Chapter Text
"Call out in the middle of the night,
For when else would I hear you?
Fall out in the cold starlight,
I can save you if you do.
You will never walk alone.
You can always reach me.
You will never ever walk alone.
Call me Little Sunshine."Ghost – Call Me Little Sunshine
Waking up was painful. Normally if I under sleep or oversleep, I was fine. However this time it felt like I had gotten hit by a bus.
The sun was blinding and when I moved to get away from the sun, I felt nauseous and saliva entered my mouth like I was going to throw up. I reached for a trashcan beside my bed, but there was nothing. Then I threw up on the hardwood floor. I was confused, because my floor wasn’t made out of wood. It was carpeted.
The fuck?
I pushed back my hair. It was a lot shorter than usual.
“Lexi?”
There was a knock on the door. “Are you all right?”
Who the fuck was Lexi?
The door opened and a man walked in.
Who the fuck was he?
He walked over and looked at me. He put his hand on my shoulder. I wanted away from him. I didn’t want anything to do with this guy. “Don’t worry, Lexi, I’ll clean that up.” He grimaced slightly, “Is this…the time of month the nurse warned me about?”
I was still confused. Who was this guy? Did he kidnap me?
“No,” I said slowly and then I was freaked out. It wasn’t my voice that came out. My voice was more high-pitched.
He seemed relieved. “I’ll get you a trashcan. Hopefully it’s a stomach bug and will pass before the first day of school.”
“School?” I asked confused. I haven’t been to school since I graduated college.
“Yeah,” the man said, “School. I’ll call your friends’ parents and tell them that you’ll be staying home. I’m off work so you can call me if you need anything, all right.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
“I’ll clean that up,” said the man. He opened a window to air out the room.
I was right back to freaking out again. There was a strange man calling me Lexi. He must’ve cut my hair. Apparently I had school…something was very wrong.
I got out of bed, which wasn’t mine. This bed had pink sheets and a bluish-gray comforter and it had a white bed ruffle.
The walls were pale blue with golden dots and there were pictures on the wall. I looked at one. There was a man and a woman with a young daughter. She must’ve been in middle-school. She had armpit length black hair and piercing blue eyes. There was a desk against one wall, which I went to. There was a corkboard hanging above the desk. There was Polaroid pictures pinned to the corkboard.
There were pictures of that girl from the family picture hanging out with her male friends. I didn’t really get a good look at the pictures because there was a knock on the door again and I had to get back in bed.
The guy walked in with a glass of something and set it down on the table beside the bed.
“Maybe it’s just nerves,” the man said. “You’re going into seventh grade…”
Seventh grade?
What the fuck was this man talking about?
I had to be losing my mind.
“And I know you’re worried that Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin will ditch you, but I assure you, they won’t,” the man continued. “And I know you’re upset about your mother leaving you, I mean us.”
Okay, whatever you say weirdo.
I didn’t go back to sleep. I needed answers.
I checked the closet to see if there was a mirror in there. There was, and I almost screamed in horror.
I did not look like myself. I looked like that girl from those photos. This girl was at least taller than me; she was maybe 5’4. Her hair was at least armpit length.
If I was in this body, where was Lexi?
That was enough looking at her. I looked through her wardrobe. The shirts and sweaters were really colorful and had frills to them. The jeans had ripped knees. At least the knees weren’t removed and I could see some thread holding them together. This girl even had frilly skirts with neon leggings.
Either this girl was a hipster or something was really wrong. Maybe she got into 80's fashion.
Well, I picked the least attention drawing thing. A purple tee-shirt, and okay, the denim frilly skirt was kind of cute, and some black leggings, paired off a pair of converse if I was going to school tomorrow.
There was a red canvas backpack hanging onto the chair at the desk and I went through her desk.
Lexi had an eyeliner pencil in there along with a journal that looked to be a diary that I took to look through. I needed to know Lexi so I can impersonate her before I figured out how to get back to my body.
I sat in the chair at the desk and looked through the diary. It was very sporadic entries, with no dates, because it couldn’t be that easy. There were some misspellings and words crossed out. However, her handwriting was neat and legible. The only way I can describe it was architect handwriting.
There were pages that had been ripped out.
One entry said that Lexi had befriended four boys: Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, and Dustin Henderson. She played Dungeons and Dragons with them. She had detailed her role-playing character, which I had to memorize so they won’t get suspicious. I knew nothing about Dungeons and Dragons.
She detailed the fun that she had with them, which mostly boiled down to playing D&D with them.
She even wrote about how she tried to do a pull-up for gym, but fell in a mud puddle, then chased the teacher around pretending to be a mud monster.
One was very recent and dated 1983. Oh fuck me. I was in the past. I wasn’t even born yet.
The recent entry detailed how much Lexi hated Lonnie Byers. Will had taken Lexi to introduce her to his father as his ‘girlfriend’ because he wanted Lonnie to get off his back for being ‘gay’ which made Lonnie make very gross comments (they’re twelve, gross!) that made Lexi throw a rock at him and they had to leave.
Reading through it, it confirmed that I was stuck in Stranger Things.
Why? I didn’t know anything about Stranger Things. I watched like three or four episodes of the show before stopping. I looked up the show plenty of times to see what’s going on in the seasons, but that’s how far my knowledge of the show goes.
I think the first episode was Will going missing, but I don’t know when that happened.
This really sucked.
I cried in Lexi’s bed, because what the fuck? Was this my life now?
Lexi’s dad woke me up to see how I was feeling. I was actually feeling a lot better now, but he deemed me well enough to go to school. He made me toast and put butter on it. I didn’t like buttered toast, but I ate it with orange juice that he gave me.
