Her || LESBYLER MODERN AU

Chapter One ~~~ Willow Byers

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Sunlight pores down on me, golden brightness almost blinding me as the bus reaches the stop after mine. I hear footsteps and look up to see a girl with black locs bouncing along her shoulders. My heart skips a beat.

She's so pretty.

My step-sister, Jane, taps me on the shoulder and shows me a TikTok about her favourite anime right now. "Look, the editing on this video is really good," she says, pointing out the transitions.

"Yeah." I clear my throat. "It looks really coo;- Hey Max!" I call out as I spot a flash of red hair. She turns around. "Hey!" She slides past a bunch of sophomores vaping behind the seats and sits down in the row in front of us. "Oh my God, Jane. I love your phone case, did you do it this break?"

Jane nods excitedly. "Yeah, I did it last night because I wanted it to look nice for today."

"Speaking of today." Max smirks at the two of us from her row. "First day of high school. We gotta stick together girls, okay?"

"Yeah," I agree. "I'm kind of like... nervous. Hopefully we get some of the same classes and the same lunch period." I pick up my phone and scroll through Instagram. There's a bunch of art on my feed from a bunch of my favourite influencer artists. Right now, Zoie Walter is doing a series where she is drawing characters from TV shows until not a single person knows who they are. So far she is on Day 13.

"I'm excited for Math," Jane chirps in, her voice filling room. She's always been good at Math, better than anything. She says she likes the formula and the predictability. This makes sense because Jane hasn't had too much stability in her life.

Max shakes her head of red hair. "I will never understand how you like Math, Jay." She cracks a smile. "Anyway, Will, can you do my hair?"

"Sure." I close my phone and slide it into my backpack. "What style?"

"Uh, braid."

"Okay." My fingers twist as I braid her hair, my mind wandering far off into the distance. I think back to that girl with the hair. I've grown up in Hawkins my whole life, so I know everyone in this small town, but I've never seen her before. I wonder who she is?

I blink, and all of a sudden we're getting off the bus. Loud footsteps pattering against the bus's metal steps. The sun is still shining, but hidden behind the clouds. I miss clouds. I haven't seen them in so long. Someone pushes past me, almost tripping me too. "Hey!" I shout, trying to gain back my balance. I look up, and catch another glimpse of the same dark hair.

Who is this girl?

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"Okay," Max slides onto a seat in-front of me, siting beside Jane. "So I finally figured out what bathrooms are bets to use."

"How d'you do that?'" I ask, taking a bite of my pizza.

"Robin Buckley," she states, like it's an obvious fact. "She's the girl who works at Scoops Ahoy with Steve Harrington, and she serves me ice cream all the time." She shrugs. "She ran into me and was like 'Oh I thought you were still in 8th Grade haha' and just told me everything about this school."

"A band kid working with Steve Harrington?" Jane stares at Max, eyes wide. "Why hasn't she quit already?"

"They're friends I'm pretty sure," Max replies, shrugging as she sips her water. "Kind of weird, but apparently they both had a crush on Tammy Thompson."

"She's gay?" I say, looking up. "I mean it makes sense, like she has the vibes, but I thought she was just another weird band kid."

Jane nods in agreement. "Yeah. I mean it makes sense that she liked Tammy. Jonathan said a lot of boys liked her in high school and middle school. He said she has had a lot of boyfriends."

"Okay, sure. That's fun, but can we not spend our first day of high school as the cool freshman talking about Tammy Thompson and all of the boys have liked her?" She groans as she speaks, rolling her blue eyes. "We should look around and like, observe, y'know? Get to know the school?"

"That sounds fun,' Jane says. "We could look at the clubs."

"That's boring," Max groans, her sassy tone amplifying her voice. "Let's look at the people." She stands up, throws her lunch in the bin and waits for us to follow. We copy her and we start walking down the aisle between the cafeteria tables.

"Okay, students - school is in session. Our homework for lunch is to judge everyone. Literally by their cover. We need to find our people, guys! Live our lives, not be ignored like in middle school and get the boys!" She smiles at the thought of it. "Ok, Jane - you go down that lane, where the young little people are there." She points over there and then tuns to me, "Willow, you'll go down this one. And I'll go down the last one down there."

"Go team!" Jane grins and we each take our aisle.

I walk done the floor, looking at the first table filled with kids reading books, not even talking to each other. Too nerdy. The next one, cheerleaders judging everyone the way I am. I see a particular one with a blonde bun tied with a green scrunchie, siting to the side. I peer at her a little more, and she still looks like shes seen a ghost. I'm not sure if any of her fellow cheerleaders have noticed though. I keep doing this, picking up far too many different cliques. Bookworms, basketball jocks, science nerds and like, so many more.

I look over to see that Max and Jane are taking much longer, maybe taking a lot more care into the task at hand. Then again, Max could just be cussing a bunch of people out.

"Hey, did you drop this?" Someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around. It's her. The girl from the bus, who pushed past me. I can see her it on my face that she recognises me. "Oh hi. Uhm, yeah, is this yours?" She hands me my pocket sketchbook that I carry around.

I smile slightly. "Yeah, thanks." We just and there awkwardly for a moment until I add, "So like, are you new to Hawkins?"

"Oh, yeah," she says. "My parents got divorced, so like, my Mum wanted a fresh start y'know?"

"Oh, sorry, that sucks."

"It's fine. Should've happened the moment they got married."

I look over her shoulder and see Max waving me over. "Sorry. I've gotta go talk to my friends, bye!" I wave her off without her even saying goodbye and half-run, half walk over to Max and Jane.

"Who was that?" Jane questions curiously, peering at me closely.

I look back for a second, and she's already gone. No name, just a face. I shrug and say, ,"no one. I just dropped something. C'mon, what'd you guys find?"