Chapter Text
“Then find me. I'm in the shithole on Norton.”
A minute later, Wayne watches through his ice-encrusted window as the girl walks up the shitty steps next door to sell cookies to his landlord. She holds up a box and the dickhead waves his good hand aggressively through the air, no doubt demanding that she get off his porch. When the door slams in her face, she flips it off with both hands before striding back down the derelict street.
Grinning at the display of attitude, Wayne looks around his room for something suitable. He waits until the girl is around the corner, then yanks open the frozen window to hurl a half-eaten cup of instant noodles at the dickhead landlord’s house. He doesn't have the angle to hit the front door but the red cup explodes in a satisfying mess on the front stoop.
“Wayne?” The voice of his dad calls out between rattling coughs.
Shit. He'd been so caught up with the girl’s presence in his bedroom that he'd forgotten his dad was asleep right below. As the landlord's door flies back open, the teen slams the window shut and stumbles down the stairs to poke his head into the room of the senior Wayne McCullough.
“Sorry, dad. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
”Forget it.” His dad beckons as he sits up. “Was that a girl I heard?”
Wayne nods, the corner of his mouth pulling into a hint of a smile as he nears the edge of the narrow bed. “Yeah. She, uh, goes to my school. I don’t really know her, though.”
It's true. Although he’s seen her before, she isn't in any of his classes (not even in the same grade, he’s pretty sure) and Wayne's attendance at Hagler High is worse than spotty. Their paths rarely cross and today is the very first time they've spoken.
”She cute?”
“Yes,” Wayne says, conscious of the shy smile blooming on his face. His cheeks feel warm. The girl is very pretty.
“You want her to be your girlfriend?” The question is followed by more pained coughing. It's been bad like this for a while now, and the medications don't help anymore.
Wayne shifts his weight to one side, the old floor boards creaking beneath his Vans as his body turns halfway to the door. He’s never really discussed girls with his dad before. Or with anyone, actually. This is new and uncomfortable territory, and a part of him wants to flee.
”Yeah,” he finally admits with a shrug. “If she wants to be.”
His dad’s dark eyes glimmer as he rasps out a chuckle, and that laugh alone makes the awkward conversation worth it. They’ve known for months that the end is near, and moments like this are few and far between. Not that life was all rainbows and butterflies before the terminal cancer diagnosis, exactly, but it’s been worse with the timer ticking down.
“I’d bet on you, kid.”
—
In her tiny room at the top of the stairs of the shithole on Norton, Del sits alone on her equally tiny bed. Her cheek is still tender from the punishing slap her dad gave her after dragging her inside, away from Wayne, and she knows that any attitude or pushback now will just make things worse. She’ll have to tip-toe around her dad for a few weeks, or maybe just until he’s pickled his brain with enough booze to forget why he’s mad at his only daughter.
Del’s supposed to be doing her homework but mostly she just worries about what might’ve happened to her new boyfriend at the hands of her asshole brothers. Actually, he's probably already her first ex by now. What guy would want to stick around after that stellar introduction to her miserable family?
But on the other hand… he is Wayne McCullough. And Del doesn't live under a rock - she’s heard of him.
In ninth grade, Del and her best friend Natalie watched two older guys getting hauled out of the principal’s office by the police. One was Luca Giarratana, a popular linebacker, and his face was badly bloodied. The other was a smaller, angular boy with dark hair and split knuckles. In a voice of equal parts fear and reverence, Natalie had said to her, ‘That’s Wayne’.
For many at Hagler High, the name carries a similar weight as a childhood boogeyman, but Del’s never been the type to buy every single word that exits the mouths of dumbasses. From what she can discern, the type of people who find themselves in Wayne’s crosshairs always have it coming. Everyone knew what Luca Giarratana did to freshmen in the locker room. ‘Reap what you sow’, or whatever.
And so yesterday, when Wayne invited her inside his house after staring at her for just a smidge too long, Del felt an undeniable pull of curiosity rather than fear. She wanted to see what the boogeyman was really like.
It turned out that Wayne was a weird kid, fairly awkward, and somehow too direct while also quite sparing with words. And she was right - he wasn't frightening. Up in his messy room, she'd been confused but intrigued by his odd authenticity and soft little smiles, and the fact that he seemed to like her in a way that didn't feel predatory. And it certainly didn't hurt that he was cute. Really cute, actually, which had surprised Del when she saw that teenage face up close.
The cookie-buying thing was something she'd proposed as an experiment of sorts, to find out if Wayne would make the effort for her. She hadn’t been at all sure if he would, and her heart tripped today when she came home to find him on her porch. Then he'd said that thing about voting for her to be mayor, which, after everything that had happened in September, meant more than she could say. Maybe to Wayne it was just an offhand comment, but to Del it was the most freely kind thing she's heard since her mother died.
Of course her stupid fucking family had to go and ruin that about five minutes later.
She listens to her dad downstairs ordering pizza and wings while the twins make a quick trip to the packie for a case of beer, and she knows it's all being funded by her confiscated wad of cash. It hurts, but Del finds herself distracted by the question of whether Wayne will ever talk to her again, and if he does, how she's going to keep it from her dad and brothers.
—
The third Tuesday in March is the best and worst day of Wayne McCullough’s life. Previously, that title was owned by the day his brother beat him to death. Worst because of the whole dying thing, obviously, but then also the best because he'd come back to life.
Today is even better and worse.
It's the day that Wayne's first and only crush agrees to let him be her boyfriend. He’s over the moon when she kisses his cheek on her front porch, and it doesn't matter that her family tries to run him off right after. He's wished for this ever since he witnessed her raise that incredible pandemonium in the blood-spattered school gym in September. How could anyone compare? Everything about her is lovely. Even her name - Del. Her presence on his front step yesterday seems like fate, or a kick in the ass from God or whatever. Today is the best day ever.
But suddenly it's the worst day ever, too, because Wayne McCullough Sr. finally succumbs to his savage cancer. His cold body lays mere feet away and Wayne glances at it now and then, trying to process the death while hoping uselessly that it's somehow a mistake and maybe his dad will start breathing again, just like Wayne had three years ago. If he'd known these were his dad’s final moments, he wouldn't have left to hassle those neighbor kids. He would have tried to tell his dad he loved him while he could still hear it. He would’ve told him that he'd won that bet on Wayne yesterday and then talked to him more about Del. He thinks his dad might have liked to know that his youngest son wasn't going to be alone anymore.
But none of that matters. The only thing that matters now is what Wayne’s going to do next. And as he picks up the photo of his dad's stolen ‘79 Trans Am, the kid gets an idea.
—
Del, finally working on her homework, nearly jumps out of her skin when her bedroom door silently flies open.
“Wayne?” The sixteen year old is standing in her doorway, his face banged up from the beating her brothers must’ve delivered. Briefly, Del wonders if she’s just dreaming. “What the fuck?”
“You wanna come to Florida with me?”
“Why?”
“To get my dad’s car back.”
“What for?”
“Because he wanted me to have it.”
She deliberates for exactly three seconds as she hears Teddy call her name from downstairs. There's almost zero information on which to base her decision, but it doesn't make a difference because Del already knows in her heart that she's going with this boy. It’s impulsive and insane, maybe, but something about it just feels right.
“I need a bikini.”