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Lucas Sinclair has a fake girlfriend.
At least, Eddie is pretty sure she’s fake. She’s real enough when Sinclair’s running late to Hellfire, sliding into his seat at the last minute and muttering some half-assed excuse about losing track of time with her, but other than that….
She won’t sit with them at lunch or even sit in the cafeteria, even though she would totally fit right in if she joined them. She won’t come to Hellfire or even play D&D, even though she would totally love it if she gave it a try. She’s everything a fourteen-year-old boy could possibly want her to be, but only in the hypothetical. Every time Eddie asks Sinclair to point her out from the crowd, it’s always one of the days she conveniently skipped school and he just can’t do it, sorry.
Eddie’d almost believe it was something Sinclair made up to impress the douchey jocks in the basketball team that eventually spilled over into all other aspects of his life, except that doesn’t account for Henderson and Wheeler having a piece of the action too. They’re apparently dating a Mormon who thinks kissing is better without teeth (just, what? and more importantly, why?) and Jonathan Byers’ little sister, even though with the spotlight on that family for the past three years he’s pretty sure he’d know if there was another kid in the mix. But their imaginary love lives don’t affect his very real campaign, so Eddie is less inclined to care. Maybe there was a buy-two-get-one-free sale at Melvald’s, and all three of them pooled their allowances to get bragging rights along with three-ring binders and pencil cases before their freshman year started. Sinclair got the freebie, which is why his fake girlfriend doesn’t just go to a different school, guys, I swear, and why she doesn’t seem to have a name.
“Sorry, sorry, I was with my girlfriend,” he always says, making his apology to Eddie and the old guard as he shuts the door behind him. Wheeler and Henderson exchange significant looks and never comment on it when they’re at the table. He’s not sure what their endgame is with this or why they encourage each other through these frankly pointless delusions, as if so obviously pretending to have girlfriends will earn them respect in the eyes of the biggest freaks in Hawkins or respect in the eyes of those who see anyone with a bag of dice and a handmade T-shirt as the spawn of Satan and wouldn’t give two shits about them even if they saved the goddamn world.
After the sessions, which almost always run late with the last minute setup they have to do, Eddie goes home. Wayne’s already left for his night shift at the plant, so he makes a plate of whatever leftovers are in the fridge and eats them in front of the TV alone. He’ll watch if something good is on, but there never is, so he just stares vacantly out the window at the darkening trailer park. The light in the Mayfield trailer is on nine times out of ten (the tenth is usually because the park has temporarily lost power), and as it gets later and later he can still see the hazy silhouette of the kid, Max, sitting at her desk with her head bowed, never moving no matter how many times he looks out the window. He’s up until three AM because he’s a third-year senior who may or may not be staring a fourth year in the face and his life has pretty much lost all meaning by this point, but what’s her excuse? Sometimes he falls asleep and when he wakes back up, the light is still on like it never turned off in the first place. Eddie wonders how they can pay the electric bill if she keeps that up. He knows they struggle with money, and that’s not a wild swing in the dark because so does everyone else in this hellhole.
When another lucky soul joins the ranks of their little community, there are no tearful confessions or “and that’s how I got here” speeches, but people talk. Other people, that is, and eventually the story comes out. It’s always the same; failed marriage, failed mortgage, failed, failed, failed. The particulars may differ, but no one moves here without some overwhelming hardship. Misery loves company, and the residents of Forest Hills love to speculate about the trials and tribulations of the new guy next door. It was the same way when he showed up all those years ago. Little Eddie Munson with his hair still growing out of his buzzcut, taken in by his long-suffering uncle before the answer to the question of whether Wayne could straighten out his wayward brother’s boy had settled on a resounding no, so the general consensus to his arrival had been pity mixed with uneasy expectations of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So that’s how he knows Mayfield’s story. Stepbrother dead, stepdad cleared out as soon as he could, mom working two jobs but still not making enough to keep the house. Eddie can sympathize with the last two things, but not so much the first. He remembers Hargrove from his second senior year, and the guy was a major douchebag. The new King of Hawkins High, coming in and taking them all by storm after the dethroning of their previous monarch. Eddie isn’t really invested in the complex inner workings of the high school party circuit unless he’s selling them drugs, but with a gun to his head he has to admit that he liked the other guy better.
Harrington was your dime-a-dozen jock, your garden-variety dickhead with nothing to back up his reign but a stupid fluffy head of hair. He got his ass beat by Jonathan Byers three years ago and lost both his crown and his girlfriend shortly afterwards. It was kind of funny to watch, actually, and Eddie covers up what is objectively an asshole reaction to some guy’s social life going to shit by thinking that even though Wheeler the elder is a priss, a total teacher’s pet type, she’s decent and deserves better than some douchey jock boyfriend, so at least something good came out of it.