I appreciated his efforts. He was a single dad raising a girl. I assume that he was recently divorced and his ex-wife split.
Also, I liked him in a way. He was being a dad to Lexi, and a complete stranger had taken over his daughter’s body.
I didn’t want to go back to middle school, but I think Lexi’s dad would be pissed if I ditched school. The good thing is that I can just blow through all this stuff.
There doorbell rang and Lexi’s dad went to answer it, while I awkwardly brushed her teeth.
“Lexi! Your friends are here!” Lexi’s dad called. “Your bike is out in the front!”
I finished brushing her teeth and grabbed her backpack from the couch, before going outside.
“Move your ass, Alexis!” Lucas called to me. “We’re going to be late on our first day!”
“Maybe she’s worried about Troy and James making fun of her,” Mike said.
I grabbed my, uh, Lexi’s, uh, Alexis’s bike, which was red with some white on it. There was a headlight on it, so I assumed that Alexis usually stayed out ‘til dark.
The 80s was a strange time. I bet she also drank water straight out of a water hose too.
I got on and we were off.
“You’re coming over to play D&D after school, right?” Mike called to me. I was in the back, trying to memorize the route to the middle school.
“Hell yeah,” I replied, more because I wasn’t sure how Alexis would’ve responded to that.
“Cool,” said Mike.
Will was lagging with me, which was rather sweet of him.
Something told me that Alexis was closer to Will than with the others. I think after Will was Dustin, who I felt like Alex was closer too. Mike and Lucas were at a tie, with me feeling like I wasn’t that close with them.
“How are you feeling anyway?” Dustin asked me, pulling to ride alongside me and Will.
“Fine,” I said. “Nerves and worry got to me, I guess.”
“Was it…a girl thing? Like what Nancy gets?” asked Mike.
I tried to remember who Nancy was, and remembered that she’s Mike’s older sister. “No, it wasn’t a period.”
The boys shuddered at that.
That’s what they get for hanging out with a girl. Besides, they’ll need all the help they can get when it comes to relationships.
The school was five blocks away from Alexis’s house. The middle school was right next to the high school. How convenient.
I put Alexis’s bike right next to Will’s.
“Let’s see if we have any classes together,” I said to the boys. It would be easier to see if we shared any classes because it meant that I can follow them.
“Oh, yeah,” said Will.
I took out the schedule from Alexis’s backpack and I looked at it.
The name was Alexandria B. Cardiff. Her father’s name was Robert. The mom’s name was absent, so she must have left before school started, so Robert had to have updated that information.
I, or rather Alexandria, had Mr. Clarke’s science class with the boys. I had math class with Lucas. History was with Dustin. Gym was with Mike. English and some band elective were solo. Art was with Will, something that he seemed happy about.
At least I had one class with them all, so that was relieving.
Two guys came up and I felt revulsion towards them.
One guy said, “Looks like the freak show came to school.”
“Yeah and we’re looking at them. The Village Idiot and his sideshow, Curly Q,” I said.
That wasn’t as stinging as I wanted it to be. I couldn’t exactly bring these kids to tears, no matter how much I wanted to.
The Village Idiot and Curly Q laughed. So they heard of that ‘laugh at every insult’ trick to get bullies to stop.
“Actually we got the Whore, Fairy, Frogface, Midnight, and Toothless,” The Village Idiot said.
I was kind of pissed at that. Really? That was how insulting he could get?
“And we got the coward who stoops as so low to bully a girl,” I replied. “What’s the matter? Daddy left you. Is that why you think you’re a tough-guy?” I shoved him as hard as I could. He stumbled back.
Lucas grabbed my arm, “Come on, Alexis. He’s not worth it.”
I agreed with that, but these were Alexandria’s friends so I wanted to do something before El snapped one of their arms in half.
“Yeah, listen to him,” the Village Idiot said smugly.
I turned and punched him in the gut as hard as little Alexandria could muster. She must’ve have been real fed up with this guy, but I planted that guy on the ground. I kicked him in the ribs for good measure.
“Leave me and my friends alone, you dumb-fuck!” I yelled at him.
Mike grabbed my arm and dragged me inside the school.
“I love you,” Dustin said to me in awe. “Will you marry me?”
I laughed at that, because it was kind of funny. And I doubt he has a crush on me.
“He’s going to get you in trouble,” Mike said.
“He’s a wannabe tough guy. I tarnished his reputation by knocking him on his ass. You think he’s going to ruin it even more by admitting that a girl kicked his ass?” I asked him.
“I knew we became friends for a reason,” Mike told me.
“Hey, as your friend, I have the right to knock douche bags on their asses,” I said.
“And we’re lucky to have you around,” said Lucas.
Will followed me back to Alexandria’s home. There was a stranger there, sitting on the couch, with a beer.
Well, I say stranger, because I didn’t know him.
“Hey, Lexi and Will,” the stranger greeted us.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, Mr. Williams,” Will muttered. Maybe Mr. Williams reminded him of his father.
“He’s in the kitchen,” Mr. Williams said.
We went into the kitchen.
Robert smiled, “I got us some tacos.”
I took some tacos.
“Want some, Will?” Robert asked.
Will seemed to debate on the pros and cons on accepting a taco from Alexandria’s dad, before he took one.
“Come on, bud, take another,” said Robert.
Will smiled and took another taco.
“We’re going to Mike’s to play some D&D,” I said to Robert.
“All right, don’t stay out too late. You both have school tomorrow,” Robert said.
“Will do, Mr. Cardiff,” Will said.
I think Will was teasing him.
It was nice to see, before Hell gets rained down on him.