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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.
    “Yeah,” I said, leaning against the wall with my shoulder. I felt all happy inside. We were having what could have possibly been defined as a conversation, or at least the start of one. I think it was at that point I might have actually realized I really liked him. Not just friend like liking him, but more than friends liking him, even though at that point he technically wasn’t my friend, so it wasn’t really more than friends liking him. It was, well, it was the kind of like where your stomach feels all fluttery and you hear birds chirping and harp music when you think about him kind of like.
    “So,” Elias said, clicking his tongue.
    I scrunched up my face and asked, “You really read my comic?” I actually didn’t want to ask him that because I was afraid of his response, but our conversation was losing steam fast, so it was the first question I plucked from my brain.
    He crossed his arms and pursed his lips together and gave me a kind of mean glare.
    Uh-oh, I thought.
    Then he cracked a slight grin. “Yeah.”
    “Do you hate me?”
    He shrugged. “Your depiction of my mother kinda holds true.”
    What I heard at first was Youd depiction of my muda kinda holds due . I scratched the back of my neck, concentrating on his response, trying to pick up on his speech pattern. From the brief sentences we’d exchanged so far, it seemed I was getting it. Ss became sh’s as in yesh and ish and he tended to leave off the ending letters on some words. He also did not seem to like certain letters, like Ls and Rs, they became Ws. If I just listened and paid attention, I was able to get it. It was like my brain’s auto-correct kicked in.
    When Elias’ sentence clicked in my brain, I looked at my feet, still being embarrassed that he had seen my comic. “I’m sorry anyways.”
    “Don’t fret,” he said, giving me a light tap on the elbow.
    I looked up, and our eyes met for a slight second. His eyes were a dark-brown, but they almost looked black, like pools of oil. “Have you gone to our school this whole time?” I asked, biting my lip, hoping not to offend him.
    “Uh, yeah.”
    “Oh my God, really? I swear I’ve never seen you at school before.”
    “I’ve seen you.”
    God, I felt like an ass. How could I