Chapter Text
The fabric of Max Mayfield’s uniform scratched against her skin, as it had for the last five years. Her fingers toyed with a loose thread on the hem of her skirt, a strand of yellow from the plaid pattern in the fabric. As her hair slipped forward from where she had tucked it back behind her ear, she didn’t bother putting it back. She was too focused on not unraveling her entire skirt out of anger.
Tapping his shoes nervously against the floor next to her was the source of her anger, Lucas Sinclair.
She welcomed the shield of hair so she didn’t have to keep glaring at him.
It was his fault they were here.
A creak in front of them jerked her out of her tirade of thoughts and she looked up to watch as Flo opened the large wooden door to the headmaster’s office. Lowering her oversized classes, the secretary gave the two teens a long hard look before nodding towards the office behind her.
“Headmaster Hopper will see you two now,” she said disapprovingly before disappearing in a cloud of old Chanel perfume.
Lucas and Max nearly knocked elbows as they both shot to their feet, jostling to get towards the door first. She growled under her breath, practically stepping on his feet as she was able to slide into the front just before they entered. A minor victory, but she took it all the same. Sitting behind his desk, his hands already resting in his hands, was Headmaster Hopper. Max couldn’t help the quick glance over at Lucas at the sight, catching his eye as well before quickly facing forward again. They wordlessly each sat in one of the chairs that had been placed in front of his desk.
Minutes ticked by, marked only by the sound of a distant clock somewhere in the office.
“It is September. How many times am I going to have to see you two in my office before winter break?” Hopper asked with a groan, finally pulling his head out of hands and giving a pointed look at the two of them.
His mustache was growing out oddly and Max had to choke back a giggle before pulling her face back into as neutral of a stare as possible.
She didn’t give him an answer.
Mainly because she wasn’t sure what to say since it was going to be nearly impossible for her to promise that somehow she and Lucas wouldn’t be at their throats again. Which would most likely result in them being back here in this office no doubt. At least with the scale they were escalating to.
Lucas held his tongue as well and Hopper’s eyes narrowed as he gazed at them.
“A food fight? Are you two serious right now, what are you six?”
“It was hardly a food––” Max cut herself off as Hopper’s face swung to stare at her.
Okay, maybe she had dumped her plate of pasta on top of Lucas’ head. But that was because he had cut her off for the last brownie on the dessert table and then proceeded to empty his napkin of crumbs (as well as other bits of leftover food) on top of her head while she and El had been talking about their homework due in Mr. Clarke’s class that afternoon. Of course she was going to retaliate.
It wasn’t like anyone else had been involved, so it wasn’t an outright food fight. Not by her standards at least. And if she had any other food she would have gone for something less messy, but the pasta was all she had. Therefore, pasta it was that she had impulsively poured on top of Lucas.
“As much as I can sympathize with teenage antics, I can’t have you two setting bad examples for other students. And frankly I expect more from both of you.”
Max flushed and she looked back down at the stray thread on her skirt.
“It’s fine,” Lucas said after a moment, his voice curt and decidedly not fine. But he had the same understanding to this as Max did. This was just their thing and it was always uncomfortable when teachers (or headmaster in this case) intervened. She didn’t see why it was so important to everyone that they got along. They did perfectly fine as rivals.
Apparently Headmaster Hopper didn’t see it that way.
“If you two don’t at least start tolerating each other,” he took a moment to jab a finger and point at each of them, “I will revoke either of your chances to become valedictorian.”
Max couldn’t help the squawk of indignation that came from her. It was mirrored by an equal noise of frustration from Lucas, the two of them leaning in prepared to fight their cases against him, but Hopper shook his head.
“And that’s final. I’m not interested in the two of you taking each other down before you get the chance to graduate. It also doesn’t look good to other students, or their parents who are paying this school a lot of money, if I reward bad behavior. I can’t do it if you two insist on acting like children. Just please, give me this one thing.”
A silence settled in the office.