But Hargrove was a different kind of king altogether. He had a real slimy vibe going, something light and inoffensive up top but way more twisted and sinister down deep, and there was real power behind his fists. He’d body-slammed Eddie into a locker one day and tried to buy from him the next. In a perfect world Eddie would have told him to fuck right off, but he is, fundamentally, a coward, so he sold him that ounce and any others he asked for until his untimely death in that mall fire. Eddie can’t bring himself to feel too bad about that, but every time he sees Mayfield floating through the trailer park like a ghost he reconsiders his position just a little bit.
He shouted hello to her once over the expanse of dead grass and loose gravel that separates their trailers, but she just stared at him like he was a dragon trying to add her skateboard to his treasure horde and went back inside. He gets that a lot, so even if he is mildly offended to be snubbed by his new neighbor he can’t really hold it against her. She’s a freshman, so she’s probably heard all about him from the grapevine at school and got a warning from her mom about staying away from That Munson Boy on top of that. On the rare occasions he sees her in the hallway at school, she’s walking alone, head down, shoulders hunched, religiously wearing her Walkman but probably not listening to anything he would recognize. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever heard her voice before. He’s pretty sure she was talking to the neighbor’s dog once, but when he came to put out the trash her head whipped around and her eyes narrowed and she clammed up straight away before stomping back to her trailer.
He always takes the trash out as soon as the bin starts getting full and does the dishes every night too, because somehow Wayne hasn’t kicked him out yet but Eddie can’t depend on his uncle’s good will forever, no matter how much he wants to. He knows Wayne loves him, really he does, but a little voice in his head keeps telling him that if he doesn’t manage to graduate this year he’s going to be leaving town with no plan, no future, and all of his worldly possessions stuffed in the back of his van. The chores (and the drugs) make it shut up a little, so he keeps doing both in the hopes that one day he’ll wake up and it’ll finally be gone for good.
So once again he’s taking the trash out one afternoon before Hellfire, thinking about the killer campaign he has planned and the plot twist he hopes his players stumble on in the upcoming session, when the door to the Mayfield trailer slams open, shuddering into the flimsy metal siding and scraping the paint job to shit. It almost closes on itself again, but an angry hand catches it and throws it back. The little neighbor girl storms out, followed by a boy who is waving his hands around and trying to grab her shoulder so he can spin her around and talk to her. She flinches away from him, smacking his fingers like they burn, and as they spill out onto the sorry excuse for a lawn, Eddie sees the guy’s face.
He sees it, and he realizes. Lucas Sinclair is dating Max Mayfield.
It does make sense, and he was partially right. She is kind of like a fake person, in the way that she doesn’t seem to eat or sleep or talk at all if she can help it.
She’s sure talking now though. She’s pissed as hell and screaming so loud he’s surprised half the trailer park hasn’t come to watch the show. Then again, drunken fights and explosive arguments are common among the denizens of Forest Hills, and hell if they’re not all desensitized to it by now.
For his part, Eddie is fixed in place. If he moves to go inside they’ll definitely notice him, and that would be awkward as shit, especially considering he and Sinclair see a lot of each other. If he stays put and they notice him anyway, then he’s the creep watching two freshmen argue in a trailer park, but a coward takes a maybe over a certainty every time.
“So we don’t have to go to the arcade,” Sinclair is saying, with a frantic pleading edge to his voice that makes Eddie incredibly uncomfortable since it’s obviously a last ditch effort to fix whatever their argument has spiraled into. “We can do anything you want. We can go to a movie, we don’t even have to talk or look at each other!”
“It’s not about the arcade!” she shrieks. Her hair is frizzing around her head like it really is on fire, and her eyes punch holes in his letterman jacket. “Why do you care so much? Why are you always bothering me?”
“Bothering you? I just want to spend time with you. I’m your boyfriend, Max, that’s kind of the point of the relationship!”
“Fuck off!” she bellows, and Eddie can’t tell if she’s talking to the boy on her doorstep or shouting out to the world at large. He knows the feeling, but years of soaking in it have taken most of the edge off. It must be fresh for her. “Just go! Go away! You and Dustin and Mike need to leave me alone! Stop talking to me!”
She slams the door in his face. Sinclair stands there motionless for a second, his shock clear even though Eddie can’t see his mouth hanging open because of the direction he’s facing, and then he surges forward. “Max! Hey! Come on, Max!” He beats his open palms against her door, once, twice, three times, but it remains firmly shut. “Shit!” He jumps on his bike and pedals furiously away, leaving Eddie standing next to the trash can wondering what the hell just happened.
A curtain twitches, a flash of red appears and disappears behind the blue, but the trailer park is silent.
Sinclair is uncharacteristically on time for Hellfire that night. He comes in with his little buddies, all of them whispering in a huddle, and barely pays attention for the whole session. Usually Eddie might ask him if he’s gotten too many basketballs to the head during the last practice, leading the group in a round of good-natured jeers and giving a short sermon on the evils of high school sports teams, but he lets it go tonight. After the session, the kids are right back to their quiet conversation as Jeff and Gareth pack up their character sheets and Eddie swipes dice off the table into his palm. Sinclair and Wheeler’s faces look grim, and even Henderson’s perpetually goofy grin has slipped into something flatter.
