You know in 1999, when people thought the world was going to end in 2000? Well, they had a reason—the computers wouldn’t be able to change the first digit of every date on every site. Since you’re alive (I hope), the world didn’t end up ending. What I realized is, no one thought of 3000. Same deal, right?
Wrong. Horribly, completely, and utterly wrong.
It all started with my boyfriend, Michael, and I raiding the teacher’s lounge in the basement for cigarettes. Don’t start thinking that I smoke. I don’t. Neither does Michael. His dad does. If Michael’s father doesn’t have a pack of cigarettes each day, he takes out his anger usually on his wife, Michael’s step-mom. When she’s not around, he takes it out on Michael. But I still don’t take pity on my goofball of a boyfriend.
“Hurry up,” I whisper harshly, my ear glued to the door. “I swear footsteps are coming this time!” Michael replies with a shuffle of boxes. I groan. “Seriously, why can’t you just go buy some at the drugstore?”
He looks up this time, a cigarette pack in his mouth, because his pockets and hands are full of identical boxes. He spits out the box onto the rest of them, making them all tumble to the ground. He sighs, but doesn’t get mad. I laugh lightly. “Because, Alicia” he lets out, picking up the fallen boxes, “all of those stores kicked me out. I almost bought all of them in each store.” He laughs. “Apparently, store managers don’t like it when seventeen-year-olds buy all of their cigarettes.”
I manage a laugh, even though I’m visibly freaking out. I never do things like this. I’m the nice, outgoing girl, who isn’t a suck-up, but never even bends the rules. Up until now, that is. I pull myself together, and calmly walk down the stairs, and reach a frantic Michael. He’s picking up boxes like crazy, and I stop him by pulling his arm away and wrapping it around my waist.
Once both arms are wrapped around me, and his calmness calms me down, too, I rest my head on his shoulder (more of chest, since he’s so much taller than me) and whisper, “Mikey, if you stop now so we can go home, I’ll go to Prom with you.”
That gets him. Prom is coming up soon, and he’s known for a while that I’ve never liked Prom. I wasn’t exactly thinking of going, but I’ve been able to use it to bribe him lately. It’s worked. “Okay,” he whispers back, stepping back and grinning. “After you, Ali.” He motions to the stairs. I smile sweetly, and start up the stairs.
A rumble. I feel a huge rumble on the ground, and it shakes through to the step I’m on. Earthquake, I immediately think. We live in California, so it would make the most sense. But then it stops, like, really quickly. “What was that?” I ask, looking down at Michael, who is now on the ground, sitting amongst his fallen cigarettes.
“Stupid California,” he mutters. He gets back up, and looks at the boxes, defeated. “Why don’t we…” He trails off, and looks above him as the world rumbles again. This time it’s bigger, though. I cover my ears to muffle the sound of the terrifying crash above me. Several kids who stayed after shriek, and I hear something huge fall over.
“Let’s get out of here!” I scream over the crashing above us. I start up the stairs, and the world ends.
