chapter 016,
love whisperer
one month later
IN SOME SICK WAY, JUSTICE HAD BEEN SERVED. Hawkins Lab had been shut down, effective immediately, once the military had actually gotten their shit together to come check out all of Hawkins' pleas. Abandoned, chained, and posted with WARNING signs... nobody would ever be going near the lab anymore, that was for sure.
Nancy and Jonathan's incendiary tape had served as an exposée that gained quick and surprising traction. It circulated news channels, magazines, national papers. The small town of Hawkins, Indiana that had once been a town of solitude was now facing a national spotlight, something none of its citizens had ever expected.
Lucy, for one, hated it.
She'd tried to ward off the reporters and journalists who'd swarmed Barb Holland's funeral, but they just kept coming. Lucy hadn't even known Barb too well, but when the high-ranking members of the "Department of Energy" had admitted their massive involvement in aiding and covering up the death of Barbara Holland, Lucy felt obligated to go pay her respects. Even with such a tragic death, the reporters kept coming. Lucy despised them.
One of the goddamn journalists had even tried to interview her after the funeral. "April Kline!" she'd introduced herself, in her buzzy reporter voice. From some national news channel Lucy couldn't bother to listen to. "I—and my viewers, of course—just wanted to hear the real-deal, unfiltered opinion from a usual Hawkins resident! Mind telling us your name, sweetheart?"
"Lucy Andrews. And you want my honest opinion?" Lucy asked, her voice rising in irritation. Steve clutched her arm, but she ignored him, glaring at the camera. "I'll give you my honest opinion, then. Hawkins was supposed to be peaceful. We needed time to grieve. To process what we've just been through. But did you give us that? No. You didn't. You swarmed in here like a hive of bees, badgering us with stupid questions that nobody gives a damn about. So in short, Ms. Kline, I say: Fuck you."
So.. yeah. Her little stunt on live television did not go unrecognized. Her father grounded her for an undetermined amount of time, and her mother was beyond angry, but no punishments could overshadow the relief she'd gotten when she realized she had been successful in scaring the rest of the reporters away; they had all packed up their things and left by the time Lucy was picking up Mike and Will for the Snow Ball.
Another side punishment of cursing on live television—and inherently cursing in front of her little, baby brother—Lucy had been forced to chaperone the middle school dance. She tried to argue that after what she and Leo had been through together, cursing on T.V. was the last thing she was worried about, but of course her dad wasn't having it. So Lucy found herself getting dressed up in her Sunday best and carpooling four kids to the middle school dance.
"I remember, when I was your age," she said to the kids in the back seat of her car, "the whole dance was all.. hippie-ish, flower power, peace signs."
Leo scrunched his eyebrows together. "Okay, Grandma, no need to get all prehistoric on us. Just drop us here and we'll meet you inside."
"I think the flower power thing's cool," Will offered, from the middle seat in the back.
"Of course you do," Lucas said with a half-teasing tone.
"Hey, shut up, Lucas," Leo said, turning around to whack him from the front seat. "I think it's cool, too."
Lucas scrunched up his face. "But you j—"
"Lucas, look," Mike said, "it's Max!"
Lucas sat up straight in his seat, snapping his head around in every direction. "Where? Where do you see her? Where is sh—?"
Mike burst into laughter, and Will and Leo followed suit. Even Lucy let a chuckle slip. Mike shook his head. "Lukey's in loooove!"
Lucy put the car into park, ignoring the mock-kissy noises coming from the back seat. She looked to Leo. "You ready?"
He shrugged. "Let's get this over with."
As Lucy paraded the four boys into the gym, a familiar BMW whipped into the parking lot and an exceptionally curly-haired boy was dumped out of it. Dustin stumbled over to his party and joined them as they moved to stand in the line for punch.
Lucy's gaze lingered on the BMW, her eyes catching Steve's though the dashboard. His headlights flickered, like his whole car was hesitating, before turning off altogether. He climbed out of the driver's seat and met Lucy in the balloon-arched doorway.
"Hey," he said, smiling down at her.
"Hi," she replied. "I thought you weren't staying?"
"Well, I wasn't going to," he explained. "But then I saw that my not-girlfriend actually dressed up for this stupid dance, and I thought she looked pretty dang good, so I decided to come tell her so."
"Not-girlfriend," Lucy repeated the title with a nod. "You know, Harrington, it's been a month since we unofficially got back together. I think we can drop the not's and just be boyfriend and girlfriend, no?"
Steve's brow furrowed like he was thinking hard about it. "I dunno, Luce; I'll have to ask my not-girlfriend and see what she thinks."
He spun around, and when he faced her again, his expression was serious. "Hey, listen. I've got this girl and she just offered to be my real girlfriend. What do you—?"
She whacked his chest. "Clichè, cheesy, gross, annoying," she said, emphasizing each word with a smack, though she was smiling. "Can't you just be normal for once in your life?"
Steve grinned down at her and pulled her closer to him by the shoulders, trailing his hands up and down her arms. "I can never be normal when I'm around you, Luce. I'm too crazy for you."
She tried not to smile, but it broke through eventually, a laugh breaking past her lips. "You are ridiculous, Steve Harrington."
"Only for you," he agreed. He raised an eyebrow and pulled her back closer to him. "Wanna skip together? I can drive us down to Lover's La—"
"No, Steve," she cut him off pointedly, poking his chest. "I have to chaperone."
He thought for a second. "Hm. Yeah. I can chaperone. It's basically babysitting, isn't it? And I do enough of that on my free time."
"Basically," she agreed. She offered a smile. "Maybe we should start a babysitting service."
"Only if the only kids we babysit are the ones I like," he said. "You know, The Kids. Max, Sinclair, Henderson, Wheeler—"
The speakers crackled alive, and Cindi Lauper's serenading voice of Time After Time began to echo across the tinny gym, layering a hazy blanket of tense eye contact between pre-tweens and their crushes. It wasn't long before Lucy caught Lucas and Max swaying to the music with their arms awkwardly placed on each other's shoulders and waist.
"Look." She nudged Steve and nodded to the pair. "Saw it coming from a mile away."
"Hey, check it out," Steve muttered, nodding to the far side of the gym. Lucy followed his gaze. El had arrived and looked just gorgeous in her pink dress. Her curls were draped back loosely, a few framers hanging around her face. She was dancing with Mike.
"Saw that one coming, too," Lucy said. "I'm basically a love whisperer."
Steve laughed lightly, shaking his head. "Yeah, okay, 'love whisperer.' You wanna dance?"
She looked up to him, the mirrorball's lights reflecting into her warm brown eyes as she gazed at Steve. He raised his eyebrows in an offering when she didn't reply immediately. She broke into a grin, rolling her eyes.
"Of course," she said, like it was obvious. She held out an arm. "C'mon, Harrington."
Steve looped his arm through hers. "Let's show these little punks how it's done."