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There was a time that I wanted you forever
There was a time when it all made sense
This was it. This was what she was waiting for. She’d been waiting for months for Neil to finally sober up and take her mother out on a date night to pretend everything was fine and as she pushed her car she’d saved and scrimped up for out of its hiding spot at the back of the house to the front only an hour after they’d left.
‘It’s now or never, girl.’ She was thinking to herself. ‘Get going before they’re back.’
I'm still hoping that it could get better
Does forever have to come to an end?
It was a scary set of thoughts to have one after the other, despite having been planning this for almost 3 years now. She’d been in Hawkins for almost 5 years and in that time, she’d been though a lot, but she hadn’t been as naive as he ocne was when considering this. She practically had no relationship with Neil, so she couldn’t care less what he would do in the aftermath of her disappearance. Her mother on the other hand, might try to locate her, but she doubted she’d want to despite the thought as she wouldn’t want to upset Neil, obviously.
As for others, like Dustin and Mike or El and Will, she’d see them again, one day when she was not focusing on hiding away for a while, when she was established and stable enough to handle tracking down people from her past again. Maybe.
Lucas, however, was a different story.
And I'm thinking 'bout who I'd be without you
In the middle of the bed we made
Lucas was…god, the best thing that ever came out of the move and Billy’s death and all the rest. First they were just young kids in love, then they broke up for a long while, but soon enough, they were back together. Like a rom-com movie, she fell into routine with him, keeping him at arm’s length from her mother and stepfather, but spending what time she could between working in the local Family Video store and putting away the money she needed to finally leave. Not that he knew.
Now I'm walking on the edge when I'm around you
How can love make you feel this way?
What was she going to be like when she finally left Hawkins and in turn, left Lucas who she’d become something so…normal with?
Would California Max come back? Would Hawkins Max stay? Would she become someone new entirely?
‘Am I too scared to leave?’
That was the thought of the last couple of weeks as when she’d had plenty of opportunities to leave on several occasions and was prepared, but she hadn’t and she didn’t know why.
I'm halfway to letting you go
And I'm half brave, but scared of alone
She had nothing to stick around for, besides of course, the gang and Lucas to a fault, but even those paled in comparison to what she’d gone through at home.
Five years of knowing that you were the one
Taught me to walk now I'm ready to run
The abuse had become too much, the anger Neil had for the world shoved onto her when Billy died due to the Mind Flayer’s control.
Run fast out the door, oh I'm sorry, but I need more
I can't believe that I'm getting this close
Back then, she’d just been a scared little kid, but now she was 19, an adult and ready to fly after letting others teach her to run. She had a license, but Neil never let her drive and she had a job, but her parents monitored most of her pay, which is why she worked overtime secretly and hid the extra money from those times in jars to not set them off.
Halfway to freedom
Halfway to letting you, go [Time to let go], go
She just wanted out of here, at whatever cost. Maybe it would kill off the friendships she’d made, the perfect girl track record she’d built, but it was time to go. It really was.
I'm halfway to letting you, go [Time to let go], go
Halfway to letting you go
Determination in her eyes now, she pushed the car fully down the drive and into the road, the rusty red racer (later identified as an Audi 100) she’d salvaged from the junkyard nearby the mall barely making a noise as she started it and waited till she couldn’t see anyone’s porch or house or headlights before spinning the tyres and driving her way out of the neighbourhood and onto the main road.
Got the strength, got the will, got the reason
Got a car with the bags all packed
Peeking in the back, Max could see her belongings, the meagre amount she’d kept both from California and the newer ones she’d acquired in Indiana, stacked up in boxes that littered the back seat and of course, the boot. She’d been slowly and methodically packing things since her birthday a few months ago, making sure Neil and her Mom didn’t notice things like her posters leaving her walls or her spare bedsheets from the linen closet going missing.
She was surprised that they also hadn’t noticed bigger things like her fairy lights suddenly not being there or clothing that she stopped wearing or her leaving work on her lunch break to go shopping at Goodwill for other stuff to pack that she couldn’t take from home. Apartments needed things like toasters and pans and stuff like that still. She’d also, by some miracle, folded her old double mattress up and stuffed it in the passenger seat, securing it with a seatbelt so it would have less chance of its moving straps that she’d stolen from Neil’s stash breaking and sending her through the windshield.
And I guess I gotta go with the feeling
But if I go then I can't come back
All in all, the situation was quite dire, or at least, it would look like that to a passerby as Max drove through the town’s streets, a stranger and a familiar face at the same time as she drove, only stopping to drop letters off one by one into mailboxes of houses she’d graced the steps of once upon a time.
