Free Permanent Adhesives by Melissa T. Liban Page A

head against the chain of the swing, enjoying such a peaceful moment. Elias slowed down too, stopped his swing, looked at me, and gave a little smile. We got up and started walking across the field whose grass was slowly changing to a faded green, losing any luster that it had during the summer. We reached the sidewalk and hung a right in the direction of where we lived. To our right were some limestone two flats, each one painted in a different color. There was a peach one, a federal blue one, and a cream colored one. We walked past the currency exchange and crossed the street at Mount Holy Burger and strolled down our block and over to my building.
    “Hey, you wanna come in for a bit?”
    Elias bit his lip, shrugged, and said, “Okay.”

Chapter Ten
     
    I let us in and much to my surprise, nobody was home yet. We went into my room because my mom slept on the couch, so I knew when she got home we’d get kicked out of the front room. And the kitchen was out because I felt like lounging, and you can’t kick back and lounge in a kitchen. I sat at the head of my bed and leaned back against the wall. Elias sat at the other end, crossed legged and facing me.
    “You seem so different outside of school,” I said, while thinking how I couldn’t believe I actually let him in my room because it was such a disaster zone.
    Elias chewed on his nail. “Well, normally I don’t talk while in school.”
    “Don’t talk?”
    “Nope,” he said with a shrug.
    “Hmmm, you’re…” I said, trailing off. I was going to say an interesting person, but I didn’t want to be, I don’t know, too complimentary maybe? He said I screwed up his head; I think he might have done the same thing to mine because somehow I was being won back over, but there was no way I could have still liked him, at least that’s what I was telling myself right at that moment. He was such an ass to me; I just couldn’t let myself. I was still supposed to be mad.
    “We should start with the blog transfer first and then tee-shirts,” Elias suggested.
    “Okay, but how do we get tee-shirts?’
    “We could order printed ones, but that can get expensive, or you could use a print on demand website, or we could make them.”
    “How would we make them exactly?”
    “We can buy blank tee-shirts, and I can just screen-print some for ya.”
    “You screen-print tee-shirts? How many talents do you have? How do you know all this stuff anyways?”
    “Well,” Elias said slowly. “Some of the comic stuff—” He stopped and pretended the hole that was starting in the knee of his jeans had some of the most interesting threads. He sighed. “I started researching it before last night.”
    I wanted to say aww, that’s so sweet, but instead I said, “Really?”
    “Yeah and then a lot of the web and kinda promotion stuff I kinda learned from helping this kid at school. Remember Benson Carter, he graduated last year?”
    “Yeah.” I definitely remembered Benson. I pined after him for a while last year, and he was in this band called Insert Name Here , and they were pretty spectacular.
    “I helped him build his band website and make the videos and their merch and stuff. I started out making their tee-shirts, and then I pretty much laughed at their website when I saw it, so they challenged me to make a better one, and it turned out it came kinda easy to me. Afterwards, they asked me to help with their videos, and thus I have an expanded skill set.”
    I smiled at Elias. “So it all started with tee-shirts?”
    “Yeah, I kinda made them for myself and Benson noticed one I had on and asked me ‘bout it.”
    “Really, that’s cool, so yeah, let’s make some tee-shirts.”
    “Okay, cool, I actually have a bunch of blank ones we can start with.”
    Elias Bickler might have been a little unstable (freaking out on me one evening and being so sweet the next), but yet pretty cool. “You want a pop or something?”
    “Sure.”
    “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
    When I