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1. December 22, 1984
The moment that Max woke up the day after the SnowBall, she felt slightly different. She couldn’t immediately remember why, then the memories of the previous night came to her: she and Lucas had danced together, had kissed, were most definitely something more than friends. It was hard to fully accept that that was true, because it was so exceedingly weird. Kissing boys and being…well, not just friends with them, was not something she had ever anticipated would happen to her. Obviously it happened to most people, but it just didn’t seem real.
It was real. Max saw the sweater and pants she’d worn to the SnowBall draped across her dresser, where she’d left them last night. The SnowBall had happened; it had all happened. She jumped out of bed, feeling light and airy. There was a strange excitement in her chest, like more things were going to happen that were going to be nerve-racking but so, so good. What happened after you kissed someone? Was Lucas going to be her boyfriend?
Max left her bedroom and headed to the bathroom to wash her face. She had been planning to go to the arcade today, and Neil had commanded Billy last night to drive her. She didn’t think even Billy could ruin her good mood, though he’d try if he figured out why she was in a good mood at all. He hadn’t spoken badly about Lucas since last month when she’d threatened him with Steve’s nail bat, but if he knew that she had literally kissed him that might be enough to push him over the edge.
Finished washing her face, Max pushed open the bathroom door and felt it bounce back, having hit something. She pushed again and this time it came open. She slipped through it and saw Billy standing on the other side of the door, looking at her. She’d hit him with the door on accident.
“Are you ready to go yet?” Billy asked in a bored tone, not even mentioning her hitting him with the door. He probably barely felt it with how much he worked out.
“Almost,” Max replied. All she really had to do was get dressed. Anyway, Billy had agreed on leaving at ten and it was definitely not ten yet.
“If you’re not ready in five minutes, I’m going without you,” Billy said, starting to walk away from her towards the kitchen.
“You’re going to the arcade without me? Gonna play Dig Dug?” Max muttered under her breath. She failed to be truly annoyed, however, still feeling a strange mixture of nervous and elated from the memories of the previous night.
Though Billy probably heard, he ignored her and continued down the hall. Max headed to her bedroom to change out of her pajamas, moving quickly despite her attitude that she wasn’t late and didn’t care about Billy pressuring her.
Five minutes later, Max entered the kitchen. Neil and Susan were eating breakfast while Billy stood off to the side, obviously not wanting to join them at the table. Max went and grabbed a banana, also not wanting to join them.
“Come join us for breakfast,” Neil said, like he was reading their actions and wanted to specifically tell them to do the thing they didn’t want to do.
“We’re about to leave,” Billy responded, as if this was the reason.
Max just nodded. She often struggled to find her voice when it came to discussions involving both Neil and Billy.
“You have time to eat breakfast with Susan and I. Come join us.” Neil’s tone was flat but clear: they didn’t have any other options.
Max grabbed a bowl from the kitchen cabinet and went and took her usual spot, Billy across from her. Neil and her mother were just eating cereal, and the boxes of corn flakes and Cheerios were still on the table. Max reached for the Cheerios and filled her bowl with the smallest amount possible that wouldn’t cause Neil to suggest she was rushing. Billy did the same with the corn flakes, though he put far more than her; he could probably eat twice as much in a day and was probably hungry.
Not bothering to go to the fridge and get the milk, Max started to eat her Cheerios dry, staring at her bowl to avoid making eye contact with anyone else at the table. Neil was chatting to Susan about Reagan and his upcoming inauguration. Well, he was talking and she was listening. Billy also said nothing, though he did it with a more uninterested and less timid air about him than her.
Max was so focused on her cereal that she barely registered that Neil was speaking to her when he said, “So, going to hang out with your boyfriends at the arcade?”
Max opened her mouth to respond, but Billy beat her to it. “Yes, and she’s going to be late,” he said. “You’re the one who always says to never be late.”
Max wasn’t even meeting her friends. They hadn’t made plans for today. But she got why Billy was saying it and she didn’t object. As much as she hated Neil talking about her friends because of how he referred to them, she would go with anything that got her out of the house faster.
“Ah, I don’t think those boys know how to tell time anyway,” Neil said. He had literally never met any of Max’s friends, he just knew they were boys; if he had met them, he would make comments about Lucas far worse than those made by Billy. Because of this, it seemed royally unfair that he would pass such a judgment upon them. They were nerds, not idiots.
Max shifted in her seat but didn’t tell Neil he was wrong about them. She didn’t want to talk about them with him, to give him any kind of picture of who they were. Billy knew and that was enough.
Billy didn’t argue with Neil either. There was no point to it. He finished his cereal moments before Max, and got up from the table. “We’re leaving now,” he informed Neil.
Neil said some bullshit about not staying out too long, and then they were moving through the house to the front door. Once they were outside, Max breathed easier, back on the high of having kissed Lucas and the reasonable confidence of having threatened Billy with the bat last month.
