Chapter Text
It’s prom night and Nancy is in a bad mood. If she’s being honest, she’s usually in a bad mood. Finally, all the monsters are dead, and she’s wearing a gorgeous pink dress, and she’s at prom with her boyfriend, but still she’s in a bad mood. When Nancy got drunk and spilled wine on her white clothes and told Steve she didn’t love him before she’d even realized that herself, Jonathan had appeared just in time to take her home. That had felt like a sign. Her relationship with Steve had been perfect, from the outside. He was popular and handsome and even trying to be nice, plus he had helped her fight off the Demogorgon. But once they were actually dating, it had all felt too perfect, hollow on the inside.
So she’d figured with Jonathan, what she was feeling must be real. He wasn’t the popular boy all the girls fawned over, so she figured she must really like him for him. Shared trauma and all that. But she’d been feeling, recently, an uncomfortably similar lack of something that she can’t quite name. And now here she is, again, mad at her boyfriend for no reason in a crowd of all their peers.
Jonathan hadn’t even wanted to go to the prom, of course. Nancy had practically had to drag him here, after all those times of Steve practically having to drag her out to parties. That was just the problem, though. When she’d been with Steve she’d been so uncomfortable, felt like they were playing at normalcy, felt like she’d been chasing some idyllic teenage-hood only to find it didn’t fit once she’d gotten it. She’d thought things would make sense once she started dating Jonathan, another person who she knew felt like he didn’t fit in. But once things had died down – once finally, shockingly, they weren’t running from or chasing after monsters, once they could just be for a minute, she’d found herself still unable to sit still.
With Steve, Nancy had always had to be on display, to talk to people she didn’t want to talk to. But Jonathan always wanted to listen to his weird loud music alone in his room. When Nancy was alone in her room, she sometimes let herself picture, just for a moment before falling asleep, what she really wanted. And when she did that, when she admitted to herself that maybe what she wanted was something more, or something different, again, what she pictured was not any boy, but friends. Not the kind of friends she and Steve had had, not like anyone she knew at school, not like anyone except, well, Barb. With Barb, unlike with Steve and Jonathan, she hadn’t had to wonder who she was or if she was happy. She just was. She and Barb fit together. Well, they had, until Nancy had started to get restless, until she had messed everything up, until – but she didn’t let herself go there, to think that, anymore.
So what she wanted wasn’t to go to prom, not really. Not with Jonathan. But she also didn’t not want to go to prom. It was hard to explain. Often, Nancy felt like she was crazy, like she always wanted the opposite of whatever the person she loved the most did. Like, okay, if she’d been dating Steve, maybe she would’ve wanted to skip prom, but because she knew Jonathan wouldn’t want to go, she wanted to. She worried, a lot, that she’d only wanted to go to that party that night Barb died because Barb hadn’t wanted to. But again, that was something she didn’t let herself think about anymore.
In any case, despite whether either of them had really wanted to go or not, Jonathan had taken Nancy to prom. Of course he had. He’d grumbled about it, he’d asked her why she was interested in the crap, but once it became clear she was going with or without him, he’d bought her a corsage, found something semi-decent to wear. She’d had to go eat dinner at his house before they went, instead of him picking her up and taking her out to some local restaurant like all the other kids. She’d grumbled about that, but secretly, she’d been glad to. Jonathan had asked her if she would because he’d known it would mean a lot to Joyce to see them “do normal shit.”
Nancy loves Joyce. Joyce is nothing like her own mother, who, after one moment in the kitchen telling Nancy that it’s hard to be a girl, had once again disappeared from her life. In fact, her mom was currently on some weekend-long vacation with her dad because they wanted to “reconnect.” They’d sent Holly to the grandparents and asked Nancy to babysit Mike, not even seeming to realize it would be the weekend of prom. Neither Nancy nor Mike had bothered to inform them – Mike was only too happy to play his weird wizard games while Nancy was out.
Joyce, however, was very much there when Nancy had gone over for dinner earlier tonight. She’d gasped when she’d seen Nancy’s dress and said, “Oh, honey, you look gorgeous” in a voice so sincere Nancy had excused herself to the bathroom for a minute so no one would see her tear up. And when Nancy had composed herself and come back to the living room, Joyce had even helped Nancy do her hair.
