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"Hey doofuses you know you need to clean up after yourselves, right?”
An exhausted Steve Harrington, sitting on the floor of Hawkins’ gymnasium surrounded by boxes of autumnal decorations and lights, shouted after the disappearing backs of Lucas, Dustin, and Mike.
“Hey shitheads!”
Will hovered back from the group apologetically, willing to help with the mess four middle schoolers choosing decorations for the Autumn Pumpkin and Spooky Gourds School Dance are capable of making, though the look in his eyes pleaded to be allowed to follow his rapidly retreating friends.
Steve didn’t have the heart to keep him. “It’s fine, you go ahead. I’ve got it.”
“You sure?” he asked, already halfway to the door.
Steve waved him on with an encouraging look.
How did he get stuck in situations like this? Always helping, always cleaning up after these shitheads. Because he liked these shitheads. Because he didn’t have anyone else.
Because he was a sucker that’s why.
He began to pack up the papier-mâché Jack O’Lanterns that covered the floor. They were old and frail and kept falling apart in his hands. The school had used them for years and their age was beginning to show.
He and Nancy had had their first dance under their orange glowing lights. They had been foolish middle schoolers and had both “liked” other people at the time. But Mrs. Crane, the middle-aged English teacher, had made them dance together. She had been very shy, not even daring to laugh at his jokes. But he remembered, with sudden stabbing clarity, how wide her eyes got when he teased her. Even then he had been struck by her pointed little face and deliberate slowness of speech. By the way she said his name with a hint of soft surprise.
Dammit, Steve. Not now.
He pushed the box away from him and reached for the scattered paper ghosts Mike had dumped onto the floor “looking for something cooler.”
But even his forced deliberate packing up of the rest of the boxes and his untangling and testing of 3 stands of lantern lights couldn’t drive the memory from his mind.
He stood up and stretched his aching back. The orange light of an October sunset glowed through the upper windows of the gymn. Music drifted in from the streets.
Steve felt suddenly chilly. He wasn’t made for the after-party of it all, confetti covering the floor. He wasn’t patient enough for it. It made him want to break something or swear loudly or —leave.
Leaving the last box untouched in the middle of the floor he found a basketball under one of the bleachers and shot hoops until he was out of breath and the light outside had faded to a dusky twilight.
The ache was better when he was moving, or exhausted from it. He sank to the floor against the basketball hoop in a blind sweat.
Unbidden, he suddenly thought of Mrs. Crane and her English class. Not that he'd paid attention much but some things stuck. She always said that unrequited love wasn’t a thing, not really. That love was inherently a two-way street. That people who held on forever were just stuck.
It had been a year and he had tried. Tried to let go of Nancy. But he couldn’t do it. One memory was enough to set his mind and heart racing and to turn the world from color to black and white.
He had no right to her, he knew that, but something kept him holding on. She was with Jonathan, she was happy. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was the only person in the world who could make her happy.
What did that mean then?
Probably just that he was an idiot. Probably just needed to get over himself. He’d always been slow to understand things.
Something glowed in the dark next to him and bumped his leg, Lucas’s glow-in-the-dark rubber ball he wouldn’t stop throwing at Max's window.
Steve picked it up and hurled it at the opposite wall watching it bounce satisfactorily around the room in deep, glowing v-shapes.
He pulled one knee towards him and put his hand in his hair, back to the hoop. Ghosts from the past seemed to press in on him closer and closer, swirling around him.
He closed his eyes, letting the darkness settle into the folds of his loneliness.
He stayed there a long time.