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Dear Billy, she wrote then scraped the pen over the words until they were nothing but a blotch of ink on the page. Then she tore out that page from her notebook and threw it away, just like the rest of them; a bunch of papers falling out of the trash can near her bed.
Miss Kelly said, “If you don’t know how to express your feelings verbally, write them down.” It’s one of the first things she said to Max and one of the only ones she remembered. The rest was just the same questions over and over again that she already knows the answer to. How’s your mom? Do you still have headaches? Nightmares?
Every visit to Miss Kelly left Max mad. She rarely got mad anymore, not on the outside at least. She went through a long period of time when she was nothing but mad. But before that, she was trying to be normal.
Up until The Byers moved away, she had some semblance of normality. She had someone she could talk to. Someone who understood. Who knew about Billy and was there next to him when it happened, someone who looked into his mind and knew him as something more than a monster, than a bully that was out to get everyone.
The long winter months following that felt like an eternity. Billy’s bedroom stood empty except for a pillow and a blanket, bundled over the bare mattress. When Max would wake up in a cold sweat from yet another nightmare, she would quietly sneak into his room, wrap herself in the blankets and burrow herself into a pillow that once upon a time belonged to him—safer in this bare room than she felt anywhere else in the world.
She’d hide there a lot, not only at night. She’d hide there when the fights would start, louder and louder each time, headphones on her head trying to drown out the yelling and banging.
Neil was a mess after Billy died. He didn’t let it show, didn’t let a single tear drop down his cheek, didn’t move a single muscle when they lowered an empty casket into the ground. His face was as strict as ever when he didn’t even bother to acknowledge Max’s presence.
Somewhere deep, deep inside her, Max knew he was grieving for his only son in his own way. But most of the time she hated him for it. She hated how he cleaned Billy’s room the first night after Billy was gone, by himself and threw everything into the trash. She hated that she had to dive into those black trash bags and dig out some cassette tapes and random pieces of clothing. That she couldn’t say goodbye to him properly, bit by bit, with every piece of his room put safely away. Instead, he was gone just like he lived—fast and hard.
She hated that Neil never spoke about Billy, that he hated whenever anyone brought him up, if anyone said I’m sorrys and My condolences . It became an unspoken rule in their house, to not talk about Billy. Because who knew how Neil would react.
They were tip-toeing around Neil all the time and in the beginning, in the summer. Max wasn’t home much, she didn’t want to be, so she didn’t realise what was going on until December.
In December, right before Christmas, Max saw her mother crying on the kitchen floor with a black eye, and Neil and all his belongings gone, just like that. She finally realised it wasn’t the first time it happened. It wasn’t the first time Neil hit her mom.
Max wanted to kill him. He never wanted to kill anyone in her life as much as she wanted to kill him. Because when she started thinking about it, she started thinking about all of Billy’s black eyes and suspicious bruises and red-rimmed eyes whenever he and Neil were alone in the house. She didn’t know if Neil hit him too or not. She had no one to ask.
Max wanted to kill Neil, She wanted to talk to Billy, to share her pain, to make him share him. But, neither of them was there. And Max couldn’t do anything about it. So she bottled it all up like she always did. She had to be strong for herself, for her mother who drank more and more and who had to get another job.
It wasn’t long before they moved out to that shitty trailer in the middle of the worst winter storms in the middle of January. A shitty trailer with shitty heating and no shitty memories of Billy. No memories of Billy at all.
It didn’t feel like home. Not in the way the house on Cherry Lane once upon a time had - with Billy’s working out equipment in the way and his shitty music blasting from the TV, annoying Max to no end while she was trying to do her thing.
It didn’t feel like home because her mom wasn’t there much anyway. Two jobs are a struggle and her mom barely worked serious hours in her accountant job before. Most of the money was coming from Neil. Susan was struggling, smoking, and drinking with shitty soap operas in the background when she was actually home. And Max was left with cleaning the trailer and making meals.
It made her think of him again. How when Max’s mom was busy, Billy was always the one to cook. How his Mac and Cheese and his soups were the best thing Max ever had—a rare treat. She tried to make them like his so many times but it never worked. They never taste the same.
Another lost right along with him.
***
“Max! Where the hell were you yesterday? We thought you were coming to the celebration?” Dustin asked, agitated as usual about something.
She put books back into her locker and levelled him with a blank stare. She didn’t know what he was even talking about.