First, there was the Henderson house, then the Wheelers and lastly and most difficult, the Sinclair house. She even went up to the porch to drop the letter through the door personally instead of just shoving it in the letterbox, opening the flap a little to see Lucas listening to a mixtape as he left his parent’s kitchen to go upstairs to his bedroom and tearfully inhaling before flipping it shut again and rushing away, her boots loud slaps in her ears.
The cold, guilty feeling she was doing something wrong hadn’t left her by the time she stopped at the main street’s roundabout, knuckles white as she stared at the road ahead of her that predictably, lead its way out of the country town and towards…the unknown. An unknown she most likely wasn’t going to come back from.
‘Am I too scared to leave?’
The thought came back to her so suddenly, she almost jumped on the brakes again, but managed to navigate the road as best she could before pulling off, hyperventilating as she sat in the cold and eerie darkness pitted by occasional lights as she tried to sort herself out.
I'm halfway to letting you go
And I'm half brave, but scared of alone
She was so close now. One road away, two at the most, from getting everything she wanted, but Lucas came to the forefront again. Bright and shining like he always had been, a beacon of light in Max’s newly and then, extended, dark world. Even when they were broken up for that slight amount of time before their last two years of high school, he hadn’t changed. He’d tried his best to deal with her, in the trauma and grief Billy left behind in his wake and had done so much for her in that time and beyond that.
Yet, here she was, repaying that and everything else he and his friends that had become her friends gave her by taking off with all her belongings and disappearing like a ghost.
Five years of knowing that you were the one
Taught me to walk now I'm ready to run
She knew the guilt of such an action would hit her eventually, but she hadn’t expected it to hit just before she really got out of there.
How does a person justify 5 years of hell with only very few lights in the dark for what could possibly be one moment from freedom?
Run fast out the door, oh I'm sorry, but I need more
I can't believe that I'm getting this close
Neil might find her, if she was actually wrong about him caring. That or so she didn’t talk about the abuse she’d suffered at his hands and what had happened to Billy to get him in some kind of trouble. While seeing him in trouble would be good, it would be bad for her mother and it wouldn't surprise her if he used her as the next victim, more than he used her already.
Halfway to freedom
Halfway to letting you, go [Time to let go], go
Her mother might find her, somehow, if she found the strength to overpower the other. She’ll most likely suspect she’d gone back to her father in California, but while Max is aiming for the sunshine state, she’s not going to him till she’s safer than he can provide. She also hopes she never has to hear her mother’s voice over a phone she might own one day begging for her to come back either.
I'm halfway to letting you, go [Time to let go], go
Halfway to letting you go
There was also the possibility that one of them, Lucas, Mike, Dustin - hell, maybe even one of their friends like Robin and Steve who she’d been working with for months now, might find her. She has no doubt that someone will ring up and tell El and Will, if Will doesn’t hear it from his brother Johnathan through Nancy first.
El might even try to use her powers (which Max was still uneasy about sometimes) to find her, but she hopes she can stay under her and every other radar that might be deployed. She knows Lucas might hate her as well, for abandoning him. He’s been at her side for half a decade. It’s a horror she wipes from her mind quickly. Would he ever forgive her? She doesn’t want to know the answer as it’ll hurt either way.
Got the strength, got the will, got the reason
Got a car with the bags all packed
The police could get involved even, as while 19-year-old girls are adults, 19-year-old girls don’t just up and go missing. All options with varying ability to happen, yet all unknown. The weight of everything she hadn’t considered was crushing her and she soon broke down and started to cry in her seat out of just pure emotion as the streetlights blinked around her, fireflies and the occasional mosquito or moth flying across her screen while she did.
God, why now, when she was so close? When she had the car, the supplies, the sheer willpower she’d been searching for, for months? I t’s almost clandestine that a couple of cars pass her by for they make her look up in fear, hoping not to see Neil or her mother or someone else like a cop banging on her window, only to see the ‘Leaving Hawkins’ sign just up ahead, highlighted by headlights as they either turn before it onto some dirt road or go past it.
That was supposed to be her.
And I guess I gotta go with the feeling
But if I go then I can't come back
She, unnervingly, has the sudden urge then to look in her rearview mirror after hearing some noise and thinking it’s a car, her eyes widening as she sees bikes, clustered together like a parade, with flashlights and sounds and calling out of her name, a car following slowly behind them as the search party looks up and down the streets in their midst, but doesn’t see.
Of course someone would rally everyone to find her. They just don’t know she’s right there, just waiting for a sign to turn back or move forward. What does she do?
I can't come back
She doesn’t know what comes over her, but something, a string, cuts itself and seemingly, as her hand suddenly pulls the clutch, she’s made up her mind as tyres spin, attracting their attention as she shoots out from her parking spot like she’s escaping the Upside Down. She doesn’t want to, but makes the stupid decision to look in the rearview again, watching through sobs and blurry eyes as the bikes desperately try to catch up along with the BMW behind them, following her like they have laser sight.
