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It was Andrew who suggested it. He and Fred were the same age, but Andrew was a genius. He had an IQ of a hundred and sixty, but he wasn’t a nerd. Fred didn’t know why exactly, only he didn’t talk or act like one, and he had friends all across Hawkins High’s social stratosphere. For that, Fred was cool toward him at first. Simple resentment. Why did this guy, with his punky getup and charm and girlfriend, get the amazing IQ while all he got was horn-rimmed glasses and skin that burned in the sun? It wasn’t fair. Andrew probably wasn’t even using his, Fred thought. Judging from the way he dressed, he was burning away those IQ points one by one smoking cigarettes and marijuana.
Fred had never smoked any substances. Or had an IQ test. He’d always wanted the latter and had vowed to never do the former.
Andrew wanted him to drive. “I don’t have my license,” Fred almost said, then didn’t. Andrew was a year Fred’s junior, but just as tall—another irritant—and wasn’t eligible for his license yet. So Fred said he would.
They were headed to the movie theater a town over. Fred didn’t remember what they were going to see. He just remembered the way his hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white as chalk. The chilly night air rippled through his hair, cooling the sweat beading on his forehead.
They were going a little over the speed limit. Andrew was laughing and whooping at him to go faster. He was drunk. Fred had thought about drinking, too, then refused. He wanted to be sober—less chance of an accident this way—and anyway, Andrew was younger, so that meant Fred was responsible for him. His stomach was flip-flopping and he felt like he was going to throw up—rule-breaking had never agreed with him—but he also sort of felt like whooping, too.
Technically, it was Erika Haas who did it. That’s what he told himself every night, over and over, rubbing his nose where the bridge of his glasses dug in and left a red mark, sweating. Erika Haas, whose station wagon was carrying her family, including her brothers Michael and Daniel, and her nine-year-old daughter Darcy. She had everyone in that car but Haas’s own parents. They were going home from somewhere, some vacation, and she had tried to merge when he had tried to merge—that was sloppy, stupid , Fred had only driven around with his dad in parking lots and even he knew that—then….
Her legs had fused with the suitcase material in the heat of the explosion. Sometimes Fred remembered that late at night and he had to go throw his guts up. Then he sat in bed and read under the steady, comforting light of a flashlight until his heart stopped trying to hammer out of his chest.
He never had good dreams anymore.
The Bensons weren’t rich, but Andrew’s family was. They had a private funeral for him in a beautiful white church with steeples that pierced the sky. Fred remembered the white roses dripping down off his casket; he remembered the way Andrew’s eye drooled down his cheek like running egg white.
He didn’t hear much of what the priest said. He was too busy trying not to give into the nausea lurking, ready to spring into him the minute he lingered on the accident.
School was a dark pit. That was a shame, because before, Fred had always liked school. It was where he felt comfortable. He belonged in a classroom, inhaling the familiar smells of chalk dust and pencil shavings. Socially, he was a pariah, save for his fellow nerds, but none of them shared his passion for journalism. No, it was working on Hawkins High’s newspaper where he truly soared.
Before his time, the kids in the school’s journalism department were mediocre writers and lackluster editors, but Fred was proud to say he’d secured a veritable crop of students he’d shaped into worthy peers over the course of last year, and now the crew was in much better shape. They appreciated his talent for crafting head-turning headlines and took his frank criticism with minimum eye-rolling, which was exactly what Fred wanted.
After the accident, Streak writers and reporters crowded around him, sympathy and curiosity brimming in their eyes. Fred dismissed them with a frown. “We have work to do,” he said, curt. He couldn’t name specifics, but he was sure there was something.
He bent over his desk and stared at the write-up he’d just finished checking over, at the notes he’d made in the margins in red pen. This is Theo’s work, Fred thought, and swallowed.
Theo Kavinski was a writer at the Weekly Streak. Since the accident, he hadn’t said a word to Fred. He took his edits from Valerie now. But Val had been absent for the past week, and Theo needed his work edited.
