Chapter Twelve
“Your comic is totally worthy Molly,” Roberto said as we walked out to Kate’s car.
He was responding to my verbalization of the thoughts I had in the classroom. Sometimes I wondered if people were just humoring me and my comic really sucked. I was a teen. I was entitled to self-doubt, right? But really, self-doubt was one of my worst enemies.
“It’s deserving of everything it gets,” Roberto said, assuring me.
“Ya think?” I asked.
“Of course, he thinks so,” Kate said, punching me in the shoulder.
The rest of the car ride they filled me in on how Elias texted Kate late Saturday night, and they got together at Kate’s where Elias did the website while Roberto and Kate helped set up all my social networking accounts, and they also started my shop and took pictures of the merchandise and all that other stuff.
Kate and Roberto dropped me off at my house, and after they left, I ran across the street to Elias’. Unfortunately, my dad answered the door. Why, I thought, why? I should have just called Elias or texted, but my phone was a pre-paid one, so I was trying to conserve my minutes and number of texts, but I was paying the price for trying to be thrifty. A grin spread across my dad’s face. His shit-eating grin is what I called it. Oh how I hated it. His mouth was open and spread the entire span of his face, exposing the Indian corn he had for teeth and deep wrinkles splayed from the corners of his eyes. His hair was a fuzzy mess that stuck out at obtuse angles. He still wore his whites from work—a paint splattered sweat shirt with carpenter pants splattered in the same fashion. He smelled like baked beans. He always smelled like baked beans. Well, it was usually only when he was drunk, but then he was constantly drunk, so therefore, he technically always smelled like baked beans.
“Molly,” my dad slurred, leaning on the doorframe.
I responded with, “Is Elias here?”
My dad’s corny grin disappeared. He appeared to be contemplating my question with pursed lips and drawn in eyebrows. “Ewiash,” he said. Yes, my dad was being an ass and was making fun of the way Elias said his own name.
“Elias, is he here?”
“No, the idiot is not in.”
“God, you’re such an ass.”
“And you’re my lovely daughter. Why do you want to talk to him anyways?”
“None of your business.” I turned my back on my dad and went across the street to my apartment. I know, you’re probably thinking, who talks to their dad like that? But he was an ass, simple as that. Let me fill you in a little more, so you get the picture. Let’s see, he used most of his paycheck for beer and cigarettes, leaving little for groceries and bills and all that kind of stuff, so the last Christmas we all had together, the holiday feast consisted of pancakes and tater tots because that’s all we had in the house. I also mentioned why I didn’t work because my mom gave all my money to my dad for beer, well this one time I went on this crazed baby-sitting streak and had like three hundred bucks saved. I had it stashed in a dresser drawer, and somehow my dad found it, and I never saw that money again. The whole holding out on them and saying you didn’t have money, didn’t work, because as you can see, it eventually got found. Let’s see, some other pleasantries my dad bestowed upon our family. Well, there was this one time when he got together with a bunch of drunks from the neighborhood, and they set a car on fire. He lost his license due to so many DUIs. He punched out my best friend’s dad (she wasn’t my best friend anymore after that). He once broke my mom’s wrist…I could go on, but it’s just too depressing. I’m pretty sure you get the picture.
I mean I did have some happy childhood memories, but thinking about them almost made me sad because then I longed for those moments. Happy times that we only got to see in photographs; my sister and I in bathing suits being squirted with the hose by my dad, eating picnic lunches, my sister and I singing a duet while my dad clapped with fake enthusiasm. Maybe they were just passing moments from my childhood, but I still longed for those times.
*************************
“Dranyan, do you think your band of ornery teens will defeat us?”
Bubble with question mark.
“There’s no way. They have no superbness to unleash.”
I was in the middle of a scene where Dranyan was trying to start up his own society type of deal, so he would be more evenly matched with Sasha because since she put her society together she always had one-up on him. The Band of Ornery Teens was what he was calling it. In his mind if you got teens mad and gave them weapons, they’d be able to take on their peers who possessed powers.
“Molly,” my mother called from the kitchen.
I ignored her and wrote, “You have yet to see what they can do.”
Then my mother once again yelled, “Molly!”
I growled under my breath and put down my pencil. My mother was not a believer in walking a few feet to get you, no, instead she just yelled.
“What?” I yelled back, getting up off my bed.
“Get your butt in here.”
I walked into the kitchen and crossed my arms. “Yes, mother?”
My mom was pouring herself a cup of coffee and wearing a sweatshirt that had kittens playing with balls of yarn all over it and over her short little legs, she wore lilac knit pants. “Can’t you just call me mom like a normal teenager?”
“Problem with that is…I’m not a normal teenager.”
“Don’t I know it?”
I let out an overly dramatic sigh.
“What do you want for dinner?”
I trudged over to the freezer, opened the door, and peered inside. All that was in there was ice, some freezer burned green beans, and a box of frozen lasagna. “I guess we’re going with lasagna?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“It’s also the only thing we have,” I said, throwing myself into one of the kitchen chairs.
“Don’t complain Missy or I’ll make you get a job.”
