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“This old place is haunted, Joyce! Are we really going up there?”
Joyce scowls down at Cindy, little coward that she is. “You don’t have to come, you know. No one’s asking you to.”
The girl eyes her fearfully, clutching her gingham skirt tighter. Joyce knows exactly why she’s coming, and why she won’t turn back. One, it’s cool to play the daredevil. It’s the only reason Joyce is ever looked at with anything but disdain. And two - Jimmy Crawford’s meeting them up there. And Cindy, Joyce knows for a fact, has had a crush on Jimmy Crawford since fifth grade.
True to form, the girl grumbles, “I’m coming,” and hoists herself up on the wall beside her. “Couldn’t we have just walked in the gate?”
“No, silly. The neighbors would see us. Didn’t you hear, they called the police on Jack Hyde and his friends last week?”
“They called the police?” Cindy’s voice is barely a whisper. “Joyce, I can’t get arrested, I wanna go to law school-”
Joyce rolls her eyes. “Like I said. No one’s forcing you to come.”
She takes a deep breath and drops down the other side of the wall, landing only a little unsteadily on her feet. She takes the opportunity to look around, as Cindy huffs and puffs above her. It’s a neat little graveyard, underwhelming even. Not exactly the picture of satanic sacrifice that Jack had painted for them. It’s peaceful, actually. The stars glitter above and the breeze is cool, not cold. She digs out a cigarette and lights it as she inspects one of the headstones with casual, curious interest.
“Shit!” Cindy shrieks as she lands not on her feet but as an uncoordinated mess on the ground. Joyce rolls her eyes and lends her a hand to stand up. “Damn, this is creepy,” Cindy says, when she’s dusted herself off. “Do you think we’ll see a ghost?”
“No,” Joyce says flatly, already annoyed. She should never have told Cindy about this. She should have come here alone with a book and a pack of Camels and forgotten all about Cindy and boys, but here she is. Because of a boy.
She picks her way across the graveyard, shivering slightly. Again, because of a boy. This was a stupid idea. She’s wearing a skimpy black top with her jeans, the kind of top she’d never have worn if she wasn’t trying to impress. Jeans, though, still. She’s not lovesick. She’s just got a teeny, tiny, inconvenient crush.
“You didn’t break the bourbon, did you?” she asks without looking behind her.
“No, I’ve got it.” Cindy hurries to keep up. “Doesn’t this place freak you out? And so close to Halloween too.”
“It’s just a story, Cindy.” Joyce doesn’t have time for her nonsense. Sure, there could be ghosts here. Joyce doesn’t deny that. It’s old, and plenty of people have died here. But Jack is an idiot, and Cindy is gullible, and Joyce just wants to get this over with. She wants to show up, have a drink and a smoke, and maybe if she’s lucky leave to have sex with The Boy in his Oldsmobile. Cindy and ghosts don’t figure in the plan.
She climbs in through the open, gaping broken window and finds the boys already there. Three of them, plus Emmy T who’s inevitably glued to Arthur Boyd’s side. The two are canoodling in some ruined armchair that Joyce really wouldn’t touch if she were them, but hey. She’s not.
Jimmy Crawford’s using a knife to open a can of beer like the cad he is and the other Jimmy, the Jimmy she’s here to see, is egging him on like the cad he is.
“Hop,” she calls as she comes over, hugging herself against the cold, her cigarette still burning. “You realise you look like a pair of idiots, right?”
Hop grins, wide and toothy, proudly displaying his cut lip from when he got hit in the face by a baseball last week. “It’s part of our charm.”
She rolls her eyes and sits down on the floor next to him, leaning in despite herself. Jimmy Crawford makes a mess of the beer can, but when Jimmy Hopper takes one he opens it with ease.
He crows. “Who’s worthy of the name Jimmy now, huh, Crawford?”
“Still older than you, Hopper,” Crawford says, taking a sip out of the mangled can. Hopper has noticed she’s shivering and without a word he drapes his heavy leather jacket around her shoulders. She draws it closer around her, inhales. It smells of him, and smoke and spilled beer.
“I could challenge you for it.” He takes her cigarette without asking and slides it in between his lips. “Bet I would thrash you in a fight.”
Crawford looks like he’d take that bet, so Joyce intercedes hastily. “If you think fighting is gonna impress me you’re seriously wrong, Jim Hopper. Protect what’s left of that pretty face.”
