Work Text:
Thursday, February 13th, 1986
Lucas heard it.
He wasn't trying to eavesdrop. He wanted to make that clear, at least to himself, because there was something deeply uncomfortable about the fact that he had heard it at all. He was supposed to be copying down the problem on the board. His pencil was in his hand. The paper in front of him was, you know… mostly blank. These were all signs that he had not been paying attention to begin with, but that was not the point, not right now.
Two girls were sitting two rows to his right. Danielle Nicks and a girl Lucas only vaguely knew as Emma something. Classmates that for him, only existed in the background of his high school life. They were leaning toward each other over the small gap between their desks, heads tilted and voices completely audible to anyone near.
"—my aunt literally lives like twenty minutes from the venue," Danielle was saying. There was something in her voice that made it sound like she was barely containing herself. "We can stay with her the whole weekend. My mom already said yes, we just need to ask your mom next!"
"You're kidding." Emma’s voice went up. "Chicago?"
"Yes Emma, Chicago," Danielle confirmed. "She's only doing like 5 dates on the whole tour. Five. And one of them is Chicago. Do you know how insane that is, Emma? Kate Bush hasn't toured since— god, since like the late seventies, since like, forever. And now with Hounds of Love, she's actually doing it—"
Lucas stopped writing. His hand just — stopped.
Kate Bush. He remembered that name. Of course he did.
He didn't mean to look but he did anyway.
His eyes moved across the room, pulled by some intuition.
Max.
She was sitting closer to the window. Her left elbow was on the desk, her chin resting in her hand, and she was supposed to be looking at the board, yet she wasn't. Her gaze had drifted. And for just a moment, it was pointed in exactly the same direction as Lucas's had been a moment ago, at the same two girls, at the same conversation.
Then her head moved sideways, smooth, like she'd caught herself doing something she didn't want anyone to notice, and redirected toward the window. Toward nothing. Her expression was almost unreadable. She'd gotten very good at it, at keeping her face arranged into something neutral, rather than completely sad, something that didn't give anything away. And by February of 1986, Lucas had gotten moderately good at accepting that.
Her new expression was giving something smaller and quiet. The one of someone who wanted something and had already accepted that it was not happening.
Lucas looked away before she could catch him looking.
He stared at the blank paper in front of him. Mrs. Jackson was still talking. The problem on the board hadn't changed.
Kate Bush, he thought again.
(Lucas on The Line extract)
November 28th, 1985
Elmore skatepark, at this time of the night, is a concrete desert lit by overhead lamps. Doesn’t help that tonight is the most family-oriented holiday in all of America. So when Lucas spots Max, seated in her usual spot at the barrier on the edge of the park, it seems more of a sad picture.
Lucas rides up to her slowly to keep from scaring her. He recognizes her signature jeans, vans, and red hair tucked under a hoodie. Lucas calls out her name, but she can’t hear him. Her ears are plugged with earphones connected to her Walkman. On the ground next to her is a cassette of Kate Bush’s latest album, Hounds of Love. “Running Up That Hill” is the first track of the A-side, so she always has it playing because it’s the easiest to rewind to.
Lucas stands there for a moment, watching her head bob to the music. Then, probably sensing Lucas’ presence, she turns around slowly, then recoils.
“Jesus!” She says, pulling the earphones down. “Lucas?”
“Sorry, I was trying not to scare you.”
“What’re you doing here?” she says, hand on heart. “I thought you were at dinner?”
“I was,” Lucas said, “but I thought you could do with some holiday spirit.” he stretches the Tupperware forward. “Happy Thanksgiving?”
Max observes the container in his hand but makes no move to take it. “What’s that?”
“Part of a Thanksgiving dinner,” he says. “I decided if you weren’t going to accept my invitation, then maybe I could bring Thanksgiving to you. Careful, though, it’s my mom’s good Tupperware, and I have to get it back tonight or I’m dead.”
She eyes the container a bit more, then says, “No, thanks.”
“No, thanks?”
“I don’t need food, Lucas?”
“It’s not food, Max, it’s Thanksgiving dinner.”
“I don’t want your family’s leftovers, Lucas, I’m not a charity case.”
This isn’t charity, he wants to say, but what’s the point? She’s already angry, anything he says to contradict her will just make things worse. So he drops down and sits on the barrier next to her.
“Max,” he says. “I want to help you deal with… what you’re dealing with. But I don’t know how to because I don’t know what’s wrong. So… please, tell me what it is, and I’ll do whatever I can to help make it better.”
