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The extra space—3 guest bedrooms, a weight room, another full of junk—never used to bother him. Neither did his parents’ absences. Both excuses to have as many people over as he wanted.
Which was always, come to think of it, not that many.
True, he used to sing the states song at the top of his lungs to fill the space when he was younger. Time his slides down the hallways and bannisters with the stopwatch he got for his birthday. Play basketball in the driveway when it was nice out for hours on end, with the foam ball and plastic hoop on the back of his bedroom door when it rained. It’d been hard to take it down when he reached the age of girls and parties.
He remembered the first day of kindergarten as one of anticipation and fear—fear that the other kids wouldn’t want him as part of their group but the anticipation that they’d let him in. They did and by the end of the day, happily playing with a large group of kids in the school’s sandbox, the fear had been largely forgotten.
Still, he’d always liked going to other people’s houses more than inviting them to his.
High school was different. Doors were opened to him—through sports, money, clothes. His hair. If popularity hadn’t come with no effort, neither had there been too many obstacles. He was a natural leader; he had never lacked for followers. And with parents mostly out of the way the house became his scene, his show to run. Every teenager’s dream.
Turns out that when you get what everyone wants you find that you can still, in fact, want more.
Now the loneliness of the gigantic house pressed on him like a physical force, adding extra weight to his bruised face and pounding headache he’d gone to bed to try to nurse himself.
It was a week and a half since he’d gotten beat up by Billy Hargrove. People had forgotten about his bruises in the aftermath of, well, everything. It was understandable. He was doing alright, taking care of himself in the quiet, empty house.
The space gave him room to remember at least. Nancy drifted into his mind as she always did sooner or later, a little hazy through the pain but still clear enough.
It had been her half-shy, half-defiant manner that had caught him first. The way she so clearly wanted to be noticed by him but pretended she didn’t had appealed to both his ego and his sense of humor but to his infinite surprise it wasn’t what had made him stay. It was—it was the way it felt like she was always backlit by lamplight, surrounded by lists and schedules and to-do lists, right at the center of band or debate or whatever it was she was doing. Her big eyes and patterned sweaters and pointed little chin holding sway at the center of her busy, full life.
There wasn’t any loneliness with her, only the promise of warmth and a cold night and—family somehow.
This headache was getting to him. It was a week to the Snow Ball. He wasn’t going but he promised to take Dustin. And only real dickheads break promises to middle schoolers who’ve just been through what Dustin had been through. And Steve wasn’t a dickhead. Well, he was trying not to be.
The silence was broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. It had never been louder, beating through his bruised and battered face and heart.
He turned to face the wall and, eyes closed, sang the states song until he fell asleep.
It’s three weeks into the second semester of his senior when Steve starts walking by the reservoir twenty miles out of town in the evenings.
It’s quiet but not oppressively so, better than his room or the hallways at school that in his new post-friends reality somehow feel emptier than they ever have.
He skips rocks on the edges of the water and watches the sunset paint the clouds in the East lighter hues of pink and purple. It’s peaceful but as he drives away he speeds, music blasting, as if he’s chasing the rays of light.
Song lyrics race through his mind on these evenings, snatches of poetry he was forced to read in school. He mumbles them sometimes in his car or while watching a red-tailed hawk wheel overhead.
Reading’s always been hard for him but he’s always had a good memory, surprisingly agile and strong.
He still remembers Nancy’s chemistry definitions from the back of her flash cards with total clarity.
It’s strange what he remembers. Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright. Byron talking about the roses of love gladdening the garden of life “though nurtur’d ‘mid weeds dropping pestilent dew.”
[ Yeah there had been pestilence alright. His own stupidity, impatience—with Barb’s death, with Nancy. He’d been such a douche. Well, time had cropped the leaves with unmerciful knife. And he was left here bleeding.]
His life is so much quieter than Dustin knows, Dustin who assumes with matter of fact charisma that Steve’s life is as full as his own. The thing that Dustin doesn’t know is that he’s saving Steve from a life of no social contact. He and his friend group who now accept Steve as a tagalong sometimes, who do not necessarily need his presence but also doesn’t question it.
He hasn’t seen Nancy since the Snow Ball, a moment where he made the choice, again, to let her go.
When he called himself a shitty boyfriend, he meant it but he wasn’t prepared for how those words would sink into him in the coming months. Becoming truer and truer with time.
His dad asks him how he is doing sometimes but he never really seems to hear the answer.
The only conversation he really seems to care about having is what Steve is going to do after graduation. But that’s a one-sided conversation and doesn’t require very much of Steve. He’s got the gist, gotten it for years. The subtle but perfectly clear threat that if he doesn’t get into a college good enough for his dad, he’ll be working some minimum wage job to support himself, not coasting on the family’s money.
It doesn’t seem very pressing right now, though graduation is only months away. The future is a blank but so is the present.
Sometimes at school he’ll see the quickly retreating form of Jonathan Byers disappear around some corner and he’ll feel a new but ever-increasingly familiar bitterness well up inside him.
A steady stream of profanity, half-directed at himself, half at Jonathan, heard only by the sleek interior of his BMW is the only release he has.
A month before graduation he finally sees Nancy in the school hallway. She’s wearing a yellow blouse loosely tucked into a patterned green skirt. Her hair is twisted halfway back. She’s laughing while talking to a friend.
She stops when she catches Steve’s eye. Her eyes widen a little.
“Hi Steve.” Her voice is as slow as ever, her expression kind and her manner gentle.
It kills him.
Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue / Use power with power, and slay me not by art / Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere;
Nancy never actually broke up with him. Not in words. But she’d never said she loved him either. He was the one who let her go.
“How have you been? Any plans for after graduation? I haven’t seen you in so long.”
Steve’s received all his rejection letters and is contemplating a job in retail or the food service industry. He doesn’t particularly feel like telling her that.
“Did you ever hear back from Butler?”
Steve hadn’t actually applied to Butler. Just something he talked about with her, back when anything seemed possible.
“Yeah, yeah. Waiting on a few things but yeah. Real excited about the future.”
She nods and pulls her stack of books a little closer to her chest. She tucks a stray curl behind her hair. He knows both motions by heart.
“Well, I better go.”
She moves down the hall.
“Bye Steve.”
He raises a hand in what he hopes is a nonchalant wave goodbye, not trusting himself to speak.
It’s not til she’s out of sight that he’s able to whisper,
“Bye, Nance.”