Another World (Runaway) (E.M.┃S.H.┃B.H.)

October 29th, 1984

October 29th, 1984

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When Celeste had told Jessica Anderson that she wanted to live in the world of Stranger Things during an eighth grade sleepover, she hadn't meant it. Not really, at least. What she had actually meant was that she wanted to escape from her shitty, fucked up life.

Now, three years later, she was starting to regret wording it the way she had. Because, somehow, she had ended up in Hawkins Indiana. In the 1980s. In the actual world of Stranger Things.

At least she had a correctly dated license. And a shit ton of cash. And a car, luckily. Thank you, twice-dead paternal grandmother.

The problem only problem was that she still had to carry on a normal-enough life that she wouldn't immediately raise the suspicion of anyone. And that meant that she had to enroll in school ASAP and cry about the loss of easily accessible GPS systems later.

She was lucky she knew how to read a map well enough to navigate. Not that it was easy, because it was hard to read a map and focus on the road at the same time. Somehow, though, she did it well enough that no accidents occurred, which was good enough in her books.

But what wasn't in her good books was the mandatory new-kid "orientation." Considering the fact that even she had managed to be on time for once, it was beyond annoying that she had been waiting in the front-office for at least thirty minutes.

Her leg was bouncing up and down, her thoughts fixated on her annoyance towards the situation. If she had to be on time, why couldn't the admin be held to the same standard? She thought bitterly.

She was lucky her first class was most likely homeroom, and that she had decided last minute to risk getting caught with modern technology and grabbed her phone and a pair of wired earbuds before she left.

It was easy enough to hide: she just had to slip the wire under her shirt before she left her car, hide the earbud with her hair and listen with only one earbud in. She could at least pretend to listen to whatever was going on around her with her other ear that way.

The door that lead from the office to the rest of the door suddenly banged open, and then slammed shut just as fast. She flinched.

"Mr. Hargrove, what can I do for you today?"

The fuck is he doing here? She thought.

Obviously, he was going to school with her—that was a given. But, if her memory served her correctly, then he was supposed to have arrived in Hawkins around the same time that she had, maybe a few days earlier—Celeste couldn't exactly remember. Though, the fact that the secretary was talking to him like they were old friends made her think that he might've arrived closer to the beginning of the school year instead.

Their conversation wasn't the loudest it could've been, but it was loud enough for her to catch bits and pieces of it without her trying. Something about a fight somewhere about something. To be honest she really didn't care.

She discretely turned up the volume on her music a notch, trying to drown out their voices. Bite Me by Enhypen was blasting loud enough that they probably should've noticed the music bleeding out from the other earbud, but no one did, and so she didn't care. If she was being honest, she would've just gaslit whoever noticed.

Although, there was a small part of her brain that wasn't internally screaming the lyrics. That part was occupied with trying to make herself believe that he wouldn't notice her.