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Barb is gone, Nancy thinks, looking too closely at the girl with curls sorting through the books at the library, Barb is dead, and it’s all because of that stupid party.
It’s all because of Steve Harrington, who tells her to act like everything’s fine, who ran into Jonathan’s house, swinging a bat with nails, who is everything she wants and more.
She told Barb to go home, to just go home, what kind of friend was she? Now her parents are selling the house and now she can’t explain why and Barb is dead. Barb is dead while she’s at this stupid party having to act like a stupid teenager.
There’s the new kid, Billy, who comes up to challenge Steve, but she’s sick of it. She’s sick of him. She’s sick of this party. She just wants to go home. She wants to tell someone, anyone, what happened, but she can’t.
No one would ever believe her. She didn’t even believe it until she had to crawl out of a tree covered in some sort of gross tree mucus. That world was different. It looked the same, but it was scarier. That thing wasn’t even human. It had these…these teeth that opened up like a flower and it was tall and could rip through animals like nothing and that could’ve been her.
But this time, it was Barb.
It was Barb, instead of her, gosh, she wished it was her.
Now there’s a bowl of punch in front of her and she closes her eyes for a second, imagining Barb bleeding out, calling her name, instead of the punch.
“What’s in this?”
“Pure fuel!” He shouts, definitely drunk, but she wants to get drunk as she grabs a cup, drinking straight out of the cup, just like him. She wants to get drunk and forget about it, but Steve stops her. It’s always Steve. It’s never Barb.
Not anymore.
“Woah, hey, take it easy.” He says, like he’s concerned for her, like he cares.
“I’m just having fun,” she rolls her eyes, “wasn’t that the deal?” He stares as she takes another drink. It burns in her chest, just like her calves burned that night in the woods.
She wipes her mouth, walking straight into the dance floor like she owns it. She has fun, she lets loose, but every time she remembers Barb, every time her chest is hurting and it’s not the burn of the alcohol or the pleasant sensation of not being aware, she drinks.
She drinks and drinks and drinks until that’s all she can do, until that’s all she can remember, but Steve pulls her back every single time to dance. It’s an excuse. She knows it’s an excuse, but she dunks her cup full of punch and he’s saying something.
“No,” he’s pulling her away and she feels sick, “no!” He’s stern, just her father is, just like her mother is, and she scrunches up her nose, trying to pull away.
“Get off!”
“No,” he tells her, “you’ve had enough, okay?”
It’s all his fault.
If she hadn’t gone to his damn party, if she wasn’t so obsessed with fitting in, if she had told him she wanted to go, then Barb wouldn’t have been….she still would’ve been here. She wouldn’t be dead. It’s all his fault.
“Stop,” Steve says and everyone stares and all she can think about is Barb.
“It’s bullshit.” Nancy says, spilling the drink all over his shirt and he winces, but everyone is staring and he doesn’t want to do this right here.
“Nancy,” he laughs, “come on.” His reputation’s already ruined enough.
“No, no,” she shakes her head, drunk, “we’re bullshit.”
“What?”
“You,” she wobbles a little, raising her hand, “you’re bullshit.”
“Oh,” someone in the crowd is laughing, “you hear that, King Steve? You’re bullshit.” Steve closes his eyes. They’re drunk, everyone’s drunk, it doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna remember this.
Steve opens his eyes again and something in them hardens, not angry, not really, just tired in a way Nancy’s never seen before. The music keeps pounding, the lights keep flickering, red and blue like some cheap emergency, and everyone is still watching.
“Nancy,” he says again, quieter this time, like if he lowers his voice enough she’ll come back to him. “Let’s just…let’s go upstairs, yeah?” Upstairs. A room. A bed. Her having fun with Steve the night Barb went missing.
How could she have been so stupid?
“No,” she laughs, a brittle, ugly sound. “No, I’m not doing that. I’m not—” she gestures wildly between them, knocking into the table as he reaches out. “I’m not pretending anymore.”
“Nance,” Steve wraps his arms around her waist, not tightening or caging, just careful. “Please.” The touch makes something inside her snap because that’s all he cares about, isn’t it? It’s just sex. It’s always been sex.
She pushes him back. “Don’t.”
A couple people quiet down, some people jeer, and it feels like the music has dimmed a little, but all she can focus on is Steve, how embarrassed he looks, how everyone is watching him.
“I said don’t touch me.” Her voice wobbles, but she keeps going. She has to. If she stops, she’ll think, and if she thinks, she’ll see Barb’s face again. Pale, bloody, and still gone. She’s gone. She’s never coming back.