She shakes her head. “That’s just the problem, Lucas. I’m not high school or Hawkins or your life. I don’t need you to fix me.”
Lucas places the dinner on the concrete between them, then sighs.
“I’m sorry,” he says. And then “Can I… listen to some music with you?”
She’s surprised by this change in demeanor. She creases her brow, unsure of what Lucas’ game plan is. So he takes the Walkman, which has been playing this whole time, and he pushes rewind. The tape whirs as it spins backward.
“‘Running Up That Hill’ is your favorite, right?” He asks.
Max nods.
The tape finishes whirring and clicks to a stop. Lucas’ pushes the play button, crank the volume up to the highest, and sets the Walkman down between them. The stains of the relentless drums through the flat earphones sound like a tin radio, but it’s loud enough in the silent night, where the only contest for the Walkman is crickets.
Kate Bush begins to sing. He’d never really listened to the song other than once when Max let him. But as he sat there, he realized suddenly, that she’s signing about making a deal with God for her lover to swap places with her so he can feel her emotions without having to explain it. She’s singing about exchanging their experiences so they’d never be unhappy anymore.
She’s singing about him and Max.
He looks at Max, and there are tears in her eyes. She looks back at him, and he can tell she’s realized the same thing he has.
Max mumbles something soft, her voice barely a whisper.
“What?”
She reaches forward and stops her Walkman.
“I live in a trailer park,” she says, a crack in her voice.
Just sit and listen, he thinks.
“Neil left my mom,” she says after a beat. “Left her with nothing. So now we live in Forest Hills, up east. That’s why I’m here. Because we can’t afford a turkey this year.”
“I’m so sorry, Max.”
A tear falls down her cheek. She wipes it with the back of her sleeve.
“It’s not like I don’t want to come to Thanksgiving dinner at your house, Lucas.” she says. “Or to Super Mario in Mike’s basement, or to movie nights, or to see Godzilla. It’s just…” She pauses. “There’s just too much… change in my life right now. I can’t pretend that everything is normal.”
She flips the hood of her jacket over her head. It’s getting chilly.
“I want you to know—I understand what you’re doing. I know you don’t think I’m a charity case. I know you’re bringing me dinner because you think I deserve to be happy, and you want to try to make me happy. But…” She sighs. “It’s hard to look around and see everyone doing fine when everything in my life is going to shit. Nothing stays the same for long, and everyone—good or bad—leaves eventually. No matter how hard I try, nothing ever works out.” She shrugs. “So what’s the point of trying anymore?”
“Max…”
She looks up at him. “I don’t know if I can ever be happy, Lucas. Not even with you.”
She doesn’t say it. She doesn’t need to. Listening to the silence in that moment, he can finally hear loud and clear what she’s been trying to tell him all this time.
I can’t be with you anymore.
Max pushes the rewind button on the Walkman. The whirring fills the space between them, and then she pushes play. Once more, Kate Bush sings about her lover and the pain she wishes that he could understand.
Inside him, different dragons fight each other. The dragon of rage wants him to be angry, to remind her of all he’s done and sacrificed just for her. To emphasize how hard he has tried to be a good boyfriend. Another dragon wants him to remember that Max is still his friend, that she’s going through a hard time, and maybe he needs to understand that without his boyfriend ego getting in the way.
But the dragon of silence, which wants him to do nothing but listen, wins.
And so Max and Lucas sit there together, listening to Kate Bush sing. For the first time in their relationship, their breakup feels final.
Lucas became aware, gradually, that Mrs. Jackson had moved on to a new problem on the board. Two rows over, Danielle and Emma had finished their conversation and were now writing down, focused.
Lucas looked down at his paper.
Still blank.
He wrote the date in the corner. November — no. February. He crossed it out. February 13th, 1986.
His pencil stayed on the page, not moving.
He thought about Danielle's aunt's house twenty minutes from the venue. He thought about five dates. He thought about Max's face turning toward the window.
He thought about a concrete barrier in the cold, a pair of headphones shared between them, a voice asking to make a deal.
What if—
No
Well…
The thought was still forming, still taking shape. It was not a full plan. It was more like an impulse, the same kind of impulse that had made him show up at Elmore Skatepark with a Tupperware, the same kind that had made him lean in to listen to the earphones she held out.
What if I took her.