They got into Billy’s Camaro and he started the engine, zooming forward before Max had even fastened her seatbelt. She checked her jeans pocket absentmindedly to verify that her coins were there then sat back, listening to the music that was blasting from Billy’s stereo.
“So,” he said, a few minutes into the drive, “going to meet Lucas?”
It was impossible to detect what emotion Billy was asking this with. It wasn’t really necessary to, because the answer was no. “I’m not going to meet anyone,” Max responded, “just like I said last night. I’m going to play Dig Dug.”
Billy sort of grunted, but didn’t say any actual words. He turned the music up even louder so that it nearly hurt Max’s ears. She tried to block out how loud it was, telling herself that she’d be out of the car in a couple more minutes.
When they arrived at the Palace Arcade, Max quickly unfastened her seatbelt and reached for the door handle. She was pulling it out when she felt Billy grip her other arm, pulling her back into the car. She spun her head around to face him.
“You said you’re not here to meet Lucas?” He said coldly.
What? She was confused for a second, then she followed Billy’s gaze to the front of the Palace Arcade. Lucas and Dustin were locking their bikes, about to head inside. Oh. Her heartbeat quickened, not because of Billy but because of Lucas. The half-excited half-nervous sensation in her stomach was becoming more nervous at the prospect of talking to Lucas so soon after last night.
Trying to shake off the feeling, Max looked back around to Billy and said evenly, “I’m not. I didn’t know he was coming.”
Billy squinted at her, then said, “I believe you.”
It wasn’t that surprising that he believed her, because he usually knew when she was lying and she was not lying. It was surprising that he would say it so unabashedly. “What?”
“You wouldn’t be that red if you expected him to be here,” Billy said. Of course she was red. She was anxious, and she turned red very easily. It was the curse of being a redhead. “Why are you so nervous to see your friend Lucas?”
He knew. Max didn’t know what he knew, but he knew something. Billy had enough experience with girls that it sort of made sense, but Max didn’t usually think of herself as being like those other girls. Billy was good at reading her, but it was because he was good at reading her and not because she was like the other girls. But now–this, her blushing at seeing a boy she liked–was more like those other girls than her. She didn’t like that, and she didn’t like that Billy was making her feel like garbage about something she’d felt good about just an hour earlier.
“I’m not,” Max said flatly, probably too forcefully to sound honest. She didn’t really care if Billy knew everything about her and Lucas. She only cared that he didn’t see her as a blushing, boy-crazy girl. Speaking forcefully and rudely was something those types of girls did not do.
Billy made a scoffing noise. “You’re a bad liar, Max.”
She wasn’t a bad liar. She was a good liar. She was only a bad liar with Billy, but that was what he had meant anyway. Not wanting to continue this discussion, Max pulled the latch of the door and pushed it open.
“An hour and a half exactly,” Billy said as she exited the car. She ignored him and slammed the door to his Camaro a bit harder than she needed to before walking slowly towards the entrance of the arcade.
Lucas and Dustin had vanished inside, but she was going to have to hang out with them the moment she went inside, too. She dragged her feet, attempting to gather herself. She was excited to hang out with them, happy to see Lucas. Most of her wasn’t like those girls that flirted with boys and got scared to talk to them, so most of her was eager to see Lucas, who was her favorite person in Hawkins. But deep down she knew that a small part of her was like those girls, as much as she didn’t want to be, and that part of her was the part that was making her drag her feet towards the entrance.
She took a breath and then opened the door to the arcade, immediately greeted by the sounds of video game music and people talking. She heard Lucas and Dustin soon after, her ears automatically distinguishing their voices from the pack of unfamiliar ones. They were to the left, over by Dragon’s Lair. She forwent the urge to take another deep breath and marched in their direction.
“Max!” Lucas exclaimed when he noticed her. Dustin was concentrating on the game, but Lucas was watching him play so his attention was easily diverted. Max noted that his cheeks were a little redder than usual, too.
“I didn’t know you’d be here, Stalker,” Max said, choosing to focus on this convenient conversation point. Were they going to talk about the fact that they’d kissed last night? Time would tell.
“I’m the stalker? We got here first,” Lucas said, but he was smiling. She knew he liked the nickname.
“Well, I would have if I didn’t have to eat breakfast with my family,” Max said. Why she said it, she wasn’t sure. She rarely talked about her family. Her mind had been unable to instantly conjure something to say, so that had come out of her mouth.
“That sucks,” Lucas replied. He too looked lost, and it probably didn’t help that Max’s family was known to be sensitive territory. “We got to Dragon’s Lair first, so…”
Dustin was still in the game, and he now said irritably, “Will you shut up? I’m trying to concentrate.”
Max rolled her eyes at Lucas, and he returned the gesture. She liked feeling like they were on some kind of team. Usually when you made new friends, it was hard to fit into a group because everyone was all so much closer with each other than with you. But though Max had had problems fitting into their group because of Mike, she was amazed at how little she felt like an outsider already. Specifically with Lucas, sometimes it was like he was closer to her than anyone else. She knew he was still closer with his friends, but the way he looked at her was different from how anyone had ever looked at her before. She liked it, a lot.
