CHAPTER TWO
II. the dig dug culprit
[ season 2, episode 1 ]
Lucia Delgado was friendless. Not a single friend in sight.
Honestly, if you were to ask, Lucia would tell you she preferred it that way. She ghosted through the hallways of Hawkins Middle School every day like an invisible cluster of dust, content with the revelation that absolutely nobody would go out of their way to strike up a conversation. Or even so much as look in her direction.
Most of the time, it was peaceful. But sometimes ── more than Lucia would be happy to admit ── her lack of friendships beyond the imaginary ones she had been carrying around since childhood could make her feel extraordinarily lonely. After school, she would sit up in her box-room, sketching meaningless things that she plucked from the darkest crevices of her mind, all while gazing out of the window at the chortling children whizzing down the ramshackle street on bikes and scooters.
Lucia envied it.
Her problem was, people found her to be intimidating.
When middle school first began, Lucia became a prime target for bullies ── what, with her braces and eccentric choice of clothing. A girl by the name of Rachel Sherlot thrived on teasing Lucia to the point she thundered out of classes, head cradled in her hands, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks. Rachel poked fun at absolutely everything the Delgado didn't have; money issues within the family was to blame.
Eventually, the cruel behaviour of her classmates became too much for Lucia to deal with.
She can still remember the encounter clear as day ── up in Mrs Zands class, English Literature, second floor. Rachel Sherlot had been assigned the seat beside Lucia, making matters revolving around the constant torment all the more insufferable. Rachel had been scribbling down demeaning notes about her table-partner, proceeding to fold the paper into small planes that she threw across the room toward her best friend, Helena Brown.
Of course, Lucia had been intrigued by the notes, having known the likelihood they were about her was jolted up the highest possibility. She happened to look down at the exact moment Rachel placed down her pencil, hands inching toward the note to fold it into a paper-plane. For a second, the brunette had a direct birds-eye view of the scribbled words, and her stomach sunk when she saw what it said.
Poor people smell bad!
The next moment was a blur.
Anger bled through her supposedly stone-cold composure. It was as if the tip of a fountain pen had been stabbed into a blank piece of cartridge, where the ink seeped and sputtered ── flooding into her bloodstream like the scorching venom of a vicious snake.
Without hesitation, Lucia had grabbed Rachel's notorious blonde ponytail and used it as leverage to yank the pompous bully to the ground. Her chair toppled over, gathering the rapt attention of the entire class, and she collapsed to the floor in a heap of twisted limbs.
On her way down, however, Rachel's face smashed against the corner of the table. Alongside the river of gushing blood, there had been an audible crunch of the blonde's nose breaking, which Lucia could still hear echoing within her mind whenever she recalled the vengeful act that wound up having her suspended for two weeks.
After that, nobody dared approach the violent Delgado.
She became a ghost in the crowd. Another daunting face to avoid.
Nothing new.
She had never had any friends, so what was she missing, really?
On Halloween morning, Lucia biked to school because her mother had picked up an extra shift at the hospital, meaning she was unavailable for drop off. The roads were busy, so she was forced onto the sidewalk ── which was a precarious route with the magnitude of parents and children walking their kids to school, and blocking the narrow path. Most of the waddling kindergarten students were dressed in spooky costumes, ranging from witches to supernatural beings, and the sight of their gleeful expressions and rattling candy buckets caused a delicate smile to inch over Lucia's lips.
Once she made it to school, Lucia clumsily steered her bike into the silver rack and sorted through a handful of discarded gum wrappers, searching for an unopened piece. Gum was a necessity ── she couldn't go a day without it. She was lucky today, because there was one piece at the very pit of her leather jacket.
She shoved it into her mouth and chewed rather viciously.
That was when she heard a nearby discussion, occurring in a plethora of hushed voices. And one name rang a bell.
"There's no way that's Mad Max."
Her ears instantly prickled with curiosity.