Dustin made a squeak, offended. He threw his hands up, dramatic as always. She couldn’t take it today. She shut her locker shut and started walking, annoyed when she people didn’t get out of her way. God, can they walk any slower?
“What’s your excuse this time, huh? Let’s hear it. You never hang out with us anymore but to say you’ll come and then ditch us? Low blow.”
“Sorry,” she said, distracted. She couldn’t even think of an excuse. She forgot about The Celebration. They won a big battle in DnD or something. They explained it in detail, but she wasn’t really all there. She rarely was those days.
“Come on, Max, at least try!”
“I went to see Billy,” she said, because it was true but also to make Dustin squirm.
And squirm he did, guilty and conflicted. On one hand, he and the others gave Max space because that’s just how she was dealing with stuff, on the other hand, that space was created because they felt uncomfortable.
With the whole Billy thing.
“Max,” Dustin sighed. “That doesn’t mean—I mean, it’s not like he’s going anywhere.”
Words sometimes just came out of Dustin’s mouth and usually, Max would even laugh. But sometimes he would say the most stupid shit, that would make her so mad.
At least he’s speaking to you , a voice in her head said. He doesn’t think you’re too fragile to handle.
Still, Max was pissed and she knew Mike and Lucas made Dustin be the one to berate her over skipping out on The Celebration.
She stopped, suddenly and whipped around to face Dustin, who almost bumped into her in his haste to stop.
“You know what, Dustin? I’m so very sorry I didn’t wanna spend another hour in the armpit that is Mike Wheeler’s basement with you and your DnD pals that I don’t even know and pretend it’s all nice and normal like nothing happened.”
Dustin heaved a mighty sigh, missing the whole point as always when he said, like she was the one who was being difficult, “It’s not pretending! And it’s just a party. Why do you have to make everything about him ?”
“Because you won’t even say his name!” Max gritted her teeth and jabbed a finger into Dustin’s sweaty Hellfire Club t-shirt. “And it is pretending. All of this bullshit is.” She gestured at the curious stares from the people around them, shrugged and turned away.
She put her headphones on but she was sure Dustin didn’t want to speak to her today. If ever again.
She was right, though. She wouldn’t look back and she wouldn’t feel bad about it.
Whenever they meet those days, for anything, it’s always the same. Max will mention Billy, a stray thought escaping her head. And then—silence, nervous glances, fidgeting. And Max would regret she even opened her mouth.
No, she wouldn’t feel guilty for talking about him. Because for the past eight months no one spoke about him at all. Her supposed friends, her mom… None of them mentioned him anymore.
Sometimes Max thought he never existed. That Billy was just an imaginary shitty older brother she made in her own head and that he died in her head too. That it was all a dream that she would wake up from soon.
Why did no one talk about it anymore? About what happened? How could they just move on when she was the only one who couldn’t? Was there something actually wrong with her? Something broken?
At night in the worst nightmares, sometimes she thought that maybe, maybe she died with him at that moment. That they were left together in a burning mall, lying side by side on that linoleum floor.
She wondered if her friends would talk about her. Or would they refuse to say her name, just like his?
Max was terrified of not thinking about him, of not speaking about him. Because if she stopped, then where else would his memory live? Who else would remember him as someone who mattered? He sacrificed his life for all of them, for Hawkins. He was a hero but no one thinks of talks about him as if he was one. Everyone would just rather forget.
Not Max though. She was different. She’s never going to forget.
***
She still talked to Dustin, Mike and Lucas, it’s not like she didn’t.
It’s just everyone’s so busy now, with their own lives. Mike and Dustin had their DnD club and Lucas had his team. Whenever Max wasn’t overwhelmed with bitterness at the world, she was happy for them.
That they moved on; that they found their passions.
Only Max was standing still.
And, in the privacy of her room in the middle of the night where she was afraid to go back to sleep after yet another nightmare, she thought, it’s good that they moved on, it’s that they had new friends and clubs and hobbies.
It meant they wouldn’t be too devastated if Max was gone.
Gone was more an abstract idea for her. Gone in her dreams meant that she would just disappear and no one would remember her or talk about her as they did with Billy.
Everyone would move on and it would be easier. She wouldn’t be a burden anymore. Not for her mom and her friends.
It seemed those days she just always made everyone sad.
***
She had three cassettes left from Billy’s collection.
Most of them were hair metal, the worst noise she ever heard, guys screaming and shredding guitars. She learned to love the sounds. Over the few months, it was the only thing that could drown her thoughts, Neil’s and Susan’s fights, stupid kids in school.