I'm halfway to letting you go
And I'm half brave, but scared of alone [Scared of alone]
She can’t go back now. Do they know she’s in this car? That she’s sorry? That she’s meant everything in her letters about them being good friends for the time they were in her life for and that she’ll see them again someday?
That she can’t take it anymore? She doesn’t know.
Five years of knowing that you were the one [You were the one]
Taught me to walk now I'm ready to run [Ready to run]
She screams at the night sky from inside the car like she’s being murdered out of frustration and more grief than she ever felt with Billy as she puts her foot on the gas and loses sight of them at the town border, the bikes stopping as well as the car when she suddenly does just past the sign and near a tree that marks the start of the road out, distance between them as she waits to see if they’ll come any further forward.
Run fast out the door, oh I'm sorry, but I need more [Oh, I need more]
I can't believe that I'm getting this close
When they don’t and she hears feet instead, her ears automatically having been able to pick them up rather fast, she almost lets them get there, let them pull her out and try to make her change her mind, but instead drives away, hearing something hit the car in vain and make her jump, jerking the car a little and almost knocking her off the road, but ultimately fail to imped her driving as she speeds off down the road and into nothing.
It’s a rest stop about a day or so after before she finds out what most likely made the noise that spooked her, for she emerges from the truck stop freshly fed and watered only to find what looks like a keyring around the back aerial. Confused as to how it got there, she slips it off to throw it away, but a sparkle inset in it catches her attention and she gasps seeing the rainbow shine of a diamond fluttering its reflections back up at her, the ring as it now crushed in her hand as she doubled over.
She knew how it got there. The car had caught it when someone threw it and there was only one person she knew with that aim who would throw a ring and she sobbed again, pain flooding through her. Why would Lucas do this to her? He never talked about marrying her, never talked about even trying to ask her because in her mind, she wasn’t good enough for that. Not good enough to be loved that hard, a passerby in his and others’ lives destined to live alone because she was damaged goods.
Halfway to freedom
Halfway to letting you, go [Time to let go], go [Time to let]
It takes her almost 2 days to stop crying, the ring tucked in her pocket at first, but then slipped onto her left fourth finger like a promise as she keeps driving, no one able to bug her and not stopping till California is in her sights and working her ass off at her new job and juggling it with college, the ring staying on a chain around her neck after her road trip for a year and a half passing until she’s finally ready enough to reveal herself. Her Dad’s first to know and he’s beside himself, but with enough promises that she’s not going anywhere, he lets her go to where she needs to go next.
El almost crunches her into a ball when she shows up on the Byers’ doorstop and Will wants to push her into a mud puddle or something childish like that despite being a 20-year-old man, but she doesn’t care.
She gives them her address so they can come over on the weekend and Joyce, kind as ever, spoils her with dinner she doesn’t deserve before she leaves and takes El aside, begging her to call Lucas if she can, or if Will can and give him her number, only vaguely telling her to say to him that she would have said yes and leaving it at that.
I'm halfway to letting you, go [Time to let go], go [Time to let]
Halfway to letting you
She’s making scramble on her stovetop early Friday morning when she hears a knock on the door and expects the mailman or one of her new sorority sisters or college friends, maybe even another lost student (it’s happened before), but that is not what she sees when she does open up, tiredness falling away to breathlessness and shock.
He’s taller, a good 2 feet then when she left as her head is level with his chest now and not his shoulders, head clean-shaven like his face while his eyes held hope that’s suddenly flowing like warmth she’d never felt before. He doesn’t hate her. Lucas doesn’t hate her. It almost looks like he still loves her.
She doesn’t know what comes over her brain and her head, but instead of just letting him in as a horrible, stupid runaway ex-girlfriend would, she jumps up onto him aggressively unlike her normal self and kisses the shit out of him as he pushes her into her apartment and shuts the door on them, blocking them from the world as they moved deeper.
Their clothes are flying which way they can as best the 1 bedroom can contain them and the eggs are forgotten, the burnt smell ignored and the ring he’d thrown towards her when he realized she wasn’t stopping all that time ago ending up on her finger again in the process between turning off the stove, her tailbone digging into the counter and being vertical on the couch as they stunted each other's ability to breathe for a good few hours.
Lucas’s tearful relief that she’s alive and whispered ‘I love you's' is what simmers after their reasonable sides return under all the passion and while Max can’t bring herself to believe it just yet after almost a lifetime spent hurting, she just buries herself in his chest and lets Lucas’s body and arms hold her as hard as she’s holding him, the California sun setting over them through the blinds on the window and turning into dusk.
His presence at her back is comfort alone.