✵
"YOU'RE STARING," Jessica drily commented, barely glancing up from her book to acknowledge her blonde friend seated next to her. Ringo snapped out of her daze, the drone of the cafeteria filling her ears once again. She hadn't realised it, but she had been staring at the table Steve and Nancy were seated at, for God knows how long.
"I'm not," she lied dismissively, absently picking up a carrot from her packed lunch and crunching on it angrily. The texture of the vegetable making it perfect to bite harshly into, and hopefully release some of her frustration.
"Oh okay," Jessica settled her copy of Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar' down onto the table to look her friend in the eye. "So I suppose you were really eyeing up Nancy's apple and thinking 'damn, I want a bite of that', instead of Steve Harrington?"
"W-What?" Ringo sputtered in shock, her face reddening instantly as her head snapped up to look at Jessica. "It's not like that, honestly it's not!"
"What is it like then?" She pressed, a smirk playing with her lips. "Last I checked, we hated him. And now you're gazing off lovingly into the distance like he's the Sandy to your Danny."
"Well don't worry," she huffed, leaning back into her seat and crossing her arms. "I won't be sitting on the table singing about him or his greasy hair any time soon."
"Good," Jessica nodded, "I've heard you sing, it ain't pretty."
"Hey!" She protested.
"Why don't you tell me what's going on?" Ringo sighed at her words, mulling over her thoughts. Ultimately, Jessica and Nancy were her best friends. But seeing as the theme of what was on in her mind directly involved Nancy, perhaps it was best to tell the friend that was an outsider in this situation.
"Okay, so," she turned to Jessica, who giddied eagerly at the prospect of being told. "Steve and Nancy kinda split up after that whole cinema incident-"
"Good, power to her."
"Can I finish?" Ringo groaned, continuing when she nodded. "Anyways, they got back together afterward. And I just... can't figure out why? Like, they don't work. At all. Opposites attract and all that, but all they do is fight and their relationship is purely based off of lust and not actual love for each other."
"Do you realise how jealous you sound?" Jessica cocked an eyebrow at her.
"I'm not jealous, it's not like that. They're both close to me, I love them both and I want them to be happy. I can disapprove of their relationship without having to like Steve," Ringo disputed, but Jessica only smirked silently in response, like she knew something the blonde didn't.
"And she so obviously likes Jonathan. I'm her cousin, I want her to be happy!"
"Shut up," Jessica answered, which Ringo took as a reaction of shock.
"No, really! You should see the way she looks at him."
"No, shut up!" She hissed again, and the following scraping of a chair told Ringo that it was actually a warning. Surprised, she turned and let out a small sigh of relief upon seeing that Jonathan was joining her.
"Hey, um," he began, taking her flabbergasted expression as a negative thing. "Mind if I sit?"
"Of course not!" She beamed in encouragement, gesturing towards the chair and nodding a little too over-eagerly. Jonathan smiled slightly, placing his tray of food down and joining the girls.
"I've never seen you in the cafeteria before, Byers," Jessica said randomly, receiving a look from Ringo in return.
"Oh, I usually eat in my car."
His revelation almost broke her heart, but Ringo tried to keep her smile alive. It had been two weeks since the events at Halloween, and the group had only just gotten over their original trauma. Funnily enough, it had brought the four together in the most weird, but surprisingly effective combination.
"Well you can eat with us any time," Ringo told him, "the 'Feminazi' and the 'Slut', as the rest of the school so affectionally calls us."
Jonathan let out a small chuckle at his words, and she found that his growing confidence was a pleasant surprise. The old Jonathan would never have approached the girls in the first place, no matter how close they were.
"The Weirdo, the Feminazi and the Slut," Jonathan mused, "sounds like one hell of a TV show."
As they continued to eat and chatter on about their day, Ringo couldn't help but let her eyes drift back to that table. Even Steve and Nancy themselves seemed different around each other, barely speaking as Nancy read a book and Steve picked at his food. It was a far cry from how they acted weeks before, where Steve couldn't keep his hands off of her.
She tried to keep her focus fixed on her own group and their conversation, but that focus only allowed her to see that Jonathan was doing the exact same thing - pretending he wasn't looking when he was.
✵
Ringo had never felt as relaxed in her life. Laying sprawled out on her cot, a green skin mask on her face and the Rumours vinyl Steve had procured for her playing in the background.
A knock on the door brought her out of her stupor with a groan. Rolling her eyes beneath her closed eyelids, she sat up on the bed and took the cucumber slices from her eyes, slipping them into her mouth and eating them.
