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“Max time for school!” Steve is yelling up the steps and Max can’t help but groan. No way in Hell is she ready for the day, she’s barely slept.
“I know!” She yells back at him, annoyed. She rolls back over in the covers, not entirely sure what her excuse could even be to get him to let her stay home. Can’t she just contract the bubonic plague or something? Not everyone died from it anyway, and she has to guess that it would be she wouldn’t have to go to school. She can hear Steve’s footsteps before she can hear him knocking. “Max, come on, I don’t want you to be late.” He says through the door.
“I don’t feel good.” It isn’t even in a convincing tone.
“Max.” Steve has this softness to his voice, Max can see his facial expression, the one that looks a little tired but fondly, even though he’s at the other side of the door.
“I really don’t Steve.” He finally pushes the door open and Max sighs, he’s going to make her get out of bed, she hides her face deeper in the covers, not facing him.
“Do you have a fever?” He’s reaching for her forehead and she ducks her entire head under her pillow.
“Yes.” It’s muffled.
“You’re a shit liar Max, you know that?” He laughs a bit.
“I don’t want to go to school.”
“Is this about yesterday?” She hates he asked that question, she hates how hard she cried when she got home because of fucking Billy. He hated her, but seeing his name in a text book, correction someone showed her his name in a fucking textbook destroyed her a little bit.
“No.”
“Shit liar.” Steves’ body goes from dipping the mattress where he’s sitting, to laying down with her.
“I don’t know why I don’t want to go.” She confesses finally, she hates that about Steve, the fact he’ll sit and wait until she’s ready to talk.
“You know, you’re allowed to be sad.” His voice is calm as he says it, she’s still hiding herself away from him.
“It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“I can count on my one hand how many times he even liked me being around, he even liked me as a person and treated me like one.” She finally exposes her face to him, she knows she’s going to start crying again.
“Max, I’m not going to drag you out of bed, but, we should talk about it.” Steve says after a few moments, brushing her hair out of her face some.
“One of those moments was when he died.” She whispers it, not looking at him, looking at his god awful green shirt instead.
“You can be a shitty person and still have a few good moments, you’re allowed to remember the faults and what happened that night.” Steve says with sincerity.
“Neil beat him, you know? I never stopped it.” She has this guilt surrounding that, that fact entirely, she was so scared and maybe he would have liked her had she stood up for him. It’s a conversation she’s only ever had with Steve before, and she feels a little bad she’s making them have it again.
“Max, you were a child, you are a child. Neil is a terrible human being. I’m not saying Billy deserved that, but you’re a child.”
“So was he.”
“He was, but part of me thinks that he would have rather Neil not turn on you.”
“The other part of you?”
“Isn’t sure what Billy needed to be protected, maybe he was protecting you in some fucked up way?” Steve is trying, she knows that, she knows he’s reading about trauma and trauma responses. When she saw the book on the coffee table one day it became an unspoken secret between the two of them.
“Can I stay home today?” Her voices wobbles, she doesn’t want to leave the safety net she’s created amongst Steve’s pillows and blankets.
“I already said you could.”
“I think he’d be mad I’m sad about him. Say I didn’t deserve to be.” She whispers, Steve’s fingers brush away some tears.
“No one can tell you how to feel.”
“You say that, but I don’t know. He’d say he didn’t like me, I wasn’t his sister, why am I still crying three months later?”
“Because apart of you loves him.”
“I don’t know if I loved him before he did that for me, for us, for everyone.”
“I understand what you mean.” Steve whispers, he’s not looking directly at her and she’s thankful for that.
“I had wanted him dead before.” She admits it.
“Max, he was so mean to you. It wasn’t your fault, wishing to wanting him to be dead didn’t cause his death. You didn’t kill him.”
“What if he was targeted because he was all alone? I made him all alone.”
“You didn’t. You would have never been with him.”
“He was scared.”
“He was scared, but even then, it wasn’t your fault. You can think that wishing for something and then somehow that fucked up wish coming true can be your fault, but it isn’t. It’s not at all. I don’t know how to change that for you, if I could I would.”
“You know, when we first met each other, I was so little. Why didn’t he like me even then? I mean I guess I was an annoying little kid.”
“You’re an annoying little kid now,” his voice has amusement as he says it, “but even so. It doesn’t mean what he did was right.”
“Maybe he would have been better.” She’s almost pleading with herself, to make sense of his death, because maybe he could have been better and she can feel guilty he doesn’t get to live up to that.
“And maybe he would have been the same.” Steve says it in a more serious tone.
“Thank you.” She says it quietly after silence has filled the air for so long.
“For what?”
“Protecting me.”
“Kiddo, I’ll always protect you. All of you.” She laughs a bit for the first time since she saw Billy’s name scrawled on that textbook page.
“You got your ass kicked and you barely knew my name.”
“Hey, it was worth it.”
“He would have killed you.”
“Yeah, but then you threatened his balls with my baseball bat, which I wish I could have seen by the way.” She’s laughing a real laugh now, not a half assed laugh.
“You were too busy being dead weight!”
“He broke a plate over my head!”
“You know,” she’s giggling now, “we dropped you on the way to the car, more than once.”
“I know, and you guys dragged me.”
“We were thirteen!”
“And there were four of you!”
“Dustin and Mike were still twelve.”
“You just dragged me into the car.” Steve laughs.
“Only because Dustin made us.”
“You guys were happy I was there then.” Steve smiles at her. She was happy he was there, because if he hadn’t been, who knows what would have happened.
“We were.” She says it and adjusts so she’s laying on his chest some.
“I didn’t even know your name and I jumped in front of one of those damn dogs too.” Steve mutters, almost as if in disbelief.
“You were my hero that day.” She means it, she can feel him smile and she hopes he believes her because she means it. She really, really does. He still is, no one else would have let her stay home to be sad, but she’s happy he did today.