Fred stood up from his desk, write-up in hand. He strode over to Theo, who was chatting with a couple other writer-reporters. When he saw Fred, his face darkened.
“Val is supposed to edit my work,” he said.
“Val isn’t here,” Fred replied. “I am.” He extended the paper out to him. He tried to keep his face devoid of expression. The eyes of Theo’s friends, Grace and Alan and all of them, were on him. bleeding through his clothes and seeing everything underneath. They hadn’t been the ones giving him sympathy when he came back to Hawkins High. No, they’d been the ones to stay silent, to eye his scar and twist their mouths. That was okay—Fred hated it himself, how could he expect his peers not to? It was their stares that were the problem. They were hard, accusing. They looked at him that way now as he stood, waiting for Theo to take the paper.
Murderer, their eyes said. Murderer.
Theo snatched the paper out of his hand and opened his mouth to make a retort, but Fred was already walking away, wiping his hands on his khakis. He quietly asked their supervisor, Mr. Shucter, to use the restroom. He waved a hand from the back of the room without lowering his book, and Fred walked briskly to the door. Once he was out in the hall, he ran to the nearest bathroom and puked, hands gripping the toilet bowl so tight his knuckles turned white.
Theo and Andrew had been in the chess club together. They were best friends. You couldn’t separate them. Andrew had been a good reporter and Theo had been a good writer, but, as the old adage went, together, they were great.
In May, Theo quit the paper. So did his friends. Fred told anyone who asked that he was sorry to see them go. He said it with the stiffness of an unaccustomed liar.
He spent the summer riding his bike around town. He went to the library a lot and hid in the nonfiction section for hours, hunched over a dog-eared copy of All the President’s Men . He tried to ignore the gawkers and whisperers, but his neck always turned a mottled pink regardless.
His dad offered to give him driving lessons during dinner one hot midsummer night. Fred said he’d think about it, maybe.
That was another lie, because Fred had privately decided never to get behind the wheel of a car again. His father would be concerned if he knew that. You can’t let the past control you, Freddy, he’d undoubtedly say. Hard as it is—and I know it’s hard—you have to move on.
Fred didn’t want to move on. He wanted to stay right where he was. It was the only place he knew where to be. So he shoved a forkful of macaroni in his mouth and asked his dad about football, which his dad loved and Fred hated because there was too much violence, and the subject was dropped.
Talk of the accident dwindled, gradually. People moved on. At school the next fall, he entered the Weekly Streak office (really an empty classroom on the second floor of the English building), saw Nancy Wheeler, and stopped dead.
Nancy was talking with Mr. Shucter and hadn’t seen Fred walk in. He retreated back into the hallway and bit the knuckle of his index finger. It was an old habit he thought he’d shaken when he was a kid, but recently it’d come back. His heart was pounding. In his mind’s eye, he saw the headline blazing in bold black print:
HAWKINS HIGH’S “IT” GIRL REJUVENATES FLOUNDERING SCHOOL NEWSPAPER!
Everyone knew about Nancy Wheeler. Fred had been familiar with her personally since freshman year, when they’d been the top scorers in Mrs. Seawell’s debate class. They never talked—Fred had been shy, then, with braces and a pair of glasses with a prescription made his eyes look freakishly huge. He hadn’t yet found journalism nor the Weekly Streak , so he’d had to settle for getting a steady stream of A’s and avoiding jocks like the plague. He was just trying to get by, then.
Nancy, though, was different. It seemed to Fred that she’d never settled for just getting by in her life. She, who walked around with her hair tied back in a softly curled ponytail and only regularly talked to her friend Barbara, seemed like someone Fred could want to get to know. She had it , though he didn’t know what it was. Determination? Drive? Moxie? Whatever it was, something about her intrigued something in him; it had ever since one day freshman year.
It was after he’d gotten a devastating B- on one of their geography quizzes. He’d been aghast, offended. His neck flushed and his mouth twisted in dismay. It was impossible. Shame wracked him. What would his parents say? He’d lost his streak. He’d failed.
