do.”

“You know, we actually don’t beat each other.”

“Are these rules set in stone?”

“Not really.”

“Perfect,” Elias said with a smile, running out of the garage.

*************************

The LARPing was on.

*************************

I pumped my legs hard to propel myself forward, so I could catch Dean, or The Home Wrecker you could say. He looked over his shoulder and smiled. He had the shield, but I was going to make sure it did not remain so. Kate was behind me, ready as back up. Dean scaled the chain-link fence that separated the yards and darted across the neighbor’s small patch o’ grass. Carly and Roberto caught up with us, and I motioned for them to go around. I was hoping we could surround him. I went after Dean, bounding over the fence like some pro-fence jumper or something, no scaling for me. I ran, planted my hand on the smooth bar the chain-link was wired to, and with my momentum from running, I jumped and hurled my legs up and over to the left. I stuck the landing, ran around a picnic table, and down the neighbor’s gangway to where Dean had disappeared. Dean’s robe was flapping in the breeze making it look quite cape like, and he was pretty well cornered. He turned and looked back at me charging at him full speed down the narrow little sidewalk, and then he looked at Carly and Roberto. He opted out of all options and took a sharp right and ran across the neighbor’s lovely fall flower bed; those poor mums.

“Get him,” I shouted, and the four of us—me, Kate, Roberto, and Carly—formed a mini v formation. We charged, and our other few team members emerged from other gangways. We officially had him surrounded. Then the rest of Dean’s team showed up. It was battle time. Punches, jumps, kicks, and ducks ensued, which were all supposed to be pretend, but as I said, we tended to get carried away. I was then attacked by Sasha’s clone aka Nicki. She threw a punch, and I blocked it with my arm. Our forearms collided, and I swear I heard our bones clunk together.

“That hurt Comic Girl,” Nicki said, throwing another punch. Comic girl was the name that Brian gave me. Since I wasn’t playing an official character he made one up for me. It was a little unclear what my exact powers were, maybe fighting because I was pretty good at blocking punches. I then threw out a roundhouse kick and almost kicked Nicki in the gut for real.

She jumped back and growled. “
The Band of Ornery Teens
are going to win this thing, whether you like or not.” She then spun around and kicked me in the hip, and it wasn’t pretend.