Not as a date. Not necessarily. Not with any pressure attached to it, not with any expectation. But, what if he found out when the tickets went on sale. What if he figured out how much they cost, and figured out how to get the money, and what if he just… got them. And then asked her. Keep it simple. I know you like Kate Bush. I thought you might want to go. That was it. That was the whole thing. It didn't have to mean anything more than that, if she didn't want it to.
He wrote ‘Kate Bush — Chicago’ in the upper side of his math paper, very small, he stared at it for a moment, and then turned his pencil sideways.
The bell rang.
Saturday, February 15th, 1986
He thought about Chicago. He thought about tickets and what they might cost and the drive and who would drive them and where they'd stay. He thought about his savings account. He thought about his parents — his mom's particular pause when he asked for something bigger than expected. His dad, who would ask practical questions and want a full plan, which meant Lucas was going to need an actual plan before he said anything.
And then there was the part that wasn't logistics.
He thought about Max’s face against the window. The way she'd looked at those two girls for just a moment before turning and realizing she could never go. The small way she'd redirected, like she'd caught herself wanting something and decided, quietly, not to want it anymore. He'd seen her do that with a lot of things, this past year. He recognized that look by now...
By the time he'd dropped his basketball backpack and sat on the edge of his bed, he knew he'd gotten approximately nowhere. The notebook on his nightstand was open. He had written a list. Ticket prices, gas, hotel, parents — and then stopped at number five, where he'd written max and left it, because there wasn't anything to add after it. Max was the whole point.
He sat with that for a while. He was still looking at it when Erica knocked.
Three sharp knocks, unbothered. "Lucas. Dinner's almost ready. Mom said come down."
He didn't answer right away.
"Hey, dipshit?"
"I'll be down in a second."
A pause.
"Wait, Erica," he said, before he'd fully made the decision to. "Can you come in for a second."
A shorter pause. "Mmm… why."
"I want to ask you something."
"Is it about homework."
"No."
"Is it about something embarrassing?"
"Erica, please." Lucas's chest loosened, just slightly. "It's not embarrassing. Just, please come in."
The door finally opened. Erica Sinclair. She entered the room, stepped over his backpack and looked at him with her arms crossed.
"Okay," she said. "What is it?”
Lucas looked at the notebook. At max.
"So there's a Kate Bush concert," he said. "In Chicago. She's doing a short tour for the new album and apparently she never tours, it's kind of a huge deal. And I heard some girls talking about it at school today. I've been up here thinking about—" He stopped. Pressed his hands together. "I want to get tickets. For me and Max."
Erica looked at him for a long moment, her expression doing that thing where it went completely still and unreadable.
"For Max?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"You're going to ask Max." She said rather than asking.
"Yeah, that's— that’s the plan."
She was quiet for a moment longer. Then something in her face shifted, something quieter. More careful. "Oh, okay," she said. "That's actually really sweet, Lucas. She'd love that."
He blinked. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." She tilted her head, studying him. "By the way, how— how is she doing? Like, actually.”
Lucas was quiet for a second. "I— I don't know," he said. "I genuinely don't know anymore. I used to be able to tell, even when she was trying to hide it. Now I just—" He stopped. He looked at his hands. "I can't reach her. I've been trying but I can't really figure out how."
Erica nodded, slowly. She looked down at her own hands, and for a moment she looked younger. "She's been bad since Billy," she said. Flat. Plain.
Something in Lucas's jaw tightened slightly at the name. Not much.
Erica saw it.
"I know," she said, before he could say anything. "Trust me, I know." Her voice had an edge to it now. "He was horrible to you. He was horrible to your friends. He said things that—" She stopped herself. Exhaled through her nose. "I was there for some of it, Lucas. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't, or pretend it didn't matter, because it did."
"Yeah," Lucas said, quietly. "It did."
"And sometimes—" She paused, like she was deciding whether to say the next part. She said it in the careful voice. "Sometimes I feel like we're all supposed to just... set that down. Because he's gone and Max is grieving and that's what you do. You set it down. And I do. I can. But it doesn't mean it goes away. It's still there." She looked at him. "You feel that too."
It wasn't a question. Lucas held her gaze.
There was a moment where neither of them said anything, the room was quiet.
"The thing here is," Erica said, eventually, "Max didn't make him that way. She didn't choose it either. She was brought here, into his shitty town with a new family to ‘care’ for. And from what I know, Billy was abusive towards her and she hated it. She hated him.”
Erica made a small pause.
