Permanent Adhesives (21 page)

“Ow,” I cried. Dean then whizzed past me. “Sasha,” I called when I saw Carly show back up on the scene. She ran up and took over fighting clone Sasha, and I went after Dean again. He went back towards Brian’s house, and I followed. I ran past T3 and Dranyan battling it out. T3 (Dave) appeared to be outsmarting Dranyan’s (Reynaldo) attempts to stab him. Right past them a couple of ornery teens (Roberto and Eric) were dancing around Elias (society extra), who appeared to be cornered. I got to Brian’s house, but before I headed to the backyard, I reached out to my team by way of bird call. I cupped my hands around my mouth like I was forming a megaphone and called out, “Caw caw, caw caw!” My team promptly picked up on it and started to make their way towards me. We all convened on the backyard where The Home Wrecker awaited, looking forward to the final battle. Brian was standing off to the side rubbing his chin like he was deep in contemplation. Without warning, he ran up behind Dean and snatched the shield right out of his hand. He then chucked it up on the garage roof.

“God Brian you’re such a turd. Why would you do that?” I screeched as the two teams stood on opposing sides of the small yard.

“More of a challenge,” he said, rubbing his hands together and raising his eyebrows up and down.

“Well, how in the heck do you propose that we get it down?” I asked.

“Climb the tree and then get on the garage,” he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world to do.

I looked at the tree that sat in front of the garage. There were no reachable branches. Dean attempted to jump for one and missed. He tried again, caught hold, but just hung there. “Too bad I can’t do a pull up,” he said, jumping down.

Elias walked up, scratched his nose, and sighed. He turned and looked at Kate—who was standing next to me giving the evil eye to
The Band of Ornery Teens
—and me. “Want our team to win?” he asked.

“Of course,” Kate said. “
The Society of Prodigious Superbness
will prevail!”

“Okay, one of you step in my hands, and I’ll toss you up.”

“Molly,” Kate said.

“Um,” I said. I wasn’t a fan of the idea.

“I’ll do it if you guys want, but you guys have to help me up,” Elias said.

Kate began laughing. “I could toss you up there with one arm.”

“Kate,” I said under my breath.

“What? I got some poundage on him.”

I punched her in the shoulder, and the two of us then squat a bit so Elias could step into our hands. We tossed him up. It was a very cheerleader like maneuver. Elias grabbed the branch, pulled himself up, swung his leg over, and scrambled to the garage roof. Kate started laughing. “It cracks me up. Little dude is showing you guys up.”

“He’s almost average people,” I said.

Brian snorted, like the idea of Elias being almost average was ridiculous. “He can easily do that cuz he weighs like ten pounds.”

“Okay, keep telling yourself that Brian,” Kate said with a grin.

“Got it,” Elias called down to us, holding up the shield.

“Woo-hoo,” my team shouted. Victory dances ensued.

Once back on the ground Elias turned to Brian. “Since we won we should get a prize.”

“Yeah,” my team said.

“Winning is the prize,” Brian said.

“In a way, it would be a prize for everybody.”

“What do you want?”

“The shway faind in the garage.”

“What?” Brian asked. That time I was pretty sure Brian wasn’t being a total jerk because it took me a sec to figure out what shway faind was.

“The ssssshway…” Elias started. He then tried again. “The sssshpp…” He gave up trying to say spray and made like he was spray painting with his hand.

Brian looked like he was still trying to process what Elias was getting at. His mouth was partially parted and his eyebrows slightly drawn in.

“Are you really that dense? He wants the spray paint ya dumb nut,” Kate said.

Brain put his hands on his hips. “Be nice to me. I’m letting you paint me naked.” Brian gave Kate a toothy grin and rubbed the palms of his hands together.

A cry of ewws rung out from everybody in the yard.

“Kate, Elias can talk for himself,” I said.

Kate looked and pointed the foam sword she held at me. “You’re talking for him right now.”

Elias fake coughed, raising his hand, letting us know he was still there.

“Hey,” Brian said to Elias. “Can you talk normal if you tried?”

“Brian!” Kate and I both shouted.

Elias’ face turned about fifty shades of red. He then reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and started a text.

“Look man, I’m sorry,” Brian said. “You don’t have to resort to non-verbal communication because of me, but seriously.”

I would have told Brian to fuck off, but Elias was too nice. Elias sighed and started talking very slowly. He then explained that if he concentrates and tries hard, he can say some words properly, but then it would take him forever to say a sentence, and with some words, no matter how hard he tries, they just don’t come out right.

Brian pursed his lips together. “Okay, I think I got it. You need to talk more, so I can get used to, uh, you know.”

Elias responded with a shrug.

“You can have the spray paint. I don’t think my mom would care. She used it to color a couple of lawn chairs and hasn’t touched it since.”

“What do you want the spray paint for?” Nicki asked, coming over and sitting on the ground next to where Elias was standing. This prompted Elias to sit and everybody else followed suit.

Elias seemed hesitant to answer at first. He looked down at his phone gripped in his hand, but with a sigh he responded. “Well, one, it’s not sold in the city and two, if you go to the burbs to buy it, you have to be eighteen, but I figured we can make stencils, like ones that say
The Society of Prodigious Superbness
.”

“Ah, like an expansion of the stickers and your guys’ wheat pasting,” Kate said.

“Yes and we could use some extra help. Get more coverage across the city and we could definitely use some lookouts too,” Elias said with a little more confidence in his voice.

“Totally in,” Kate said.

“Me too,” chimed in others.

“Oh, Molly, with our get together tomorrow, song recording and what not, we should move it to your house,” Kate said.

