𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐢 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 | steve harrington

chapter three

Rory Henderson was a mess of dinners at midnight and fake id's. She liked horror films and swimming in lakes in the dark. She liked rock music but the kind that had been made mainstream and nothing too heavy because often when she listened to music she wasn't trying to bang her head around, she was trying to escape. Rory liked running really fast and smoking weed, she liked eyeliner and big dogs, the idea of snow and banana milkshakes.

She was nineteen years old until December and her birthdays were marked with Christmas cards, additional presents to save time and money. Born on Christmas Eve to live a life of no birthdays and a day full of anticipation for something better. She was used to cards that left imprints of glitter dust on her fingertips and presents that weren't really meant for her like bobbly sweaters and fruity lip gloss, rollers for her already curly hair and dangly earrings that looked like something you'd pull from the cellophane wrappings of an all girl magazine.

Her life had been Hawkins and nothing else. She was the girl who'd give you a handjob for five bucks, the one whose boobs grew before anyone else's which made her more desirable and more lost in the idea of femininity and who she should be. The boys would lie about her and tarnish the idea of virginity before she'd even gotten into bed with someone. She'd been thirteen, no fourteen, no fifteen. Stories of leather backseats in cars and breathy moans of 'please, please!'. Or had it been in the bathroom at a house party, skirt pushed up to her hips. Boys liked to lie about her because it made them sound better but it tarnished everything about her.

In truth she'd been eighteen and in Indianapolis where she'd moved at sixteen years old. From that point she'd been Rory to stay away from, to watch in anxious eyes. She'd been the one to start fights, to pull girls ponytails and spit on boys faces. Kick in the ribs and a yell. Kicked out of school and did senior year in a place filled with pervert teachers who wanted to know more about why her shirt would never button properly. She'd only just graduated and spent a year faking her way into clubs to drink heavy gin with fizzing tonics and fuck men in bathrooms. Her first time had been thirty but he'd believed her twenty two.

It's not that she didn't look it. With her makeup smeared on her eyes and her lips full and rather kissable. There wasn't much youth in her slender face and poking cheekbones. That had been scraped away by years of lies and deception. With plunging necklines and short skirts she reeked of adulthood in stolen perfume and clumpy mascara. It's not that men cared anyway. If they got caught it was her fault for lying not their fault for believing.

So Rory Henderson was the slut, the girl who wanted money for her body but often got bruises instead. The girl who worked hard to escape perceptions she'd then throw herself into. The girl who didn't know who she was, who had spent her teen years trying to be someone else. But she never cared about those things. About who she'd touched and consequently who'd touched her. Rory was uncaring about opinions and perceptions which made her a very cold, angry, unfriendly and generally unpleasant person to be around.

At the front of everything, Rory Henderson was the girl who had left her eleven year old brother to fend for himself, to grow up on his own. Knowing what could happen to him, she'd been the girl to take his father and his sister in one fatal blow and now she was the girl who had waltzed back into his life knowing he didn't want her there.

Dustin was sitting in the passenger seat of her old Chevy car, a second hand collective with peeling paint and a radio system that didn't work. Rory was watching him out of the corner of her eye and god had he changed. He was taller by far but his face wasn't round and cute. He'd been such a sweet child with chubby cheeks and a toothless grin. He had teeth now, it was insane. His mop of hair was styled instead of unruly and he didn't look like a baby anymore.

"What year are you in, at school?" Rory asked, forest green blurs stroking tree branches into the sides of her car.

"Freshman"