Once, back in middle school, some guy had tried to give Steve shit about how he better not get Tina pregnant because if he did, his giant babies would kill her. Most of the girls from the Flats were small, but Tina couldn't be five feet. Sometimes Park wondered if Steve was with Tina because she made him look even more like a monster.

He'd looked like a grown man since the seventh grade, and that was before he grew a full beard. Steve always looked like he was surrounded by doll furniture. Even sitting, his head practically touched the roof. Steve was holding court in the last seat. Park pulled down his headphones and turned to the back of the bus. 'Teach her Drunken Monkey style,' somebody said. 'I'll teach you all about human growth and development-what do you need to know?' 'Those were my Human Growth and Development notes, dicklick,' Tina said. A ball of paper hit him in the back of the head. The other 20 percent was just keeping your head down.… Knowing that was 80 percent of surviving with Steve as your neighbor.

Sometimes, if you ignored Steve for a minute, he moved on to someone else. 'Drunken Monkey style, man, it's a real fucking thing. 'It so fucking does!' Steve shouted back. 'That doesn't exist!' somebody shouted behind him. Once he started driving to school, he could listen to whatever he wanted or nothing at all, and he'd get to sleep in an extra twenty minutes. His parents had already said Park could have his mom's Impala, and he'd been saving up for a new tape deck. He could get back to New Wave in November, after he got his driver's license. Or maybe he'd make a special bus tape with as much screaming and wailing on it as possible. Tomorrow he was going to bring Skinny Puppy or the Misfits. Park pressed his headphones into his ears. XTC was no good for drowning out the morons at the back of the bus.

Eleanor and park novel