Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
steve's advice
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
Today was cloudy, but that didn't keep Alina from sweating. She walked along the old train tracks beside Dustin, sprinkling pinkish meat onto the ground, her head bent slightly as she thought about what she would say when she met up with Lucas again. Perhaps Keith had been wrong. Perhaps it had been a misunderstanding. But Alina remembered all of the other things Lucas had done for Max, and clenched her fists, hurling another piece of meat onto the ground with renewed anger. Dustin startled at that, turning to her and raising an eyebrow, and it was like they were back in science class, using their silent communication.
Alina turned her head away. She really didn't want to talk about her problems with Lucas right now. There were more important things going on. Like where Will, Joyce, and Mike had gone. Alina assumed they'd gone to find Hopper—Will had seen it in his now-memories, after all—but she had no idea if they'd actually found him or not. She had no idea if he was still alive.
The bucket nearly fell out of her hands as she thought about that. Please, please, let Hopper be alive, she prayed. Please let them have found him.
Alina sprinkled more meat onto the ground, her palms sweaty under the thick rubber gloves. She'd never expected to spend her weekend with Dustin and Steve, littering beef across the forest ground, but sometimes life just surprised you. It seemed to be doing that a lot, actually.
It had been quiet for a while now, but Steve finally seemed fed up by the silence. "All right," he said, "let me get this straight. You kept something you knew was probably dangerous in order to impress a girl who... who you just met?"
Oh, yeah. It hadn't even been a surprise to Alina when Dustin revealed that he'd kept Dart to impress Max. She'd known he'd had the hots for her, too, and honestly? She was rooting for him. Even if what he'd done was incredibly stupid and that keeping Dart didn't even impress her, anyway.
But Dustin had told her once that he always felt like the guy who wouldn't get the girl. Because he was a nerd and he had Cleidocranial Dysplasia and always wore that hat. Alina told him he'd just have to wait. That one day someone would show up and they would like him just the way he was. There was no point in changing himself.
