I threw out a couple of exploding fist bumps and then landed in what seemed to be deemed as my seat every time we all met up. It was up near the coffee order counter place and was kind of centered and facing everybody else. I had an urge to go home, but I suppressed it and took off my ski vest and sat down with my arms crossed. The seats around me were almost instantaneously taken the second my tushy hit the chair.
“Hey Brian,” I mumbled. He sat down to my left and wore a black tee-shirt. On it was white text that said Have You Unleashed Your Superbness? It was like the unofficial club tee-shirt.
“What’s up my lady?” he asked, making his eyebrows go up and down.
“I don’t know,” I said, scratching the tip of my nose.
Brian made a gasping sound and looked at the guy who was sitting to my right. It was Dean. “Are you not in a superb mood?” Brian said, putting his hand to his chest like he was in utter disbelief. I was usually one never to mope. Well, at least in front of others.
“I’m actually surprised you showed up Molly,” Dean said. Before I could say anything he said, “We need to get her some coffee.” He pushed back his chair, standing up.
“Thanks.” I flashed a smile at Dean.
Roberto occupied the seat directly across from me at the table. He smiled at me and tipped his head to the side. His way of saying you okay?
“Sooooo,” I said. “How was the party after I left?”
Roberto let out a chuckle as Kate bounded up to the table. “Hello Molly, nerd, Roberto.” She was so mean and addressed all members of the club as nerd; she and Roberto were the exceptions. “Have you seen this?” Kate asked with a huge grin across her face, pulling out her myPhone.
I responded with a, “Huh?”
“It was seriously just posted only a few minutes ago, but you should see how many hits it has already.” Kate then pressed play on her phone and handed it to me.
My gut sank when I saw that it was a video of mine and Elias’ argument from the night before. “This is awful. I look like an angry girl with daddy issues.”
“Um, hon,” Kate said, placing her hand on my shoulder. “You kinda are.”
I scrunched up my face and looked at her. I opened my mouth to defend myself, but Kate spoke first.
“I see through your superbness sweet cheeks. You’re not as good at hiding things as you think.”
I threw a mean glare at her, grabbed my ski vest, and got up and left.
“Mols,” I heard a few call after me. I ignored them and stormed out. I so did not want to deal with any of it.
*************************
I was a few buildings away from mine when I saw Elias running across the street at me. I turned to walk in the opposite direction. I was quite opposed to talking with him. I could hear him running on the sidewalk behind me to catch up. I contemplated running, but just didn’t feel like it, so I stopped.
“What do you want?” I asked, fully agitated.
He stood next to me in the grass and bit his lip and took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
“That’s it? You’re sorry!” I turned to look at him straight in the face. “You’re an ass-hat. A real true live ass-hat. I’ve never fully hated anyone before, but I may hate you.” I paused, and Elias looked at the ground. “It’s unbelievable how mad I am at you. Do you understand that? You can’t just waltz up to me and say I’m sorry.” I was furious. I had to stop to collect myself a little; I closed my eyes, let out a breath, and then went on. “You just can’t. You’re a big shit head!”
“Molly,” Elias said, trying to get in a word. We both now stood inches from each other, face-to-face.
“Don’t Molly me,” I yelled, sounding like my mother. “I don’t even want to hear your voice. I don’t even want to see your lips move. Keep them shut,” I shouted, feeling my head turning red. “Just keep them shut!”
“No,” Elias said flatly. “No, I won’t. I came out here to say something, and I’m going to say it.”
“No you’re not,” I screamed. “Get out of my face.”
He backed up a couple of inches and was standing on the curb in front of a rusting, red car from the seventies. “There. I said I was sorry, and I am. I feel awful. I don’t know why I said what I said or why I did what I did. From the bottom of my heart I’m sorry.” He stopped talking and looked at me. I didn’t say anything. There was total awkward silence hanging in the air. I was still quite mad.
“I know I’m so stupid. You just, you, you…” he said, stammering over his words. “You cross this boundary in my life, and I don’t know how to deal with it.”
I raised my eyebrows inquisitively. I wanted to shove him, but then I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, so I let him continue instead of going with my urge to knock him down. “What do you mean?”
“Nobody knows about my home life. I keep home and school totally separate,” he said, scratching between his eyes. “You cross that boundary. You know all about my home life. No one is supposed to know ‘bout it. You can’t be in both worlds. My life is a big pile of shitty and it’s probably better if you just stayed clear and I dunno, the whole situation, it’s just, it…, uh… kinda scares me. And I’m just angry at you for this stupid reason, and I guess I was trying to get you to go away or something, but I’m so sorry. I really didn’t want to hurt you. I just blurted it out without thinking. It’s so stupid. I know it is,” Elias said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. It looked like he was starting to cry. “I just wanted to say I’m truly sorry, and I really am.” He looked down at his feet.