Mad Max . . . She had definitely heard the nickname before. Lucia racked her brain, poking her tongue against the side of her cheek, trying to recollect the activities she had pursued in the days leading up to that moment. Most of the latter consisted of sitting in her room, eating stale chips, neglecting to socialise with her family.
Tuesday. She went to the arcade on Tuesday! The pieces clicked together.
Mad Max ── it had been the name at the top of the leaderboard on her favourite game, Dig Dug. She had always been shoved into the second rank beneath an infuriatingly amazing player, Dustin Henderson, but the newest rival had pushed her down to third place.
Unfortunately, that made her job of reaching the top of the podium even more difficult. Not only that, but the lack of accomplishment would tarnish her anonymous name within the arcade community.
Mad Max.
"Girls don't play video games." mumbled a second voice.
"And even if they did, you can't get 750,000 points on Dig Dug!" cried a third.
Searching for the source of conversation, Lucia peered around the closest wall. From her position, she saw four boys gathered around the chainlink that looked out into the open recreational courtyard.
Lucia's eyes drifted from the group to a redheaded girl skateboarding on the yard.
"But her name is Max."
The boy with a nasally voice and cropped raven hair shrugged nonchalantly, "So what?"
"So," retorted the fourth member of the tittering collective. "how many Maxes do you know?"
"I don't know."
"Zero!" member number four reminded sharply, curling his fingers around the chainlink. "That's how many."
Member two ── wearing a baseball hat that sat lopsidedly atop his auburn ringlets ── pointed out the obvious, "She shoes up at school the day after someone with her same name breaks our top score. I mean, are you kidding me?"
Lucia carefully stumbled away from the wall. She slowly stepped up behind the quartet, hands clasped behind her back, keeping low. They had not heard nor noticed her steady approach, proving her attempts at remaining undetected went swimmingly.
However, once she opened her mouth to speak, she was no longer a transparent entity blending in with the background.
Lucia raised her arms thriller-style and bellowed the word, "BOO!"
"AHH!"
All four boys whirled around, stricken and rendered immobile by both fear and shock. The Delgado recognised their perplexed faces immediately ── especially her rival in the baseball cap ── despite bleary eyes resulting from her deep-routed laughter.
Will Byers was clutching his chest, taking a wary step backward.
Lucas Sinclair had screamed so shrilly at the unprecedented jump-scare to the point he sounded like a terrified little girl.
Mike Wheeler was scrambling backwards, but upon realising it was only that supposedly violently unstable girl from their classes, he came to a standstill.
Dustin Henderson had raised his fists without any logistical thinking, prepared to battle against whatever inter-dimensional being had been thrust their way this time.
Lucia pointed at them, features contorted into a highly amused expression, "Wow, you should have seen your faces! That was hilarious!"
Lucas exchanged an incredulous look with Dustin, who in return quirked a single eyebrow, appearing too stunned to speak.
Awkwardly, Mike cleared his throat, voice trembling slightly as he inquired on behalf of everyone, "Can we help you or . . ."
"Me?"
They all nodded simultaneously.
Lucia leaned against the mesh fencing, "I believe I overheard something very interesting."
She almost laughed aloud at the identical terrified expressions that liberated their faces from the shock of her previous actions. They all seemed to gaze at one another, searching for answers, but found none. Apparently, the bizarro situation involving a new Dig Dug rival was not something they were desperate to share oh-so-soon.
Lucia rolled her eyes, elaborating with the words, "Mad Max."
"You're Mad Max?" Mike implored sceptically.
"No."
Their growing smiles faded.
"Then . . ." Lucas began, swallowing thickly. He shared a brief look with Dustin, who seemed to urge him onward with a sharp nod. "how do you know who Mad Max is?"
She crossed her arms, leaning back in the typical cool-kid manner, even though she was certainly not perceived as a cool kid, and never would be. "You're not the only people who play games at the arcade, dweebs."