All of a sudden, a tightly folded note landed on his desk. When he opened it up, he found these words written in looping, girlish script:
You’ll beat me next time.
Fred stared at the note, brows furrowed, then looked up and saw Nancy looking at him. She smiled briefly, then continued to organize her pencil case.
Fred read the note again, then folded it slowly, with utmost care, and put it in his pocket. At home, he put it in the bottom drawer of his desk. It was there still.
That was all before Nancy started going out with Steve Harrington. Then, Fred found journalism and lost track of her almost entirely. It was only when strange things started happening around Nancy that he became curious again. He’d approached her after her friend Barb’s death and said he was sorry for her loss.
He really was, through he didn’t know what to say. Barb had always been there, like the flickering fluorescent light in one of the science lab rooms or the school mascot or the muggy, sweaty smell of the locker rooms after third period gym, or…. He tried to think of nicer things. He tried to summon an image of Barb from happier times, but all he could picture was her standing beside Nancy in the halls freshman year, her glasses catching the light and flashing as she turned.
He wanted to say more than just what was standard, but he didn’t know what, only that he wanted it to be meaningful and comforting. But the words wouldn’t come and Nancy was already drifting away from the lockers, a faraway in her eyes.
That was the last time he’d talked to Nancy Wheeler. Now, she was here, in his orbit again after two years. It was crazy. It didn’t make sense.
But it could only be a good thing. Nancy was smart and hardworking, and if she wanted to work on the Weekly Streak , maybe the loss of Theo and the handful of others who’d left wouldn’t hurt the paper as much. There were freshman who’d signed up, but they were freshman , and besides, Nancy had infinitely more potential than even the best of them. Fred pushed his gnawed-on knuckle from his lips and steeled himself. He walked into the room and saw Nancy at one of the tables. When he saw she was flipping through a thick blue binder, his eyes lit up and he hurried over.
He craned his neck to see what issue she was on. Black-and-white pictures of girls in poodle skirts and cardigans and boys with crew cuts greeted him.
“I’d personally recommend reading it in chronological order, but I guess everyone eventually wants to look for their parents,” he remarked. When Nancy looked up, brows wrinkled, he wiped his hand on his pants and then stuck it out. “Fred Benson. Editor. For the last three years.”
Nancy took his hand and gingerly shook. Her hand was warm. Her nails were painted lavender.
“I know who you are,” she replied, and a small flicker of hope jetted up inside Fred that she might remember him from freshman year. Then her eyes darted briefly to his scar, and the hope was snuffed out as quickly as it had ignited. “I’m Nancy Wheeler. Hi,” she said shortly. Then her gaze dropped to the binder again.
Fred watched her flip through pages for a moment. He resisted the urge to bite his knuckle again. “So…you looking to join the Weekly Streak staff?”
“Yep. As an editor.”
An editor? That was unexpected. Questions immediately came to mind. Not just anyone could be an editor. Before he could stop himself, Fred blurted, “How’s your English grade?”
Nancy looked up again, suspicious. “An A. Why?”
Fred shoved his glasses up his nose, flustered, trying to backpedal. He knew that her grades were stellar, of course he did, why had he even asked? “Well—”
“Mr. Shucter says you don’t need any qualifications to be an editor for the school paper. He goes over the edited drafts before it goes out to print.”
“Yeah, but it helps if you have experience,” Fred insisted, looking down his nose at her. He was used to being interrupted, but it still annoyed him. And now she’d thrown him off what he was saying, to boot. “I mean, you’re a very studious person—” You have a sterling academic reputation is what he wanted to say next, but he wondered if that was too forward. It wouldn’t be good if he laid it on too thick. “—I just mean that you of all people should understand that we take the Weekly Streak seriously. It’s not some frivolous elective. It’s not drama.”
He wrinkled his nose, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and leaned conspiratorially forward. “We do real work here.”
Nancy blinked. “No offense, Fred,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “but I’ve done real work at the Hawkins Post, and it didn’t involve milking as much drama as possible from one of the cafeteria ladies retiring.”
