Chapter Text
“You good, kid?”
Max paused. Cereal box suspended mid-pour.
The Breakfast of Champions . (‘It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live.’)
Angela waited. Mulling over Kurt Vonnegut quotes in her head, bare legs swinging from the kitchen stool and the oversized shirt she’d worn to bed brushing against her thighs.
Just last night she’d been in Max’s room; rattan headboard like a sunbeam, shelves neatly filled but for how long? Her cousin’s persistent hands worked the trucks on her skateboard, legs splayed behind her as she lay on the floor. She had been braiding her own hair as she sat against that sunbeam headboard, indulging Max who had come alive with the aftermath of the arcade visit and the accompanying victory– Hawkins's very own dig dug champion.
Max, that morning, was a whole different creature. Pale-faced and bleary-eyed, but something weak in the features, something so unlike Max who stomped around and badgered an irate Billy for a ride because that dig dug high score was hers damn it.
“I’m good,” she said, cocking her head as if she was making up her mind before nodding slowly.
Angela raised a brow. “Yeah?” And I’m Superman, went unsaid.
Her red-headed cousin squirmed under her look, busying herself with finally pouring her cereal. “It’s just that we’re in a new place and it’s a whole new school and you and Billy are going to the same school and I don’t know anybody.”
She was fixated on her cereal, refusing to look at the older girl.
“What if they don’t like me? I mean, Billy called me weird the other day– whatever that means. What if the kids at school think I’m weird, too? And we still haven’t got our class schedules! What if I have gym? Or, worse, history.”
And she would have carried on, with this cosmically heavy list she’d made just that morning of everything that could go wrong. She was practically crushing herself under the sheer weight of it, building it up to some impossible size.
“Since when did you give a shit what Billy Hargrove thinks?” Angela piqued up. Pinpointing the only thing she could bet on.
And like clockwork, Max bristled all at once.
“I don’t! ” She slammed the milk carton back onto the countertop. The liquid poured over the edges. “But he’s popular, isn’t he? Nobody ever gives him grief.”
Which was true enough. Billy was always better at giving grief than being on the receiving end. Except for where Neil was concerned; a delightful fact Max always seemed keen to forget.
Angela hummed, leaning back on her stool. “What about me?”
“What about you?” Max grumbled, cleaning the small spillage with a paper towel. The look she was giving that spilt milk was enough to make it curdle.
“Well, I think you’re pretty rad. You skate, you’re the new reigning dig dug champ, and you’ve got a lot going for you. And what about that cool Walkman I got you? Hell, I would have been lining up for a listen of that when I was in middle school.”
The paper towel was quickly dissolving into the puddle of milk.
Max was decidedly unimpressed with her spiel. “You’re my cousin. You have to say that.”
She threw her hands up: hey, what can you do? “And Billy is your step-brother, he has to pick on you. I don’t make the rules.”
The spoon clattered against the cereal bowl.
“Gee, thanks. I feel so much better.”
Angela softened all at once. “You’ll find your people, Max. And hey, there’s more to life than school. It’s just a blip in an otherwise steady trajectory to old age, I promise.”
“If you say so.” Max twirled the spoon halfheartedly, a sudden shyness on her rounded face.
“I do,” Angela nodded. “So hurry your ass up and get ready.”
She left Max to her pittance of cereal and existential crisis.
Her own nerves were steeled. New school, new place, but that just meant questions. She hated questions.
Maybe it should have come as a surprise that Billy was sitting on her bed when she entered her room.
There was a missing panel between their closets. A close-kept secret that somehow Neil and Susan had failed to pick up on.
(Was it just her or had the opening gotten wider since they’d moved in?)
His head was against the wall, surveying the multitude of posters and polaroid photos decorating the place.
He had watched her put them up in the first place. Filling her room with those long legs he’d slung off the mattress and the smoke from his cigarette.
(Black Sabbath Vol. 4 was playing. The needle sank across the circumference of the vinyl, searching for the middle where she’d inevitably flip it over and start anew.
Billy lounged on the bed, long legs slung over the side, motorcycle boots tapping against the bare floorboards. His head was tilted back, blooming smoke from his parted lips and filling the room.
He watched her like he sometimes did, with rapt attention and eyes boring into her greedily.
She’d taken a seat at her desk, opening and closing drawers and rifling through the clutter she’d have to work her way through if she wanted some semblance of order.
Half the walls were postered: movies and bands and random artwork spanning across the room. Bookcase spilling out into any open surface: the dresser and windowsill and piled on the floor by her bed. Photographs scattered everywhere, polaroids with the date scrawled underneath, her room dotted with memories.
Finally, he stood. Snatching up a stray baseball she’d had since little league, passing it from hand to hand with easy grace.
And she was the one watching him, now.
He leaned in close to her cluttered desk, inspecting the polaroids on the wall so far with scrutiny.
He was scant an inch away from her, leaning in closer somehow.
“I’m not in any of these,” he announced.
She leaned back- leaned away. Took a cigarette from the pack on her desk, rooting around for a light.
He was watching her.
Finally, she found one.
“I don’t have any of us.” She spoke around her cigarette.
Billy nodded. He turned and placed the baseball on her desk- not where he’d found it.
“You got a camera?”
“Bottom left drawer.”)
Jim Morrison was behind him, at the head of the bed, all wild curls and shirtless.
Billy was all wild curls and shirtless, too.
The bruising was almost gone entirely.
“Enjoying the view?”
She flipped him the bird, kicking the door shut behind her. “Fuck off, Billy.”
He didn’t fuck off. He seemed pretty comfortable on her bedspread, his eyes following her around the room as she went about preparing herself for their first day at school.
She could hear her Aunt fussing over Max in the kitchen.
Neil wasn’t home.
Back in California, it hadn’t been unusual to have Billy in her room. He’d been as commonplace as the furniture, maybe.
Here, in Hawkins, maybe things weren’t so different.
She found the jeans she was after, stepping into them with her back turned to him.
He made a low noise in his throat, something that almost resembled a scoff.
She shot him the finger again without turning around. One leg fully clothed, the other one posed to join it when she almost lost her balance-
“Here.”
-because something fabric hit her back.
Jeans unbuttoned but fully on, she turned. He’d thrown a shirt at her, one of his. Sleeveless, the kind he used to work out in, in charcoal grey with a red logo.
He was off the bed, now. Stationed at the desk, looking at something.
(She was pressed against his chest, one of his arms around her and the other fully extended as he fiddled with the camera.)
It was the polaroid. One of them.
(The flash went off, but he didn’t move.
Instead, he pressed the button again.)
And in it, he’s looking at her. Crushed against his chest, eyes bright and smile bared to the camera.
He’d taken the other one. She hadn’t seen it, not displayed in his room like all of her photos were. But she knew he’d kept it.
Billy turned.
He caught her staring.
He crossed the room, moving past her— a hand reaching out to tug at her braid.
“We leave in fifteen,” he murmured.
And then he entered the closet, shutting the door behind him.