( Saturday, February 16th 1985 )
REGARDLESS of the sport, game days at Hawkins High were always alive and exciting, and on the soccer field that day, it was no different.
The bleachers were filling quickly with students, family members and friends, a cacophony of chatter filling the atmosphere as the Hawkins girls soccer team huddled with Coach Martinez. She was giving a speech, an enthusiastic one filled with tactics to remember and mistakes they made in order to learn instead of repeat.
Sandwiched between Robin Buckley and Beth Wildfire, Julie listened intently to her coach on the other side of the circle. They were all in their green uniforms with yellowy-orange lettering and embellishments.
She was listening entirely, hanging on to every word like the next girl, but metres away across the field, Steve was filing up the bleachers and ushering Dustin and two other kids his age-a pale ginger girl and a dark-skinned brunet-down a row in the middle.
He found her gaze in the frenzy of the chaos so easily. He had already seen her, looked over four times prior to be exact. But a side smile grew on his face like it was the first time noticing her at all.
Her lips pressed down tightly into a smile of her own.
She counted down the seconds until the pep talk was over, putting her hands in the middle with everyone else and raising it into the air. Then she jogged over to Steve who had saved her the effort of coming all the way up the bleachers by meeting her halfway.
"You came." She craned her head to look up at him from a step below on the stairs.
"Well, your mom closed the shop for the day so I might have had some extra time on my hands."
"Who's the entourage?" Julie nodded her head in the direction of Dustin and his friends, laughing between each other about something.
"That's Max and Lucas."
Dustin glanced over, waving with a toothy grin when he realised Julie and Steve were already looking his way.
Julie laughed slightly, showing the boy her palm nevertheless.
"Dustin mentioned he was coming, Max heard girls and soccer in the same sentence and Lucas is seeing Max so where she goes he goes."
Julie's eyebrows pushed together at Steve. "How old are they?"
"I know, but in all fairness, they are good together." He sounded sincere.
"How do you know all these kids?"
"Babysitting," he frowns, just before his eyes catch something in its peripheral. "Check it out."
Julie traced his line of sight to her own mother accompanied by a lanky man with a moustache. He had pale skin, dark hair and he was tall like Earl said he was.
"So that's the infamous Scott, huh?"
"I think so..." Julie's eyebrows drew together as they scooted by seated people down a row further up on the other side of the aisle. Once they seated themselves in the two vacant seats down the middle, they fell into laughter between each other, clearly amidst a conversation of their own.
She settled her eyes on Steve again. "We're going for dinner at Benny's afterwards, win or lose-"
"You're not going to lose."
She ignored him. "You should come."
"I would, but I have to drive the little brats home," he nodded over at the three middle schoolers.
"Just meet us there."
Steve couldn't help but be taken aback by Julie's earnestness. But he liked it. "Okay."
She smiled. "Okay."
"Knock 'em dead."
Her nose wrinkled at Steve's faith in her, and headed back to her team now situated by the bench, beginning their warm-ups.
Stretching with her arm angled towards the ground over her head, Tonya teasingly asked, "And remind me why you're not dating again?"
"Shut up," Julie exhaled, and put her right foot on the bench, lunging.
"The guy looked at you like you're a puppy chasing it's tail," Pam interjects, sitting down next to Julie's soccer boot on the bench.
"We're not doing this again." She looked between their sceptical faces-her other teammates' too, Beth and Sara, who were both listening in alike. "Seriously. We have a game to win, remember?"
"Well, we've made it this far," says Tonya, straightening up.
"Next stop?" says Pam.
From where she'd been stretching with Tonya, Sara slowly and quietly chanted, "Na-tion-als... Na-tion-als..."
Tonya joined in too, then Beth who rounded the back of the bench to tap Julie's shoulder with each chanted syllable, then Pam and then in time, most of the rest of the team were joining them in a synchronised chorus.
"Na-tion-als! Na-tion-als! Na-tion-als!"
Steve couldn't see her face, but just from the way her shoulders were hunched forward and her friends were jumping and shouting around, he knew Julie was having the time of her life. He hadn't seen her like this before, just ecstatic and in her element around her friends that weren't him. But it was a sight to behold.
"All right, simmer down!" Coach Martinez settled them into unanimous laughter. "Save that energy for the field."
Then Steve noticed Julie looking over her shoulder at someone in the crowd, her wide smile slowly shrinking. He followed her eyes, suspecting to follow them to Eileen and Scott laughing or talking intimately in their own bubble.
But he wasn't remotely close.
She was staring at Mark Lewinsky and Bonnie McGregor making their way onto a lower row across the bleachers. It didn't take Mark very long to find her eyes.
She flushed under his scrutiny right away.
Then he nodded at her once without an ounce of subtly, not that Bonnie was paying attention.
But it made Julie smile all the same, holding it even as she looked away.
Everything inside Steve sank.