“So you don’t want people to know about your screwed-up life? What about me? You going and shouting that crap at the party. And now it’s all over the internet!” I turned and started down the sidewalk back towards my house.
“God, I know. Can I somehow make it up to you?” Elias asked, tailing me.
“No!” I started into a slow run. He ran next to me. I ran faster, and he followed suit. We ended up at the bottom of the cement stairs of my apartment building. “Seriously, scram.” Jesus, he was getting really annoying.
He didn’t listen and sat down on the bottom step. I let out a deep sigh, threw my hands up, and sat next to him. I gave him my stare of death; I drew in my eyebrows and scowled my lips, and in response he gave me a crooked half-grin.
“What?” I said, exasperated.
“Have you ever considered expanding with your comic? Maybe try to make some money with it? Bring it to the next level?”
I shrugged. “No, why? It’s just my silly comic. A distraction for me really.”
“Since the video went up, so has the amount of your blog followers.”
“Okay, and?”
“You have a growing pool of people out there to sell things to.”
I still wanted to harm him, but the little turd was making me curious.
“You could sell print versions of your comic, or e-books and tee-shirts. Did you know that you can even sell subscriptions to your blog?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, for people who want to read it on their phones or electronic reader things.”
“Interesting.”
“You don’t have to like me. Just let me somehow make it up to you.”
Hmmm, I thought looking out onto our street; a one way lined with tall trees that left the whole block in the shade. Our block actually looked pretty with the old trees. A good portion missing their leaves, but a few still dressed in gold and reds and browns.
I glanced over at Elias. He sucked on his lip and raised his eyebrows. My rage was no longer at a rolling boil, just maybe a medium bubbly one. “Fine.”
“Good. Do you really hate me?” Elias asked.
“No,” I sighed. “But I’m still mad.”
“God, I swear, I really am sorry,” Elias said, reaching down and picking at a loose piece of rubber on his shoe.
“Okay, enough already.”
“I feel like an ass.”
“That’s cuz you are.”
“Yeah.” Elias stopped picking at his shoe. “I really mean it though. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Didn’t I say enough already? I’ll let you make it up to me, but you are a bastard, you know that?”
Elias clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and nodded his head yes. “Yeah.”
“And you look like crap.”
Elias smirked. “I have to go to work, but we’ll meet up later.”
“Okay,” I said. “You work a lot?”
Elias shrugged.
“All right, gotta go and work on my comic.”
Elias stood up and shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “I’ll be back later.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Bye.”
I watched Elias go back across to his building. After a bit, I saw him pop out on his bike and ride off down the street. Was I letting him off the hook too easily? I kind of knew where he was coming from, and I did beat him up. Maybe he would be able to help me move The Society of Prodigious Superbness to the next level.
Chapter Eight
I was on the couch dozing when I heard a knocking on the front door. I groggily got up and answered it. It was Elias. “Hey,” he said, looking at the ground.
I motioned him inside. “What time is it?” I asked, noticing it was dark out.
“I dunno,” Elias said, chewing on a fingernail. “Like seven or something, I got caught up with work.”
“I was just napping anyways.”
“So, do want to just hang here and talk about your comic stuff or go somewhere, uh…?”
“My mom and sister will probably be home soon, so we can go to The Nugget or something.”
“Okay, cool. First can we swing by my place, so I can pick up a couple of things? Cuz I just came over here to make sure we were still on and stuff.”
“All right.” I nodded, grabbed my ski vest, and we headed across the street into the cool night air, ending up at the building where Elias lived and also my dad. It was weird. I’d never been that close to it before. I always walked on my side of the street. I felt like I couldn’t cross the street, all the dangers lied on the other side and yet there I was. Elias opened the front door, and we walked through the makeshift front porch, which was piled high with watered stained moldy, old cardboard boxes, and into the living room.
“So, welcome to my humble abode,” he said, waving me inside with a twirl of his hand. “Life styles of the rich and famous.”
“Close,” I said. “We don’t have what would qualify as spectacular living quarters either.” I looked around the room. The walls were yellow and dirt stained. They probably went years since they were painted with a fresh coat of white. On one side of the room was an old, worn couch with water mills and hay bales on it, done in shades of brown and next to it was a pile of newspaper ads and empty beer cans. Across from the couch was one of those ancient TVs, one of those cumbersome wooden ones that sat on the ground that was like five hundred years old. I wondered if it actually worked. Besides the TV was a green and yellow folding lawn chair. There was a very musty smell about the place. I looked down at the carpet I stood on. It was so worn that it was like a flat almost hard surface with large tan and gray stains on it. I doubted they had a vacuum because there was a smorgasbord of little paper flecks and lint and odd crumbs dancing on top of the carpet.
“Just give me a sec,” Elias said, biting his lip and bobbing his head.