So the dinner had been sweet, actually. It wasn’t Joyce who was the problem, it was her son. Nancy didn’t know what she’d expected to happen. She and Jonathan had been fighting constantly, about everything from politics to what song to listen to next. She didn’t know why she’d expected being at prom to magically fix that. They had walked in the door and of course there were all their same classmates, all the people who they didn’t really like and who didn’t really like them. And of course the music that was playing was always something Nancy liked but Jonathan didn’t, so the last half hour had consisted purely of Nancy trying to convince Jonathan to go out and dance with her.
And now she’s finally snapped. “You won’t look stupid, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she tells Jonathan, shifting from one foot to another, uncomfortable in her new heels. The two of them are standing in a corner of the gym, next to the bleachers. Jonathan is sitting down but Nancy refuses to, as that will just put them one step further from getting out onto the floor and finally, actually dancing at their prom. “There are a lot of worse dancers here than you.”
“Gee, thanks, Nancy. I wasn’t worried about that, actually, but now that’s another I can be depressed about besides this abysmal music and our abysmal classmates,” Jonathan replies.
“Well, if you’re really not going to dance with me, I’m going outside to get some air.”
“Fine,” Jonathan says. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“Do you want to come with me?”
“Jesus, Nancy, it was just a question!”
She doesn’t reply, instead pushing past him and through the crowd toward the door. Mr. Clarke is chaperoning and starts to tell her that he isn’t supposed to let her back in once she leaves, but he has to shout the end of his sentence after her, as she ignores him, pushing open the double doors. Even though it’s just past sunset, the air is still so hot and humid it feels sticky. Nancy can feel the heat radiating off the black tar of the parking lot as she makes her way somewhat aimlessly out into the night. She hadn’t thought past, Get out of the gym and as far away from Jonathan and everyone else as possible, but she’s now realizing that she has no real way to get home if Jonathan doesn’t drive her.
She half-considers just walking home out of sheer stubbornness, but if her heels are already hurting her from standing still, she knows will not survive the walk. Instead, she decides to go sit on Jonathan’s car and sulk until he finally feels bad enough to come out after her. As she starts walking across the parking lot, though, she hears someone say her name.
“Hey, Nancy,” comes a disinterested-sounding voice from somewhere off to her right. She whips her head around and sees, to her surprise, Carol. Carol is sitting in the passenger side of a beat-up car with the windows rolled down, and she’s smoking a joint. Nancy considers walking right past Carol as if she doesn’t notice her, but she’s in the kind of bad mood where she almost wants to hear what shit Carol was going to say to her. Plus, she half wants to try some of the joint – sobriety is feeling less and less fun by the minute.
“Hey, Carol,” Nancy says, matching Carol’s disinterested tone and making her way over to the car. Carol leans out the window slightly, taking a drag of the joint and not bothering to blow the smoke away from Nancy’s face. Nancy pretends not to be bothered by it and leans against the passenger side door of the car next to where Carol is, crossing her arms. “What are you doing here?” Nancy asks Carol. “Pretty pathetic to be hanging around prom a year after you graduated.”
Carol rolls her eyes. “Pretty pathetic to be hanging out in the parking lot during your own prom,” she shoots back. “Tommy is making some deliveries, for your information. Earning money as we speak.”
“Oh, great, so he’s literally a drug dealer now?” Nancy says. “I can’t say that I’m surprised.” She knows this is probably not a good thing to say if she wants Carol to offer her a hit of the joint, but she can’t help herself. She’s still against marijuana on principle, even if she wants to try some right now. She wants to try some right now precisely because she thinks it is a bad and stupid thing to do.
“He makes more money than most of the kids from our town. Like, what, Harrington with his part time job at the video store?” Carol tells Nancy. “I would’ve said congrats on dumping that loser except that I heard you’ve started dating perhaps the only guy that’s more of a loser than he is.”
“At least I’m not pathetic enough to still be keeping tabs on the relationship status of people I don’t even go to school with anymore,” Nancy says.
“Don’t try to lecture me on who’s pathetic,” Carol says. “Why are you out here, anyway? Finally realized Byers is wacko and that you’d rather take your chances with whatever creeps might be lurking outside the high school gym?”