A couple minutes later, Dustin finally lost, hitting the machine in frustration. After he got over his loss, he twisted his head to Max. “Hi,” he said. Was it her imagination or did he sound a bit less friendly than normal? “So, did you like the SnowBall?”
Max felt heat on her cheeks that could only mean one thing: she was turning red again. She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand, thinking wildly that this might divert the blood flow to her face. “It was fun,” she said casually. There was no way Dustin didn’t know that she and Lucas had kissed. “Did you like it?”
She’d seen Dustin dancing with Nancy, and he’d seemed happy. She hadn’t had the chance to talk to him much before the dance ended, but she didn’t know why he’d have reason to complain.
“It was okay.” Dustin’s eyes moved to Lucas, evidently prompting the same question despite the fact that, again, there was no way he and Lucas hadn’t discussed the dance already. Maybe he got some kind of sick pleasure out of watching them both be awkward.
Lucas nodded. “Uh, Max,” he said, “are you going to play Dig Dug? That’s a really…good game.”
Max couldn’t help but smile at this, because he sounded just like he had last night when he’d asked her to dance. She might get nervous, too, but she was better at concealing it. “Of course I’m going to play Dig Dug,” she said, fishing around in her pocket for two quarters. She turned her back on Lucas and Dustin and headed to the Dig Dug machine, inserting the coins. She knew they were going to watch her play, but she did her best to shut it out. Nothing could distract her from doing well.
Over an hour later, they had all burned through coins and played games and discussed nothing. Every so often, Max would look sideways at Lucas and he’d look sideways back at her and they’d smile. Spending time with him had erased most of Max’s nervousness, and she would have said something if Dustin weren’t there. But Dustin hung close to them, right up until the moment Max heard Billy’s Camaro outside.
“I have to go,” she announced, backing up from the Pac-Man machine. Dustin was playing, but he said a vague bye.
Lucas followed Max to the door. A month and a half ago, Max would have told him not to, for fear of Billy seeing. But now she was glad that he was following her, so they could talk away from Dustin.
“Uh, Max,” Lucas began, grabbing her wrist to prevent her from leaving without realizing he wanted to talk to her. As if she had not realized that. “About last night, uh…”
She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“Well, I’m happy that, you know…” Lucas kind of looked at her meaningfully rather than say it.
She smiled, her eyebrows still raised. “That we kissed.” Her heart beat faster when she said it, but she didn’t feel her face getting hot so she at least had that under control. “Me too.”
“Yeah, that’s good, that we both are.” Lucas laughed awkwardly. His hand was still on her wrist, but she didn’t really want him to let go yet.
“Yeah, it is,” Max said, continuing to smile at him. “I’ll see you later.”
“After Christmas,” Lucas agreed. “Bye.”
He finally let go of her wrist, and she put a hand on the door of the arcade. “Bye,” she said, pushing the door open and rushing out into the cold, where Billy’s Camaro was waiting.
She felt even more light than she had earlier that morning. She got into the Camaro, trying to wipe the obvious smile off her face.
“Is he your boyfriend now or what?” Billy asked, getting right to the point. He hadn’t turned off the engine to wait for her, and Toto was playing out of his speakers so loudly that he had to raise his voice.
Max glanced back at the arcade, clasping her hands together in her lap. “No,” she answered. “He’s not.”
He wasn’t her boyfriend, but he was definitely something.
2. December 31, 1984
The ball was going to drop in five minutes. Max sat on the floor of the Wheelers’ living room next to Lucas, watching the Times Square New Years celebration on the Wheelers’ TV. Mrs. Wheeler, Ted, and Holly had gone to bed over an hour ago now, leaving the living room to the Party.
Max ate popcorn out of the bowl situated between her and Lucas. She wasn’t that hungry, but its proximity to her prompted her to continue eating out of it long after she got sick of it. Her friends kept up a colorful commentary on what the newscasters on the TV were saying, and she joined in whenever she thought of something witty to say.
“So, John,” the female newscaster said brightly, “now that we’re four minutes away from 1985, I guess we’ll be spending New Years together. You know what they say-”
“Who you’re with at the start of the year is who you’ll be with throughout the year,” John said, finishing her sentence.
Dustin snorted behind Max. “Do they really say that?”
“I guess they do,” Will said, also behind Max. “But we’re all with each other, so that works out, right?”
“Except for El,” Mike said, failing to not sound bitter about this. Hopper didn’t want El coming over to the Wheelers because he said they would still recognize her as the girl that had lived in their basement. Therefore she was not allowed to come to their New Years celebration.
“That’s not even what they mean,” Dustin said, in response to Will and not Mike. “They mean, like, love. The one person you’re with-”
“They don’t mean that,” Mike protested, obviously even more annoyed. “That’s stupid.”