If disbelief was audible, it would be screaming.
Of course, the boys' shock did not come as a surprise to Lucia. Girls were girls ── they braided hair, painted their nails, gossiped about meaningless crap over the telephone, screamed in the face of dirt and germs and gory crap. Playing games in an arcade, brutally composed games, was seemingly out of the picture for the female generation. Perhaps that was why they were so desperate to crack the case of new player, Mad Max.
Because she was a girl.
"Wait!" Will exclaimed suddenly, holding up his left hand up to gesticulate the importance of listening to his bold declaration, "If you play Dig Dug, and we've never seen you at the arcade, does that mean you're GiftedGamer?"
Lucia splayed her hands out either side of her body, smirking triumphantly, "The one and only."
Dustin huffed a genuine laugh, "Seriously?"
"Mhm."
All four boys looked at each other, wearing wry grins, eyes wide with bewilderment. In all honesty, this was probably the strangest conversation Lucia had ever had ── with the one group of people she tended to ignore on her way through the school hallways, and all of Hawkins. Only when Will Byers went missing did she recognise them to be individuals. Their group was so tightly knit that they seemed to just drift by everyone undetected, conjoined or something.
And when Will came back, the attention unfortunately zoned in on them. They were submerged beneath a spotlight, bathed in the mellow glow of their peers.
In all fairness, missing cases never typically concluded with the vanished person returning from the 'dead.'
They just . . . didn't come back.
Veronica Hayes, for example, never returned. She was abducted years ago, and the case remained as notorious as ever in the bleak town of Hawkins ── uncracked, unsolved, unbelievable. Mothers and fathers used Veronica's story to teach their children lessons about staying away from strangers.
It weirdly worked, because no kid ever went missing again. Up until Will Byers.
"Uh, guys."
The unassertive voice of Lucas Sinclair invaded Lucia's spiralling thoughts. She unfolded her arms, shifting meticulously on her feet, following Lucas's outstretched finger toward the small segment of school building. On the courtyard, chatting students were beginning to begrudgingly disperse, and the redhead who had been gliding on a skateboard ( the girl that the boys presumed to be their Dig Dug culprit ) was shoving aside the door to make her way into the school.
Out of sight.
However, before she slipped inside of the building, the girl reached over the railing and dropped a ball of paper into the trashcan below.
Lucia tilted her head to the side in contemplation, "So, that's Mad Max?"
"Yeah." the boys answered in unison.
She had barely opened her mouth to speak when the clan of nerds dashed over toward the trashcan. Lucia watched them congregate around the bin for a moment, brows furrowed in confusion ── until she saw they were reaching into the rubbish to pull out the girl's discarded ball of paper.
Lucia rolled her eyes and pushed herself toward the boys.
"Got ourselves a clue?" she inquired.
Lucas leaned against the bin, smiling inconspicuously at a group of girls meandering past. They all shared a freakish look and giggled amongst themselves, right before Dustin pried the paper from the trash and punched his fist into the air victoriously.
Henderson unravelled the crumpled sheet, the ghost of a smile on his lips. Everyone gathered around him, heads bowed low.
Lucia read aloud, "Stop spying on me creeps!"
She glanced up at Dustin. The boy's features twisted into an expression of utmost disappointment, and he crumpled the paper back up again and tossed it into the bin, "Well, shit."
"Great," Lucia exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "Now I look like a stalker."
Simultaneously, the boys turned to look at her. They all wore the exact same expression ── confusion mashed with disbelief. Mike's, on the other hand, was more shrouded by the annoyance he had kept internalised since she first started speaking. He wouldn't dare speak the truth in his mind, though. Not if he wanted to end up like Rachel Sherlot.
If only people knew the truth.
"William Byers." interjected a low and authoritative voice.
They all quickly whirled around to see their principal approaching. Lucia was unsure why he wanted to see Will Byers of all people ── he rarely ever got into trouble, and always completed his homework on time ── but she supposed it was absolutely none of her business, after all.
