TOTALLY NOT BATSHIT CRAZY
June 30th, 1985
⏰ 9:15 pm, 📍Hawkins, Indiana
༺♥༻ Stephanie and Max are pedaling their way through the blinding rain. Their mere bike light isn't helping to cut it's way through the water.
A bolt of lightning crashes down from the sky as Stephanie turns the corner into the driveway of a house.
Max stops her bike in front of Stephanie. "Is this it?"
Eleven led the way solely based off of the door she saw. Pretty cool.
El nods her head and they walk up the pathway to the door, which El unlocks with her powers.
Max gingerly walks through the door, removing her hood as she looks around the house.
Stephanie follows, trying to wipe the rain off of her arms with her already wet hand, obviously getting nowhere.
Max stops in front of a portrait with a perfectly posed family in it. "This is her house."
"What?" Stephanie walks to Max, finishing getting the water out of her clothes, only to go back into the rain in a few minutes.
"Heather's house," Max repeats.
Hearing this information, Stephanie walks through the doorway, towards the music playing in a different room.
Stephanie finds herself standing in the dining room during an innocent family dinner.
There were two older people, whom Stephanie assumed were Heather's parents on the two ends of the table while non other than Billy Hargrove in the middle of the pair.
Billy stands up. "Max."
Stephanie looks behind her to notice that Max and El followed her into the dining room.
"I—we didn't mean to barge in," Stephanie starts, feeling the awkwardness of the whole situation.
"...We tried to knock," Max reasons, "but..."
"Maybe you didn't hear us over the storm." Stephanie shivers from the sudden change in temperature.
"I'm sorry," the man seated at the right of the table—Heather's father—asks. "who is this dripping all over my living room right now?"
Billy laughs the most fakest, creepiest laugh Stephanie has ever heard. "I'm sorry." He gestures to each parent. "Janet, Tom, this...is my sister Maxine." Billy gets up from the table, putting on an act. "What on earth are you doing here?" He stands in front of Max, probably trying to be intimidating. "Is something wrong?"
"We just wanted to make sure everything was okay." Max avoids eye contact with Billy, and quite frankly so does Stephanie. He's scary, but right now, he seems calm. Which is somehow more worse.
Billy's smile drops. "Okay? Why wouldn't it be okay?"
"Where is she?" El gets straight to the point.
Billy turns his gaze from Max to El, giving Stephanie a stare before asking through his teeth, "I'm sorry. Where is who?"
Stephanie jumps at the voice coming from around the corner. "Well, they're a little burnt, I'm sorry—"
Heather.
"Heather!" Billy gestures towards the girl. "This is my sister, Maxine." Billy again fixes his gaze on El. "And, I'm sorry, I did not quite catch your name."
El turns her head away from Heather, and without a doubt in her voice says, "El."
"El." Billy points his finger at Eleven. "Now, what is it you were saying, El? You were looking for somebody?"
El looks between Heather and Billy. "I—I saw..."
Stephanie's eyes go wide in realization of what El is about to say. "Your manager! At the pool." Stephanie tries to save the conversation. "He said you guys didn't come in to work today, so we got worried."
"Heather wasn't feeling so hot today, so we thought we'd take the day off to nurse her back to health." Billy doesn't break his creepy stare on the girls. "But you're feeling just fine right now, aren't you, Heather?"
"I'm feeling so much better." Heather holds the tray of cookies out to the girls. "Do you girls want a cookie? They're fresh out of the oven."
Stephanie steps in front of the group. "Thanks, but I think we really should be heading home...you know with the...weather and all."
"Come on." Billy grabs Max by the arm. "I'll walk you girls out."
The three are already making a beeline towards the door, trying to get out as fast as possible.
Stephanie gets to the door first and opens it for Max and El, staring Billy in the eyes, trying to be intimidating.
Once Max and El are out of the door and grabbing their bikes, Stephanie doesn't notice since she was keeping her stare on Billy until he grabs her by the wrist. Hard.
"You stay away from Maxine, you hear me?" Billy tightens his grip on Stephanie's wrist. "I don't want people like you around her." His voice seemed almost deeper, if that's even possible. Like there was another voice on top of his own.
What?
On the verge of tears, Stephanie basically runs out of the door once Billy let's go of her.
She grabs her bike and pedals off to catch up to Max and El.
————
༺♥༻ "Which one?" Max holds up two comics, one Wonder Woman and the other, Green Lantern.
Stephanie is sitting on the end of Max's bed with a throw blanket while El gets under the covers with Max.
El doesn't answer, and dismissively looks away. Max and Stephanie knew what was bothering her so Max tries to reassure her for what seems like the tenth time tonight. "Hey, there's nothing to worry about anymore, okay?"
El sighs, trying to put her thoughts into words. "It doesn't make sense."
Max's face drops in confusion. "What doesn't make sense?"
"Heather." El stares out the window. "The blood. The ice."
"Heather had a fever, so she took a cold bath, but she's better now," Max reasons, readjusting herself on the bed. "That has to be it. I don't know where that blood came from, but...we saw her. We all saw her. She's totally fine."
El nods her head, thinking for a moment. "What about Billy?"
"What about him?"
"What's about him is that he was acting batshit crazy." Stephanie mumbles, picking at her nails.
Max turns to Stephanie, confused. "What? What do you mean?"
Stephanie realizes that she said that out loud and that Max didn't know about her and Billy's...altercation. "Oh! Oh, yeah nothing. I meant that he's crazy all the time. Y'know?"
"Steph." Max puts her hand on Stephanie's knee. "What happened?"
"Nothing. Nothing it's fine. It doesn't matter anymore," Stephanie stutters due to the hand on her knee.
"Okay." Max slowly retreats back to her previous spot on her bed.
"Who...is that?" El asks, pointing to wonder woman on one of Max's comics.
"See, this is why you can't just hang out with Mike all the time." Max chuckles, picking up the book. "This is Wonder Woman. AKA Princess Diana," Max reads, holding out the comic for El and Stephanie to see.
"She's from Paradise Island, which is, like, this hidden island where there are only women Amazon warriors," Stephanie continues, remembering what Max told her a few months ago.
After almost hours of talking about Wonder Woman, laughing, and gossiping, the girls finally decided to call it a night and try to sleep.
Stephanie's on the right of the bed, Max beside her in the middle, and El all the way to the left.
Each girl did not have enough room, but none of them decided to say anything, even though they all knew there was not enough room.
In the middle of the night, Stephanie wakes up to realize that she was actively falling off the bed and onto the floor.
Once she hit the ground, she decided that the floor was pretty comfortable, so she decided to stay there the rest of the night.
༺♥༻
not me posting earlier than a week
look at me go
anywayssss
THANK YOU SO MUCH DOR 2k VIEWS!!!!! I HONESTLY CANT BELIEVE ANOTHER THOUSAND IN JUST ABOUT TWO WEEKS
ps. stephanie is my icon and i love her
5-5-23