Permanent Adhesives (13 page)

“Homework?” I asked.

“Somebody else’s.”

“Why are you doing somebody else’s homework?”

“They’re paying me,” Elias said, closing his laptop.

“Can’t you get kicked out of school for that?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re not worried about that?”

Elias shook his head no. “I don’t plan on getting caught. I have a very discreet system on which I operate.”

“So you do this often?”

He smiled at me. “It is how I will be able to move out of my house once school is over.”

“Really, how much do you charge?”

Elias shrugged. “It depends. My specialty is research papers.”

“So, do you actually write people’s papers, or do you just sell copies of one’s you’ve done?”

“Oh, you get a totally brand new paper.”

“So somebody says
hey write me a paper
, and you do?”

“Pretty much, they’re referred to as tutoring sessions, and I can do just the main paper, but then lots of teachers like outlines and note cards and mini essays, so it just varies on what you need, and if need be, I have express services too, but those cost a good deal more.”

“Are you messing with me?”

Elias shook his head.

“How do you not get caught?”

“Half my teachers didn’t even know I was in their class until recently, like they’d ever think I’d pull off such an elaborate cheating scheme. It’s all word of mouth. Most are referred to me by others who previously had tutoring sessions with me, and there is absolutely no speaking involved. We meet at a library, usually that one ‘round the corner from where we live, all the necessary information is written on a piece of paper, and I read what they need, and then I burn it. They pay me half up front and the other half when I’m done. I have them give me their personal zip drive thingy and I upload the work to there. There’s really no proof of my involvement in any of it.”

I was almost at a loss for words. My mouth slightly parted about to say something and then Elias jumped in. “Pretty good for somebody who doesn’t talk in school.”

“Wow. How do you even get started doing that?”

Elias drummed his fingers on the counter. “Sophomore year, some kid sitting next to me was whining about not doing his paper, and he didn’t have time, blah, blah, blah, and I needed money, so I wrote on a slip of paper
I can help you for a fee
, and now I usually do, uh, two to three a week.”

“Really?”

“I learned to become resourceful when it comes to getting things I need, money being the main thing that I need.”

“You sure have, but how do you go to school, work here, and write two to three research papers a week?”

“School, well, I do enough to pass. I’ve never gotten good grades.”

“If you’ve never gotten good grades how…”

“How did I get into our school? I test well. I’m not as dumb as people think I am.”

“Nobody thinks you’re dumb. Don’t say that.”

“But anyways,” Elias continued, ignoring my statement. “I’m here a good portion of the week and when we’re slow, which is often, I do my work. Then I don’t sleep much, so there’s all evening, the weekends when I’m not at work, and I don’t have any friends I really socialize with, so there’s a crap ton of extra time right there. And if ya sit down and focus, it doesn’t take that long to write a paper and many of the topics I’ve done before, so I’m familiar with the information. So, yeah, that’s it.”

“You’re like an evil genius.”

“I don’t think so.”

A couple then walked into the store. The only customers since I arrived. Elias hit a mini gong, and the two looked in his direction. He saluted them, and the guy saluted back and the girl gave a wave.

“You don’t say hi to the customers?”

“Nope, I talk as little as possible.”

“How did you get a job then?”

“My sheer coolness.”

“You just walked in, and they saw that you were so cool and offered you a job?”

“Pretty much. There was a sign in the window, and it said something like
you
want a job here, try us
. So I went to the counter and mumbled something about the sign, and the guy behind the counter pointed to this picture.”

I looked at the picture on the counter that Elias pointed to. It was taped down around the edges and the paper in the middle that was exposed was starting to fade. In the picture was an obese woman sitting in an inflatable kiddy pool.

“I knew what bizarre cult film that was from, and the dude asked me if I talked, and I said when I need to, and I got a job.”

“Dude, that’s kinda crazy.”

Elias laughed. “Kinda is. They prefer us kinda aloof and non-talkative with the customers anyways. I dunno, I think they feel it makes us seem cooler, or some unknown reason like that.”

“Once again, I will say, you’re so different outside of school.” I was wondering if he was pumped up on energy drinks again, or if it related to what he said in school earlier, how I was different. I was starting to think maybe he felt more at ease with me or something, so perhaps Elias saying I was different wasn’t such a bad thing.

Elias shrugged. “See watch,” he said as the couple headed towards the register with some useless household decorations.

They placed their items on the counter, and Elias gave them a head nod. Without saying anything, he rang them up and then pointed to the little screen on the register that said the total when he was done. He clicked his tongue, they paid, Elias gave a little wave, and they were off. “Simple as that,” Elias said, after the couple left.

“So, do you ever talk to anybody besides me?”

“Not really.”

“But don’t you want to be heard?”

“You don’t have to speak to be heard.”

I thought about what he said for a moment and didn’t quite get what he meant, so I responded with, “You are one interesting cookie.”

Elias shrugged.

After a few minutes, a stocky guy with plastic framed glasses and a bowling shirt walked into the store.

Elias looked at the guy, gave him a little nod, and then turned to me. “Mike,” Elias said. “Manager.”

Mike wandered over and leaned on the counter next to me, resting back on his left elbow. “You’re not a customer,” he said, looking from me to Elias.

I immediately thought that maybe Elias wasn’t supposed to have visitors at work and was going to get in trouble.

Elias pointed to the left side of his face where I punched him and then at me.

