DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

ACT ONE

SEASON ONE

Moving to Hawkins, Indiana, had not been anywhere on Mallory's list of things she expected to happen this year.

Then again, neither had burying her father, teaching herself how to scrub vomit out of carpet at three in the morning, or figuring out which bars in Manhattan didn't ask too many questions when a seventeen-year-old walked in looking for her mother.

Her dad used to tell her to expect the unexpected.

Sometime over the last year, Mal had decided it was probably the stupidest advice anyone had ever given her.

Some things nobody should have to expect.

She shifted one hand higher on the steering wheel and flexed the fingers of the other, trying to work some feeling back into them. They'd been on the road for hours, long enough that New York felt strangely far away now, swallowed up behind miles of highway, gas stations, rest stops and towns she would never remember the names of.

Indiana stretched out ahead of her in endless streaks of green and brown.

The radio played quietly beneath the steady hum of the tires, fading in and out every few miles. Mal had stopped trying to find a decent station somewhere around Ohio. At this point, she would've listened to static if it meant not having to reach for the dial again.

Beside her, Asher slept with his head tipped against the passenger-side window, his Walkman headphones slightly crooked over his ears. His knees were pulled awkwardly toward the dashboard, one sneaker pressed against the glove compartment, and every now and then his head bounced lightly with a crack in the road.

Mal glanced at him, then back at the highway.

A few seconds passed before she looked again.

She'd checked to make sure he was breathing three times since he fell asleep.

She hated that she did that. Hated even more that she couldn't seem to stop.

New York had been home once. Really home, before everything went to shit.

They'd lived in a three-bedroom apartment that always felt slightly too small and somehow exactly big enough. Their kitchen table had a dark burn mark near one corner from the time her dad set a hot pan directly on the wood and spent the next three years insisting it gave the place "character." Asher left basketballs in the hallway where everyone could trip over them, Mal's sketches were taped to nearly every available surface, and her father treated the refrigerator like it was some kind of private art gallery.

They weren't rich, but they weren't poor either.

They had enough.

Enough for Chinese takeout on Fridays when nobody felt like cooking, for grocery-store flowers her dad brought home for her mom for no reason other than he'd seen them and thought of her. Enough for movie nights where Asher inevitably fell asleep before the ending and their mother stole every blanket within reach. Enough for Sunday mornings filled with burnt pancakes, too much syrup and music playing louder than anyone in the apartment building probably appreciated.

They cooked together most nights. Her mother danced while she chopped vegetables, badly and without even a little embarrassment, bumping her hip into anyone stupid enough to get close. Her father sang every song wrong on purpose because he knew it drove Mal insane. Asher threw shredded cheese at her from across the kitchen, and Mal threatened his life before throwing it right back.

They fought over board games, had water-gun wars through the apartment until their downstairs neighbor threatened to call the landlord, went to the park when the weather was nice and ordered pizza when it wasn't. Her parents attended every one of Mal's art shows, even the tiny school ones where half the paintings were hung crookedly against the gymnasium walls.