Alice the Amazing ⇒ STRANGER THINGS

[1] Alice Henderson, Teenage Delinquent

{The Vanishing of Will Byers, Part II}

School kind of sucked.

That was an understatement: School really sucked.

10th grade wasn't so bad, but Alice was anxious to be done with the prison known as Hawkins High School.

It's not like Alice didn't have friends—she did. And her teachers weren't too bad. She just felt that high schoolers wasted their time caring about stupid things, like parties and dating. Alice never got invited to parties or asked on dates. Not that she was bitter, or anything.

...that's a lie. She was indeed quite bitter.

As she walked in the doors, she spotted her friends Nancy and Barb standing by the lockers, whispering about something—or someone.

Alice became friends with Nancy because Mike and Dustin were friends. They moved to Hawkins when he was in fourth grade and Alice was in seventh, and by middle school, most people already had cliques. Nancy was nice enough to invite Alice over once when Dustin was playing Dorks and Dweebs with his friends, and it turns out they had a lot in common. Through Nancy, Alice met Barb.

Alice also had friends in the drama club, but sometimes she needed a break from them. One could take random outbursts of monologues from Shakespeare plays only so much before it was too much.

"...We just made out a couple times," Nancy said to Barb, cheeks turning red.

"Who are we talking about?" Alice said loudly, walking up to them. "Steve Harrington?"

"Keep your voice down," Nancy hissed. "But, yes."

"'We just made out a couple times,'" Barb said in a mocking tone. "Nance, seriously, you're gonna be so cool now, it's ridiculous."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes!" Alice said. "You'll be as cool as Tommy Lancaster. Did you guys hear he won the state fair pie eating contest? 50 pies in fifteen minutes! There's no way that's healthy."

Barb wrinkled her nose.

"Ew. That's disgusting."

"I know, right? But kind of cool, though."

"Anyway," Barb said, shaking her head, "you better still hang out with us, that's all I'm saying. If you become friends with Tommy H. or Carol—"

"Oh, that's gross!" Nancy said with a scoff. "Okay, I'm telling you, it was a one-time..."

Alice coughed, "Liar!"

"...two-time thing."

Nancy opened her locker. A note fluttered to the ground.

Nancy picked it up and opened it.

In a messy scrawl, it read, "Meet me in bathroom. -Steve."

"A love note!" Alice teased. "What's more romantic than a public-school bathroom?"

"You were saying?" Barb added, smirking.

Nancy ran off to her knight in shining hair gel, and Alice opened her own locker to get her books.

"What's this?" Barb said, eyeing a sheet of paper that had fallen out of her locker. "Don't tell me you've got a not-so-secret admirer too."

"Oh! That's nothing—"

Alice went to grab the paper, but Barb was already reading it.

"'Searching for birth parents. I was born on February 14th, 1968 at St. Patrick Hospital in Indianapolis...'" Barb looked up from the note, brow furrowed. "Al, what is this?"