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Steve dives for two reasons….Well, three.
Firstly, someone has to do it. While Nancy and Robin are both decent swimmers—at least Steve assumes Robin’s a decent swimmer; the one time he invited her to hang out in his parents’ pool Dustin was conducting an experiment with chlorine and nobody ended up swimming for two weeks—neither one of them has dragged Stanley Sweeney across the Hawkins public pool after he cramped up in the deep end. Also, though Steve wouldn’t exactly call himself chivalrous, he isn’t about to let two girls take the plunge before he does. Let alone Eddie Munson, who seems to be a decent guy after all, at least not a psycho killer, but Jesus.
Secondly—yeah, Steve is sick of being the babysitter. He’s tired of being the only one nobody thinks to tell about the flashlights. He’s sick and tired of Dustin’s ego and Max bossing him around like he’s her personal chauffeur. Steve is sick of chauffeuring. He’s sick of how Dustin has to approve each snack like he’s the entire FDA stuffed under a curly wig and a dorky baseball cap, even though Steve’s the one buying.
So sure, he’d jump at the chance to drive off with Nancy, do some genuine detecting with a friend closer to his own age. But it really isn’t about that. It isn’t about the fact that when he thinks of Nance as a “friend” he can picture Robin’s air quotes and her knowing smirk, either.
It’s about being someone else. For just a little while, Steve would love to worry about whether the girl who dumped him two years ago is a friend or a “friend,” and not about whether another girl he’s known mostly just through their shared network of monster-hunting basement nerds is going to die in front of him.
Apparently that’s too big an ask, so: Thirdly, Steve dives because he never wants to see Max caught like that again.
“Caught” is the best way he can describe what happened in the cemetery, though there’s no best about it. No sunny side to relying on kids and a walkie talkie, friends miles away and Kate Bush, to snap another kid out of her white-eyed, Exorcist-level floating trance….except maybe that Steve will stop brushing Robin off when she bugs him about expanding his musical horizons and actually listen to Kate Bush.
Probably not.
Anyway, the point is they were all caught. Max, obviously, out cold and rising off the ground, but Dustin and Lucas and Steve were left on the ground, yelling themselves hoarse, helpless.
The helplessness was what really scared him shitless—not so much in the moment, which was all panicky bolts of adrenaline followed by the kind of relief that socks the breath right out of you and makes you feel like puking. But afterwards, driving back to the Wheelers’, Steve felt the fear brewing.
Max curled up between Dustin and Lucas in the backseat, still shaky and gasping. Every few minutes she mumbled, “I’m still here,” like a mantra.
That got to him. “Yeah, but what if you weren’t?” Steve snapped. “What if you were gone, Max? Forever?”
Of course Dustin and Lucas circled the wagons— “Dude! Not the time!” “Are you serious right now?”—but he pressed on.
“What if you were gone?” He got a glimpse of Max’s pale, clammy face in the rearview mirror and tried not to think about how dead and taxidermy-d her eyes had been, like she was about to be mounted on something’s wall.
“Stop acting like this is her fault,” said Lucas, trying for tough. It wasn’t exactly convincing.
“It’s not her fault!” Steve knew he sounded just as wobbly and scared. He flexed his hands on the wheel and swallowed, tasting bile. “What I’m saying—” What was he saying? “She just—” He gave up. “The only reason I drove you around in the first place was because you were being so goddamn annoying—”
Dustin blew a raspberry.
“Shut up, Henderson. It was either drive or beat you with Mrs. Wheeler’s old slipper or something—”
“Dude,” said Dustin.
But that perked Max right up. “Try that and I’d have knocked you out with one of her dumbbells.”
“Whatever.” Steve swallowed again. “I’m just saying, I’d appreciate if you didn’t take advantage of my frankly stupendous patience by always making a beeline for highly dangerous shit—”
“I’m here, Steve. Let it go.”
“I’m not built for this.”
“So you think I chose—”
“No, stop—stop!—that’s not what I meant.” He only had so long to quell the backseat commentary. “Give me something to swing a bat at next time,” Steve said. “That I can handle.”
“We can’t fight our own monsters?” Max was pissed off, which at least was better than almost catatonic.
“Exactly.”
Because, he thinks now, poised over the dark water, he’s a good fighter, and even better at taking a beating. Steve used to think of that skill as a cruddy consolation prize, but over time he’s started to appreciate his own resilience. He has a knack for rolling with punches, falling when he can’t roll anymore, and getting back up.
And the kids are growing up. They’re so different from the little punks he followed into the Upside Down two years ago—Lucas is filling out, Dustin’s even more stubborn than usual and aloof, Max is rangy and withdrawn. Being in danger with them used to be different; at least Steve could boost them back out of the tunnel, into the real world.
It’s different now. They’re too big, scattering to their own personal pockets of danger, and the Upside Down is getting less and less contained by the day. Leaking, spreading. Reaching into their heads. If Steve and Nancy and Robin and heck, maybe even Eddie can finally seal it up, at least he won’t have to watch the kids going down into holes on their own.
So Steve dives.
Lids slitted, legs pumping through the black water, he thinks of Max’s white eyes, then remembers the brown envelope stuffed into his glove compartment. Her letter, scribbled on notebook paper, that she wouldn’t let him read.
What did Max put down there?
Who knows. But Steve hopes that one day he’ll get a chance to read it.