“She hated the way he treated you. She hated his shitty ass and I know that you still have mixed feelings towards him and hate the way Max grieves him.” She said it the same way she'd said everything else, without trying to make it into more than what it was. "She's not asking us to forgive him. Nor her. Grief doesn't care whether the person deserved it. It doesn't ask."
Lucas looked at the window. The dark outside was complete now, no trace of the February afternoon left in it. "I know," he said. "I know it doesn't." And he did know. He'd known it since the summer of 1985, watching Max become someone he didn't entirely recognize, watching her hollow out. He knew grief didn't make moral distinctions. He knew that. Of course he did. It was just different to know it and to live alongside it, day after day, watching someone you loved disappear into it and not being able to do anything about it.
"I can't get through to her," he said, and it came out lower than he meant it to. "I don't know what to do anymore. Every time I think I know how to be what she needs I'm wrong, and she pulls further back, and I just—" He stopped himself. "I don't know if this is stupid. You know? The whole concert thing. I don't know if it's going to matter or if she's even going to let it."
Erica was quiet for a moment, watching him.
"It might not fix anything," she said, finally. Honest as always, no softening. "Probably it won't fix anything. At the end of the day it's a concert, not a divine cure." She paused. "But it's something that's just for her. Not for you, not for the party, just something that's hers." Her voice was even.
He sat with that. It was the most useful thing anyone had said to him all day.
"You have to be sure about it, though," Erica continued. "Because she's already in a bad place. And she doesn't need someone doing something nice for her and then making it into something she owes you. She's not in a position to manage your feelings right now on top of her own."
"I know," Lucas said.
"And if she says no—"
"She means no. I know."
"And you have to be actually okay with that." She held his gaze. "I mean it, Lucas. Because the last thing she needs is to feel guilty for saying no to something that was supposed to be a gift." She let that sit. "Can you do that?"
"Yeah," he said. "I think so."
Erica studied him for a second. "Figure out the money first," she said, back to practical, efficient Erica like a switch had been flipped. "And talk to Mom and Dad. Do it in that order, not the other order."
"Right."
"And do it fast. Five dates is nothing. Those tickets are going to disappear."
"I know. I will."
She moved towards the door, stepped over his backpack with ease, and then stopped. Her hand on the frame. She looked back at him, and her voice dropped quieter.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I think for Max, knowing someone sees her like that, someone who actually pays attention to what she loves and remembers it and does something about it, all of this is going to mean something to her. Even if she doesn't know how to say so." A small pause. "She's lucky it's you. Okay? That's what I think."
Lucas didn't have anything to say. He just looked at her.
She held his gaze for one more second, gave a single small nod — the kind that meant we're done here, I said what I needed to say, and then she was gone. Quick footsteps down the hall. "Mom, he's coming, he was doing homework—" and then the familiar sounds of the evening filling back. Their dad's voice. The TV. The smell of dinner warm through the ceiling.
Lucas sat alone in the dark now.
He thought about what she'd said. Not just the part about Max — the other part too.
It didn't make him hate Max. It never had.
He picked up the pen. He looked at those lines for a moment. Then he closed the notebook, stood up, and turned the desk lamp on as he passed it on his way to the door and went downstairs for dinner.
Saturday, February 22nd, 1986
Dinner was spaghetti, which was a Saturday thing in the Sinclair household. Erica talked about a book she was reading for school that she had strong opinions about, and their dad asked Lucas about the playoff games coming up. The whole thing felt like an ordinary night, which Lucas found both grounding and perfect given the specific thing he was waiting to say.
He didn't say it at dinner. That had been the plan. He was going to catch them together, after dinner, and he held onto it.
He helped clear the table. He washed his own plate. He watched Erica disappear upstairs and he listened to her footsteps above the kitchen and her bedroom door close, and then he stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment with his hands in his back pockets and watched his parents move around each other in a practiced way. His dad putting the leftover spaghetti into a container, his mom wiping down the counter, the two of them talking about something low and half-finished that Lucas hadn't caught the beginning of.
"Hey, ummm," he interrupted. "Can I talk to you guys for a second?"
They both looked at him. His mom set the dish towel down on the counter. His dad, now sitting, closed the newspaper he couldn’t read in the morning and turned around.
"Sure, baby," Sue, his mom, said. "What's going on?"
Lucas came into the kitchen properly, pulled out one of the stools at the counter, and sat down. It felt like the right thing to do, you know, sitting, like this was a conversation and not just a request. He'd thought about how to start this conversation forty times since before dinner and had not landed on anything he liked, so he was just going to start from the beginning.