Max glanced at Lucas. He was looking back at her, like they shared an inside joke the others weren’t a part of.
“Yeah, Lucas and Max are probably thrilled,” Dustin said sarcastically, popping the bubble they were in while everyone else was arguing. “Oh, Lucas, we’ll be together throughout the year-”
“Shut up,” Max said, spinning around and throwing a kernel of popcorn at Dustin’s head.
“Guys, it’s almost midnight,” Will said, interrupting whatever Dustin was going to say back. “One minute.”
He was right. The countdown on the corner of the television had gone under one minute and was now at fifty-one seconds.
Max snuck another glance at Lucas, and he made a face at her like they’re so dumb. But really, the idea that who you were with at midnight was how you’d spend the next year was sort of comforting. She was really hoping 1985 would be better than 1984, and it seemed like it was going to be. El had closed the gate, and now she had a whole group of friends. And a Lucas.
The countdown kept ticking closer and closer to zero. Max’s friends had all shut up now, waiting. Knowing Lucas wouldn’t do it by himself, Max reached her hand over the popcorn bowl and took ahold of Lucas’s. The fact that they were holding hands was hidden by the bowl, so their friends wouldn’t see and comment. But Max wouldn’t really have minded if they’d seen; she wasn’t easily embarrassed by Dustin, who was just jealous, and Mike had no business making fun of her when he and El were practically Romeo and Juliet.
“Twelve, eleven, ten, nine eight…” The female newscaster began counting. Max felt a surge of anticipation that she always did at New Years; there was something so exhilarating about it being a new year.
Her friends started counting aloud, too, at ten seconds before. Max raised her voice as high as theirs, now saying, “five, four, three, two, one…”
The ball stopped rolling in New York City on the TV and Max and her friends all jumped up, cheering in slightly hushed tones. Max let go of Lucas’s hand, but she was happy she’d been holding it at midnight even if the superstition was dumb.
“Nineteen-eighty-fiveeeeee,” Dustin shouted, louder than the rest of them.
“My parents are sleeping, shh,” Mike said. “If they wake up my mom’s going to be mad.”
Max didn’t know how you could not stay up until midnight on New Years. It wasn’t even that late. Then again, Neil and her mother probably hadn’t stayed up. They were probably sleeping like the boring people they were. Billy, at least, was out partying far harder than Max and her friends.
They watched the TV for another five minutes while music played and people in New York cheered louder than they were able to, then Mike turned it off. “This year’s going to be better than last year,” he said confidently as they started to gather up their stray snacks and garbage.
“Why’s that?” Max asked, even though she knew why and fully agreed. “Because now I’m in your Party?”
“Ha ha, no,” Mike responded, rolling his eyes. “Because El is back.”
“Ah, but of course,” Max said. “What other reason could it be?”
“Uh, maybe because there are no more Demo-Dogs to eat us,” Lucas interjected.
Hopefully. Having not been present during the first rendition of the world ending, Max was less clear on the definiteness of El’s gate closure. But from how everyone else talked about it, it seems definite enough for her to not worry about it regularly. She still suffered nightmares like the rest of them, but they were rooted in the past, not a fear of the future.
They were in the kitchen now, finishing cleaning up. Mike tossed the last empty bowl in the sink and said, “Have fun in the living room, Max.”
The only way Max had been able to convince her mother and Neil–mainly Neil–to allow her to sleep over at a boy’s house was if she slept in an entirely separate room from them. She’d intended on simply lying about it, but Neil had implied he might call Mrs. Wheeler and set the record straight so she’d had to obey. Because of that, the rest of her friends were all having a basement sleepover while she had to sleep alone on the living room sofa.
“So much fun,” Max replied sarcastically.
“I’ll get you blankets,” Lucas offered. The rest of them were starting in the direction of the basement, but Lucas hung back. “I know where they are.”
Mike, Dustin, and Will all echoed goodnight to Max, and then Lucas led her to the hall closet. He opened the door and pulled out a couple of thick blankets, tossing them to Max. She caught them and half-stumbled underneath the weight of them.
“Sorry,” Lucas said apologetically.
“I’m strong enough to hold blankets, don’t worry,” Max assured him, adjusting the blankets so that their weight was more evenly spread out. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Uh, for getting me these blankets,” she said, laughing slightly. “You can go to the others now, it’s okay.” She had no idea what boys did at sleepovers when they were supposed to be sleeping, but she didn’t want to keep Lucas away from his friends.
Lucas laughed too, even though she had kind of been laughing at him, though not unkindly. “Right. But wait a second.”
Lucas shut the door to the hall closet and began walking towards the front of the house. Max stumbled after him, holding the blankets up high so they didn’t drag on the floor and trip her. “Where are you going?” She questioned, confused.
Lucas stopped at the front door, by where they’d all hung their coats when they’d arrived. She noticed that his backpack was still there. The rest of the boys had brought their stuff down to the basement earlier, so Lucas must have forgotten. That must have been why he told her to wait a second.