I sighed in response. It was like mine and my mom’s ongoing thing, almost like a joke. You know why I didn’t have a job, I told you the reason and my mom knew too. I think a part of her felt guilty for taking my money and my dad stealing it. My sister Janie hated the fact that I didn’t have a job, and she was the one who had to help out with the bills and rent and whatnot, but I always said to her, “Well, you didn’t have a job in high school either.” She usually would respond with something like how it was different now, and we were flat out broke ass poor. But it’s not like I was some kid who was always demanding money or whatever. If I needed clothes, my mom would give me five dollars, and I’d go to the thrift store. If you went to this one thrift store on certain days of the week, everything was like way discounted, and I got a lot of tee-shirts for like forty-cents that way. I had no problems shopping there. I didn’t consume a large amount of food either, so I wasn’t like a huge financial burden, even though Janie thought otherwise.
Chapter Thirteen
“Partner,” I said, tapping Elias on the shoulder.
He looked up from his nails he was chewing on and nodded. Mrs. Gomez just told us to find groups, so we could start brainstorming on the project she assigned. We were supposed to choose a book with some literary merit and do some sort of presentation on it. I plopped into the previously occupied chair next to Elias and scooted it over a bit. We both stared forward at the chalkboard.
“Okay, this isn’t gonna work, get up,” I said to Elias. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I stood up and grabbed his arm. He obeyed and got out of his seat. I sat us down in a back corner of the classroom. “Okay, better,” I said, crossing my legs. “Let’s make it look like we’re talking about our project.”
Elias shrugged.
“What’s with the silent treatment all of a sudden? Brian and them didn’t really get to you did they?”
Elias sighed, dropping his shoulders. “Like I said, they were right.”
“Who, Brian and Reynaldo? No, don’t listen to
them, they’re nubs.”
“Just leave me be.”
“C’mon, I want you to be my friend.”
Elias looked up through his hair at me and sucked on his bottom lip. He sighed like the thought of being friends with me was exasperating.
“I’m not that horrific.”
“No, no, it’s not you, you’re, you’re…” he stammered.
A large shadow crept over us interrupting Elias’ sentence. We both looked up at Mrs. Gomez. She wore a buttoned down denim shirt with her khaki skirt. She put her hands on her hips and directly looked at Elias, but talked to me. “Make sure he takes part in this project.”
“Um, okay,” I said, wondering why she would doubt his involvement.
“Fifty-fifty.”
We both nodded.
“Maybe you could do something so Elias can practice his vocal projection. This will be a great opportunity for that.”
“Ut…” Elias tried to sputter out in some sort of objection.
Mrs. Gomez left to bother some other students, and Elias rubbed his hands over his face.
“Projection?” I asked.
Elias’ face flushed red. “Stupid IEP,” he mumbled.
I’m sure I had a pretty blank look on my face because I had the slightest idea what an IEP was. Elias picked up on it and said, “Individualized Education Program.”
“What’s that?”
Elias sighed and looked at the floor. After a few seconds, he looked back up at me, but didn’t say anything.
I raised an eyebrow at him trying to elicit a response; it actually worked.
“I fall into the category of special education.”
“But you’re not.” Maybe I didn’t have a proper understanding of what special education encompassed because I immediately thought, he’s not retarded.
Elias nodded. “I now receive special services, and they fall under special education.”
“Special services?”
“Speech therapy.”
“And you say you now receive them, you did not before?”
“No, well, some time ago, like in third grade, but not since then.” He sighed and drew circles on the floor with his finger. “I actually shoulda started in kindergarten cuz supposedly I was screened then, and they wanted me to start, but we moved, and then in third grade my teacher had me screened and I started, but at the end of that school year we moved again.”
“But not since then?”
“Yeah, I dunno, the paperwork or something didn’t follow, so my therapy stopped, and my mother never acts on my best interest, so, ya know.”
“And why now then?”
“I spoke too much in class.”
“How can you speak too much in class?”
Elias sucked on his lip and looked over my shoulder at the wall. “I didn’t think to question why I stopped, ya know?” I wasn’t sure if he even heard what I asked.
I nodded. “You were only eight. Why would you?”
Elias shrugged. He seemed to be big on the shrugging. “So, well, anyways, I talked stupid and so everybody assumed I was stupid, and I didn’t like it, so I just stopped talking in class and stuck with it since then.”
“How can you just stop talking in class?”
“Well, easy actually. I’d answer with as few words as possible, and in reading and stuff, I got bad grades cuz I wouldn’t read out loud, and when I did I couldn’t pronounce a lot of words, but they just thought I couldn’t read and/or was kinda slow in some subjects and so yeah, it was like my teachers left me alone. They said I was just very soft spoken, and assumed I wasn’t that bright. And that worked well for me until a few weeks ago.”
“And that’s when you spoke too much?”
“My other English teacher caught on after a while. Cuz…” Elias stopped and looked at me with his bottom lip pouting out.
“What?”
He let out a deep breath. “It all sounds pretty pathetic, especially...”
“How is it pathetic?”
