Chapter Text
“Kid, I think you ought to sit down,” he had said.
He took one look at her and thought she was trouble.
She’d taken the curb, a brazen scowl scratched across her face. Like most kids her age– he’d place her as no more than eighteen, maybe younger despite the age-old scowl she’d perfected, but most definitely a high schooler– she didn’t appreciate being told what to do.
“You wanna tell me what happened there?” he nodded towards the offending appendages she made no move to hide.
Her knuckles were bony, swollen things that looked like they’d been pumped with hot air. She had her arms crossed loosely over her knees, the mess of her hands looking all wrong with how measly she looked sitting there. To Chief Jim Hopper she looked every bit a beaten dog backed into a cage. Moreso, she looked every bit the teenage girl she was, and he wanted to wince at how stiff her fingers looked. He remembered some long-dead relative, a great aunt perhaps, and the way arthritis had eaten its way through her gnarled fingers that once could knit and play the piano. Having split his knuckles a fair few times himself, he knew the sting and the stiffness that must have been working its way through her hands pretty well.
“Unwrapped hands and a punching bag.”
It was the first thing she’d said since he’d found her.
And did he believe her?
Her voice was surprisingly low for a teenage girl, a warm tone that lacked any warmth if that made any sense. An oaken quality to it. Strangely, it suited her.
He watched her, that was a given. That’s what cops do. What was surprising was that she was watching him right back, a brazen little thing cruising for a fight. Almost like she didn’t trust him. Her eyes were dark, she had a whole luggage set worth of bags under them, and wearily he thought of his own sleepless nights that seemingly became more and more common as he got older.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Angela Rafferty,” she said, looking him straight in the eye with her devil may care attitude.
Maybe she had gone a round with a punching bag. She certainly looked capable. As the nights loomed over him, unable to sleep to the point of sheer madness, the thought of having a bare-knuckle fight with a bag didn’t seem so far-fetched.
He grinned, all teeth and no joy. “Named for riff-raff?”
“Maybe they thought calling me Angel would even the odds,” she shot back, voice cool but not unfriendly. Like she’d heard the joke ten times over but entertained it with gentle impatience.
He remembered being her age, remembered wearing that same look when somebody came along and tried to tell him much of anything.
Jim frowned. The Gas Station clerk had been looking at them funny ever since he’d had her take a concrete seat, and he wondered what people would say about this girl– Angela Rafferty– with the swollen knuckles come this time tomorrow. Nothing good, that much he knew.
“Am I under arrest?”
He considered her with a cop’s gaze. She was only a kid. A lanky, unruly kid who looked like she was swimming in her too-big getup. Really, she didn’t look so different to his Sara.
At the same time, they looked nothing alike.
The kid in front of him was a tall, coltish thing. Sara had been tall for her age, but so small– sick with the Cancer and the Chemo and tied up in tubes. But before that– before the Cancer and the Chemo and the Funeral and the Divorce– Sara had been alive. Thrumming with the same energy this girl in front of him was. Except–
Sara was dead.
–Except Angela was all off. Coltish, sure. Like a Colt firearm. Steadfast and sure, lean as a whip, and something told him she didn’t have the safety on.
And he believed her. She didn’t look like a bare-faced liar. There was an earnestness to her, to those bloody knuckles and stolid eyes.
He’d stopped her– why had he stopped her?
“No,” he said. “I’m just worried, is all.”
–because he was worried. Because he saw a teenage girl at a Gas Station with a packet of smokes she had no right to own with sore knuckles.
Because she’s not the first little girl he’d found. Recently he’d felt there had been plenty of those. (But this one wasn’t on the run from a laboratory or wanted by the government. She wasn’t a weapon or a lab rat or sporting superpowers.)
He flushed a little, and he’d never been any good with feelings or teenage girls. It made him sad to think of his own daughter, to think that he still wasn’t any good at that kind of thing. Sadder, still, for the little girl waiting for him in his Cabin.
What worried him most of all was the call he had gotten. Just last night he’d made the drive to Cherry Grove after receiving a call from a concerned neighbour, and he wondered if Angela even knew the cops had been called to her house in the first place.
She sat there, staring straight at him with a cool, even look.
If she did know anything about that call, she didn’t let on.
He’d met her stepdad, and it wasn’t often that Jim thought someone was a real sonofabitch, but that was precisely the case with Neil Hargrove. His son looked sure to follow in his father’s footsteps, too: a real prize.
A concerned neighbour with a noise complaint that amounted to next to nothing. It still worried him, though.
There had been no mention of Angela. She hadn’t come to the door, and Neil had made no comment about a wayward step-daughter or a runaway teen. Just an argument among siblings- step-siblings, the boy had interjected- while moving into a new house.
And kids argued about all kinds of things, he knew.
(The nutritional value of Eggo waffles and contacting her boyfriend through the TV even though it wasn’t safe, for example.)
“Listen,” he wasn’t as young as he once was, that had never been as clear to him as when he crouched down just then. He swore his knees weren’t this sore yesterday. “I think we ought to take a drive to the station and get you checked over. Those hands look real sore.”
Florence was first aid trained. Or, at least, she was in Jim’s eyes. She’d fixed him up plenty of times.
She stiffened at once. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” he held his hands up. A part of him had expected the defensive tone, but the mistrust on her face almost took him aback. Almost. “You could have a boxer’s fracture. Might need a splint.”
She raised one hand, flexing it like on instinct. The fifth metacarpal bone made a brief appearance before it was hidden somewhere in the mess of swollen flesh once more. She didn’t so much as wince. “You think so?”
“Better safe than sorry,” he nodded, solemnly. “Plus, it’ll give me some peace of mind. I can’t leave you here in good conscience.”
The same conscience he couldn’t keep good on if he had left the little girl currently housed at his cabin.
She looked at him like she was waiting for the punchline.
Jim waited. Kids like her were full of talk, usually. He paused for a fierce declaration of being more than capable of looking after herself, that she didn’t need any dimestore cop to look out for her. That’s what being a teen was all about after all.
“Alright,” she said, she seemed to be measuring him up with a careful mind, like he was the Wile E. Coyote. “But if it ain’t broken I’m free to go, right?”
He nodded. “Sure. You’ll be wanting a ride, though, it’s set to rain. Got anyone you want me to call?”
She got up from the curb but made no move to stand straight. His Grandmother would have taken a conniption fit at the sight of her, all slouched over and her hands every colour of a sunset. Nevertheless, he followed her to the cruiser as she seemingly mulled his words over in her mind.
The cruiser wasn’t locked. It was an awful habit, and probably broke all kinds of rules and regulations, but she didn’t seem to care any as she slipped into the passenger seat. Though he noticed she kept her eye on the mirror as if she didn’t trust the backseat.
“My step-brother is home, he won’t mind.”
He paused, halfway into his own seat with the keys in hand, wondering if she was in some kind of trouble after all. If she was looking at that backseat because that’s where she belonged.
“You don’t want me to call your folks?” He goaded, ever so gently. Finally taking a seat behind the steering wheel.
She almost looked bored. “They’re not my folks. ‘Sides, they won’t be home ‘till six.”
Jim nodded. “Right.”
Then, she looked at him. Really looked at him. Like she was waiting for something.
“So,” he ventured, “are you excited for school?”
“Yes, sir.” She tacked the last part on absently.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“I can hardly contain my excitement.”
She spent the rest of the ride staring out the window in silence— That was just fine by Hopper.
Snarky little shit, he supplied in his head, turning into the parking lot of the station.