"There's a Kate Bush concert in Chicago," he said. "She's doing a short tour, apparently she basically never tours, and it's a pretty big deal. One of the dates is in Chicago. I found out about it a few days ago and… I want to go, I want to take Max."
His parents looked at each other. A quick look, one that lasted less than a second. Lucas had grown up watching that look happen and he'd learned to wait it out.
Charles, his dad, was the one who spoke first. "Chicago?" he said.
"Yeah."
"That's a three — four hour drive, son."
"I know. I know. But I was thinking, you know. The date is April 4th. It's the last Friday before coming back from spring break." He'd worked this out on the walk home from practice. "I don't have it fully planned yet."
"Where would you stay?" his mom asked. Her voice was measured.
"That's one of the things I still need to figure out," he said. "I was going to look into it. A hotel, maybe. Something cheap." He paused. "I have money saved up. I've been saving since I was twelve. I was going to use that for the tickets and try to cover as much of the rest as I can."
Another look between his parents, briefer this time.
"Lucas," his dad said, not unkindly, "that's a lot of money. Tickets for a show like that, gas, a hotel — you're talking about a significant amount, even if you've been saving."
"I know, dad." He held his dad's gaze. "That's why I'm asking."
His mom picked the dish towel back up, not to use it, just something to hold. "So, this is for Max," It wasn't a question, she was looking for confirmation, looking for the rest of the story.
"Yeah," Lucas said.
"How is she doing?" His mom's voice had shifted slightly, softened in a way it did when she was asking about something she was genuinely worried about. She'd always liked Max. She'd liked Max since the first time Lucas had brought her home, back when things were different, back when everything was different. "I know this past year has been hard for her."
"It has," Lucas said. He thought about what to add to that and decided that the simple version was the truest one. "I don’t know if you heard but, she’s living in the trailer park, in Forest Hills, with her mom. She's still not— she's still pretty far from okay. And she doesn't really have a lot of people right now. And she loves Kate Bush. Like, really likes her. And I just—" He stopped. "I thought it would be something good. That was just for her."
The kitchen went quiet for a moment. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere upstairs, very faintly, he could hear music from Erica's room. Madonna.
His dad stood up, moved closer to where his son was and pulled out the stool next to Lucas. He sat down again, which was not something he'd been expecting. His dad sitting down meant the conversation was going to be longer than a yes or no. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
"She's not doing anything that worries you, is she, son?" his dad asked, careful. "Like— you'd tell us if something was seriously wrong."
"It's not like that," Lucas said. And then, because his dad was looking at him steadily and he'd never been great at giving his dad partial answers. "She's sad. She's been sad for a long time and she doesn't know how to let people help her. That's what worries me. Not anything else." He paused. "She's not going to do anything to herself, I’m sure.” ‘I hope’ he thought. “She's just — she's just really far away from being okay. And I know a concert won’t fix that but I want to give her a space where she can forget all of this, all of the chaos. At least for one night.”
Charles nodded once, slowly, looking at the counter.
Sue looked at Lucas for a long moment, like she did when she was making up her mind about something. He could never tell exactly what she was reading when she looked at him like that.
"It's a big ask," she said, finally. "An overnight trip, to another city, for two fourteen-year-olds."
"I know."
"And we'd need more than a rough plan. We'd need to know where you're staying, how you're getting there, how to reach you."
"I know. I was going to work all that out before I asked you to actually say yes."
"You're asking before you've worked it out tho" his dad said.
"I'm asking if it's even worth working out," Lucas said. "Because if the answer is definitely no, I don't want to spend a week figuring out logistics for something that's not happening."
His dad looked at him. Something shifted in his expression— not a smile. The look he got sometimes, that Lucas couldn't fully decode. "Fair enough," he said.
Another look passed between his parents. Lucas waited.
Charles was the one who spoke. "We're not saying no," he said.
"But we're also not saying yes to a vague plan. Here's what we need." Sue held up a finger. "We need a real itinerary. Where you're driving, where you're staying, what the venue is, how you're getting home." A second finger. "We need to be able to reach you. Not just by phone, I mean you check in. When you get there, before the show, when you're back at wherever you're staying."
"Okay," Lucas said. "Yeah. I can do that!"
His mom looked at him for a moment, setting the dish towel down again. "Well, at least you’re doing all of that with your dad because I'm coming with you."
Lucas looked at her really quick.
His mom looked at him dead in the eye.