Max scratched at her knee and stole a glance over at Lucas. He seemed to be just as mollified as she felt. His eyes slid over to her as well, his lips pursed. A silent agreement was exchanged between them with a blink before they faced forward again.
“Yes sir,” they mumbled in synchrony, a tone of resignation lacing their accepting.
“Now get out of my office before I have to give the two best students here formal detention for once,” he said with a wry grin, shooing them out.
With a long exhale, Max hurried out of the office just on the heels of Lucas. They made sure to completely pass by Flo’s open desk and back into the main hallway before stopping and facing each other. Lucas’ deep brown skin had a tinge of red ghosting his cheekbones as he glared at her and Max knew she had her own patches of redness on her cheeks from the lecture and her lingering frustration with Lucas.
“Let’s make a deal,” he whispered angrily. “We only talk to each other when we need to, otherwise it’s like we don’t know each other. It’s a big deal for me to be Valedictorian and I’m not having you mess that up.”
She crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes at him. “Oh and it’s not important for me? You’ve got yourself a deal Sinclair. Not a word.”
The stood there momentarily facing each other off until the bell rang to signify that lunch was over. A rush of students flooded the hall as everyone hurried to their lockers to get whatever they needed for the afternoon. No one spared them a glance, all too used to the usual fights between the two of them. Max glowered at Lucas until the bumping of students was too much and the two were jostled apart. Hoisting her book bag higher on her shoulder, she gave the back of his head one last murderous glance before spinning on her heel and merging into the channel of students.
Everything between them was a challenge and she wasn’t going to mess this one up.
When Max had been awarded a scholarship to attend Hawkins Preparatory in seventh grade, she didn’t have very high hopes for her experience. The only saving grace was that it was a boarding school and she wouldn’t have to listen to her step-dad yell about everything and Billy’s loud music and his own asshole tendencies he had inherited.
But still, boarding school?
Yikes.
When the day came to move in though, she’d still felt butterflies of excitement in her stomach, despite her initial skepticism.
Hawkins Prep, as it seemed to be more commonly called, was located on a sprawling campus just north of where her family had moved. The ruddy brown brick buildings peered out from behind overgrown trees and the white trim shone brightly in contrast against the otherwise primarily earth-toned campus. The dorms were separate from the main academic building, with what looked like a couple other buildings just shooting off just a way from it as well as athletic fields to the east. It was intimidating at first, but after being on the grounds for a little while, Max had to admit it was more relaxed than she had originally given it credit for. Certainly a far cry from the more run down public school she had been attending back in California.
After getting set up and having an interview with the imposing headmaster, a man named Jim Hopper with a gruff demeanor and sly, secret smiles when the secretary wasn’t looking, it had been time for her to move into her dorm.
Her room was the same size as her bedroom back home, and she’d have to share it with someone, but that didn’t seem to matter. She’d actually get to decorate her side exactly how she wanted it and she wouldn’t have to worry about Billy’s overly loud radio or the sound of her mom and step-dad arguing.
Her roommate was a small girl named El and she had surrounded her side with piles of romance novels and vintage records, as well as what appeared to be an old poster of morse code. Max had been a bit cautious at first, unsure of exactly how to go about making a new friend. Her worries lasted approximately five minutes after her mom left (the goodbye had been somewhat emotional but stilted too) but then somehow the next thing she knew, she and El were best friends. It also turned out that El was the headmaster’s daughter which had thrown Max for a loop, but it didn’t seem to affect her demeanor at all and they instantly bonded.
With a friend under her belt and a wall covered in horror movie posters and her own books joining El’s on their new bookshelf her mom had bought them, now all that was left was to tackle her first day of school.
Not that the school itself was far from her dorm, but she too excited to not have to carpool with Billy anymore that she didn’t think twice about using her skateboard to cross the quad. El had left earlier to go to the library and she knew she could just store it in her locker over there, so it seemed like the perfect chance to break it out/
She started to instantly regret it once she noticed everyone staring at her.