"Come in!" She called, her voice muffled slightly from the food inside her mouth. Hesitantly, the door opened, revealing, to her surprise, a nervous-looking Mike Wheeler on the other side.
"Mike..." she murmured, reaching over and switching the record player off completely, suddenly looking alert. "What's up?"
"Um, mom and dad took Holly to the park and Nancy is gone, so I was wondering are you making dinner, or..?" He asked, his voice low. His entire demeanour had become a similar sight for her the last few weeks, and she hated that her cousin had went from a happy-go-lucky innocent kid, to a boy who had seen such horrors and lost his new friend for it.
"Well... I can't cook, so we can go out for food if you want?" She offered, tilting her head politely. Mike nodded, turning to the door to head out. Ringo followed, grabbing her purse.
"You might wanna wash that off first," Mike called over his shoulder to her confusion, before she remembered the hardening green substance coating her pores. "I thought for a second the Demigorgan had come back to finish us off."
✵
"So, I guess Eleven never left that morning huh?" Ringo grimaced as she brought up the subject, knowing it was a tender one for Mike, but she had been avoiding it for too long.
"Yeah, sorry that I lied to you," he muttered, pushing the dollop of ketchup on the side of his plate around with a French fry.
"I'm not mad that you did, I just want to know.. why? I thought we were close, Mike," she murmured, finding herself mimicking him by awkwardly pushing her food around.
"We are! But you would have told someone about her, and you seen the kind of people she was hiding from with your own eyes."
"Yeah," she huffed, raising her eyebrows. "I'm sorry that you felt like you couldn't trust me."
Mike didn't respond, but did give her a small smile, which was enough for Ringo.
"By the way," she leaned in, dropping her fry and lowering her voice. "If you ever happen to find another government-experiment runaway, let me know. I won't tell anyone."
"I don't think I'll meet anyone like El again," he replied sadly, and Ringo got the sense that he wasn't just talking about someone with her abilities and background.
"It'll get easier, I promise." When she saw her words were of little comfort to him, she decided a distraction was in order. "Hey, hurry up and eat and I'll take you to the arcade before we go home."
His eyes lit up at this, knowing full well that his friends would already be there. They had invited him, but Mike wasn't feeling up to going, then.
With a newfound energy, he started to shovel the food into his mouth, causing her to laugh at his puffed out cheeks.
"I'm just going to the bathroom, okay?" She slipped out of their booth, making her way through the small diner towards the ladies room.
After doing her business, she looked into the mirror, fluffed her hair and adjusted her clothes. Ringo turned towards the door, preparing to leave but the sound of a quiet sob stopped her.
She followed the sound towards an occupied cubicle in the bathroom, it was clear the person was trying to be quiet, but she could still hear their muffled crying as she came closer.
"Hey," she spoke out awkwardly, rapping her knuckles gently against the door, "are you okay?"
"I'm fine," the feminine voice grunted back, thick with emotion, "just leave me alone."
"Look," she began, leaning against the frame beside the door. "I don't know what's going on, or who this is, but I'm not leaving until I know you're okay. So, we can either talk it out, hug this shit out, or make toilet paper Voodoo dolls and stab them with the dispensary tampons."
The person on the other side chuckled at this, quiet sniffles being the only sounds that followed until they reached forward and unlocked the latch on the door, opening it to reveal themselves. Ringo let out a quiet gasp when she saw that it was the very woman she had fought weeks before - Carol.
Carol didn't look at all surprised to see her, probably knowing full well that it was her on the other side by her voice. Pushing aside their history, Ringo stepped inside and shut the door after her, leaning back against it and looking Carol over. The redhead was seated on the closed toilet lid, her face as red as her hair and soaked with tears.
"Are you happy now? I'm sure this is exactly what you wanted, to see me all pathetic and crying in the bathroom of a fucking diner," her voice croaked out, her hands flying up to rub at her cheeks.
"Why would I want that?" Ringo slid down the door until she was sitting on the ground, wrapping her arms around her bent knees.
"Gee, I didn't exactly get the impression you liked me when you threw Coke all over me," she drawled sarcastically, reaching for a tissue.
"And I didn't exactly get the impression you liked me when you've been a bitch since the day we met," Ringo fired back. Carol fixed a glare on her, which eventually melted back into her broken expression. She felt out of place seeing the girl like this, of all the people in Hawkins, Ringo wouldn't have been more shocked to see anyone else crying in the bathroom.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't mean to be like that, I just... it's easier to take things out on others when it's always others taking things out on you."