Instead of just grabbing his bag and turning back around, though, Lucas squatted down on the floor and started unzipping it. He reached his hand inside and seemed to grab onto something inside the bag. “I have something for you,” he explained, sounding nervous. “For Christmas, I guess.”
The Party had already clarified with one another that they were not getting each other Christmas presents because they were all broke. Max had not gotten anything for Lucas, though part of her had wanted to. “You weren’t supposed to get me anything,” she said. Maybe she should have gotten him something. Did it make her a bad person that she didn’t?
Lucas shook his head, like he understood what she was thinking. “This is different. You’ll see. Close your eyes.”
Max stared at him for a second, then shut her eyes, relenting. Although she felt a bit of guilt at not getting him a gift, she was mainly excited to see what he’d gotten her. She was not so old that she didn’t love getting presents. She hadn’t gotten any very good presents this year; Neil had obviously influenced her mother’s Christmas shopping and she had mainly received dumb things like sweaters. She didn’t need one more reminder that she was “not like other thirteen year old girls.”
She heard Lucas removing his hand from his backpack, then he pressed something into her hand. It was long and boxy. She knew what it was before she opened her eyes, and she opened her eyes before Lucas told her to.
It was a walkie-talkie, like the ones Lucas and Mike and Will and Dustin all had. She was rendered momentarily speechless. She knew she was in their Party, knew that ship had sailed, but this…this was, like, official. If she had a radio, she had to be in the Party.
“You had to have one,” Lucas said, talking quickly. “Because you’re in the Party. The others all knew I was getting it for you. Are you-do you like it?”
Max nodded frantically, still staring at the walkie-talkie in vague disbelief. “Oh my god, yes, of course I like it. Thank you.” Thank you hardly seemed like enough. “This is the best thing I got for Christmas, Lucas.”
Lucas grinned. “Really?”
“Most definitely.” The only honestly good gift Max had received at all besides this was the record of Like a Virgin by Madonna, and Neil had immediately made a rude comment about the title when he saw her open it.
“Good,” Lucas said. “Now we can talk all the time. Like, if you want to, I mean.”
Max finally raised her eyes from the radio to make eye contact with Lucas. “I do.” The radio was more than a symbol of her membership in the Party; it meant that even when she was in her house, the place she most hated being, she could talk to Lucas and her other friends.
Lucas was still grinning like an idiot. “Cool. Okay, well, I guess we can go to bed now.” He took a step back.
But Max stepped forward to re-close the distance between them, hand squeezing the radio tightly to ensure she didn’t drop it. The only light on on this floor of the house was the one in the living room, so the entry was only dimly lit. She saw her shadow on the floor, moving closer to Lucas’s.
Lucas stood still, like he was delayed in his comprehension of what she was doing. When there was only about an inch between his shoulders and hers, she leaned her head forward and kissed him. It was quick, lasting less than a second, but his eyes closed as her face got closer to his and flew open as she pulled away.
“Thank you, seriously,” Max told him, their shoulders still almost touching. The blankets were pressed between them.
“What?” Lucas appeared stunned, but in a good way.
“For the walkie-talkie, idiot,” Max said.
“Oh, yeah. You’re welcome.”
She maintained eye contact with him for another moment before retreating backwards a bit. “You can go to bed now. Goodnight, Stalker.”
Lucas’s same grin reappeared on his face, this time even wider than before. “Goodnight, Max,” he said. He turned around and left her by the front door, heading for the basement. She watched him go until he was too shrouded in darkness for her to make out his shape, then she turned around herself and went to the living room.
She tossed the blankets down onto the sofa and spread them out, then switched off the lamp. They had all changed into their pajamas earlier, so she laid down on the couch and pulled the blankets over her. The wall clock was ticking, and she found it with her eyes in the darkness, squinting to read the time. It was just after 12:20.
Twenty minutes into 1985, and so far it was definitely a superior year.
3. January 6, 1985
Neil and Billy were fighting. Well, fighting wasn’t really the right word. Billy had stopped arguing within the first two minutes of the “fight” and now Neil was just angry at Billy. So far, all Max had heard was a slap, which wasn’t too bad.
She sat against her bedroom door, listening to the fight play out. It was close to over. Neil’s volume level was dying down, and Max hadn’t heard any sound of violence in over three minutes. She squeezed her eyes shut, straining to hear what was going on over the sound of Material Girl playing from her new Madonna record.
Another minute later, there was the sound of Billy marching down the hall towards his bedroom. She always knew it was Billy, because his footsteps were the heaviest. When she heard his door slam, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.
It was just after four o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday. Max had been at home all day, and the tension between Billy and Neil had been rising for the past hour. Neil was pissed about some grade Billy had gotten on a final paper in English, and Billy was adamant that it didn’t matter. Max had gone to hide in her room right about when the real discussion started, over forty-five minutes ago. She was exhausted from sitting on the hardwood floor for so long.