Fred’s neck went pink. He didn’t think anyone read that article; he was proud of the pathos he’d wrung out of Jake Sidney’s so-so writing—it only took a few added commas and instances of swapped word choice, but it was effective. He crossed his arms. “Oh, sure,” he said, “it might not look like a big deal, but trust me—it takes hard work and effort to edit articles that supposedly milk drama out of Hawkins High.”
Nancy bit her lip. She looked like she was about to laugh. “Okay,” she replied, bending over the archives again, fingers ghosting over the black-and-white photos and tiny newsprint.
Fred eyed the binder again. “So,” he said, “ are you looking for your parents?”
Nancy looked a little annoyed, but she didn’t tell him to buzz off yet. “Don’t you have something better to do, Fred?” she asked.
Spoke too soon. “Just trying to be friendly to the new recruit,” he replied, a little miffed. What newcomer wouldn’t want an old pro like him to show them the ropes? He would be chomping at the bit to shoot the bull with someone like him.
After a minute she pursed her lips and relented, saying, “I already found my mom.” She flipped a few pages forward until she reached the mid-sixties. A fuzzy photo of a girl—Mrs. Wheeler, he assumed—in a ruffled dress took up a significant portion of the spread. Fred hurried around to her side of the table so he could look properly, squinting to read the smudged news print subtitling the picture. “We have the same article in one of her vanity drawers at home,” Nancy continued, fingertips grazing her mother’s radiant smile. Fred looked at her sideways, then at the photo again.
“Well, she was beautiful,” he admitted. “Can you blame her for keeping a copy?” His own mother had gone to a secretarial school after graduating, but that’s all he knew of her years before she met her dad. He wondered if she’d had any articles in her school newspaper. Knowing his mother, probably not.
Nancy jutted her chin out, contemptuous. “It’s embarrassing. She romanticizes her high school years because that’s all she has. She left college after barely a year.”
Fred had no idea how to reply. Judging from Nancy’s stint as Steve’s girlfriend, her looks, and her academic achievements, he’d thought she might admire her mom being prom queen. Wasn’t that what all pretty high school girls aspired to be? Then again, dating Jonathan Byers didn’t really fit the prom queen image. Maybe Nancy Wheeler was looking to follow a different path. That made sense; it certainly fit in with the psychology book he’d skimmed that summer in the library. Not to mention all the weird stuff that’d happened in Hawkins in the past couple years. After being near the epicenter of such tragedy, why wouldn’t she gravitate towards nonconformity?
Nancy flipped past the article with a dismissive flick of her fingers that made Fred jolt out of his reverie. “Be careful,” he snapped, aghast. “The pages are laminated, but they’re still delicate as all hell.”
“Sorry,” said Nancy, but she didn’t sound sorry. Fred watched her nervously. He lifted his hand to his mouth before catching himself and forcing it back down. She looked up at him, now visibly irritated. He got the message.
“Well,” Fred said a little awkwardly, sticking his hands in his khakis pockets, “I’m off. Welcome to the Weekly Streak, Nancy.”
She gave him a dismissive wave and said, “Thanks.” He returned the wave without thinking, spun on his heel, and strode out of the room.
Then he strode back in because he had to use the copier. His neck was pink the whole time.
The first time he brought her a cup of coffee, she looked at him in confusion. “Thanks,” she said. “But why?”
“Well,” he said with relish, sliding into the chair opposite, “you rub your eyes a lot in meetings, so I figured caffeine would help.”
He didn’t mention that about ten of the other kids in the office also had the same problem. It had been an issue for some time, and he’d been stuck on solving it, on account of food and drink not being allowed in classrooms, even after school. His peers at the Streak begged him to just bring in a damn coffee pot. In fact, they begged him for that about five days a week, but that just made more resolute; he didn’t want to bend the rules without ample cause.
Nancy’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “A little weird that you’re observing me that closely,” she said. “But it’s still nice of you.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Fred replied. “I can be very nice.” He watched her sip a while before taking his seat, adding, as if it’d just occurred to him, “Here’s a thought. While you’re enjoying a hot cup of coffee courtesy of your fellow editor, you can start telling me about your internship.” He smiled, smug.