She wasn't his friend.
The principal lowered his voice with the following statement, "Your mother is here."
The group seemed to understand the principal's hollow-spoken news immediately, because they recoiled from the interaction and watched Will hesitantly follow the man toward the main entrance of the school.
Lucia sniffed awkwardly, keeping her eyes trained on Will's receding figure.
"Where's zombie boy off to?"
An older kid was nearing the small collective with his clan of vile sycophants in tow. Like a rabid dog, the group leader smirked maliciously ── lips peeling back to reveal a set of crooked teeth.
"Running off to join the dead?" he mocked.
Mike's gaze danced across the floor, and he dared not raise it any higher to meet the bully's eyes as he spoke, "Leave us alone."
"Or what?" snarled the boy. He pushed Mike backward, and fortunately enough, Lucia happened to be there as support, using one hand to keep the middle-schooler upright. "You gonna make me, freak?"
Mike was exhausted. The constant bullying, and the older kids who enjoyed making their lives hell ── even after everything they went through last year ── seemed to sap every ounce of energy from his body.
Too much. It was becoming too much.
They just wanted to be normal.
"You gonna cry?" said the bully. He pouted his bottom lip out over the top, contorting his features into a 'sorrow' grimace. Dustin and Lucas stumbled backward, trying not to make eye contact with the gang of six-men strong crowding around them.
Then, the ring leader shoved Mike again.
Lucia liked to imagine her anger as a rubber band. It pulled and stretched constantly, seemingly invincible to the power of nature. But one day, it was bound to snap ── and the shockwave of such an atrocity was determined to rattle across a three-mile radius.
She could feel the anger twisting in the pit of her stomach, bending in every direction exactly like a rubber band.
When the bully violently shoved Mike back again, causing him to tumble over and fall into the side of the trashcan, that band stretched too far.
It snapped.
She swerved in front of Dustin ( who was the unfortunate second target of the day ) and pummelled her hands against the vulgar boy's collarbones. With one forceful push, he stumbled back.
He recognised her immediately.
The entire clan did.
Lucia Delgado, sworn enemy of Rachel Sherlot, specialising in breaking noses and tugging ponytails.
The bully scrambled to keep his intimidating composure intact, brushing himself off as if nothing had ever happened. Lucia clenched her jaw and watched him with narrowed eyes ── standing in front of the vulnerable boys like a shield.
"You'll regret that, Delgado." he fumed, pointing at her with vicious intent, but making no move to come any closer.
She quirked a brow, "I don't think I will."
The group didn't waste a second in hobbling away from the altercation. A grin split over Lucia's lips as she watched them leave, knowing she had the upper hand, and that she had succeeded in standing up against the disgusting species that were bullies ── for the second time.
Dustin broke the silence with a prolonged breath of relief, perching his hands on his hips.
Mike and Lucas blinked several times, gaze never leaving their guardian angel shipped down from above, Lucia.
"Okay," Dustin began, regaining the breath he didn't know he had been holding throughout that altercation. "that was literally the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed in my life."
"I second that." said Lucas.
Dustin stepped forward, standing only inches away from Lucia. She was still reeling from her honourable acts of defence, and barely even noticed when the Henderson plunged an outstretched hand through the air between them.
"So," Dustin murmured, waiting for Lucia to accept his handshake. "what do you say about becoming the next Terminator?"
An invite.
This was . . . an invite.
"By Terminator," Lucia hummed, uncrossing her arms. She forced her expression into neutrality, just so Dustin wouldn't see the excitement bleeding into her features. "do you mean, like, a bodyguard?"
A nod.
Lucia shrugged, unable to keep the incessant smile from inching across her lips, "Fine. I'll be the next Terminator."
With that, she clasped her hand around Dustin's and shook them together rather vigorously.
If only Lucia had known the haunting consequences that would come with accepting that handshake.