As she got up, Max spotted her new radio on her dresser. She had talked to Lucas on it a couple times now, but only really for the sake of doing it. She reached for it now, closing her fingers around it and carrying it with her to the opposite corner of her room. She pulled her knees to herself and pressed down on the talking button.
“Lucas, do you copy?” She was still getting used to this radio language, but she no longer felt stupid using it when she heard that all her friends talked that way on their radios.
He didn’t answer instantaneously, and she didn’t expect him to, but he was typically pretty fast at responding. Sure enough, she heard the static that indicated he had pressed down to talk on his own radio. “Max, I copy. What’s up? Over.”
Ah, the overs. Mike was obsessed. The two times he had spoken on the radio with Max there, he had berated everyone for not saying over. It was quickly becoming ingrained in Max’s mind, though, so his obsession was effective. “Do you want to meet up? I could come over there. Over.” She hoped it didn’t sound like she was inviting herself over.
“Uh, yeah, will Billy drive you? Over.”
Billy, who was listening to music and doing whatever else he did after an altercation with his father. He was definitely not going to drive her, and she was definitely not going to ask. The whole reason she was calling Lucas at all was because she didn’t want to leave her bedroom, didn’t want to be in this house at all right now.
“No, I’ll skateboard,” she said hurriedly. “Billy’s, um, busy. And don’t say it’s cold, I have a coat. Over.”
“How did you know I was going to say it’s cold?” Lucas said, sounding genuinely surprised that she had read his mind like that. “But okay, I’ll meet you outside my house in twenty minutes. Over.”
Twenty minutes. Max made a mental assessment of the time. It seemed accurate. “Okay,” she said. “See you then. Over and out.” She pressed in the antenna of the radio so that if Lucas tried to contact her while she was gone, Neil wouldn’t hear it coming from her bedroom. She had hidden the radio from everyone in her house, and she didn’t want them finding out about it. It was hers and it was special to her.
She left it on the floor so that it wouldn’t be visible if anyone opened the door, and grabbed her coat, which was hanging on her bedpost. Before putting on her coat, she put on her shoes, knotting them tightly so they wouldn’t come loose and trip her on her skateboard. Then she slid the sleeves of the coat onto her arms and zipped it up. The heat was sweltering in her bedroom, but that would be remedied quickly.
She went to the window and pulled on the latch, fingers working quickly but lightly so she didn’t make noise. Madonna was still playing and Neil was probably too busy to pay attention to what she was doing in her bedroom, but she didn’t want to make it too easy for him. She didn’t know what she’d do if he caught her sneaking out.
She had snuck out of the house a couple of times since moving to Hawkins, but until a week ago the threat of the consequences of being discovered was far smaller. Neil got angry at her for things but largely took his anger out on Billy. He had never hurt her in the way that he hurt Billy. That never had changed a few days ago, however, on New Years. She had attempted to defend Billy against Neil and had suffered those consequences in the form of a black eye. The ghost of the black eye was still on her face, fading but still reasonably prominent. She’d told her friends she’d run into a door, but she knew if it ever happened again that lie was going to be less believable.
Focusing mainly on how quiet she was being, Max slid the window up, the icy air outside hitting her like a ton of bricks. She was sweating because of how warm her coat was, so it felt good. She slipped one leg over the windowsill, dropping it gently onto the structure outside, where they kept firewood. It was conveniently placed underneath her window, giving her a perfect stepping stool onto the ground. She balanced herself on the windowsill while moving her other leg over it, now mainly outside. Careful not to put too much weight on any one spot of the structure, she tugged the window down so that it was not quite shut. She needed it to be open in order for her to be able to sneak back in, but the sub-thirty degree temperature was going to freeze the entire house if it was open very much.
Successful at closing the window to the point she wanted to close it to, Max dropped down onto the ground. She pressed her hands against the house to verify that she was steady before taking off at a jog towards the front of the house. She usually kept her skateboard on the porch, but she had left it closer to the street yesterday. Thanking her past self, she hurried to where she’d left it and scooped it up.
After glancing around to make sure no one had seen her, Max dropped her skateboard onto the street and began skating away from the house. She hadn’t made the trip on skateboard to the cul-de-sac in a while, it being so cold outside. It was oddly refreshing to be outside, though she knew it was going to become less refreshing over time. The heat she’d felt inside her room was already completely gone, and it was getting replaced by the cold that surrounded her. She tucked her hands inside her pockets, concentrating more on her feet to keep herself balanced.
The main issue with skateboarding in this weather was ice, not cold. Max kept her eyes looking down, moving them back and forth across the street as she constantly checked for icy spots. They were usually pretty easy to spot, like sheets of cake icing on the otherwise dull background of the road. She maneuvered herself around them, the task keeping her so occupied that she barely noticed how cold she was becoming.
When she finally arrived at the cul-de-sac, she felt like a popsicle. Her toes hurt because of how cold they were; she wasn’t exactly wearing thick socks. She stopped skateboarding and carried her board with her and she ran into the cul-de-sac, her feet too uncomfortable to continue skateboarding.