Nancy glared, then looked thoughtful. She looked down at the dark, gently rippling surface of her coffee. “Get me creamer and two sugars,” she said after a moment. “Then we can talk.”
In the coming days, the whole story unraveled. Fred listened, endlessly interested, between trips to the coffeemaker. “This is like an episode of Murphy Brown,” he declared by the end.
“A really depressing Murphy Brown,” mumbled Nancy. She held her head in her hands. Her turquoise fingernails stood out against her curls. “I still see those assholes in town sometimes. It’s humiliating.”
“At least you got a shot,” Fred said, stirring creamer into his mug. “I’d kill for an internship at a real newspaper.”
“Why didn’t you apply? I’d think a nerd like you would read the paper every day. You couldn’t miss the listings.”
He took a long sip of coffee. It slid down his throat, bitter despite his doctoring. “I was busy over the summer.”
Nancy looked skeptical. “I saw you a couple times. You didn’t look busy to me.”
“You saw me? Where?” Fred stiffened, goosebumps budding on his skin despite the heater running. He didn’t want anyone to watch him. Especially Nancy, who probably saw him pick his nose or adjust himself or any number of embarrassing things. She probably saw him totally alone.
“In the Hawkins library. I went there to pick up summer reading because the bookstore—”
“—Is expensive, yeah.” He leaned forward, impatient. “And? Why were you watching me, exactly?”
“I wasn’t watching you. You were just sitting in one of those big armchairs. You looked comfortable,” Nancy said, frowning. Noticing his concern, she added, “Whatever you think I saw you doing, believe me, I’ve seen way weirder.”
“It’s not that I did anything. It’s just that I don’t like people looking at me. Rubbernecking,” he added disdainfully.
“I wasn’t rubbernecking . God, you’re dramatic. Forget writing for journals. You’d be perfect for the tabloids.” Nancy turned away. Fred opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know what. So he shut it and got back to work. They were wasting time, anyway, he thought sourly. They had work to do.
Around Christmas, the Streak organized a secret Santa. It was the only time of year Fred did not want to loudly and proudly take charge. Any social element of any gathering was likely to deter him from participating, and Christmas was such a joyous holiday he never felt comfortable celebrating in Hawkins’ halls, which had given him almost nothing but misery. The hypocrisy gave him hives, he claimed to Nancy. She just rolled her eyes and tossed popcorn at him. It bounced off his glasses lens and fell to the floor.
They were stringing popcorn for decorations. A juvenile activity, but it was going well. This was in spite of him having to myopically squint to string the popcorn in the first place. Nancy’s mimicry of his intense look of concentration didn’t help. Her giggling didn’t, either.
Nancy wasn’t usually this jolly. In fact, usually she was as serious as he was. Today, though, was different. Just fifteen minutes ago, she’d whispered in his ear—causing goosebumps to flare up on his arms— that she’d drunk a little at before arriving. Where she got alcohol, Fred had no idea. Perhaps, he thought, it was a gift from her boyfriend, Jonathan, who was known to be a bit of a weirdo. Anyway, now she claimed she was a bit tipsy. Fred would normally mind very much that someone, especially one of his top editors, were inebriated during a meeting, and he did, but at the same time…it was nice to hear Nancy laugh, even at his expense. He hadn’t heard her laugh before.
Mr. Shucter passed by their desks, a Santa hat perched on his salt-and-pepper hair. “Stay on task, kids,” he said warningly, and Nancy snickered behind her hand at the wounded look on Fred’s face.
“I’ve never been off task in my life,” he declared in a vehement whisper. “And you’re lucky he hasn’t noticed you yet. Lucky I don’t tell him why you’re so giggly.”
“You won’t tell,” Nancy said, and he frowned, even though it was true.
“Who’s your secret Santa?” she asked, changing the subject.
Fred didn’t want to talk about secret Santa. “Have you talked to Jonathan lately?”