“Oh man, she did that?” Mike the manager said.

Elias nodded.

“Gimmie a high-five girl.”

I drew in my eyebrows and gave him a look.

“He deserved that right? You’re not an abusive girlfriend are you?”

And before I could even respond, he told Elias he could clock out early.

We walked down the sidewalk side-by-side. It was still pretty bright outside even though it was nighttime; streetlights lit up the neighborhood. “Okay boyfriend, we are we going?”

“Oh wait, hold on a sec,” Elias said, stopping. He flipped open his messenger bag and dug inside, then pulled out a stack of stickers that were about five inches big. “Here,” he said, holding them out to me.

I looked at them, and it was a profile view of Sasha Santiago’s head. There was a white outline around her profile from where the stickers were cut out. “Thanks, what are these for?” Without saying anything he closed his bag and pulled a sticker out of my hand. He peeled off the back of it—putting the paper in a pocket to the field jacket he wore over his hoodie—then stuck the sticker to a light pole. Elias grabbed another sticker from me and ran backwards down the sidewalk back to the store where he worked. He once again peeled off the back, stuck the paper in his pocket, and slapped the sticker on the glass door. I started to walk towards him where he turned down the alley next to the building. He waved me over, and I handed him a sticker. He slapped it on a sign about parking that was on the side of the building.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Getting the word out.”

“Word out on what?”

“Sasha Santiago and
The Society of Prodigious Superbness
.”

“Are you allowed to do that?” I asked as we walked out of the alley.

“Well,” Elias said, bobbing his head side-to-side.

“Aren’t you like vandalizing property or something?”

“Technically yes, but if you don’t get caught, free advertising. Just stay away from private property.”

“Isn’t the building you work in considered private property?”

“They don’t mind so much. Now c’mon, think public property.”

“I don’t know about this.”

“Give ‘em back to me then if ya want. I’ll do it, just exposing people to your art.”

“But why?”

“I decided I wasn’t done helping you yet, and its kinda fun. We’re creating an identity for you, branding your comic essentially.”

I looked at the sticker. It kind of did look like a logo or something; under Sasha’s head to the right was S.S. “But how will people know it’s for my webcomic?”

“We start slapping some up, give ‘em to kids at school, your army of nerds, they start getting stuck up everywhere, and people trade and collect these things too. Look around at the light poles, back of signs, stickers are all around. People will eventually get curious and where will they look, online. You now have a larger online presence, so…”

“Does that kinda stuff really work?”

Elias nodded. “We just hit the right neighborhoods, like where young people hang out and stuff.”

“What if we get busted online?”

“Your site and photostream will just be photos of where this stuff is. Online there’s no actual proof that we put it up. As far as we’re concerned, we just took pictures.”

“Okay,” I said, peeling the backing off one of the stickers. I discreetly walked up to a newspaper vending machine and smoothed the sticker on the side of it.

“Awesome,” Elias said with a laugh.

“This is kinda fun.”

Elias smiled, grabbed another sticker from me, and ran ahead, crossing the street. It turned out that he had a crap ton more in his bag, and we ran down the one side of the street slapping them on any light pole, back of street sign, bus bench, or whatever we could find that we deemed appropriate for applying our stickers to. I don’t know why, but putting stickers on things was really quite fun. Maybe it was some weird thrill from knowing that it was technically illegal, or maybe knowing that people were being exposed to Sasha Santiago.

“Wait up,” Elias called out, jumping down from a bus stop pole that he shimmied up, so he could reach the back of the sign. He told me that the higher the better it was when it came to slapping stickers on things. The city was a little less likely to remove them if they had to put forth some effort in reaching them.

We went quite a ways down the street, so the people dissipated a bit, only a straggler here and there. We were also keeping a watchful eye for police. We were in one of those neighborhoods where cops liked to ride around on their bikes. Elias caught up with me, and we crossed the street heading back in the direction in which we came from.

“How did you make these?” I asked Elias, handing him some more stickers.

“Bought some permanent stick vinyl sticker paper, printed, and cut out with scissors. Quite easy.”

“You’re like a crafter.”

“I do not do crafts.”

“I bet you also own a hot glue gun and bunches of ribbon.”

Elias looked at me, smiled, and peeled off the back of a sticker. He then slapped it on my shoulder and ran away.

“Hey,” I yelled, running after him.

“That’s for calling me a crafter,” he said over his shoulder, jumping up and hitting a no-parking sign with his hand.

I peeled off the back of a sticker, reached up, and smoothed it down where Elias previously slapped. I then chased him down the block. We continued sticking our stickers on things until we got back to the intersection we originally came from. A mix of yuppies, teens, and singles in their twenties meandered about. It was chilly out, and I could see my breath hanging in the air.

“Wanna see something?”Elias asked, chewing on one of his fingernails.

“This isn’t going to be a, you show me yours I show you mine kinda thing is it?”

Elias crinkled up his nose. “No,” he said, entering the crosswalk. I followed him across the street where we turned left and walked past a few storefronts. We turned right at a store that had a bunch of sequined bras like things in the window. We walked down an alley where to the right was the back of the stores my friends and I liked to frequent. Murals of dead rock stars and musicians were painted on the back of some of them, and one store had a yellow and black mural with skeletons, and I do believe the Grimm Reaper. Elias stopped at a spot in the alley where to the right was a cemented patch used as parking. On the back of the building, I saw what he wanted me to see.