She spotted Lucas waiting for her in front of his garage, the garage door open. She raised her hand to wave to him, the other holding her skateboard to her. He waved back. Thinking it would look stupid for her to keep running all the way to the garage, she dropped her skateboard onto the path to the Sinclairs’ house and propelled herself towards him. Her feet hurt, but at least she looked sort of graceful. Or, if not graceful, cool. She would rather look cool than graceful.
“Your face is, like, blue,” Lucas said to her when she was close enough to him for her to hear him. He twisted himself around and headed inside the garage, gesturing with his hand for her to follow him. She did, glad to be going somewhere warmer.
Once they were both inside, Lucas went to the front of the garage and pressed the button to close the garage door. It moved down slowly, blocking out some of the frigidness of the outside air. Max left her skateboard on the ground and rubbed her hands on her opposite arms, trying to return some warmth to them.
“I told you it was cold,” Lucas said, coming over to where she was standing. He was wearing a coat, too, but he didn’t look cold.
“No, I said you were going to say that, but you didn’t actually,” Max pointed out. “Anyway, I knew it was cold. I’ll live.”
Something about this made Lucas frown. “Why did you want to come over if you knew you were going to freeze to death? I’d see you tomorrow, for school.”
Max shrugged, like there wasn’t a clear reason she had wanted to come over. She wasn’t here to discuss that. She and Lucas hadn’t really talked about Billy or her family since that night on the roof of the school bus. Considering they still hadn’t talked about whether or not they were boyfriend and girlfriend, that hardly seemed like the most important conversation to have. “I was just bored,” she said lamely.
Lucas tilted his head at her, then said, “Oh, okay. Well, do you want to stay for dinner? I bet my dad can drive you home after.”
Max had not thought this through all the way. If someone drove her home, they’d wonder why she wasn’t going in the front door. If she stayed for dinner, it would be very dark and even colder when she skateboarded home. But if she didn’t stay for dinner, there wasn’t much point in her having come at all. It was after four-thirty.
“I can stay,” she said, whether or not it was the best idea. She wanted to stay. She didn’t want to go back to her house. She doubted that her family would have family dinner tonight, after the fight. Neil usually wanted nothing to do with Billy after that, and there was no way Billy would come eat. Neil wouldn’t be surprised that she didn’t, either. It was risky to stay that long, but she was being led by her emotions and not her logic. “Your dad can’t drive me home though.”
Lucas furrowed his eyebrows, obviously confused. “It’s going to be, like, sub-zero out there.”
“It doesn’t get that cold in Indiana,” Max objected, as if his comment hadn’t been intentionally exaggerated. “I’ll live. I, well, I snuck out. So I can’t get driven home by your dad.” The truth was the best explanation in this case, though she didn’t intend to tell him any more truths. He still thought she was badass, more so than she felt a lot of the time, and he wouldn’t necessarily think something was wrong for her to have snuck out.
“You snuck out?” Lucas gasped, incredulous. “Why?”
She bit her lip, unsure what to say.
Lucas filled in the silence with his own best answer. “Billy? Did Billy do something?”
Max didn’t miss how his gaze moved to her black eye. Billy had not been responsible for that, and Lucas had not seemed suspicious of her door explanation earlier that week. She shook her head. “No, definitely not. I was just annoyed by my stepdad and stuff. So I wanted to leave.”
Lucas nodded, but he didn’t look entirely satisfied with the response. Max would have to rely on the fact that he was still a bit nervous around her to prevent him from pressing the matter. “Max,” he said, her name hanging there as an open ended word even after he shut his mouth.
“Yes?” She prompted.
“Well, just, you know,” he said slowly, “if you ever want to tell me stuff, you can. You don’t have to, but I just mean, if you ever have stuff you don’t want other people to know, you can tell me. I won’t tell anybody. Just if you ever do.”
He said it like it was purely hypothetical, but both of them knew it wasn’t. Max’s stomach twisted inside her, and she was overcome by a strange urge to tell him things she had never told anyone. But her secrets weren’t just her secrets, they were Billy’s and her mother’s. She was bound to secrecy and even the warm feeling Lucas gave her wasn’t enough to stop that.
So, instead of telling him that she didn’t want to be in her house because Neil was slapping Billy and her family was a mess and the black eye was from Neil and not a door, she just made eye contact with Lucas and said, “I know. I know, Lucas, seriously.”
He smiled and she smiled back. It wasn’t a lie. She didn’t know if she’d ever tell Lucas her deepest secrets, but she did know that if she ever wanted to, he would listen to her. That was enough. The opportunity was as comforting as the action itself.
“Listen, Max,” Lucas said, the pace of his speech still slower than normal, “there was something else I wanted to…um…ask you.”
Something he wanted to ask her? Were they talking about this now?
“What’s that?” Max responded, trying to keep a poker face in case it wasn’t what she thought it was.
