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While Lucy and Mich slept in the basement, Willow arranged everything they would need for their campaign —which they had been putting off for what seemed like years— the radio was in its place. Then she carefully put on the suit her mother had made for her.
Styling her hair was a tedious task. Ever since Michelle and Eleven had become a couple, Michelle no longer treated her the same; and that included the fact that Michelle no longer braided her hair, and her hair was quite long, which made it even worse. Of course, she knew how to style and fix her hair, but the fact that Michelle had always done it for her, almost every single day, made her too lazy to do it herself. So she simply decided to comb it into place. Finally putting on the hat that came with her outfit.
Mustering her courage, she decided to turn on the radio, startling Lucy and Mich awake.
"What are you doing?" Lucy asked, trying to open her eyes fully.
"Yeah, Willow, can you turn down the music?"
"That's not music," Willow said, fully embracing her role. "That's the sound of destiny. I have seen into the future, and I've seen that today is a new day, a day"—she paused briefly, as if creating a moment of suspense—"free of boy's."
"A tribe of villagers are under threat from an evil force from the swamp. So, who is it time?" Willow was completely absorbed in the story by then.
"Willow, it's too early."
"Is it? Is it early, Michelle?" The use of her full name instead of her usual nickname drew confused glances from the other two girls.
"Can I at least take a bath first?"
--
Even with the music still echoing through the basement, Willow let the other girls compose themselves so we could finally start playing. Although I didn't want to, I could tell they weren't very keen, but I decided to let it slide for now. Once the girls were settled in the chairs around the table where they had made so many memories, I decided to begin, and luckily for me, it was raining, making things easier.
"Do you guys hear that? Thunder" She paused briefly to see if Michelle was watching, which she wasn't, so she simply tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear try to cover up. "But no! Wait... That's not thunder... It's..." She looked at Michelle again, trying to catch the attention of those brown eyes implanted in her head. "A horde of yuyu zombies!" She raised my voice slightly, dramatically placing the zombie figures on the table. "Cavalier Mich, your action."
"What should I do?" The black-haired girl turned to her friend, speaking in a bitter tone. Lucy simply said, "Attack."
"Okay, I attack with my flael." Unfortunately, she missed, although Willow noticed that she had finally seen her since they sat down at the table, so at least that was something. "Uh, you missed! Your flael hits the stone, the zombie horde is moving towards you and!" As she said this, she excitedly stirring the dice in her hands; they were finally playing D&D after what felt like ages. She was really enjoying this
"The yuyu bites your arm, it tears apart., Ah! 7 points of damage."
"Oh no," ah, that tone again. "My arm... Lucy, look my arm." Willow couldn't help but notice the mocking undertone in Michelle's voice—a tone that had become frequent between them lately—and so the brunette turned to Lucy. "Lady Lucy." The girl looked up, paying attention; at least she was respectful. "The zombie horde roars. Do you choose to fight back or do you run?" Before she even had time to think of an answer, the basement phone rang like a bomb.
The girls instantly turned toward the sound province, though the two taller ones for different reasons. "No! It's a distraction, a trap!" For the first time that day, Willow and Mich had locked eyes. "Do not answer," the girl in costume voice sounded, unusually serious. Despite the brunette's pleas, they ignored her, standing up in a flash. "What? No!" Willow managed to shout before the other two reached the phone.
"El?" Upon hearing the boy's nickname, Willow couldn't help but feel a knot in her stomach. "No, sorry, not interested," the brown eyed girl finished, placing the phone down with the typical ding sound it made when you put it down. "Telemarketers" Michelle said in a disappointed tone.
"Maybe we should just call them."
"We can do that?" she asked incredulously.
"I think so."
"Yeah, but, what will we say?"
"We say nothing!" Willow said, a little annoyed, or a lot, actually.
"The Cuisar tribe still needs your help!"
"Alright then." Were they finally going to play the game properly?
"I'll use my torch to set fire to the chambers, sacrificing ourselves. Killing the yuyus and saving the Cuisar. We all live on as heroes in the memories of the Calama's." Ah, wow, so that's what it was huh.
"Victory!" The girls—who were still near the phone—high-fived, as if what they had just done was a revolutionary idea.
"Okay, fine!" Willow was at her limit. She dropped her cane, took off her hat too, and ruffled her hair. "You guys win." The basement fell into a thick silence. "Congratulations." Willow could feel the girls' stares piercing her skin; her chest felt heavy. "Willow I was just messing around." And now she was back to the gentle tone she used with her? After all that?
"Hey, let's finish for real." By the time Mich said that, Willow had already completely removed her costume, roughly throwing it into her backpack. A small "yeah" came from Lucy, but by that point, Willow's head was already too hot to continue. "How much longer is the campaign?"