"What? You thought I was letting you drive to Chicago alone with a girl? And yeah, I know how that sounds," she said, before he could respond. "I'm not trying to hover. I'll be on my own, I'd stay out of your way at the concert, you'd barely know I was there. But I'm not sending you and Max to Chicago overnight by yourselves, Lucas. That's just not happening."
He opened his mouth. He closed it. He looked at his dad, who looked back at him with the expression of a man who had already had this conversation and knew where it ended.
"That's— " Lucas started.
"Non-negotiable," his dad said, pleasantly.
"I know you're responsible. I know your intentions are good, kid. None of that changes the fact that you're fourteen and Chicago is not Hawkins." His mom tilted her head slightly. "And to be honest? I haven't been to Chicago in years. I wouldn't mind it."
Lucas pressed his hands flat on the counter and looked at the ceiling for a moment. He thought about telling Max. My mom is coming. He thought about Max's face receiving that information. He thought about how that sentence was going to land.
"Mom, Max is probably going to think it's weird," he said.
"Oh, I’m sure Susan is going to be glad a trusted adult is going," his mom said simply. "Trust me."
He didn't have a good counter to that. He exhaled through his nose and looked back down. "You'd really stay out of our way?"
"Honey, you'd barely know I was there," she repeated. "I'll bring a book. I'll find a coffee shop. I'll be a person in the background of a trip you planned, and nothing more." A small pause. "Unless something goes wrong, in which case I'll be very, very present. But nothing's going to go wrong."
Lucas sat with it. It wasn't what he'd pictured. None of this was what he'd pictured — he'd pictured something simpler, cleaner, just him and Max and a city neither of them had been to, and Kate Bush, and whatever that was happening after that. But he was fourteen, and his parents weren't wrong, and the alternative was the answer being no, which was worse.
"Okay," he said.
His mom nodded, as if this had never been in doubt. "Good."
"And you're covering the tickets yourself," his dad said. "That's your money, your call. But the hotel, the gas— we'll help with that. Not all of it. Half."
Lucas looked at him. He hadn't expected that.
"You've been saving responsibly for years. This is a good reason to spend some of it. We'll cover half the travel costs, you cover the rest and the tickets. That's the deal."
His mom was looking at him with an expression that was almost amused. "You're a good kid, Lucas," she said, quietly. "You know that?"
He felt his face do something he couldn't entirely control. He looked down at the counter. "I haven't even asked Max yet," he said. "She might say no. And then this whole thing—"
"Then this whole thing was still a good idea that just didn't work out," his mom said simply. "That's allowed to happen."
His dad clapped him once on the shoulder, the way his dad always did it, and he stood up from the stool. "Get us the details, son," he said. "Real ones, not guesses. And we'll talk about it again."
"Yeah," Lucas said. "Okay. Thank you."
"Thank us when you have a plan," his dad said, but he was already almost smiling.
His mom started running water in the sink to finish the dishes, and his dad wandered back toward the living room, and the kitchen returned to its ordinary hum, and Lucas sat on the stool for a moment longer than he needed to, looking at the water glass in front of him.
Half the travel costs. A real itinerary. Check-ins. Everything.
He could work with that. All of it was solvable.
He thought about what came after all the logistics. The part that didn't have a solution. The part that was just him in front of Max with something he wanted to give her and no way of knowing what she was going to do with it.
He got up from the stool.
"Night, mom," he said.
"Night, baby," his mom said, not turning from the sink.
He went upstairs. He entered his room and then he turned the desk lamp off, lay back on his bed in the dark, listened to the house settle around him, and finally, he thought about Chicago while he was drifting off.
Saturday, March 1st, 1986
He called on a Saturday morning, three weeks before spring break.
He'd looked up the number the night before, it was written on the inside cover of his notebook, underneath the list, in the careful way he wrote things he didn't want to lose. He'd set his alarm for eight o'clock, which was earlier than he ever voluntarily woke up on a Saturday, because the box office opened at nine and he didn't want to spend the whole morning working up to it. Better to just do it. Better to be half-asleep and slightly unreasonable about it before his brain caught up and found new reasons to hesitate.
His parents were already downstairs. He could hear the coffeepot, his dad's voice, the Saturday-morning sounds of the house moving at a different speed than the rest of the week. He sat on the edge of his bed, the phone on the nightstand. Now he only needed to wait. Wait for the clock to read nine.
At nine-oh-zero he picked up the receiver and dialed.
It rang four times. Someone picked up — a woman, bored-sounding. "Chicago Theatre box office, how can I help you?”