She decided Billy didn’t have as bad of a taste in music as her younger self always thought. She could remember all the half-shouted lectures on her way to school and back that Metallica, Mötley Crüe, that’s real music, Maxine, not whatever girly shit you’re listening to .
It was funny in hindsight, how offended he was. He liked to rile her up for fun, fight with her on even the smallest of topics, and make her life difficult just because he could. But when it came to music, more than anything else, he was always serious. He really loved all of his cassettes and records, probably the only thing he genuinely cared about.
Now that she was older, she thought it might have been his lifeline.
Just like hers now.
Lately, she’s been getting into music more and more. The little allowance that she spent on the cassettes from the local music store.
The inner Billy in her would probably judge her and laugh at her brand new Kate Bush obsession.
Or he would approve because she’s finally started to discover her own music taste.
Another thing she would never know.
***
That day she’s annoyed enough already.
Miss Kelly wanted to meet her after lunch just to go on asking the same questions again. Tip-toeting around her as always. Asking about her mom and the nightmares.
The nightmares weren’t always the same.
Most often than not it was Billy dying at Starcourt. Big fleshy monsters punching through his chest. She was so used to it now it was almost familiar.
But sometimes she had worse ones. Much much worse. Nightmares that didn’t start as nightmares at all.
Sometimes they were memories. About California, about her and Billy falling asleep outside and both getting burned by the sun and having red faces for ages. About Billy teaching her how to skate in their backyard, even though he wasn’t even good at it. About her teaching him how to play games at the arcade, boasting about being a champion at DigDoug and Billy getting so competitive he tried to beat her record for four hours straight, until he got pissed, kicked the machine and went out for a smoke, sulking.
Sometimes it was about Hawkins. About the big fight, right before Neil told them to pack up their whole lives and leave everything they knew behind in a span of a week. About how mean Billy had become, to her and to everyone around him. How he stopped caring about anything and how he sometimes stared into space with that dead look in his eyes, until he snapped out of it and was mad at the world again.
She dreamed about the Demodogs, and Steve and Billy fighting. How after that night, Billy became somewhat tolerable. How he didn’t even protest when he drove her back from the Snowball dance. How for the next months he was less of an asshole and Max felt lighter than ever, hopeful about their future. Billy would even sometimes let her pick the music, whenever he drove her around.
It was like everything’s been going so well.
Well, until the summer.
She also dreamed a lot about things that weren’t memories. Like Billy living with her and her mom in the trailer, his dad long gone to wherever he disappeared to. Like Billy calling Susan ‘mom’ and sitting with her and Max on the ratty couch and watching bad TV before bed.
Those sorts of dreams hurt the most, Max decided. It hurt too much to think about the Could’ve beens.
She’s been dreaming about him a lot in the past few weeks. Even Miss Kelly would think it’s too much. She would say something about joining a club or finding a new hobby to stop thinking about it.
If Max could stop thinking about it, she wouldn’t have to meet with her anymore though and Mis Kelly, as much as she means well, probably wants Max to come to her office every week until the day one of them dies.
Which, in Hawkins, would be just a normal Tuesday.
She put her headphones on as soon as he left the office. She slept with them every night those days. One Tylenol before bed and her Walkman on, drowning out the world around her.
It’s only because it was between songs, the quiet notes of the intro just starting that she heard it — a groan from one of the toilet cabins.
“Hey, are you alright?” she asked the girl obviously throwing up in there. The shoes and a skirt meant she was one of the cheerleaders.
The girl said she was fine and Max wasn’t the one to prod her nose into business that obviously wasn’t hers.
***
“And what a great game it was, Allen, ending with a dramatic buzzer-beater from benchwarmer Lucas Sinclair!” one of the announcers on the radio said.
“He must be—ing—top—” The radio started crackling just as Max was about to turn it down. Every other word was followed by static until she couldn’t understand anything they were saying.
“Stupid piece of shit,” she sighed, rattling it this way and that.
It’s been going static-y for a week. Her mom didn’t even use it to listen to the news in the morning anymore.
As Max put it down aggressively, it switched to another channel, and a song started playing, “ Turn up the radio / I need the music, gimme some more / Turn up the radio / I want to feel it got to gimme some more. ”
Max sighed and turned the radio off. She bit her lip, thinking about the game. How her chest ached, almost guilty.