“Answer me.”
“I miss hearing about Jonathan.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do.” That was half-true; Fred could take or leave the guy himself, who seemed destined for a career of bagging groceries if his photography didn’t take off. In fact, if he was honest with himself, Fred worried that Jonathan would be an albatross around Nancy’s neck.
But he would never tell her that, because Nancy loved Jonathan, and Fred had, frankly, no idea about how to navigate a romantic relationship. He’d had a crush on a girl named Mary-Jane two summers ago, but she hadn’t liked him back, and he’d sworn off women ever since. It was easier just to play off his concerns as the worries of inexperience. Surely, Nancy knew what she was going to get into if she continued dating Jonathan—if she married him, even (though Fred shuddered to think). She was smart, and hopefully not the type to be blinded by insipid high school flings.
Though, that she’d stopped talking about Jonathan, Fred wondered why. Every time he asked, Nancy ignored the question. She didn’t seem unhappy or anything. She seemed…normal. Well, except for the drinking.
That worried him a bit. He didn’t know what he’d do if Nancy was struggling emotionally, and the sudden drinking seemed to indicate just that. In their friendship, they’d thus far steered clear of any stormy waters—only cheerful ribbing and sardonic banter and cathartic grousing—and that was just fine with him. He’d never been very comfortable with displays of emotion. If Nancy started crying, or talking soft and low and serious about her waning feelings for Jonathan or whatever, he’d probably run out of the room. Or say something wrong and make her hit him, or cry harder, or both.
But Nancy was tough. She’d gone through hell, hadn’t she? And she’d come out the other side, still working hard, still trying, not letting her grades fall by the wayside. She had drive and ambition and excellent editing skills and she always looked put together….
Suddenly, Fred felt melancholy. He’d pulled Val for his Secret Santa, but—nice as she was—she wasn’t the person he wanted to gift something to.
He spent the next few weeks bicycling around, looking for something good. He visited the jewelry store and the library and the bookstore, then the jewelry store again, then flipped through the Sears catalogue. He wished the Starcourt Mall hadn’t been destroyed. He’d only gone a handful of times and two of those were with his mom, something that used to embarrass him to no end until he realized that no one asked him about his outings, anyway, so it didn’t really matter whether people thought he was a hapless nerd with no friends. Which they did. Which he was.
Anyway, Christmas shopping at the Starcourt would have been a cinch. But it had exploded or whatever, and Nancy had been involved somehow, so he had to make do with the bevy of stores still standing.
The Weekly Streak had their Christmas party the day before the break began. They all drank cranberry juice and Sprite and over-sweet eggnog. Then they ate pizza and milled around and gazed at the plastic tree with popcorn and tinsel strung up on it. Fred itched to leave almost immediately after arriving—pizza had marinara sauce, and tomatoes never agreed with him—but Nancy, who smelled a little boozy but had spritzed on a good amount of peppermint perfume to mask it, was having a grand old time. Every once in a while, when she laughed too raucously, Fred glanced at Mr. Shucter and hoped he didn’t suspect anything—but their supervisor took lengthy sojourns to the teacher’s lounge to chat up the young, pretty French teacher, so there wasn’t any need, really.
They opened their Secret Santas one by one, too full of pre-vacation excitement to really care what they got. Val seemed to like her cat-themed knit scarf, which made Fred smile into his cup. Nancy crowed over each gift, clasping her hands together, her red and white nails shining. Fred’s heart thumped at the sight; suddenly he felt giddy for what was to come, and he smiled again into his cup as he drank, only this time he underestimated how much cranberry juice was left and had to spend the next two hellish minutes hacking it up out of his lungs.
Eventually, at around five, Mr. Shucter let them go, and members of the Weekly Streak crew thundered out in a pack before splitting off into clusters halfway to the parking lot. Nancy dragged Fred behind the school.