"What do you mean?" Ringo asked, her voice noticeably softer.
"Tommy," Carol shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut at the mention of his name. "I've loved him since the third grade, and he knows that. But still, he'll kiss other girls in front of me to humiliate me."
"Maybe he's trying to get a reaction?"
"Or maybe he doesn't just care about me," she shrugged. In this situation, Nancy would have reassured her, told her that Tommy really did care and that she was just being silly. But that was Nancy, and Ringo would never be dishonest to make someone feel better.
"Listen, if he does things that hurts your feelings on purpose, then maybe he doesn't care about those feelings. And that's got nothing to do with you, he's the douchebag who led you on and encouraged those feelings," she explained.
"It's my own fault, I should have stayed away from him the second I saw him talking to Ashford after what he did to you," Carol revealed, much to Ringo's surprise.
"Why?" She dared to question.
"Because what Daniel did was wrong," Carol rolled her eyes. "Say what you want about the stuff I said about Nancy, but that was really messed up. You didn't deserve that."
Ringo looked down at her feet, the memory flooding back to her accompanied a wave of shame and sadness.
"Why are you being so nice now?" The blonde asked suspiciously. Carol chuckled falsely.
"Haven't you noticed? Tommy isn't around. I only act like that around him so he'll like me. But clearly that doesn't work, so maybe I need to start thinking about myself for once."
"That's not a half bad idea," Ringo smirked. "Sorry I threw Coke all over you."
"Well, I'm sorry that I called you a Steve Nicks wannabe who hangs off Steve's dick like a birthmark."
"You never called me that," Ringo replied, eyes widened.
"Oh," she grimaced apologetically, "I did."
Ringo couldn't help but laugh and shove her leg playfully. Perhaps the two had gotten each other wrong the entire time.
✵
"Oh, Ringo!" Karen called the second she and Mike walked back inside the house, hours later. "You're back!"
"Yeah, sorry for being late but we had to walk," Ringo cast a glance towards the living room, her breath hitching at the sight of Nancy and Steve there, cuddling into each other on the couch. The feeling stirred in her at the image of them was instead replaced with confusion as to why she felt affected at all.
Sensing someone staring, they looked up from the tv to meet her eyes, smiling and waving at her kindly.
"Hey, Ringo!" Steve greeted her enthusiastically, causing Nancy to stiffen slightly and her smile to turn sour.
"Hey, guys," she nodded her head once, turning around and swiftly walking away from them, shutting the living room door behind her. Steve's eyebrows furrowed at his friends strange behaviour, normally, she would have joined them. Or at least make a joke at their expense.
On the other side of the door, Ringo was leaning against it, staring off into the distance as she tried to push away the swell of emotion building in her.
"Your mother has been calling, Ringo," Karen rounded the corner and told her before Ringo could escape upstairs.
"Oh," she responded, not at all eager at the prospect. Sighing quietly, she leaned off of the door and went towards the kitchen to retrieve the phone. Her mother's number had seemingly been scrawled on a sticky note next to the telephone.
The receiver picked up after a few seconds of rings, just when Ringo was about to give in and hang up.
"Hello?" Her mother greeted, voice light. The very sound of it made her chest clench, how could she not have missed her mother?"
"Hey, mom."
✵
The shared bedroom had been deathly silent since Ringo and Nancy had settled into their beds respectively, where normally - they would have talked into the wee hours of the morning until they were tired.
But it was clear the atmosphere between the two cousins had changed, and Ringo couldn't for the life of her figure out why.
"Hey, Ringo?" Nancy's quiet voice was such a surprise to her that she almost jumped in her sheets, turning head towards the source although she couldn't see through the dark.
"Yeah?" She answered tentatively.
"If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?"
"Nancy, you know I never lie," she encouraged her, suddenly nervous by the upcoming question.
"Yeah," Nancy responded, the sounds of her shuffling around in bed following immediately thereafter. "Did something happen between you and Steve?"
"No."
"Do you... want something to happen?"
Silence.
"No."
"Okay, goodnight."
"Goodnight."
And just as simple as that, Ringo had lied to Nancy, something she'd never thought she'd have to do.
Ringo had an inner debate with herself about whether or not to tell Nancy that her mother was coming to take her back home to Florida, but ultimately, stayed quiet. To her further surprise, Nancy was the last person she wanted to talk to right now.