“You seem to be the only creep out here currently, and I figure my chances with you are fine,” Nancy tells her. She keeps eying the joint, wanting to try some but not wanting to ask. She keeps looking at Carol as she takes drags between bantering, looking at the way her lips close around the joint, at how she always manages not to smear whatever baby pink lip gloss she has on. I’m looking so I’ll know how to take a drag if she offers it to me, Nancy tells herself.
Nancy doesn’t know why she keeps standing here to talking to a person who openly despises her. It feels like a scab she can’t stop picking at, like the pain is more bearable if she keeps poking at it, if she feels like she’s the one causing it. And Carol, for her part, isn’t telling Nancy to get lost. In fact, Carol seems to be perfectly content talking to Nancy. Part of it is probably that Carol seems to be perfectly content doing almost anything. And part of it is probably also that Carol has nothing else to do besides smoke her joint and talk to Nancy until Tommy comes back with the keys. There’s a silence, for a minute, as neither of them want to leave but both of them realize they don’t really have anything to say to each other. Then Nancy speaks up.
“It really sucks in there without any booze,” she says in what she hopes is a casual tone. She wants to see if she can get Carol to offer her the joint without having to actually ask.
But Carol doesn’t, of course. “I bet,” she says. “There isn’t much about high school that’s good sober.” Carol is looking pointedly at Nancy now. Nancy can tell that Carol knows she wants to try the joint but that Carol wants the satisfaction of actually hearing Nancy say that out loud.
Nancy can’t decide what’s more important to her, her stubbornness or her wish to be inebriated. Without realizing it, she must’ve started frowning because Carol laughs at her and says, “You’re pouting like a little kid. What, the joint giving you a headache?” She waves it close to Nancy’s face.
“No,” Nancy says, and finally gives in. “Actually, I was wondering if I could have some.”
Carol raises her eyebrows at her. “Are you sure you want to? I don’t want to corrupt such a pure and innocent soul as Nancy Wheeler.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Nancy snaps. It’s all she can do to keep herself from snatching the joint out of Carol’s hand just to win the argument and see the look of surprise on her face. She settles for saying, “Come off it, Carol. You’ve seen me drink at parties.”
For a minute, Carol just sits there taking another drag off the joint, and Nancy thinks Carol might not even reply at all. But then she exhales and says, “Well, what the hell. This weed is shit anyway.” She reaches out the short distance between them, offering the joint to Nancy.
Nancy takes it and feels Carol watching her as she puts it to her lips. She knows Carol is watching to see if she’ll fuck it up, and she does her best to copy exactly what Carol’s been doing the whole time. She is very aware of putting her lips where Carol’s had been mere seconds before, and she does her best to inhale lazily. But the instant she feels the smoke hit her lungs, it’s even harsher than she imagined it would be, and she finds herself coughing so hard that her eyes water and she almost drops the joint.
Carol starts laughing, of course. Nancy figures she’s past maintaining an air of cool about her, so she just says, “That’s awful. No wonder it’s illegal.”
Carol rolls her eyes. “Well, if you hate it that much give it back to me.”
“Take it,” Nancy tells her, handing the joint back over gladly. She waits to see if she feels anything, but finds that she feels as sober and as lousy as ever.
“Here,” Carol says, ducking back into the car to rummage through the glove compartment with one hand while she uses the other to continue to hold the joint out the window. “I hate to see your prom night ruined by sobriety. Ah, here we go.”
She pulls out a flask and, to Nancy’s surprise, actually opens the door to get out of the car instead of just leaning back out the window. Closing the door behind her, she hands the flask to Nancy, then leans against Tommy’s car so that they’re standing facing each other. Nancy takes the flask and grimaces immediately after taking a swig of it. It’s whiskey, really cheap stuff from the taste of it. Not her favorite, but better than the joint, at least. So she takes a few more sips from it in quick succession.
“Wow, someone’s looking to get sloppy drunk tonight,” Carol says. The parking spaces are small, and Nancy and Carol’s faces are so close to each other in the dark that Nancy can feel the heat of the joint as Carol brings it back up to her lips and inhales again.
Nancy feels her face getting warm and a strange rushing in her head. She wonders if it’s the joint and the whiskey hitting her all at once. Neither she or Carol says anything for a minute, both silently imbibing their chosen substances instead.
