Eliot Strange and the Prince of the Apocalypse

8) Steven

I met Steven in the seventh grade. We became friends after we were first enemies. There is no friendship so strong as one that is first forged by hate. Steven hated me when we met. I didn't know why, but he did, and so I hated him right back. We were spectacularly mean mouthed to each other for almost the entire week of my arrival to school. I was good at that then because I had just come from teenage hell where I had been battling bullies everyday.

It was only when Steven finally said to me one day a remark about "my little twitchy tail and making sure Ben Hanson noticed it", and I caught my comeback and instead said - "What?"- that I finally figured out why he hated me so bad.

"You know girl. You know what you got, and you are using it to make Ben look at your butt," he said.

I certainly did not know I had any such power and most definitely did not have this superpower directed at the likes of Ben Hanson. "My tail is not twitchy."

"Please, girl. You are as jiggly as a bowl of Jell-O . You know what you're doing." Steven rolled his eyes.

"I think Ben Hanson is gross." I rolled my eyes too.

"He is not," said Steven. "He is.." He looked around before he leaned in to my space and whispered, "Lovely."

"You like him?"

Steven looked around again just to make sure. It was only me and him still standing on the sidewalk.

"Maybe?"

"You can have him," I said, "The boy picks his underwear out of his crack about ten times a day."

Steven thought about this. "Well, yes he does do that, but he has got beautiful hands. He plays the piano."

"When he is not tugging at his butt crack."

We both laughed.

Once Steven figured out I was not his competition, we were inseparable.

Ben Hanson got some underwear that fit and grew up to be a handsome young man who was headed to the North Carolina School of the Arts in the fall before the EMP stopped everyone from going to college. Steven and Ben never got together because Steven considered Ben out of his league.

We don't know for sure, but Steven believes he saw Ben the day of the massacre.