“Okay,” I said. All the while, thinking, oh God, what if my dad showed up? It almost felt wrong being in that apartment.
Elias headed out of the front room. I ended up following him, out of curiosity, through a very tiny kitchen and into what at one time was probably a back porch, but seemed to have served itself as his bedroom. I stood in his bedroom doorway (that held no door) as he dug for his stuff. His room, if you could call it that, was a narrow space with a mattress in one corner and a large pile of clothes next to it, and it felt like there was a draft in there. I looked, and on the right-hand side of the space was the backdoor. Elias grabbed a yellow notebook off his bed and shoved it inside his messenger bag that was slung across his body. He nodded, like signaling his mission was accomplished, and I turned and started walking towards the front. He followed. That’s when we heard a jangling sound about the backdoor. I think both our guts sank.
The backdoor burst open and Elias’s mom came in wearing a long, lavender, puffy winter coat. I nearly fell over when I saw who was coming in behind her. I’m pretty sure I stood there with my mouth hanging open. It wasn’t my dad who followed Elias’s mom in; it was Logan. I wasn’t sure how to react. I was hoping he wouldn’t realize who I was because it had been a couple of years since I’d seen him last. Logan was an old friend of my dad’s. He always had a very creepy presence about him. He had this light-brown hair that was overly puffy at the top and a thin mustache that ran across the top of his lip. He was tall and sickly skinny and had these long, creepy, knobby fingers. I remembered him always standing inappropriately too close when he would talk to me when I was younger. My skin crawled just thinking about him, and there he was in Elias’ home.
Elias’ mom and Logan made their way into the kitchen before they realized somebody else was there besides Elias. His mom looked at me like she was studying my face for some reason. She then yelled out, “What in the hell is she doing here?” She reeked of booze.
Logan then also looked at me. “Holy hot totties!” he exclaimed. “Where did you find her at?” It was like Elias brought home some scraggly little puppy he found in the alley or something. “Oh my God Molly, give me a hug,” Logan said, holding out his arms.
I couldn’t move. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I decided to shake my head back and forth for no.
“Ah, c’mon.”
“We’re leaving,” Elias said, trying to get us out of there.
“Where ya going with her?” his mom asked.
“We have to go work on a school assignment.”
“You still do school work? I figured you failed out by now,” Elias’s mom said to him while stripping out of her coat. Logan helped her pull it off. It all seemed so creepy. Being there in that situation just felt wrong. Why was I there? Why was I in my dad’s choice of residence? I should have been across the street safe in my apartment. Not there, in that apartment, exposed to the elements my family had been trying to avoid.
Ignoring his mother, Elias grabbed my arm. “Let’s go.”
“Good idea,” I said, following him through their living room that seemed to have lacked any light. Actually, the whole apartment was very dark. We got outside and the chilly air felt refreshing, hopefully washing me of the creepy feeling that was clung to my skin. Elias and I stood on the sidewalk looking at each other.
“That was way unexpected,” I muttered, playing with the zipper on my vest.
“I’m sorry,” Elias said, biting his bottom lip.
“For what?”
“Life in general I guess.” Elias’ lip pouted out, and he blinked at me.
I sighed. My anger towards him was ebbing away. “To The Nugget?”
Elias nodded.
“Even though I don’t think I can focus now,” I said in a tone dripping with melancholy.
Elias sighed. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s with that dude. He always gives me these skeevy looks.”
“That’s because he’s a perv. And your mom…”
“Is the root of all that is evil in this world?”
I smiled at him. His mom definitely wouldn’t qualify as affable; pretty sure she was nowhere close to winning mother of the year.
Chapter Nine
The Nugget smelled of grease, but not a real gross grease, like grease from corned beef hash. Elias held a sugar packet in front of his face and intently read the small print on it. I flicked at it with my fingers. He put it down on the table and sighed and then started ripping off one of his nails with hi
s teeth.
I slapped his hand. “Stop that, will you?”
Elias then started drumming his fingers from his other hand on the table. I stared at him trying to use my mind powers to stop him from being so twitchy. It didn’t work. After he drummed the table, he made those darn clicking noises with his tongue, scratched his head, and pulled at his hair at the top of his neck. I sat there studying him. He didn’t even realize I was staring. He was too busy in his pattern of twitches. He continued with the fidgeting. I think it was unconscious. He was making me want to fidget.
“What you gonna get?” I asked, hopefully distracting him from his own nervousness.
“I think I’ll just get coffee.”
I got coffee also and a plate of hash browns. I knew that would be my dinner for the night. The waitress came, filled up our coffee cups, and I waited for my food.
Elias chewed on a nail. “So?”
“Yeah,” I said, like him asking so was an actual sentence.
“I just…” he said, trailing off.
I lifted an eyebrow encouraging him to go on.
“I feel like an idiot sitting here with you.”
“Why?”
“Cuz, I acted like such an ass.”
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