“I’m guessing that’s not chicken noodle,” he said stiffly. He was referring to the thermos Nancy wedged carefully out from behind a loose brick in the school building. He pushing his hands in the pockets of his fleece coat. Cigarette butts littered the pavement. He kicked a few, then looked around uneasily. The sky was dark, the winter wind slicing at his nose. It wasn’t snowing yet, but it ought to be, he thought. He wished he’d brought a scarf. Or a thermos of actual chicken noodle soup.
“Nancy,” he complained, “I feel like any minute some thug is gonna come and beat me up. Let’s go home.”
Nancy was gazing up at the moon and sipping, always sipping, a yard away. Fred could only see her profile. He wished he had a camera with him. He wasn’t a photographer like Jonathan, but you didn’t have to be to admire the picturesque way the snow melted in her curls. It was only then he realized that it was snowing.
Flakes began to cluster in Fred’s neatly parted hair and stick to his lenses. He took them off and cleaned them with a soft little cloth he’d slipped into his other pocket before leaving the house. When he put them back on, it was about two seconds before snowflakes marred his vision.
“You always think you’re gonna get jumped somewhere,” Nancy said, sticking her tongue out to catch snowflakes. Then she started toward him, rosy-cheeked from alcohol and cold.
“I know,” he said, falling gratefully in line beside her as they began to walk to the parking lot, “but for real this time.”
“It’s just behind the school.” Her voice was slurring a little bit, which made him even more nervous. “It’s not dangerous. You just think it is ’cause you’re totally, inflexibly straight.”
“You say that like it’s something to be ashamed of.”
“Take one drink,” she wheedled. “It’s no fun drinking all by myself.”
“Get your friends from the video store to drink with you. Steve Harrington and Roxy.”
“It’s Robin.”
“Yeah, yeah, right. Robin.” He gave her an anxious glance. Nancy caught his eye, looking mischievous. She spun towards him, took a slug from her thermos, and pushed it into his hands.
“Drink,” she sang, and he could smell the vodka on her, simmering above and below the juice that stained her teeth and the peppermints that sweetened her warm breath, the perfume that wreathed around him. Goosebumps appeared on his skin again, and not just from the cold.
“No,” he heard himself say. “I can’t. It’s against my religion. I’m a staunch Catholic, for real, I just lie about being an atheist because I’m embarrassed—” The lie came out easily, not stiff at all. Maybe he was learning. Fred stuffed his hands in his coat pockets again, resisting the urge to shiver. His stomach was threatening to roil.
“Bullshit,” Nancy shot back. “I know you’re not Catholic.”
“How do you know?”
“Because,” she said, “you told me you were Presbyterian the first week I met you, and Presbyterianism—Presbyterians—is…are…okay with drinking.”
He wracked his brain, frowning deeply. “How did you know? I know I didn’t tell you that.”
“Yes, you did.” Nancy seemed to delight in knowing something he didn’t, which was irritating even when she was sober, and infinitely more irritating when she’d been drinking. Her eyes glittered when she looked at him, the amber glow of the streetlights limning her hair in gold.
“When?”
“Freshman year.”
He blinked and swallowed. “You remember me.”
Nancy nodded. “How could I forget? It didn’t hit me at first, but the minute you started trying to discourage me from being an editor? I’d know that move anywhere.” And she pushed an imaginary pair of glasses up her nose, looking haughty, before breaking into a grin.
The winter wind was tossing his neatly combed hair around and turning his nose red with cold, but Fred hardly felt it. “You tricked me, Wheeler,” he said, shaking his head to hide his smile.
“Not so smart now, huh?” Nancy teased.
There was only a handful of cars left in the parking lot. Soon, it would just be him and Nancy, Fred thought, and he could give her the present he’d stashed deep in his coat pocket, the one sewn in the inner lining.
The stars were out. Fred rattled off constellations, picking them out of the night sky with one discerning finger, and hoped Nancy was paying attention. They sat in the grass of a park next to their school. Fred’s Schwinn, his pride and joy, lay beside them.
“Do you believe in God?” Nancy said suddenly.