Elias pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is the most I’ve ever talked to anyone in school before. I usually keep it pretty brief if at all.”
“That’s not pathetic.”
“It kinda is.”
I shook my head no. Then the bell rang. I was hesitant to stand up. I wanted to hear the rest of his story. “What lunch do you have?”
“Fifth.”
“Really?”
Elias nodded.
“I have fifth too. Meet me by the totem pole?”
Without him answering, the two of us stood up and went to grab our bags. Elias scratched the back of his head and then stuck his fingertip in his mouth.
“C’mon,” I said.
“Fine.”
We walked out of the classroom together and went in opposite directions down the hall. As I meandered to my next class, I was busy thinking how hard it must be not to say anything in school since you were little. Shoot, I wouldn’t be able to do it. If there’s somebody I know in one of my classes, I’m often told to shut up. Then that also meant he probably didn’t have a lot of friends because if you don’t talk, you’re almost certainly not going to have the highest friend count. That sucked. I couldn’t imagine what kind of life that would be, especially since mine kind of revolved around my friends.
*************************
I got outside pretty early. Kate and Roberto were both already out there. I saw Brian heading across the lawn towards us. “Ah man, is Brian eating with us?” I didn’t ask to be mean or anything. Brian was my friend, a kind of creepy one, but he was one. Just the day before he was screaming he wanted to kill Elias, so I wasn’t sure how Elias eating lunch with us was going to go.
“He said his fifth period teacher isn’t here today and there’s like some hundred year old sub, so he felt it was an appropriate time to ditch that class,” Kate said, filling me in, then shrugging.
“Elias is meeting up with us for lunch.”
“Oh, uh, well, I’ll help keep the peace,” Kate volunteered.
Brian slowly sauntered up with a grin spreading across his face. “Molly, you look ravishing this afternoon.”
I ignored Brian. “Roberto, you said Elias is in your history class, right?”
“Yeah,” Roberto said, pulling down the sides of his beanie to cover his ears.
“Have you ever heard him talk in class?”
“You know, I actually don’t think so.”
“He told me he doesn’t really talk in class. How does one get away with that?” I asked.
“He does sit behind somebody massively large,” Roberto said.
“You know what,” Kate said, twirling a braid. “I think Friday night was the first time I ever really heard him talk.”
Brian crinkled up his nose. “Why are we talking about Elias Bickler again?”
I slapped Brian in the shoulder. “Will you be nice? Geesh.”
“Elias!” Kate shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. He was coming out of the set of doors near the totem pole. “Over here!”
He looked up and headed in our direction. I heard Brian let out a sigh. Elias hesitated for a moment before walking over. He then continued forward and gave a little wave as he approached.
“Come to Taco Mel’s with us?” I asked him, unsure if he’d want to go to lunch with me if my friends were in attendance.
Elias bit the corner of his lip.
“C’mon dude,” Kate said, grabbing his wrist. Kate started walking away, but Elias didn’t budge, but that didn’t stop her. She yanked on his arm making him run a step forward. After that he just let her pull him along.
*************************
We were all seated at a series of three small tables with cracked, linoleum tops with bright purple trim. Elias sat across from me next to Kate, who sat next to Roberto. Brian was to my right, almost too close.
“So, about what you were saying earlier?” I asked.
Elias drew back his head and fervently shook i
t.
“What were you two talking about?” Brian asked, while shoving a nacho chip into his mouth.
“Nothing,” I answered, totally understanding why Elias was anti our class conversation. I felt a bit like a jerk for bringing it up in front of everybody.
“No, nope, nope, if Elias wants to join our posse here, there’s no secret keeping,” Kate said.
“One, it was a private conversation and two, we do not have a posse. I think some level of cool would actually have to be involved to have one.”
“Molly, you’re a bitch. Did you guys just all catch that? She said we’re not cool. Hate to inform you Molly, but we’re tragically hip. Also, we need to know about all private conversations.”
I tipped my head to the side looking at Kate. “Wait, isn’t tragically hip a negative thing in a way?”
“Is it?” Kate asked.
“Yes, I would prefer that you remove tragically from the hip. I’m just naturally hip, so it’s not tragic,” Roberto said.
Kate snorted. “You’re such a dork Roberto.” She then turned towards Elias. “So, what were you two talking about? Was it about going on a date or something?”
“No,” Elias said, almost too defensively in my opinion.
“I thought we were all becoming friends and such. You hung with Roberto and me all Sunday. We helped you out.”
Elias shook his head and Kate licked her finger and stuck it in his ear.
“Ahhh, fine,” Elias quietly muttered, giving in. “We were talking ‘bout how I talk like a demented four year old, and how I am now considered special ed.”
I pouted my lips at Elias. “You don’t sound like a demented four year old.”
“Now that I’m actually hearing him talk, he really does,” Brian said with a laugh.
I smacked Brian in the back of the head. “Stop being a jerk, or I will kick you out of our posse.”
“You better be nice Brian. Look at Elias’s face. It still looks like crap,” Kate said, pointing at Elias’ head. “No offense dude.”
Permanent Adhesives Page 8