She didn’t let herself think about it too much, a dog barking interrupting her thoughts. She rolled her eyes. “Alright, alright, I hear you.”
She went through the living room, her mom fast-asleep on the couch, a TV playing in the background. It was a normal sight those days. Sometimes Max joined her, sometimes she didn’t feel like it. That night was one of the latter days.
Max picked up the empty beer cans with a sigh and threw them away.
Then the notes of the same song that was just on the radio started to play. Max turned to the TV and saw a music video, and a guy starting to sing,
Turn it up!
Girl!
I'm working hard, you're working too
We do it every day
For every minute I have to work
I need a minute of play
Day in day out all week long
Things go better with rock
She switched the TV off with a shrug. Weird , she thought.
She picked up the leftovers from the fridge and went out to feed the neighbor’s dog.
She heard music again but this time it was Eddie Munson pulling up in his van. He brought home a cheerleader but Max wasn’t stupid enough to think, it was anything more than business.
He was the one getting her Tylenol long after her prescription expired, after all.
When she went back home, the TV was on again—the same channel, the same song. Her mom was in her room, so she must have accidentally switched it on. Right?
Turn up the radio
I need the music, gimme some more
(Yeah!)
Turn up the radio
I want to feel it got to gimme some more
(Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!)
She found the remote under the blankets on the couch and pressed the red button.
Immediately after, the TV switched back on, the same song again, the same chorus. Turn up the radio.
“Okay, what the hell?” she said, short breaths escaping her.
Was she cursed now or something? Was this stupid trailer in the middle of nowhere haunted?
She switched a channel this time, relieved when it stayed on some TV show this time. She let out a breath of relief.
Then she saw a blonde guy in a tan jacket on the show saying, “Gloria, it’s your old friend Billy talking. You know, it’s just… It’s just a little favor.”
And the other character, a girl in a white cowboy hat said, “No! I don’t wanna do that stuff unless I have to. Not for you. Not for anybody. I’m trying to be normal, Billy!”
Max pressed the red button again and the screen went black.
It was nothing. It meant nothing and Max was either dreaming or sleep-deprived and—yeah. It’s fine.
Her mom went out of her room a few minutes later, Max still dazed staring at the black screen of the TV, kissed her forehead and said, “I’m gonna be back in the morning.”
Max nodded, suddenly having the urge to ask her mom to stay. Spending nights alone was a normal thing for Max, her mom was always working after all but now… Now the house felt different. Alien. Like anything could happen.
And in Hawkins, it could.
Max heard her mom’s car leaving the driveway and Max locked the front door.
She laughed at herself. You’re being so stupid, Max , she thought and went to the kitchen to drink some water from the tap.
She jumped, dropping a glass in the sink when she heard it again.
The TV switched on, the same song again.
Turn up the radio. I need the music, gimme some more.
It was getting louder and louder. Turn up the radio! TURN UP THE RADIO!
The lamp near the TV started flickering. Max covered her ears with her hands, squeezing her eyes shut, breathing faster. TURN UP THE RADIO. TURN UP THE RADIO.
The TV’s volume reached its max, all the lights in the house flickering now, the TV distorted just to those four words on a loop.
TURN. UP. THE. RADIO.
A lightbulb shattered over her head and Max let out a scream, sliding down onto the floor, hands covering her ears.
The TV gave a high pitched sound, distorting the words beyond comprehension until something burst and the screen turned black, and the light stopped flickering.
Max was still hearing that song, that high pitched frequency, ringing in her ears that she didn’t hear the banging on the door until a few moments later.
“Hey, is everyone okay in there? Mayfield!”
She stood up on shaky legs and turned the lock and cracked the door open to see two concerned faces of Eddie Munson and the cheerleader buying drugs from him who turned out to be Chrissy Cunnigham.
“What do you want?” Max spat, not letting them see or hear how shaken up she was.
“Well, shit, Mayfield, as pleasant as ever,” Eddie said, rearing up to ramble some more but Chrissy stepped closer and asked, “Are you okay? We heard screaming.”
“And the lights going on and off, it was spooky as shit. Is your shitty trailer haunted? Is mine?”
Chrissy swatted Eddie on the arm and he smiled at her. Weird.
Anyway, Max heard one thing she said. “Wait, you saw the light too, right?” Like it wasn’t only in her head, right? She had to know.
They both nodded, frowning. “It was just your house, too,” Chrissy added.
Max nodded, her mind already miles away. “Thanks, it was, uh—the TV short-circuited. So, you can go back to, uh, whatever. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Eddie said, shrugging, turning away already.
