Highway To Hell •Steve•Billy•

Chapter Three: The Pollywog

"Huh, you think?" I ask as I raise my eyebrows

"Hey, be thankful I'm doing this okay?" He says as he comes in close again but then backs off. We wait a second before he starts to talk again "You know what? This was a bad idea anyway" he grabs his towel and opens the gym's double doors

"No, wait, wait, wait" I push myself off the lockers and grab his arm and spin him around and placing the pads of my fingers on his waist. At first he doesn't make eye contact with me, but then he looks down at me and only then realising how close we were and it wasn't forced upon.

"Thank you for apologising, it means a lot" I tell him while looking into his blue eyes. We wait a second in that position, soaking up the moment

"There's just something about you Sam that I just can't get out of my head and I have a hard time expressing that" Billy whispers to me "I think you're really special - special to me"
Billy looks around for a second and then pulls me in for a soft hug.

He lets go, grabs a cigarette that's in my front, shirt pocket and walks back into the gym. I roll my eyes and smile slightly, trying to process what he meant by that. I spin of my heels and head to the library to hopefully get some study in before lunch.

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I stand out the font of Mr. Clarke's classroom in the Middle School area with my back against the wall that Lucas, Dustin and Billy's step sister Max are in. Apparently I'm meeting Mike and Will here as well.
Mike and Will catch my attention as they run down the hallway to this classroom. I push my self off the wall and look at both of them with a confused look. 

"Mike what's wrong?"

He pushes open the classroom door and Will and I follow him in.

"Stop! I'm sorry, Mr. Clarke. It was just a stupid prank" Mike picks up the box that was sitting on the desk and starts to frantically get out of the classroom

"What are you doing?" Dustin asks

"I told him to stop. We need to go"

"Mike!"

"Right now" Mike is already out the door but his body facing us "Right now!" He practically screams.
We all follow him out of the classroom, running down the hall to the AV room.

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I sit down on the floor with my back pressed against the wall outside of the room. Max continues banging on the door trying to get in

"Hello? Hello? Guys, come on. Can I come in yet?"

"No!"

I chuckle a little as I play with the buttons of my shirt.

"What's so funny four eyes?" Max says looking down at me

"Nothing" I say to her. She rolls her eyes and sits down on her skate board and rests her head in her hands that's resting on her knees while looking at me.

"I'm Max, who are you?"

"I'm Samantha. Mikes oldest sister"

As if a sense of realisation hits her, her face lights up and and sits up straight.

"So you're the Sam my brother try's to look good for"

I chuckle slightly "What?"

"I caught him looking at himself in the mirror the other day and fixing his hair and shoving cologne down his pants, so I asked him who he's trying to look good for as a joke, he came to his bedroom door and said your name: Samantha Wheeler and then slammed the door in my face"

I don't know what to be taken back by more, the fact that Billy was trying to look good for me and the stuff he said to me earlier is just a small window into his feelings or that Billy treats Max like that.

"Does he always treat you like that?" I ask the girl as she sits on her skateboard

"Yeah, it use to be way worse though, lots of yelling at me and punching holes in the wall. Whenever someone mentions your name or he's doing something for you - which is a lot of the time - he's usually pretty chill, it's like you've put this spell on him or something"

I chuckle again, but out of awkwardness "Right, if um, you want me to talk to him about you know - treating you right, then I really don't mind"

"It's okay, it's never gotten really bad to the point where he has hit me. It's always worse between Billy and his Dad, Neil, that shits abusive" I just listen closely to what Max tells me, taking mental notes on that Billy has never touched Max so if she rocks up with bruises, we know who it's from and why Billy shows admiration the way he does, however, this doesn't excuse his behaviour.

Max stands up from her board and starts to bang against the door again "Guys, what's going on? Come on"

She looks over at her bag and pulls it open, she grabs a paper clip that was on the top of on of her folders and starts to pick the lock with it.

"That's not gonna-" The door clicks and she opens it. She smiles proudly at me and opens the door. A green, slimy, small four legged things runs past out legs and out into the hallway.

Dustin tackles Max to the floor as all the boys pile out of the classroom.

"Holy shit!"

"Oh, shit! No!" Dustin scrambles to his feet

"Where'd he go?"

"What was that?" Max asks as she sits up

"Dart!" Mike tells her

"What?"

"Who?" I ask as I stand up

"You let him escape!" Mike says to Max

"Why did you attack him?" Dustin comes up to Mike and points a finger to his chest

"Come on"

"Don't hurt him. Don't you hurt him!"

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I have a lit cigarette in my mouth as I walk down the hall because everyone is off looking for Dart. How did I manage to get involved with my brothers mess again?
I check all the lockers that were open in all the halls in the Middle School area.

A familiar figure catches my attention at the down the hallway, around the corner. Once it sees me looking it quickly moves back out of eye sight. I run up to where the person was standing and look down the hall. No one.

Weird. They looked a lot like Eleven.

I get distracted by the sound of people running down the hallway. I turn to look and see my brother and Max running towards me as I put my cigarette back into my mouth.

"Will found Dart" Mike tells me and he grabs my arm and continues to run to the bathrooms.

We finally reach them and see Dustin leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the bathroom. I inhale and exhale the smoke one more time before dropping it to the floor and crushing in with my foot.

"Where's Dart?" Mike asks

"I don't know. Not here"

"What?" Mike begins to check every stall one after the other

"He said by Salerno's, right?"

"Yeah, maybe Will has him"

Mike reached the last one and looks at Dustin "Where is Will?"
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Word count: 1672