“Aw, you think I’m pretty.”
“Asshole,” she mutters, as Cindy finally clambers through the window and comes to sit beside Crawford. She produces the bottle of bourbon, thankfully undamaged, with a flourish and Crawford cheers.
“Knew you were good for something, Cindy!” he says and Joyce winces. Harsh. But Cindy preens anyway, and Joyce turns away.
Hopper is looking at her, eyes so tender the expression looks foreign on his face. “You okay?” he asks, quietly.
She nods. “Sometimes I really fucking hate my friends,” she says, smiling to let him know she doesn’t really mean it, and he grins.
“Take a shot and soon you’ll forget all about it, is my guess,” he says, snatching the bourbon away from Cindy, who’s already attempting to crawl into Crawford’s lap. He pours out a shot into the bottle cap and she holds out a hand, expecting him to pass it to her, but instead he gives her the bottle. “Cheers,” he says, and they down their shots together.
“God, that’s disgusting,” she says, when she’s able to speak again. “When Cindy said she’d get something for us I didn’t expect her to buy a bottle of diesel-”
“That’s bourbon for you.” He’s grinning. “You goin’ pussy on me, Horowitz?”
She scowls, and takes another swig just to spite him. “You wish.”
He leans back and stares at the cracked, dusty ceiling. She looks up too, her arm brushing his. “So, what d’ya think?”
She glances at him. “What?”
“Is it haunted? Are we being watched?” He leans over and hunches his shoulders, moving his arms and twisting his face in a way she guesses is meant to be spooky. “Whoooooo.”
She shoves him. “Asshole. I can’t believe you of all people buy into all that.”
“Me of all people? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That, Jim Hopper, means you’re a jock who wouldn’t know the supernatural if it hit you in the face.”
His jaw drops in mock outrage. “I’d have thought, Joyce Horowitz, that you of all people would look deeper than just a pretty face.”
Ridiculously, she blushes. If it’s a compliment, it’s a roundabout one, but she feels flattered by it anyway. “I would, if I didn’t know better. Didn’t you fail chem only this morning?”
He shrugs. “You didn’t do so great either, though, did you, on account of your never being in class. Too much time spent smoking with me, Horowitz. It isn’t good for you.”
“Touché,” she says, because she’s beginning to feel dizzy and a comeback is beyond her when he’s pressed so close to her side. “What d’ya think Cooper would say, looking at us right now?”
“Maybe the old bastard would finally keel over and die. It’d be about time.”
She laughs, unexpectedly loud, and it echoes around the empty building. A sudden cold draught rushes in and for the first time she feels a little chill of unease. Maybe Cindy’s right, she thinks with a start. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.
She jumps about a foot in the air when his hand lands on her shoulder. “Hey, you okay?” Again his eyes are kind, concerned. This is new, foreign territory. The closest he’s ever gotten to comforting her is awkwardly watching her sob her eyes out after Elise Harper accused her of cheating on a test in fourth grade, with the occasional pat on the back. Has he got better at it, she wonders? It’s probably all the girls he’s fucked since then. It’s hard to do that without learning at least a shred of compassion, right?
Her eyes stray to Emmy and Arthur, who are passionately making out in the armchair, and then to Cindy and Crawford, whose faces are inches from each other.
“What d’ya say we get out of here?” she whispers. “You can warm me up in your car.” The alcohol has made her uncommonly bold, and she can see the moment his eyes widen, darken with something like arousal. Sure, they’re friends. Sure, he’s claimed in the past that he sees her as a ‘sister’. (No he fucking doesn’t.) But she’s hot, he’s a boy, and he can’t help it.
With one hand he takes hers and with the other he picks up the bottle of bourbon, and then together they stand up. “Wait, where’re you going?” Crawford asks, as Cindy kisses a path up his neck.
“Joyce is scared,” Hopper says, and she swats his arm. “Didn’t you hear? This place is haunted.”
Cindy freezes up but Joyce ignores her, eyes fixed on him. He grins at her easily and she follows him out, clutching his hand like a lifeline. The feeling of haunting is forgotten, even as she feels a pair of eyes tracking her progress. The malevolent spirits won’t get her tonight, she thinks. Not while she’s got Jimmy Hopper to keep her warm.