Chrissy stayed back for some reason, hesitant and earnest. Max raised her eyebrows for Chrissy to spit out whatever she wanted to say.
“You’re Billy’s sister, right?” Max flinched at the mention of his name and Chrissy raised her hands as if not to spook her. “I didn’t know him well but I saw him a few times at school and my boyfriend, Jason, really looked up to your brother, and I’m—I’m sorry for what happened to him.”
Max kept staring at her, she could almost feel her eyes getting shiny, but she wouldn’t let herself cry. She hated hearing those words. I’m sorry. She didn’t know what to do with them. How to feel about them. She just wanted to go back to sleep.
Seeing as Max didn’t react, Chrissy smiled awkwardly and with a quick goodbye, she turned away and joined Eddie by his van. Eddie waved at Max for some reason and bend his head down to say something to Chrissy.
Max slammed the door shut.
A few stray tears escaped her eyes and she wiped them with a sleeve angrily. God, she hated crying. She wasn’t a kid anymore, why was she such a crybaby.
She tried to turn the TV on again but it wouldn’t this time. Something inside fried the wires when it happened. Max left it alone and went to her room.
She waited for hours, but nothing else happened that night.
***
The next day, Max woke up around eleven. Her mom was already up, getting ready for another shift. She kissed Max on the top of her head with her bah already in her hand, and off she went.
Max took her meds, made herself cereal and plopped down on the sofa to watch something.
Until she remembered it was fried.
She ate breakfast in silence, thinking about what happened last night.
It was spooky. In a way. As much as Turn up the radio by Autograph could be, anyway.
There could be a few explanations.
One, it was nothing. It could have been a dream. And it could’ve been, Max had some pretty realistic dreams. Except the TV was fried and the two lightbulbs that shattered were still in pieces on the floor and near the TV.
Two, it was something . Lights flickering, the electricity going crazy, the static. Max has seen it all before.
And there was only one way to prove it.
She left her half-eaten cereal on the table and went to her room, straight for the radio.
Turn up the radio , the song said.
So that’s what she did.
At first, it was nothing, just static.
Then, the channels started jumping. Max willed herself not to flinch, not to reach out and turn it off. Because she had to know what was going on. She had to know if…
It stopped, at a music station again, and the song burst out from the speaker, Here I am, Rock you like a hurricane .
“No way, no way, no way,” she laughed to herself, shaking her head. She knew that song like the back of her hand.
It was one of his favorite songs.
No way in hell.
She was crazy. Hallucinating. It was yet another nightmare.
“Billy?” she couldn’t do more than a whisper, almost choking on his name. No way.
The volume turned up, the familiar sounds of the vocals and guitar ringing in her ears.
Her breath hitched.
No way, Max, don’t you start crying now, she thought. She swiped her nose with the back of her shirt— Billy’s shirt she was using to sleep.
“If it’s you, you have to prove it to me. Prove that it’s you,” she demanded, hating how her voice shook.
The room fell silent, and her bedside lamp flickered on and off again until the radio blasted once again.
This time the soft notes of Kate Bush’s Running up that hill came on and Max knew.
She laid on the bed, her legs hanging on the edge, staring up at the ceiling as the song kept playing.
The fact that he chose that song. Her favorite song.
He knew. He had to be with her for some time now. Trying to communicate.
She remembered all the little flickering lights and glitches of the TV, of the radio, of her Walkman for the past few weeks and she kept calling them pieces of shit. Could have been him the entire time?
“Billy,” she said to the ceiling and closed her eyes when the song volume went down as if he was trying to listen, trying to speak. “I’m gonna get you back.”
Kate Bush’s voice filled the speakers again, filled her room and her mind.
She imagined him, in the Upside Down or wherever he was, sitting down by the same shitty radio in the same shitty trailer, scared and alone, and listening to her favorite song with her. The song she wanted to show him for ages. The song she just knew he would love.
They were dimensions apart but at that moment, Max felt closer to him than she ever did.
She knew that in a few minutes, she would hastily dress, hop on her bike and go to Dustin, to Lucas or Steve, anyone who would listen and she would ask them for help, pride be damned.
Because if there was any chance her brother was alive and scared in some other dimension somewhere, nothing else mattered.
She would bring him back if it killed her.
But for now, she let a few tears slip down her cheeks with her eyes closed as she listened to her favorite song with her brother right by her side.