The other guys leave, but the freshman hover halfway between the table and the door, too focused on their problems to get a move on. On one hand he would rather feed his Dio vest to the paper shredder than admit to the freshman he has a soft side, but on the other he is their DM and six years their senior, so he should probably offer some words of wisdom or at least a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Eddie shoves his notes into his bag and slides into their conversation like he’s rolling for stealth to sneak past the cultists of Vecna and gain access to the secret chamber door, the one he’s decided exists and may or may not be integral to the plot but his players still haven’t found despite two sessions of poking around the crypt. Henderson steps aside instantly to let him into their circle, giving Eddie room to clap a hand on his buddy’s shoulder and give him a bracing shake.
“Hey, Sinclair, I overheard your little lover’s quarrel earlier. Not trying to eavesdrop, but I do happen to live right next door. My condolences.”
“You heard that?” Yeah, and he watched it too, but Sinclair doesn’t need to know that. So he nods and Sinclair takes that in, makes a face, and says something that Eddie doesn’t think most girls like to hear from their boyfriends. “There’s something seriously wrong with her.”
“She loves breaking up with you,” Wheeler points out, and Eddie is torn between indignity on behalf of his friend and appreciation for a girl who is undoubtedly a spitfire and something else to behold when she’s in the right mood. “I think it’s how she flirts or something.”
“This time was different,” Sinclair insists. Eddie gets the vibe that their logic has been running in circles ever since he left the Mayfield trailer and undoubtedly ran straight to his buddies to hash it out as well as three fourteen-year-olds can. Now the kid throws his DM under the bus, obviously hoping for a new perspective. “Eddie, you were there, you heard it!”
The bus grinds him to a pulp under its wheels as all three of them turn to him expectantly, eyes wide and trusting. Sinclair is practically begging him to agree with his entire face, Henderson looks like he would say how high if Eddie says jump, and even Wheeler seems like he would take his word as gospel at a time like this. Unfortunately Eddie doesn’t have any other times to compare it to, seeing as he thought Sinclair’s girlfriend was fake until this afternoon and he hasn’t exchanged a single word with Mayfield in the approximately two months she’s lived across from him, but he won’t admit to either and he can’t disappoint his newest recruits.
“She did seem really, very, incredibly upset. Though I’m not the authority on the ever-changing moods of Max Mayfield.” He pauses, hedging his bets. Surely they know this already, apparently being best friends and all, but nobody’s considered it as far as he’s aware and it’s so obvious he feels he has to say it. “Didn’t her stepbrother die, like, five months ago?”
Henderson and Wheeler nod, adopting expressions that all but confirm they also had some nasty encounters with the guy pre-burning-to-a-crisp, but they’re still trying to be sad about it for propriety’s sake. Sinclair just shakes his head and throws up his hands. “I don’t even know if that’s it. Sure she cried when it happened, and she cried at the funeral, but after that she was totally fine. For months! It was like nothing ever happened. Then one day a switch flipped in her brain or something, and now she doesn’t want to do anything anymore.”
Wheeler gives Eddie a hard, sidelong look that he isn’t sure how to interpret, then says, “Jane did say she hasn’t heard from her in weeks,” and what do you know, their girlfriends know each other, and are, apparently, both people that exist in this plane of reality. Stranger things have happened.
“I don’t know what to do,” Sinclair moans, running a hand over his face. “Why are girls so hard to understand?”
“We can ask Steve,” Henderson says, correctly and hurtfully predicting that Eddie has absolutely no advice in this area to offer them. It still stings that the kids default to Harrington’s expertise over his, though, especially since he still has no idea what they see in that guy. “He knows all about girls, and he knows Max.”
“He wanted to date Nancy, so he can’t know that much.” A little brother straight through to the heart. Wheeler can’t pass up the jab at his sister, but the others must be used to it by now because they roll their eyes and Henderson smacks him on the shoulder.
Sinclair scuffs his shoe on the floor and says, “It was a good session, Eddie,” in a way that actually makes it sound like it was a shit session and he hopes he never has to think about it again. Eddie lets it go for the second time that night, deciding to take the compliment at face value even if the tone leaves something to be desired. There’s a good reason for it, after all, and he’d probably be moping around if he was in the kid’s place too.
A plan now in action, even though it involves asking for Steve Harrington’s opinion and is therefore suspect at best, the kids take their leave. Eddie could, theoretically, be right on their heels, but he takes the extra time to make sure his throne is positioned just right so he can leave a sizable gap between them. There’s been entirely too much freshman emotion for one day, and if he has to see their sad little faces for one more minute he might just start patting more shoulders and generally destroying the cool guy image he’s worked hard to cultivate in front of them. Still, Eddie watches them get on their bikes and makes sure they pedal safely away before driving his own van out of the parking lot.
So Sinclair’s girlfriend is real, even if she’s maybe his ex and definitely in need of some serious help. Jane Byers is kicking it back in California with her brothers, even if Eddie can’t for the life of him remember hearing anything about Mrs Byers adopting a little girl before the family’s big move.
He’s not holding his breath for the Mormon, though. Henderson’s on his own for that one.