“See?” Nancy says, finally, after she’s drank enough whiskey to feel lightheaded and heavy all at once. “I’m not always such a good girl.”
Carol lets out a short, snorting laugh at that. “I never really thought you were,” she says. “Always seemed a bit too perfect, to me. A bit too uptight. People like that are always hiding something.”
Nancy leans in toward Carol so she can give her some sort of conspiratorial smirk. “What am I hiding?” she asks.
“I don’t know, Nancy,” Carol says, not leaning away and smirking right back. “Why don’t you tell me? What are you hiding?”
And then the strangest thing happens. Maybe it’s because they’re fighting, and Nancy only ever seems to fight like this with the boys she’s dating, and maybe it’s because she’s been so focused on Carol’s lips as she’s watched her smoke the joint, but suddenly Nancy wants to kiss Carol. There’s barely any space between the two of them, and Nancy doesn’t move, not any closer and not any further away, but she can picture so clearly what it would be like to close that last bit of distance between them. But a second after she has the thought, she can feel her cheeks flush, and she leans back and drops the smirk from her face. I’m crazy, she thinks. I’m really going crazy. Is this what marijuana does to you? Is this why you aren’t supposed to smoke it?
Carol gives her some sort of look when she leans away, and for a second Nancy is worried Carol knows exactly what she was thinking. But then Carol just says, “I don’t know, Nancy. What are you hiding underneath your many layers of frigid bitch?”
But bantering with Carol is no longer fun. Nancy likes to push and to push, but now she feels like she’s pushed the situation too far and she is once again no longer in control. So she says, “You know, now that I’ve had some booze and you’re back to insulting me, I think I’m going to go back to my prom. Have fun hanging around waiting for your loser of a boyfriend.”
“Oh, Nancy,” Carol says patronizingly, as if there are many things that Carol understands that Nancy does not. Then she adds, almost sincerely, “I wish you the best of luck. You can even keep the flask. My little gift to you on your prom night.” Nancy is almost sort of touched when Carol adds, “You’re going to need all the whiskey you can get if you and Jonathan are intending to make this night special.”
Nancy looks back long enough to give Carol a disgusted face, deciding she doesn’t need to grace that comment with a reply. After storming so determinedly out of the gym mere minutes ago, she now finds Jonathan the preferable option to Carol and the parking lot. She feels off balance, and not because of the new heels or the alcohol. Still, she’s not sure how she’s going to get back in past Mr. Clarke, let alone with a flask too big to hide in her bra.
Nancy decides to finish off the rest of the whiskey before she attempts to go back inside, ducking down by some kid’s new car halfway between Carol and the gym doors. Then she tosses her head back and drains the rest of the flask as quickly as possible. She cringes as it stings her throat, but she hopes it will counteract whatever weird shit the weed was putting in her head. She’s not sure that’s how alcohol or weed works, but it’s the best she’s got. Once it’s all gone, she leaves the flask on the ground next to the car and strides determinedly back toward the gym, trying on the way to come up with some sort of excuse to give Mr. Clarke.
Turns out she didn’t need to have worried, though. As she gets closer, she sees that Mr. Clarke is actually standing just outside the gym himself now and is preoccupied talking to someone else. To Tommy. She hears him telling Tommy, “Now, I don’t know why you’re here, and, if I’m being honest, I don’t want to know. If you’ll just leave the school grounds right now, I won’t call Hopper over here, and this can be the end of it.”
Nancy puts on her most carefree smile and breezes right past the two of them. Mr. Clarke pauses and glances at her, obviously torn about whether to finish dealing with Tommy or trying to stop her from going back inside. “Now, Nancy, wait—“ he says, but she ignores him. After a second of hesitation, he turns his attention back to Tommy, leaving Nancy to push her way through the double doors and back into the gym.
Jonathan is sitting in the exact same corner of the bleachers where she left him, all by himself of course. Doesn’t he ever try to have fun? Nancy thinks to herself, irritated already, but she pushes the thought aside as she strides up to him, determined to get Carol out of her head. Walking up to Jonathan, she grabs his hand, clearly startling him. “Let’s go have fun,” she tells him, attempting to pull him onto the dance floor.
Jonathan, however, resists her tugging at his arm and remains sitting on the bleachers. “Why do you smell like alcohol? Why do you smell like weed?”