"Hi!" Lucas said. His voice came out way more happier than how he felt. "I want to buy tickets for the Kate Bush concert. The— the one on April 4th."
The sound of keyboard clicks. "Alright, how many tickets?"
"Two," he said. "Two tickets, please."
More keyboard sounds. A pause. "Orchestra level, mezzanine, or balcony?"
He hadn't thought about this. He'd thought about a lot of things and had somehow not thought about this specific thing. "What's— what’s the difference in price?"
She told him. He did the math quickly in his head against the number in his savings account, the number his parents had said they'd match for travel, the rough estimate he'd made for the motel. Orchestra was too much. Balcony was fine. Mezzanine was somewhere in between, and the woman on the phone said the view from the mezzanine was good.
"Mezzanine," he said. "Please."
More clicks. "Name?"
He gave it. He gave his address for the tickets to be mailed to.
"You'll receive them by mail within ten business days," the woman said. "Is there anything else?"
"No," Lucas said. "That's— no. Thank you."
She hung up. He sat holding the receiver for a moment before he set it back in the cradle.
Two tickets.
He sat with that for a while, the notebook still open in his lap. He thought about April fourth. He thought about the mezzanine view.
He looked at the list. At ask max sitting there, waiting.
He uncapped the pen and wrote one more thing, very small, in the margin.
tickets: bought. April 4th.
Then he closed the notebook, set it on the nightstand, lay back down on his bed, and stared at the ceiling for a long time with a feeling he didn't entirely have a name for.
He'd done it.
Now he just had to tell her.
Friday, March 14th, 1986
He'd planned to tell her after the championship game.
It seemed right, in the way things seemed right when you were building them in your head — the game, the (maybe) win, the adrenaline still fresh in his chest, finding Max in the crowd and pulling her aside somewhere quieter and saying I have something for you. He'd pictured it enough times that the picture had started to feel almost like a memory.
The tickets had arrived in the mail on a Tuesday, a few days after he'd called. He'd been home alone when the envelope came. His name was on the front of the official correspondence, the Chicago Theatre return address in the corner. He'd stood at the mailbox for a moment before he opened it. The tickets were smaller than he'd expected. Just cardstock, the date and the venue and MEZZANINE — ROW C. He'd put them in the inside pocket of his good jacket — the one he wore to games, the one he'd been wearing the night he found Max at the skatepark. And they'd stayed there, waiting.
He'd carried them through three weeks of school. Through practices, through homework, through every ordinary Tuesday and Thursday where he'd seen Max in the hallway or in math class and thought today, maybe today and found a reason not to.
She'd been having a bad week. The timing wasn't right. He wanted it to be right. He kept wanting it to be right and the right moment kept not arriving.
He thought about the game instead, well not quite. He thought about standing outside the gymnasium afterward with his uniform still on and the noise of the crowd behind him and the cold March air hitting his face. Max infront of him.
Yeah, it was absolutely set. He was going to offer Max a ticket to his game, and he would tell her about his plan after. Win or lose, he was going for it.
Friday, March 21st, 1986
Well, the championship game offer didn’t go as Lucas planned. Max had rejected his offer to going to the game so now he had to plan another way to invite her to Kate Bush’s concert.
Maybe he could go to her house tomorrow, talk and ask her about this. And even better, her mom has to be there. He could ask her on the spot, right?
Yeah, he was doing that.
“Hey, Lucas!” A voice cut through his thoughts. It was Patrick.
“Yo, Lucas!” The voice continued. “C'mon man, we gotta practice before the game. Let’s meet during break, yeah? Alright, see you!” Patrick smiled, too happy for Lucas to be honest. He didn’t even wait for Lucas’ response and made his way into the restroom.
“What? Oh yeah alright, see you!” Lucas barely processed what Patrick had asked. He was still too focused on the whole Max situation.
And now, apparently, he had a new practice before the game.
Friday, March 21st, 1986
He won the game.
He'd played well. His body had done exactly what it had been trained to do, even when he spent the whole year as a benchwarmer, the crowd had been loud, the final buzzer had gone off, and of course he had saved the game with a three pointer, they had won because of him.
And then he'd looked at the stands.
He'd been looking for her all game. Well, a quick scan of where she would've been. He'd offered her the ticket. She'd said no.
But he'd looked anyway. Because he'd thought maybe, maybe she'd show up regardless. That was the part he hadn't said out loud to anyone, the small irrational thing he'd been carrying underneath everything else. That she'd say no and then come anyway, because she used to do things like that, back when things were way different.
