SEVEN WEEKS LATER
( Tuesday, January 8th 1985 )
JULIE was in a white tee today, tucked into some wasted jeans and slimly peeking out underneath her grey zip-up hoodie sizes too big and rolled up at the sleeves. Her brown hair was held out of her face with a green bandana she had triangle-tied around her head. It was simple, just like any day was after the holidays.
Christmas had passed. Which meant no more string decorations in the hallway and no more glittering tree towering in the corner of the cafeteria.
Just the same old loose conversation with Tonya Grubb, captain of the soccer team and her closest friend, as they got their tray of food in line and sat at their usual table with the rest of their group—just a mix of other seniors from the team and a few secondhand friends from other classes. Their everyday crowd.
"Once I'm gone, who's captain is not my problem. I'll have varsity and guys that don't think with what dangles between their legs." Tonya took a fruit-bag.
"I know, but I really have a good feeling about Robin." Julie took a packet of crackers.
"Then take it up with coach," Tonya smirked snidely as they left the lunch queue.
"That's impossible."
"Exactly. I don't get what you see in her anyway." Then suddenly, it was like Julie was hearing Tonya's voice from the end of a tunnel. "Sure, she can kick a ball all right, but the motormouth doesn't strike me as a strong leadership quality. Sue me."
Steve was sitting alone with no more black eye and his focus centred on his ex-girlfriend sitting and laughing closely with Jonathan Byers.
There was such a vulnerability in the way his eyes glistened, and echoes of that day in the flower shop flickered in Julie's mind—his anxious desperation, his drivel uttered every other sentence. It didn't take seeing him look entirely hopeless to tell her how much he cared about Nancy, but it helped her realise how awful he must have been feeling.
Most people get to hide from their heartbreaks. He was constantly reminded of his.
"Wait. I'll join you in a minute."
Tonya stopped, too, befuddlement puzzling her face. "Okay..." But she didn't question anything, just continued on her way and filled her empty seat, easily falling into conversation.
All the while, Julie wandered to a plastic chair across from Steve who'd now been jadedly staring at the green apple he twisted back and forth by its stem.
"This seat taken?"
He looked up, a wideness to his eyes. He only shook his head.
She smiled genially and sat down.
"What's happening?"
"I'm sitting."
"I noticed." He trained his eye on her, sceptical. "Why?"
"So I can ask you if you know Mark Lewinsky," she leaned forward with her arms crossed on the table.
His nose wrinkled. "Course I do, he's a total meathead. What about him?"
"I've had the nastiest crush on him since third grade."
"If you're asking me to hook you up, I don't want to burst your bubble, but trust me when I say I'm doing you a favour—"
"No, no. It's old news. Kinda. Just let me finish."
"I would but I don't get what's happening."
"If you'd stop talking already you might find out, Jesus," she straightened her shoulders.
Steve rolled his eyes.
"As I was saying, he used to deliver the morning paper every Wednesday and I would get up an hour early just to watch him ride by on his stupid skateboard. It would make the rest of my week.
"And I would even write our initials on scraps of paper," she almost laughed. "I remember I did it on my pencil case once by accident and completely tweaked out. I had to literally beg my parents to let me get a new one because I was mortified by the idea of someone seeing it and finding out about how I felt."
From the way Steve's eyes were zeroed in on her, she could tell he was listening to every word.
"But come sophomore year, I was partnered up with him in AP chem and call me an asshole or a know-it-all, whatever you want, but the guy's as thick as a brick."
Steve's lips twitched with a slight smile.
"He always made me do all the work and being the lovesick puppy I was, I did it every time. I mixed the hydrochloric acid, I slipped him the answers to multiple choice questions on pop quizzes, everything under the sun.
"And I've had guys pay me the time of day and ask me out these past few years, but I never once entertained it, because I kept hoping and wishing that one of the things I did would be enough for him to finally look my way.
"But he never did."
Steve started to catch on.
She took a deep breath. "I guess what I'm trying to say is my whole thing has been wanting to go to college in California. I applied to Stanford and a few community colleges for good measure and if the world is on my side and I do get in and get to study biomedical science like I've basically wanted my entire life, there's a good chance that there's a guy who is willing to give me the answers to a couple multiple choice questions for a change."
She let her rambling hang in the air for a minute, trying to gage what was going through Steve's head as his eyes narrowed on her slightly.
"Please tell me you understand what I'm saying and I didn't just spill my entire pathetic love life out to you on a platter for no good reason," she laughed embarrassedly.
"You didn't," Steve weakly smiles, noticing Julie's shoulders fall with relief. "And for the record, if Mark Lewinsky wasn't a dumbass before, he is hopeless now."
Julie couldn't hold back a smile of her own. "I think that might just be the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Harrington."
"Well I guess that makes us sort of even."
The look in his eyes and his crooked smile told her they were more than even.
Then he held out his hand across the table. "Truce?"
"Sure, okay." Her voice had never sounded frailer and she extended her hand, meeting him halfway.
After school, Julie took to her usual place in the locker room for soccer practice. Her friends had already been seated on the bench across the open row or stood by it, dressed in their general grey and green-lettered gym clothes.
"You'll join us in a minute, huh?" Tonya's smug smile shone broadly as she bent down from where she sat tying her laces, her blonde curls in a ponytail on her back.
Julie barely glimpsed her way, already not bothered to deal with whatever she had to say. "What?"
"Lunch in the cafeteria."
Julie rolled her eyes, her face barely hidden in her locker as she took her school gym hoodie out.
"You and Steve Harrington."
"Yeah, what was that about?" Beth Wildfire, the team's goalie, input from where she was standing feet away with her hands on her hips.
"Nothing." Julie unzipped the grey hoodie she was still wearing. "He just works at my mom's flower shop on the weekends. She wanted me to forward a message."
"And that took up all of your lunch time?" Tonya asked doubtingly.
"As of a matter of fact, yes."
"You're so full of shit." Tonya sit slightly up and rested her wrists on her knees that had been bare from the required green Hawkins High shorts she was wearing. "I didn't even know he was your type."
"Get out. He's everyone's type," Pam interjects, turning onto the row from the aisle, already dressed in her grey Hawkins t-shirt and green shorts ensemble.
"It wouldn't matter," Julie pulled her Hawkins hoodie over her head. "I don't see him that way. We're just friends." She pushed up her sleeves and took out her green shorts next.
"Okay, so first he's just someone that works at your mom's flower shop on the weekends and now he's your friend?" Tonya reiterated, earning smiling digs from her friends that listened keenly and curiously.
"He can't be both?" Julie asked as she slipped off her sneakers. "That happens sometimes, T. If you had some friends of your own, you might've known that."
"Oh fuck you," Tonya grinned. "Well, he's totally free from the clutches of Nancy Wheeler. I say you should go for it."
"And if you don't, I will," says Beth.
Laughter erupted from everyone but Julie.
Instead she smiled and said, "Please, don't let me stand in your way."