Chapter Text
The morning he found her was cold enough to hurt.
He was late by hours, still blinking sleep from his eyes and regaining his balance after a restless round of shut-eye. He'd expected nothing, save for a few frozen over footprints and cigarette butts, waiting for him to arrive. But still, he needed to see for himself that the nothing he'd been warned away from was just that, all while the late January weather turned his fingers and toes to icicles.
Briefly, he wished he'd agreed to Wayne's offer for a ride. The two of them had to be the only open eyes in Hawkins, and unlike Eddie's van, the truck was running smoother than the day they'd bought it. The heater would have saved his aching jaw and numbing ears.
But Wayne deserved the sleep, he reminded himself. Not to mention, Eddie didn't want him asking questions he wasn't ready to answer. Better to make the trek on foot, quiet and unseen, as the sun peeked over the horizon and turned the sky a dusty, frozen blue.
Just a short half mile from the road, he found the creek, half frozen as it ran from Lover's Lake and out into the world. He stumbled to follow it, tripping over rocks and half-rotted logs as the air crackled in his lungs, and kept his eyes glued to the ground until it gave way to smooth concrete.
From there, the ground curved upward into two steep man-made hills, cleaving the wildlife around it in two with thick stone and rebar. At its end would be the culvert, a great hollow giant of concrete and graffiti that would allow the creek to continue its journey to the Mississippi without disturbing the roads and buildings that had been placed so unceremoniously on top of it.
Eddie wondered, if it wasn't so out of the way, if it could have become a spot like The Quarry or Skull Rock.
Just the memory of the latter made him twitch, and he turned his glare upward, at the trees, before his gaze finally landed on her.
He froze, barely breathing, until the ache in his chest became too much to bear. His hands shook, and in a daze, he forced himself forward, forced himself to get closer, hopping up onto a small shelf built into the concrete. He stopped just short of facing her head-on, and it took effort not to tip over, to fall straight into the creek and float away
He was only a few hours late.
From his feeble vantage point, he could see her back, the slope of her shoulders under her dusty pink coat, with its shiny buttons and fraying edges. She'd worn a skirt too, despite the weather, and her nice sneakers, the white ones she'd used for cheer.
Eddie squeezed his eyes shut, lowering himself into a crouch, and gathered his hands into a tight ball, pressing his fingers against his mouth.
When he opened his eyes, she was still there.
Her hair, a messy strawberry blonde, fell loosely around her head, draping over her face and into the creek, and just past that, water flowed around the curve of her fingers, painting with chipped purple polish. On her wrist, a collection of old, thin leather bracelets, woven together with an awkward braid.
They matched his, even all these months later.
Just a few hours late, and Chrissy was dead.