Apparently skateboards weren’t big at Hawkins.
Whatever. Max didn’t care about other people’s opinions of her, especially not at a boarding school. So she proudly kept riding it across, her head held up high.
“Looks like we got ourselves a Zoomer!”
The boy who had called out had a mess of curly hair springing out from underneath a hat, something she still wasn’t sure was against the dress code or not. It hardly seemed malicious, not with such a wide toothy grin to follow, but it still rubbed Max the wrong way. Eyeing the boys around him, she determined that at least none of them were going to say anything else. So she threw up a half-hearted middle finger and kept on her way.
Underneath her skateboard, the brick path clicked against the wheels and she used it to steady her breathing.
Boys were dumb in every state.
Her trouble with them didn’t end then though. While she only saw the curly haired boy once more during the rest of the day, she saw his other friend plenty. He was just taller than everyone else in the hallways and she immediately picked up on his voice in classes. He seemed more serious than his friends, who would randomly pop up around him throughout the day, but then he would laugh and his smile would flash brightly against his warm brown skin and Max had trouble admitting to herself that she thought he was really cute when he laughed. He was a teenage boy though so she didn’t exactly have high hopes.
What ended up helping her not give into those thoughts happened in her second class of the day.
Of course they had the same class and she noticed him glancing at her during roll call. Fine, she’d been glancing at him as well. But then when it came to the teacher asking questions, they answered her at the same time.
They’d exchanged a surprised glance at each other after the first one. It stopped being funny to Max though after the third time they raised their hands in unison. Competitiveness was her strongest suit and she was determined to make a good impression at this new school. It didn’t matter how smart this guy with the dorky, annoying friends was.
From there on, it became a contest between the two of them. They shared three more classes together that day and in each one, they’d steal a look at each other before shooting their hands up. At her old school, Max had been used to being one of the only people who spoke up in class. That wasn’t too different here except for now this guy.
Or Lucas Sinclair, as she had learned his name was.
At the end of the school day, she had been grabbing her backpack and board, only to then close the locker door and spot Lucas standing beside her.
“What are you a stalker?” She snapped, not even entirely sure why she was so annoyed with him other than she was still bristling from the run for her money he’d made in their social studies class.
His expression went from polite to frowning in a split second.
“Stalker? Relax, I just wanted to introduce myself officially. And see if you wanted to maybe hang out with me and my friends but…”
Lucas’ voice trailed off and his cool tone conveyed that he was clearly rescinding the invite before even really offering it. Which to be fair, she hadn’t exactly greeted him very nicely. But Max couldn’t bring it in herself to apologize.
She felt like a fish out of water here and it looked like besides El, she wasn’t going to match up with a lot of the kids here. Academics were going to need to be her main focus and while Lucas had been a great motivator in class, she wasn’t sure she wanted the distraction outside of the classroom. Plus they had all seemed like such dorks earlier, there was no way they’d actually have much in common.
“Thanks for asking, but I’m good.” She bit her lip as he shrugged and started to walk away.
“Suit yourself Zoomer. See you in class. By the way, Ms. Evans likes to do pop quizzes,” he added, turning back around with a mischievous smile. “I’m the only one who always gets them correct every time.”
There was a challenge in his voice and from that moment in the hallway on, their rivalry was set. For the next five years they pushed at each other to be the best. Despite teachers telling them to not race on tests, they did (they still always got almost perfect scores). They weren’t allowed to sit next to each other in class to prevent whispered, heated arguments about various topics (some not even related to the class subject). Mr. Waverly, a small hunched over teacher, banned them from debate after they got in a shouting match together.
Over those five years, Max only occasionally wondered what would have happened if she had accepted his invitation to hang out that first day. But there was no way to go back and find out. She was more than content with her best friend El and occasionally Will (the only real mutual friend she had with Lucas), and going into her senior year she was ready for anything.
Except it turned out, not getting into fights with Lucas.