Mentally Cheating

Prologue

"Come on!"

"Henderson." Steve rested his head back on his shoulder, rolling his eyes back. The sun beat down on his arms through the tinted posters at the video store. Dustin had been bothering the older boy for hours, and today Steve wished someone would scoop him up and take him elsewhere; just for today.

"Why won't you tell me? You tell me everything? Why not now?"

Steve shrugged, laying his arms on the counter. "It's just... some stuff I don't have to tell you. You know, like guy stuff." Steve shifted his body to the register.

"Am I not, 'guy' enough?" Dustin pointed to himself and made quotation marks with his fingers.

"Maybe you're just a parakeet to him." Robin lifted her brows, taking two vhs's from the counter to take back.

"Haha." Dustin sneered.

Steve played with a small piece of paper he'd ripped off the cover of a VHS, fiddling with the fragile substance.

"Steve!!"

"God, Henderson, okay it doesn't matter." Steve flicked the paper over the counter and shrugged, turning his back to the Hellfire Club bearing child. Although Dustin were an upcoming sophomore in high school now, Steve still saw him as he knew him, the same boy asking him to fight his pet demodog after it ate Mews.

Steve smiled at the disturbingly wholesome memory.

"Obviously it does." Robin leaned over into Dustin's ear, tapes stacked in her arms.

"I know right." Dustin whispered back, his eyes watching Steve's shoulders tense.

"Hey," Steve turned around, sticking his finger out at Robin, "does not."

"Does too."

"Does not."

"Does too." Robin stuck her tongue out at him as she turned, reading the labels of the tapes she was instructed to put back out.

"It does too." Dustin looked at Steve, brows raised.

Steve sighed, shoulders slumping.

"Look-"

"You? And Eddie Munson-?"

"Eddie 'The Freak' Munson!'" Robin added, her head peaking out from the shelves. Dustin pointed back at her with his thumb.

"The freak and Hawkins 'it' boy? Hanging out on a regular? On days you should be with me quite frankly, your off days? YOUR WEEKDAYS?? You can't as so simply come by my house because you're so busy and yet you're hanging out with Eddie?" Dustin tapped the center of his chin with his pointer finger, and tilted his head to one side. "Why would that be?"

Robin popped her head over the shelf, her bright doe eyes waiting for Steve's reaction. She had been wondering the same thing since last week when Steve had blown her off to get ice cream with Eddie instead of lunch with her and Argyle.

Robin had convinced Argyle to spy on the pair. They watched the two laugh. Steve had forgotten about his ice cream, the cream coating his fingers. Eddie stood from the bench, acting out of character as he usually did, going on and on about a story. All Robin could notice was Steve's smitten laughter. Eddie was funny but come on, he wasn't that funny.

"Yo, since when did they hang out?"

"I couldn't tell you." Robin opened her mouth and Argyle hesitantly pushed a chip into it. Robin adjusted her binoculars she'd took from Nancy's room. Strangely enough Robin could find anything and everything in her room. Whenever she needed anything she'd run to the Wheelers house, whether it be a bandaid or Nancy's brain, she went there with all her issues.