“Why?” Red flags shot up in my brain.

“Doesn’t Elias live across from you?”

“Yeah.”

“You two are the head honchos, and then we don’t have to drag all the stuff to my house. We can just help Elias bring it across the street.”

“I dunno.”

“C’mon Molly.”

I sighed.

“It’s settled then,” Kate said, throwing me a smile even though I didn’t even agree to it. She took my sigh as if I was giving into her, like a
hey fine whatever
, but it was really a sigh of
dear lord, do not let this happen
.

I looked over at Elias, and he gave me a slight nod. It was like he was trying to let me know it was going to be okay. “Oh, and something else,” Elias said.

“What?” Kate and Brian asked.

“Maybe we should have a Sunday morning meeting at Quirks for everybody else. We can toss around ideas. Make a schedule for those others who want to help.”

“What more ideas do you have because you’re kinda the one with all of them,” Anna said.

“They’re not all my ideas, but if we keep with the theme of our campaign so far, there are so many other forms of street art to explore. Like there’s this one guy somewhere and he makes these statues of people out of tape, and they look pretty real, and he puts them like standing on ledges of buildings and sticking outta pipes and stuff.”

“Hey,” Dean said. “The tape thing would be cool.”

“And we could move past the street art thing or even pass it on to a like a street team we could put together and then focus on other stuff,” Elias said.

“We could do more street corner dance parties,” Nicki said. “Oh my gosh, we could organize a flash mob. We could put it together online even, or have a couple meet ups where we show everybody the dance moves.”

“That is brilliant,” Kate said with a smile. “We could dance to the song we record tomorrow. This could be epic.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down guys. One thing at a time, okay?” I said. It all seemed like so much. It was that frickin self-doubt kicking in again.

“Oh, this is out of your hands now Molly.
The Society of Prodigious Superbness
is going to turn into a revolution of superbness,” Kate said.

“Okay, sure.”

“Molly, this is just the beginning,” Kate said, stretching up her lip and exposing her teeth in some sort of frightful looking smile.

“Okay, a revolution of superbness, just please stop making that face.”

Kate put on a sweet smile and batted her lashes.

“Wait, what are we revolting against?” Brian asked.

“Yeah, what?” I asked. Brian posed a legitimate question.

Kate shrugged. “I dunno. It just sounds good.”

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

Kate gave Elias and me a ride home. We threw his bike in the trunk. It kind of hung out partially, but Kate had a bungee cord, so that helped a bit. Kate gave a wave and drove off. I walked down the gangway to Elias’ backdoor.

“You can just dump me here,” Elias said, leaning his bike against the building.

“Elias?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry about me speaking for you. I hope I didn’t make you feel…” My brain was searching for a word.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

“Next time just tell me to shut up.”

Elias smiled and scratched his nose.

“Okay, see ya tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, hey, how’s your head doing by the way?”

Elias pushed back his hair to show me. His lump was still quite egg-shaped and a variety of colors: purple, yellow, blue.

“Oh Jesus, that still looks bad.”

“It’s okay.”

I kissed the tip of two of my fingers and placed them over his bump. Elias grabbed my fingers and looked me in the eyes. “You sure ‘bout wanting to go out with me?”

“Yes, after our get together tomorrow at my place, it will be just me and you.”

“Okay,” Elias said, giving my fingers a little squeeze.

“Tomorrow then.”

Elias gave a half-crooked smile and waved.

I walked home across the street and had a light happy feeling in my heart. It seemed it had a tendency to feel that way when I was around Elias. I’m glad I finally listened to it. Listening to my heart was something I needed to do more often.

Kate showed up at my apartment the next evening with a huge smile on her face. Roberto walked up behind her shaking his head. “Hey Roberto.”

He smiled, gave me a fist bump, and went inside.

Kate stayed in the hall smiling at me. “So, I painted a naked nerd.”

“Oh my gosh, I forgot all about that.”

“Wow, is what I have to say.”

“I don’t want to hear anymore,” I said, sticking out my tongue, pretending a fake retch.

“You sure? Oh boy, it was wonderful. I plan on seeing Brian naked again, just not in the same context.”

“Please stop or I will never be able to look at him again.”

Kate chuckled and grinned. I shook my head, and we went inside. We had stuff to do.

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

After agreeing that we were all getting together for a secret midnight mission Monday night, we all got busy. Brian, Anna, Clark, and Dean worked on processing the orders. Tee-shirts, bubble mailers, pins, stickers, invoices, and hand written thank-you notes were strewn in a flood around them. We were shipping tee-shirts to a town in Iowa—seriously, Iowa. I know it’s not like some awesome destination, but our tee-shirts and pins were leaving our state; people from different states were actually reading my comic. I think in part because Elias registered my comic with Comic Planet. It’s this site with the top-rated webcomics, and people can vote on them and stuff; mine was currently ranked at fifty-two. I was happy that it even made it into the top one hundred, but through the days it just kept slowly rising in the ranks.

While Brian, Anna, Clark, and Dean were working with the orders and such, Roberto, Nicki, and Reynaldo were working on making pins/buttons—whatever you want to call them—and cutting out stickers. Elias was teaching Kate his song. They were in my room, on my bed. With Elias’ phone, I recorded some of the activity out in the dining room and of Elias playing the keyboard and Kate signing; the song sounded pretty darn good. Elias was going to help me make some kind of video with the song and assorted footage of our workings and dancing on the corner and our art in various locations. Once Elias and Kate were done, they emerged from the room. Kate went and sat next to Brian, and Elias went and sprawled himself out on his back in the front room.