"Forget it, Mich!" Willow shouted. "No! We want to keep playing, right?" She said to the brunette girl, signaling her to keep up so as not to upset Willow any more. "Yeah, totally!" It wasn't really working was it?. "We'll just call the boys afterwards!"
"I said forget it, Mich! Okay?!"
Willow sounded genuinely and completely angry now. She'd never yelled at anyone like that before did she, at least not to her, Michelle thought.
"I'm going home!" Willow was taking her backpack as she stormed off, angrier than ever before. Her hair whipped around dramatically because of its length. A questioning "What?" escaped Lucy's lips as she approached the brunette slightly, standing in front of the stairs as if trying to stop her from leaving.
"Come on, Willow..."
"Move!" The girl shoved the dark skin girl like she'd never dared to do to anyone before. Climbing the basement stairs, her footsteps thundered with each step; you could practically hear her anger through them.
Mich practically ran towards Willow, following her until they reached the Wheeler main door, the rain pounding. "Willow, come on!, you can't leave, it's raining!" Willow closed her backpack, about to pack her bike to leave. "Listen, I said I was sorry, al right?" The rain continued to pound in the girls' ears. "It's a cool campaign, it's really cool. We're just not in the mood right now." That was the last straw for Willow.
"Yeah, Mich! That's the problem!" In the presence of an angry Willow with her long and abundant hair giving her an ethereal air, as she moved dramatically in anger, Michelle didn't really know what to do, she could only watch, wondering to herself when she stopped helping her control it.
"You guy's are never in the mood anymore! You're ruining our party!"
"That's not true!"
"Really?" Willow's questioning look threw Michelle off, leaving her disarmed and, now, defensive.
"Where's Dustine right now?!" Michelle hesitated, giving Willow an opening to make her point. "See! You don't know, and you don't even care, and obviously she doesn't neither! And I don't blame her!" The brunette's voice grew louder along with the sound of the rain.
"You're destroying everything! And for what?! Just you can swap spit with some stupid boy?!"
"Eleven isn't stupid! It's not my fault you don't like boys!"
What?
Willow's gaze was blurring and becoming hazy, a silence fell between the two girls, both noticing how a line had been crossed, a line that had been teetering for months. The brunette's eyes and chest burned; she truly didn't know how to react. Had Michelle figured it out so easily? Was she so obvious and disgusting that she noticed?
Michelle instantly regretted what she'd said, but she was still too caught up in the moment to admit it right then and there. "I'm not trying to be a jerk, okay?" Willow's eyes were still fixed on her, piercing her skin, those beautiful green eyes that shone for her, but not in the way they used to.
"But we're not kids anymore, I mean, what did you thinking really? That we'd never gonna get boyfriends? That where just gonna stay in my basement all day playing games for the rest of our lives?" Willow's eyes were about to explode, but they wouldn't, not in front of Michelle at least. "Yeah, I guess I did, I really did" Willow's broken, honest voice finally disarmed the dark-haired girl. The green-eyed girl got on her bike, pedaling away.
"Willow!"
"Willow!!"
"Willow, come on!!"
The girl stood there, watching the brunette disappear into the distance, soaked to the bone, vanishing into one of the most dangerous storms in a long time. She stood there, for longer than she should have, replaying every moment of the fight over and over again, wondering why the hell she'd said that.
Then, the memories of November 6, 1983, flooded her mind as soon as Willow fully vanished from sight. The thought of that night, the night that changed everything, resurfacing made her run back inside, yelling for Lucy to come out and look for her now.
--
Willow pedaled and pedaled; her home was far away, but that was the least of her concerns. The rain helped to hide the tears that welled in her eyes. Her hair fluttered, as the wind was also making its presence alongside the torrential rain, making everything much more dramatic. She didn't even know when the feeling of her hair on her back began to overwhelm her; or when her life in general began to feel this way.
The party hadn't really felt like one for a while, ever since Dustine went to camp, everything gradually fell apart. There was one less person in the group, and now Max and Lucy were a couple, as were Michelle and Eleven, which left her alone. Sure, they still hung out together, but it felt she was a replacement since Eleven simply couldn't go out. Sometimes she felt like Eleven had taken the place that used to belong to her, had taken the friendships that belonged to her, had stolen the person who was the most special and important to her. There were times when she felt nothing but jealousy when she saw him, and she hated it. Because he hadn't done anything to deserve it; all he had done was look for a place to belong, just like her. But even so, sometimes she hated that he had decided that the place he belonged was the place where she belonged.
She didn't know when she'd arrived home, or when she'd reached Castle Byers, or when she'd sat down to look at all the memories they'd kept together, every moment they'd been happy, every moment before everything that had happened.