Nancy rolls her eyes in her best imitation of Carol. “Oh, come on Jonathan, it’s prom night. We’re supposed to drink.”
“Um, I thought we decided we weren’t going to. Where did you even get alcohol? You get mad at me, storm out of the gym, somehow get drunk in about ten minutes, and then we’re supposed to just forget all that and have fun when you decide you want to?”
“Oh my God, Jonathan,” she says. She half tries to whisper, half doesn’t care who hears them as she leans over toward where Jonathan is still sitting to tell him, “I’m a teenager at my prom who drank a little bit. So sue me. While you’ve been sitting around waiting until they play some song that nobody but you even likes, I’ve been out talking to normal people who do things that normal teenagers do, like drink, not sit in their room all the time acting like they have all the reason to be depressed when their brother came back and Barb didn’t!”
Jonathan flinches at that, looking surprised. Even Nancy is surprised. All she’d wanted was one night where she could forget about Barb. But of course she couldn’t. Not here. Not when she knows that Barb would’ve been out on the floor dancing with Nancy to Wham! even if she was embarrassed and thought prom was dumb. That was the difference. Barb would do things that Nancy wanted to, even when Barb herself didn’t find them fun. Barb cared about Nancy more than she cared about her dignity or her principles or anything stupid like that. With Jonathan, Nancy isn’t so sure.
“Nancy, I don’t—“ Jonathan starts, then stops. “I mean,” he says, after a minute. “I know what happened with Barb was sad. Is sad. But this isn’t how you should handle it. I’m worried, this isn’t like you—“
Nancy cuts him off.
“This isn’t like me? Do you even know what I’m like, Jonathan?” Nancy doesn’t bother to whisper as she says this. She can tell people around them are definitely starting to glance over but she’s past caring.
“Do I know what you’re like? Uh, yeah, I think I do.” Jonathan then gets really quiet and says, “We’ve literally fought monsters together, I think we know each other pretty well. You’re tough and smart and not the kind of person who gets angry and drunk over some prom drama.”
“So what we’ve fought monsters together,” Nancy hisses back. “When have we had one normal date? I don’t want to be part of some monster-fighting team, Jonathan. I want to be a girl who has fun at prom!” Even as she says it, she feels that isn’t true either. She doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s becoming more and more clear to her that this isn’t it.
“Well I’m sorry that I can’t, like, fit in with everyone else, Nancy. I gave up on trying a long time ago. It just doesn’t work. If you want some preppy zombie boyfriend who will take you to go buy milkshakes at Pop’s dinner or whatever maybe you should go get back together with Steve.”
“Maybe I should go get back together with Steve,” Nancy tells him. She says it not because she cares about Steve anymore, not in that way, but because she knows it will hurt Jonathan. For a minute they just stand there saying nothing to each other, just staring at each other.
“You know what, Nancy? I’m going home. Are you coming with me?” Jonathan says.
“No,” she says. “I’m not.” Jonathan waits for a minute more before shrugging and walking away. She knows she should just let him take her home, but that feels like that would be losing, like admitting she was wrong. She is sick and tired of Jonathan being the nice boy who takes her home when she’s drunk and doesn’t even try anything. Because she is sick of being the girl that needs taking care of. She isn’t a nice girl. She is mean, and she deserves to be left alone. She doesn’t want to stalk back out to the parking lot where Carol might still be, and she doesn’t want to stay here where people are staring at her. So instead she stalks out of the other gym exit, the one that leads into the school and towards the bathrooms.
The girl’s bathroom is mercifully not that full. There are two girls by the sink, one of them smoking a cigarette while the other looks in the mirror and reapplies her lipstick. They are talking about some boy Nancy has never heard of and wondering if he likes lipstick girl, whose name is apparently Sarah. There is also someone puking in one of the toilets – Nancy can’t see who it is, as the stall door has swung mostly closed. Nancy walks past the girls at the sink and to the far end of the bathroom, sliding down the wall to sit with her pretty dress on the gross tile floor, not caring what she might be getting on it.
The girls at the sink ignore her, and when they leave after a minute or two, Nancy takes a deep breath. Finally, I’m alone, she thinks. Just then, though, the puker comes out of the stall. And who else would it be but Robin Buckley.