She closes her eyes. Her head is pounding, her chest feels like she’s on fire, and all he’s thinking about is the attention. He loves attention, doesn’t he? She reaches out and Steve automatically leans in before her hand smacks against his face. It’s not hard, but it’s enough to have Steve’s eyes widen as people jeer once again.
“Nance,” he whispers, almost vulnerable, almost embarrassed, but she remembers that night, the night she was tangled in his sheets, the night he looked at her with that soft, earnest hope, like she was something precious he’d somehow won and she hates herself for remembering it now.
“This is great,” she chuckles, “we’re partying,” because that look didn’t save Barb, because that look didn’t stop the thing in the woods, because that look didn’t mean he understood. “We’re in love.” Her hand drops back to her side, fingers tingling from the contact. “It’s bullshit.” It’s all bullshit.
The room feels too tight when Steve’s voice breaks. “We are in love. What are you talking about, Nance?”
“She doesn’t want you anymore, King Steve!” Someone jeers again, “how mighty your crown has fallen.” She shakes her head and her head spins and her ears hurt, but she keeps going. She stares at him because it’s bullshit.
It’s all bullshit.
“Shut up!” He snaps and he moves in again, but Nancy glares at him because she’s angry, because she doesn’t want to fall for it, because she’s over it, over him. “You don’t love me?”
“Bullshit,” she says because she does love him. She loves him so much that it killed Barb. “Bullshit!” She says, louder this time because it’s easier than the truth, because loving him didn’t save Barb, loving him made her tell Barb to go home alone, loving him made everything worse. “It’s all bullshit.”
He doesn’t say anything after that. He just walks away. He walks away and she’s angry. She’s confused. She’s hurt.
Why is he leaving her?
She reaches out, but there’s someone in the way.
It’s Jonathan.
Why is it always fucking Jonathan?
And yet she clings onto him. Anything to get away from here. She wraps her arms around his neck as he brings her to his car. People are still staring, laughing, saying something, but all she can think about is how much it hurts.
She hiccups when she’s finally in the car and fresh tears run down her face. “Hey,” Jonathan says, buckling his seatbelt, “hey, what’s wrong?”
“Why did I do that?” She whispers, sobbing, why did she let Steve go? Why did she let Barb go? What is wrong with her? What is she doing wrong? Why is everyone leaving her?
“I didn’t mean it,” she cries. Her hands curl in on themselves, like if she makes herself small enough none of this will have happened. “I didn’t mean any of it.”
The car smells like old vinyl and dust and something faintly sweet. Safe. Enclosed. Away from the lights and the noise and the watching. Jonathan doesn’t touch her at first. He just looks at her, eyes wide and careful, “Nance.”
He says her name like it’s something precious, like he knows her, getting chased by a monster in the woods does that to you, she thinks, crying over the image of Barb again.
“Don’t call me that.”
Jonathan nods, like he understands. “Okay,” he says softly, “let’s get you home, alright?”
She nods as he reaches over to put on her seatbelt and all she thinks of is Steve and the way he’d always make sure she was okay before anything else. The way he’d tug a blanket up over her legs, grin crookedly like it was no big deal, the way he cared and she ruined it.
The seatbelt clicks into place and she sobs harder.
Steve makes jokes about what happened, he tells her to smile, even when she doesn't want to, he tells her all these nice and sweet things like everything is fine.
Nothing is fine, and she’s so tired of pretending it is.
She turns her face toward the window so Jonathan won’t see her cry again. The streetlights blur past as the car starts moving, and all she can think is how badly she wants to rewind to the moment before the party, before the woods, before she ever told Barb to go home, but the car keeps driving forward.
It’s bullshit, she thinks, closing her eyes and listening to the motor engine rumbling, the way Steve would’ve filled the silence. He probably would’ve said something dumb, something easy, something that made the hurt feel smaller for a second. He always did that, papered over the cracks with smiles and jokes and promises that things would work out, but not this time.
This time, though, she calls bullshit on him coming back, and it is bullshit, she thinks, staring up at the ceiling as Jonathan carries her inside and tucks her in, just like Steve would.
When Jonathan leaves, she reaches for his sleeve. She doesn’t want to be alone, but she calls for Jonathan instead of Steve and he hesitates.
He lingers like that night when they faced the monster, but he still leaves.
He leaves and Nancy cries in her pillow, drunk on the reminder of the night, as her eyes slip close with tears and regret.
It’s all just bullshit.