Permanent Adhesives (4 page)

I flipped my pillow over, lay on the new side until the coolness disappeared, and then pulled it over my head attempting to stop my thoughts and caffeine surge so I could get some sort of sleep.

In the background of my sleep I heard a beeping. It kept getting louder and louder. It was my darn alarm clock. I rolled over, slapped it with my hand, and pulled my pillow over my head, which is something I seemed to have done a lot. I really didn’t want to get up. I lay there for a few minutes until Janie came and started knocking on the doorframe.

“Get outta bed,” she said.

I rolled over and looked at her. She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. She looked a lot like me, which means she was adorable. Okay, maybe I’m stretching it, but since she did resemble me, it means she was pretty decent looking because I was cute enough. I always got, “Why don’t you wear makeup and dress a little nicer. You’d be so pretty.” Mainly, I got that from Janie and my mother though. They weren’t the best at boosting a youth’s self-esteem. Janie too had hair the color of blah, but hers just brushed her shoulders, and we both had the cursed Pearson ski slope nose. We both also had a little bit of an overbite. I think mine was a little worse though because all my front top teeth had spaces between them; all work that I’m sure could have been fixed with braces, but my mom didn’t want to spring for orthodontia.

“Mom said to make sure you leave for school. She had to go to work early this morning.”

“I’m getting up,” I said, rolling on my side, facing the wall. Morning was always a tough time for me. I slowly sat up and started rummaging through the pile of clothes at the end of my bed, mostly stuff I had only worn once or twice, not quite wash worthy because when you don’t have a lot of money, you learn to re-wear your clothes because it’s hard sometimes coming up with money to go to the Laundromat. I pulled out a long sleeved thermal shirt and some shorts. I topped it off with my green zip up ski vest, and I was ready to go.

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

The bus was taking forever that morning. I really should have worn a hat. My ears were starting to hurt. I waited at the bus stop with about six other teenagers, a business looking guy wearing a trench coat and holding a brief case, and then there was an old guy with three small, tan, plastic suitcases. And of course when the bus came there was another one right behind it. I got on the second one since it was nearly empty. I got off in front of my school and moseyed on in.

During English, we had a fire drill. I was kind of annoyed because I was trying to work on some of the text for the next page of
The Society of Prodigious Superbness
. I usually got some good work done in English class, granted it wasn’t school work, but it was something I enjoyed more. I followed right behind Elias to outside as we filed onto one of the sidewalks leading up to the school. We stopped, and I stood looking at Addison St. and the back of Elias’s head. He stood there gnawing at his nails, not seeming to notice that it was frickin cold out, but then it could have just been me. As I said earlier, I put on some shorts. Well, they were a pair of denim cutoffs, and I also wore some tube socks. Not the wisest clothing choice when it’s late fall, but I was a teenager. We have no common sense.

I then looked around at all the students gushing out of the building and saw kids that I would see crossing my path in the hall, but didn’t personally know. Like across the lawn with one class was this kid Otto and that time I seriously mean kid. He was like ten years old and in high school. Cars on Addison were slowing down, trying to be nosey and see why we were all standing out there. I let out a deep breath and tapped Elias on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I said. I wasn’t sure what more I was going to say, but
hey
seemed like a good place to start.

He turned, looked at me, and raised his eyebrows.

“How’s work?” I asked, rocking back on my heels with my hands in my pockets. I’m telling you that might have been one of the dorkiest conversation starters ever.

“Okay,” he answered, biting his bottom lip. He didn’t seem as mad at me as before.

I nodded my head like what he said was the deepest thing ever. I needed to come up with something fast and for some reason, a lie popped into my head. “Hey, my friend Kate is having a small party like thing at her house later. Are you working tonight?” I was so lying, but he didn’t know that. Normally, I wasn’t the kind of girl who would do something of the sort to garner a boy’s attention, but it just popped into my head. I couldn’t help it.

“No,”

“Well, you wanna go?”

“I dunno.”

Everybody started going back into the building. I was glad because at that point I couldn’t feel the middle section of my legs. “C’mon,” I said, as if that was going to convince him.

He blew a breath out of his lips and made a clicking noise with his tongue.

“What else you gonna do?”

He clicked his tongue some more and rolled his eyeballs up. “Fine,” he said.

Okay, now here was my problem. I needed to find Kate, tell her that she was to have a party that night, and invite people. I got back to the classroom, ran inside, grabbed my backpack, and ran out before Mrs. Gomez could catch me. I knew where Kate’s class was, it was Art up on the fourth floor and luckily, she had a very lovely teacher who thought he was hip and would pretty much let whoever wanted, to come and hang in his class. I darted down the hall and up the stairs, keeping an eye out for any of the security guards. You could have probably spotted one of the school’s security guards miles away because they wore these bright yellow jackets that said security in large black letters across the back. I got to Kate’s classroom, almost out of breath, and tried to saunter in all cool, like I wasn’t about to die from a heart attack. Kate was sitting in the corner at a table near the window with Roberto. Mr. Murdo gave me a wave. I flipped a wave back his way.

“Hey,” Kate said, surprised to see me. She was wearing a tee-shirt that had a picture of Kirk Cobain and the years of his life on it. She always said that she was going to high school in the wrong decade; she should have been in high school at the dawn of alternative music.

“Your mom works at night, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said pensively.

“And she kinda lets you get away with murder, right?”

“Yeah, but what’s this about, and why is my mother involved?”

“Well, you must have a small party like thing tonight at your house, so we have to start inviting people as of this moment.”