“It’s about, like, the SnowBall.”
It was. It really was.
“You can’t ask me to the SnowBall, Stalker, we’re not going to go to Hawkins Middle next year,” Max said jokingly. She hoped Lucas wouldn’t be thrown off by a joke, but rather that it would crack some of the tenseness. It did seem to do the latter; she thought she heard Lucas let out a small breath.
“Not that,” Lucas said. “It’s about last month. Not really, it’s not really about that. It’s just, like-”
“Just say it,” Max said, unable to restrain her desire to know for sure what he was going to ask her.
“Will you be my girlfriend?” Lucas’s voice picked up speed right as he said it, like he too was unable to restrain his desire to know for sure what she was going to say. The garage wasn’t well lit, but Max could see the slightest tinge of red on his cheeks.
She didn’t know what the perfect reply to this was. Was it a yes, of course or a yeah or a I’d love to? She knew only what her mind was telling her to say, so that was what she said. “Yes, I will. So you’re my boyfriend now?” Clearly that was how it worked. But she stupidly wanted confirmation.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Lucas said. “I mean, yes. I’m your girlfriend and you’re my boyfriend. Sorry, the other way around.”
This broke the remaining tension between them. They both burst out laughing.
Max heard the sound of a doorknob turning, then the door from the house into the garage was thrown open. Erica stood in the doorway.
“What the hell are you guys doing out here?” She demanded, mainly staring at Max. “I’m pretty sure that Mom wouldn’t want you to be alone with a girl in the garage, Lucas.”
Lucas spun around and exclaimed, “Go away, Erica!”
“What, so you can talk to your girlfriend,” Erica said tauntingly, remaining right where she was.
Lucas put a hand to his face, evidently mortified, but Max said boldly, “Yes, exactly. So he can talk to his girlfriend.”
Both Lucas and Erica looked at her with widened eyes, though for different reasons. Max knew she was like all the other girls in that she loved to say his girlfriend, but she didn’t care. There was a reason those girls were the way they were.
“I’m going to tell Mom you’re out here,” Erica said to Lucas after she’d visibly overcome the shock of Max’s admission of her and Lucas’s relationship status. “So you’d better get your butts inside before she kills you.”
Erica disappeared back into the house, shutting the door behind her. “She really will tell my mom,” Lucas said. “We’d better go inside. But you’re still staying for dinner, right?”
A chance for Max to change her mind and do the smart thing.
“Yeah.”
Lucas went to the garage door and opened it, holding it open for her. She moved past him, through the door into the house. She hadn’t spent much time in the Sinclairs’ house, but she loved how homey it felt in comparison to her own house. She scanned the room that the garage door fed into while Lucas shut and locked it. Family photos of the Sinclairs’ lined the walls, and various toys and games were strewn about the floor. Because Max was the youngest at her own house, there was little in the way of toys and games there. Though she didn’t play with toys, she liked the vibe they gave the room.
“Are you sure my dad can’t drive you home?” Lucas asked again. He followed her gaze to the pile of Erica’s toys on the floor. He didn’t say anything about it, but she got the feeling he knew she was thinking about her own house and her own family.
“I’m sure.” Max wasn’t that dumb. “I’ll be fine, Lucas, it won’t be that late.”
“Maybe if you called your mom and told her you were here, you could come,” he suggested. She admired his innocence in the matter, like if she called her mom instead of her stepdad or Billy then everything would be all right.
“No, that won’t work,” Max said. She turned her head away from the toys to focus back on Lucas’s face. “Trust me, I’ve skateboarded in all kinds of weather. I can take care of myself.”
Lucas hesitated, then nodded begrudgingly. “I know you can take care of yourself,” he said. “You’re pretty cool, you know that, Mad Max?”
She found herself smiling again. She never smiled in any other scenario as often as she did with Lucas. “So they tell me,” she replied vaguely.
She was cool, not like the other girls who got boyfriends and fawned over them and giggled in packs. But she had done one of those things now. Something about Lucas telling her she was cool was all she needed to affirm that she had not changed just because of it. She was Mad Max, who played video games and skateboarded and didn’t wear makeup. Even though she had a boyfriend.
She had a boyfriend.
“1985 has been pretty good so far,” Lucas observed. “Don’t you think?”
On the first day of 1985, she’d gotten a black eye from Neil. But she had also spent the day with her friends, gotten her radio from Lucas, and kissed him. And here they were, less than a week into 1985, and he was her boyfriend.
“Definitely. And it just got even better.”
His expression changed as he understood what she meant. He didn’t say anything to it, but the way he looked at her was enough. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go hang our coats up.”
She walked after him, further into the house that she wished was her own, owned by the family that she wished her own was more like. But rather than feeling jealous of it, Max simply felt grateful that it was here. Grateful that Lucas was here. After all, if he was her boyfriend–and he was her boyfriend–then she really did belong here.
If 1985 was the year she belonged with Lucas Sinclair, then it was going to be a good year regardless of what else happened.