fast car | STEVE HARRINGTON [2]

30. like a bat out of hell

"Shut up!" Chief Powell suddenly stood and exclaimed, effectively quieting the rising voices that were engaged in arguments over who was lying and who wasn't. Had he not been a police officer, and previously arresting her the week prior, Julia would have considered it attractive. "We're going to interview each of the kids, one at a time. You first, follow me."

His final words were directed towards Max, which Julia immediately jumped to intervene with. Max's mother was noticeably absent, and therefore clearly did not consent to having her daughter questioned. Having been some what of a caregiver to the redhead the previous few weeks, she felt obligated to step forth.

"Don't even start on me, Julia," the Chief threatened as she stepped forward. "Do I need to cuff you?"

"Unlawful arrest?" Julia snapped back. "You're really digging yourself a hole of negligence here, Calvin."

Ignoring her protests, Max was taken to be questioned by the officer in another room separated from her friends. Desperately curious, and albeit nosy, Sunny motioned with her head towards the stairs to the boys remaining on the couch. Whereas Julia was giving a similar nod toward Ben, eager to do a little interrogating of her own.

✵

In hindsight, Ringo Wheeler had made a lot of stupid decisions in her life. From the time she licked a nine-volt battery at the age of eight and nearly gave herself a heart attack, to ever allowing Pete Townes grubby hands near her, to even most recently in trashing the Ashford's front lawn (although that one she didn't regret all that much).

When Steve had been dragged from their eye-line through the dark waters of Lovers Lake to likely be taken to an alternate dimension and killed, Ringo hadn't put all that much thought into how she would be able to rescue him. She couldn't swim, a now well known fact, but once she hurled her body forward into the water regardless she had figured if she couldn't swim at the very least she could sink.

Turns out, she wasn't even all that great at doing that.

She had even managed to tug off her sling again, hoping for full range of motion, but as hard as she kicked her legs and flailed her arms like there was no tomorrow, trying to mimic any swimming scene she had ever witnessed in a movie, she was going absolutely nowhere. The small breath she had managed to intake before diving in was running out fast, and it wasn't long before her lungs were screaming to let out the expired air. Try as Ringo did to swim down and follow after Steve, the water fought against her body and pushed back, as if it were trying to float her back to the top.

Her chest now on fire, she released a frustrated underwater scream that released the air in her lungs in a flurry of bubbles but unfortunately also emptied them with no oxygen nearby for her to replace it with. Now panicked, which didn't help matters at all, her body flailed around madly until she lost all sense of direction, leaving her unable to attempt to either swim to the gateway or even return to the top. Ringo's head whipped from side to side, desperately seeking out any form of light she could reach toward, but all she could see was the darkness of the murky water surrounding her, enhancing the claustrophobic sensation she was already reeling from.

Ringo couldn't think straight, too far into a state of panic to even theorise a way out of this. A flitting realisation crossed her mind that this was genuinely how she could end up dying - not going down swinging at a demogorgan, or fighting off Vecna's advances, but an entirely unheroic and anticlimactic death for a very climactic life. Drowning in a lake, in search of her lover. The name Lovers Lake suddenly felt all too fitting.

Then, in a state of madness or a genuine occurrence, a voice resounded through her mind. Not one of her own internal dialogue, or that of a memory, but a voice as clear and articulate as day.