Roberto peeped up from his still life drawing. There was an arrangement set up in the middle of the classroom on a table covered with some material. It was a collection of baskets, bottles, and different animal skulls. “I invited?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

Kate sat there looking at me confused.

“Huh?” she said.

“Please, you have to for me.”

“Soooo,” Kate said, all drawn out like. “I’m supposed to have a party. Tonight. At my house.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess we better start telling people.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know,” Kate said, flashing me a big grin.

I stood in the middle of Kate’s living room. Crap, I thought. I think we told too many people. They weren’t all supposed to show up. It was so last minute. The house was jammed packed with kids. Roberto was playing DJ, and music wise, it was loud, but he was mostly sticking with indie rock, so hopefully our guests wouldn’t get too riled up. I surveyed the room for those I actually knew. In one corner stood this kid Charlie Chou, who was really tall and all his pants were always just a scooch too short. He was standing with Nicki and my friend Anna Lin and her boyfriend Clark Gupta and the founders of the club dedicated to my comic. There was Reynaldo, or Reynaldo Mathias Arias Delgado as he liked to introduce himself, who initially started the club, so he was like president. He often smelled of pickles. On occasion, Reynaldo had been seen walking around school with a thermos. Rumor was that it was filled with pickle juice. He also wore tee-shirts that always had weird status update like quotes on them. The shirt he had on then said
Goin’ to Get My Dance On at the Club Tonite
. Next to him was Brian Park, who was vice-president. Brian was half Korean and half Polish and very long and skinny, almost like one of those walking stick insects. He also had a tendency to creep me out. He often said things like, “You are looking so radiant this afternoon,” and then he’d nod to affirm what he said. The last of the club’s founders was Dean Tucker. Poor Dean was only seventeen and already had a receding hairline; a most noticeable one to boot. He also liked to sport a sweet sweater vest; he had quite an extensive collection.

Then there were people sitting on the couch all garbed in cardigans, plaid, quirky band tees, and skinny jeans. And everybody else was standing in small clumps around the room squashed on top of one another. I was standing there looking all around, and I saw no Elias Bickler. If he was lying about coming I felt that I’d probably be pretty disappointed, but all was going well. We seemed to throw an okay party at the last minute. We made all the guests supply everything. If they wanted in they had to bring beverage, snack, or toilet paper (especially toilet paper) because Kate knew there was no way they would have enough. And we told people per chance if they brought libations that were of the illegal kind for kids our age, they had to be kept in a backpack or duffel bag near the back door just in case the cops were called, so then they could be easily and quickly transported out of the house.

I was turning to walk to the back of the house when Elias walked in behind this guy named Tomasz. I turned and stood next to a few people so it wouldn’t look like I was waiting for him. They walked in and started saying hi to some people here and there. Well, Tomasz was saying hi to many, and Elias gave out about one head nod. They squished past everybody to the back and disappeared into the kitchen, either to get some pop or illegal libation. I went and sat down near Roberto who was skipping over the next song in the shuffle, picking out something where the main instrument being played was a banjo. I looked over to his myPad which was playing its music through a portable speaker.

“Play that next,” I said, pointing to a song I liked by a band that used tap dancing as their percussion.

I crossed my legs and looked at Roberto’s feet because I always enjoyed the shoes he wore. He seemed to have a pair for each day of the week. That day they were black with red plaid. He bought most his wardrobe up at Belmont and Clark (yes, the intersection we were at the day before). He said if you were authentically superb, you didn’t shop in a mall.

“How’d you get DJ duty?” I asked.

“I requested it, so Kate bestowed the task upon me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, when I got here I didn’t much feel like socializing.”

I nodded my head in response. He got like that sometimes.

I sat there for a bit with Roberto. We didn’t say much, but he was one of those people you could just hang and be cool with without saying anything. After a bit I put in another request and stood up without looking, nearly knocking over Elias. My head hit his forearm sending his drink flying and spraying everywhere. Only I would do something like that, and what were the chances that he would be the one walking out of the kitchen? I think some kind of forces were at play, but I’m just not exactly sure what kind. I gave a nervous laugh.

“I’ll get some towels,” I said, looking at Elias. “You should help me.”

He looked around like I was talking to someone else.

“You,” I said, grabbing him by the elbow, leading him into the kitchen. I pushed through some people and grabbed the roll of paper towels. I ripped some off and handed them to Elias. He reluctantly took them. He walked ahead of me into the dining room, bent down, and started swabbing the floor. I watched him for a few seconds. He was wearing a gray tee-shirt with an image of a moose and some skinny jeans, which were held in place by a red canvas belt. I squat down and started helping him. “Thanks,” I said.

He nodded his head. We finished wiping up the pop mess without saying a word. He took the paper towels and threw them away and reappeared with a new cup. He came and stood next to me. I crossed my arms, just stood there not saying anything. I could see him look out the corner of his eye at me. He was probably thinking
why is this girl wearing tube socks and shorts when it’s so close winter?

“Word is, this was a spur of the moment thing,” Elias said, finally breaking the silence.

It took my brain a second to register his sentence because what it actually sounded like was
Wood ish, dish wash a shpu of the momen ding
. He hadn’t said much to me before, so I never fully noticed the way he talked. I couldn’t recall if I noticed his speech on that first day I met him (the one on the street). But I remembered that one time in school when he said
pine
for
fine
and that when he said his name the first day he was in my English class it sounded kind of garbled, but I just thought he was mumbling, but it was something more than that. “Kinda,” I responded in slight delay.

“Yeah?” Elias said, now smiling. He actually knew how to smile, and it was cute too because only one dimple popped up; just the one on the left-hand side.