Fred was about to complain about the interruption, then thought about the question. “No,” he said easily enough. “I don’t. It’s just not logical, if you think about it. And I’ve gone over it extensively with my relatives. They’re a lot more God-fearing than me. They didn’t appreciate my views when we last discussed it last Easter Sunday, but….”
He trailed off, looking at Nancy. She looked pensive.
“Why?” he asked. “Do you believe in God?”
“I used to,” she said, hugging her knees.
Oh. Of course. Barb. Fred wrapped his coat tighter around him, uncomfortable. He didn’t want to talk about death. He didn’t want to talk about dead people. Not even with Nancy. “I think you could definitely have some interesting ontological arguments on the topic,” he said quickly. “But probably not right now.”
“Mmm.”
He heard the disappointment in her voice. “We should get home, anyway,” he said abruptly, before regret could make him reconsider. “My curfew is…soon.” He didn’t have a curfew because he never went out, but she didn’t know that.
Nancy stood up and dusted off her skirt. She looked solemn…and a little sad. Fred pretended not to see. I can’t do it, he thought, guilt making his stomach twist. Even for her sake, I can’t. It’s too painful.
Nancy’s fingers were light on his narrow shoulders, just barely digging into him. She sat behind him on the banana seat of his Schwinn, skirt billowing. They rode in silence. Nancy’s head dropped onto his back, and Fred tensed in surprise. Her head lifted back up and she apologized, admitting, “I’m just tired.”
“It’s okay,” Fred said, keeping his eyes glued to the road, ignoring the shiver winnowing up his spine. “I don’t mind.”
It took only about twenty minutes for them to reach the Wheeler residence. It’d stopped snowing then. He walked her to the door. When she stumbled, he steadied her as he would a crooked picture frame, careful not to linger too long.
Finally, they reached her porch. “Thanks for the ride,” yawned Nancy as she slipped a key from underneath the welcome mat. “This was fun.”
“Wait.” Fred held up an index finger and dug in his inner pocket with the other hand. He brought out the lumpy package. It looked even more embarrassing in the glow of the porch light, but there was no helping it. He thrust the package at her. “Merry Christmas,” he said stiffly.
Nancy looked at the package, shifting it in her hands as if testing the weight. When she gazed at him, he looked away, embarrassed.
She unwrapped the big one, first. The two little ones were wedged on top but sheathed in the same paper, hence the lumpiness. In a few seconds, she held a book in her hands.
“It’s about Nellie Bly,” Fred said, rubbing his neck. “You know. The famous female reporter who wrote that book about her stay at a mental asylum. She wrote other things, too—it’s all in the book. It’s fascinating.” He added after a moment, “Any real student of journalism should read about her.”
She looked at him, a smile touching her mouth, then unwrapped the other two gifts. One was a bottle of nail polish, baby blue, meticulously chosen from the makeup counter at the Hawkins pharmacy. The other was a small bag of peppermint twists, glinting in the porch light. Fred was too embarrassed to add commentary to these last two. He just stood stiffly with his hands at his sides, face red as his hair.
“If it’s too much, I’m sorry,” he blurted when he couldn’t take another second. “I don’t mean to—I mean—I don’t know.”
Nancy looked like she didn’t know what to say. “This is the best present I’ve gotten yet,” she said softly.
“Well, it’s not Christmas Day yet. I’d be surprised if you’ve even gotten any other—”
“Shut up, Fred,” she said with a shake of her head. Then she set the gifts gently down on the porch, stepped forward, and wrapped him in a hug. His eyes flew open. It was the strangest and nicest thing he’d ever felt.
“Good night,” she said with a little wave. Then she entered the house, gifts clutched to her chest. With a gentle click, the door closed, and Fred was left on the porch alone. He must’ve roused himself from his stupor and rode home, but he only remembered falling face-down onto his bed and slipping into sleep.
He didn’t dream about Andrew. Or Erika Haas and her family. Instead he dreamed of Nancy Wheeler—her eyes, her hair, but particularly her hands.
He dreamed her fingernails were baby blue. When she ran her fingertip downward along the length of his scar, soft and gentle, he was glad to have it.
Almost.