Every moment she should have cherished more. That place was filled with memories that had once been frequent, memories that now came with each waning moon, memories that now filled her with a nostalgia that only made her want to cry.
Her eyes grew even more blurred, to the point that she didn't know when she'd mustered the courage to pick up that baseball bat Jonathan had left there once, after his much-loved father had forced him to play.
Her emotions were raw and intense, more palpable than ever. The place she had built with his beloved brother now only stirred indescribable rage within her. Her legs were scraped, her arms scratched by the trees she had passed to get there, but she didn't really care. Perhaps she even deserved the cuts that covered her skin. Maybe those where the worlds ways of punishing her.
She gripped the bat with renewed confidence, taking flight to destroy the castle, striking it blow after blow with a mixture of sadness and anguish. Each blow ached deep within her, as if every time a branch broke, something inside her broke too. There came a point when she laid the bat aside and began to pull things herself. All that there was left were some broken branches, photos, and some distant memories.
There was also a point when she started stumbling through the woods, trying to find her way back home, finding it and going inside, unaware that she hadn't closed the door behind her.
Tears and rain-soaked clothes left a trail of water, clearly showing how she'd gone from her room to the bathroom, scissors in hand.
Willow looked at herself in the mirror, seeing her long hair, wet, ravaged, holding thousands of memories. She hadn't cut her hair since meeting Michelle. Eight long years in which her hair held every memory. Every moment she'd shared. Every moment that made her, her.
But now, those memories, those recollections, only felt like a constant weight on her shoulders. She loved every memory, but she couldn't help feeling how they affected her. She wanted to keep remembering every moment, to keep every moment in her heart, in a box where nothing would ever happen to those precious memories. Sometimes she even wished she could die so she could keep them even deeper inside her, store them infinitely on her skin, so the earth would know how much they meant to her, so that she and the earth would become one, and those moments of happiness would remain etched in the world forever.
But in perhaps now she thought Michelle was right. Maybe she was too caught up in the past. Maybe she should finally let it go. Release that little girl who begged her to play again, to go back to how things were. Shouldn't she let go of everything?
The scissors moved closer and closer to her neck, positioning a piece of her skin and a lock of hair between the metal of the blade. For a moment, she was tempted to cut, to cut her neck, to end it all, but she stopped herself. Her brown hair clung to her face, to her entire body.
At some point, she took off her blouse to look at herself in the mirror, to see clearly what she was in that moment, to see every scar that everything had left, to see every mark that the universe decided would look good on her skin, and in truth, she felt nothing but disgust, disgust at the sight of her body, disgust at the knowledge that, because of how she was, because of how disgusting she was, no one would ever love her, and even less so for being a fucking faggot. Her hair stuck directly to her lower back, sending shivers down her spine that she now just wanted to rip from her skin.
She decisively took the scissors and began to cut uneven pieces of her hair, simply cutting to feel something, she didn't know what, just something that would make her feel alive again, that would make her feel it was worth going on. Each strand echoed inside her head; that hair she had once let grow for Michelle to style, now it felt worthless.
Strands fell and fell everywhere, until her hair reached the nape of her neck, fairly even for a moment of madness.
And right there she felt it, that chill her family swore she would never feel again.
She didn't hear when Michelle and Lucy entered her house, or when Michelle called her name looking for her, or when they found her in the bathroom. Crying and trembling, strands of hair swirling around her, scissors in her hand, dangerously close to her face, the blade grazing her eye, threatening.
"Willow!" Michelle snatched the scissor from her hands, looking at her, then threw herself to her side almost touching her.
"It's back."
---
After the return of the mind flayer, at some point, Michelle and Willow were alone together, when they were all tidying up and planning their next move.
Willow sat at one of the sofas, nervously swinging one leg. Her short hair still felt strange to her, as if she couldn't quite recognize her reflection whenever she passed a mirror. Michelle had her back to her, checking things without really seeing what she was doing.
The silence was heavy.
Michelle wasn't good at talking. She never had been. Especially since no one had taught her how to name what she felt, much less when that feeling didn't fit into what she was supposed to be. But with Willow… with Willow, she'd always done things she didn't quite understand. And at that point, after seeing Willow like that so recently, seeing her so vulnerable on the floor, something changed within her.
She took a breath.
"Hey…" she finally said, "Why did you cut your hair?"
Willow looked up. There was surprise, yes, but also a kind of deep weariness.
"Why do you ask that?"
Michelle shrugged, uncomfortable. "I don't know…" she murmured. "It's just… the length suited you. I didn't think…" She stopped, frustrated at not finding the words she wanted. "I don't understand why you would do it."
It didn't sound like a complaint. It sounded like she was hurt that Willow had done it.
Willow looked away. "There was no point in leaving it like that," she replied. "There was no one to style it anymore. It didn't… matter anymore."