The section where she would've sat was empty. In fact, the whole section reserved for his friends was empty.
He stood in all that winning noise and found the empty seats and held it for a moment before the crowd swallowed him back up. Someone grabbed his shoulders. Someone was yelling his name. He let it happen because there was nothing else to do with the feeling.
She wasn't there. No one was there.
The tickets — the concert tickets — were still in the inside pocket of his jacket in the locker room. Still waiting. Thirteen days until the concert. He had thirteen days.
The party was at Benny’s Burger. Music was rattling the windows, there were red cups and the smell of a knockoff whiskey Patrick had brought a few minutes ago. The whiskey was now being treated like it was water. Lucas had been swept there in the current of post-game momentum, still in the high of it, or trying to be.
He'd managed for a while. He'd talked about the game with Patrick, with Andy, with Jason himself. He replayed the fourth quarter. He hadn’t been here before, at parties like this, with people like this. He didn’t know how to be in this room.
By the third drink he was on the back porch alone.
He'd drifted. The noise from inside was low through the walls. Above him the sky was clear and black and full of stars, which felt unfair at the general state of his feelings.
He put his hand inside his jacket. Found the tickets.
He'd been doing that all night without noticing — reaching for them like checking that something important hadn't fallen out of his pocket, a reflex he'd developed over the three weeks he'd been carrying them. The cardstock was warm. Worn soft at the corners. CHICAGO THEATRE. APRIL 4, 1986. MEZZANINE — ROW C.
April fourth. Thirteen days. That was still something. Thirteen days was — that was in exactly two weeks, so in exactly two weeks he should be in Chicago, with Max, singing whatever songs she loved from Kate Bush.
The problem was that he didn't know how to reach her anymore. He'd been good at Max for a long time. He'd thought he was still good at Max.
And then he'd offered her a ticket to the game, and she'd said no, and the empty seat in the stands had said the rest of it.
He wasn't angry at her. He wanted to be clear about that, at least to himself, in the clear cold air of Benny’s Burgers with a drink in his hand and the stars doing nothing useful above him.
He wasn't angry. He understood. She was underwater and had been for a long time, and you couldn't be angry at someone for being underwater, you couldn't take it personally when someone who was drowning didn't take your hand every time you extended it.
He took a sip.
‘I know you love Kate Bush. I got tickets. I want to take you.’
Eleven words. He'd been counting them since last month. He'd said them in his head so many times they'd stopped sounding like words.
He just had to say them out loud.
He had thirteen days.
Inside, someone turned the music up. Through the glass door he could see the party still going, Patrick laughing, Andy's arm around someone Lucas didn't recognize.
The people he'd been sitting with at lunch only for some months, the ones who knew him as a basketball player and a decent student and someone who was fun to have around. People who didn't know anything about concert tickets or Max Mayfield or a pair of headphones shared on a concrete barrier in November. Or any of the weird stuff that went down in Hawkins.
He was very alone in this, suddenly.
He'd figure it out. He was going to figure it out.
He put the tickets back in his pocket. Finished his drink. Stood in the cold for another moment, looking up at the stars that were still not doing anything useful, and then pushed back through the door into the warmth and the noise.
He didn't know that at this exact moment, on the other side of Hawkins, Max Mayfield was watching Chrissy Cunningham walk across a parking lot toward Eddie Munson's trailer.
He didn't know what she was about to see. He didn't know what was already moving through Hawkins in the dark. What spring break was actually going to be, what the days between now and April fourth were actually going to look like. That she was going to die in his arms. That he was going to hold her while her body gave out and the world went wrong in every direction at the same time, and that he was going to scream her name and it was not going to be enough.
That she would spend almost two years somewhere trapped, her body in a hospital bed, her mind in a place none of them could follow her to. He didn't know he would sit next to that bed more times than he could ever count. That he would talk to her when she couldn't answer. That he would hold her hand and tell her about nothing — about school, about El, about whatever Erica had said at dinner.
He didn't know he would carry the tickets through all of it. Past spring break, past April fourth, past summer, past both their birthdays, past Christmas, past New Year's Eve, past all the ordinary days in between and then, their birthdays all over again.
He didn't know about the movie night he was about to plan in desperate times.
He didn't know any of that.
But maybe, maybe in some version of the world where things went differently, they would’ve been at the concert, lost in the music instead of words he never got to ask.