The words hung in the air.
Michelle turned slowly. "What?" Willow got off the table, as if she wanted to escape the moment. Michelle reacted before she even thought about it and grabbed her arm. It wasn't rough, but it was desperate.
"No, I didn't mean to—"
"Don't start," Willow interrupted, her voice tense. "I didn't do all this to go back to the same thing." She whispered, almost hoping Michelle hadn't heard.
Michelle loosened her grip slightly, but not completely, and Willow didn't leave either. And then, like a belated blow, the image of that day flashed back into her mind.
The water soaking the floor. Tears marking the path from the bedroom to the bathroom. Willow in front of the mirror, her wet hair clinging to her skin, the scissors trembling in her hand. Her body covered in scars that, at some point, decided they belonged there.
Eight years without cutting her hair. That beautiful hair she and Michelle adored. Eight years letting it grow because Michelle touched it, braided it, cared for it as if it were sacred.
Michelle remembered how she hadn't heard a thing when she entered the house, how all she could think about was finding Willow safe. How she screamed her name. How she found her crying, surrounded by clumps of hair, the scissors too close to her face.
That memory was still vivid. Too vivid.
"It wasn't fair," Michelle said suddenly, breaking the thread of the present.
Willow frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Michelle swallowed. She didn't know how to say it properly. She couldn't find the words to describe everything that was happening inside her. But she did know that she couldn't stay silent any longer. Not after having forced Willow to her knees to cut the hair she loved.
"Everything," she replied. "About me. About pretending." Willow froze.
"I…" Michelle ran a hand through her hair. "This is absurd, I don't even know if—" Michelle cut herself off. She was there, she'd already started, it was too late to back out, and she hated it. "I thought if I did what was expected, if I went out with a guy, if I acted like I didn't feel anything strange… it would pass." Her voice cracked, though she tried to hide it. "I used it to hide. To avoid thinking. To avoid accepting what I felt for you." Willow stared at her, incredulous.
"Michelle…"
"I don't know how to talk about this," she interrupted, not wanting to hear her rejection. "I never have. But with you… with you I would do anything I would-" She looked up, her eyes glistening with tears threatening to spill.
"I..." She paused, as if afraid to admit it, to fully admit what she felt, because if she did, there would be nothing left. But since she had already supposedly mentally prepared herself, it was too late to back out. "I've loved you since we were little girls. When we met on the swing set, when I asked you to be my friend, I knew you were someone special." Tears had already begun to stream down the taller girl's cheeks. And Willow couldn't help but place her still-free hand on one of them, and Michelle couldn't help but lean toward her.
"I loved you and I still love you. When we were little girls, I didn't care what people thought. But, my father—" Michelle stumbled, unable to find the words. "He told me it wasn't okay for us to be that close, that sometimes It was too masculine the way I treated you, that I was a woman and shouldn't treat another woman like I was 'a man,' and that the way things were going, I was just going to end up being another faggot. I never got over it. I just learned to keep quiet about it." She admitted, basically vomiting everything out at once. Willow could only look at her with pity, not really knowing what to say.
The basement suddenly seemed too small.
"I never did anything, I never kissed you, even though I always wanted to. I never said anything. I never did anything," she continued. "But I chose you every single day. Even when I was with Eleven, sometimes I imagined you were him."
Willow felt a pang in her chest. "Michelle," the girl finally dared to look at her.
"I... I've loved you since I met you." That hit Michelle like a bucket of cold water. "I've adored you for as long as I can remember. I just—" Her voice broke as tears welled up. "I never dared to tell you because I thought you and Eleven were meant for each other. I didn't want to—" She cut herself off, unable to find the words.
Willow placed both hands on either side of Michelle's face, cradling her head. Michelle gently placed one hand on Willow's hip and the other on her waist, as if everything could shatter at any moment.
They moved closer, as if both were waiting for the other's permission.
The kiss was awkward at first, slow, fraught with fear. Just two people approaching each other as if they'd been keeping their distance for years. When their lips fully met, it was soft, trembling, filled with everything they couldn't say. Willow ran her hands through Michelle's hair, caressing the small curls that had decided to emerge after Michelle had flattened it every day.
Michelle kissed her like someone diving into the water without knowing how to swim. Willow responded like someone who had always been waiting for that leap.
When they separated, just enough time to breathe, Willow rested her forehead on her neck, still on tiptoes.
"Maybe…" the brunette murmured, "This wasn't something I could cut from me."
Michelle wrapped her arms around her, firm, as if she had finally made a decision for the first time. And in that basement lost in the eighties, without the right words or clear futures, they both knew one thing for sure: even if they couldn't quite put their finger on how everything would turn out to be, they weren't going to run away anymore.