BILLY HARGROVE sat in the driver's seat of his blue Camaro outside Hawkins Middle. Revving his souped-up engine, Billy looked the epitome of a bad boy, equipped with a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips and a wrathful scowl resting upon his face. He fired up the engine again, a non-verbal warning to his step-sister, Max Mayfield, indicating that should she not hurry along, he'd be leaving her behind.
Smack! The sound of a hand colliding with the roof of his vehicle jarred Billy out of his smolder.
Ana would happily admit that the small leap of fright the boy exhibited at her impromptu entrance, brought a smirk to her face. She leaned into the open driver's window, with both hands braced on the doorframe, and greeted, "Hargrove."
Billy slowly withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and held it between the fingers of his right hand before a cocky grin slipped over his features. "Ms. T," he acknowledged, rolling his head along the headrest to glance up at her.
"It's Ms. Thompson," she corrected with narrowed eyes. They weren't familiar enough to be calling her anything less, not by a long shot.
"Right, Ms. Thompson. I apologize." Billy's voice betrayed that he wasn't sorry for the slip up, not in the slightest. No, Billy Hargrove thought he was inexplicably smooth and charming, and perhaps that overconfident swagger worked on naive teenagers, but Ana was decidedly neither of those things.
"Do you know where we are, Hargrove?" Her question caused his smile to faulted ever so slightly. Did she think he was high or stupid? Not that she'd really put either past him, not from what little she'd observed of the high school senior.
Trying to maintain his cocksure attitude, Billy answered, "we're at the school, ma'am." Ana physically bristled at the outdated title, one which was intentionally meant to age her. She squeezed her eyes shut in an effort to compose herself, while her grip on the doorframe tightened.
"Oh good, so it's not that you're too daft to understand," she drawled. The smirk was long gone for Billy's face by then.
"Wh-What?" He asked, unsure where the conversation was heading.
Ana leaned further into the space between them, her countenance devoid of any mirth. "I figured, you had to be too dull to understand where you were because that's the only possible explanation for you driving around this school zone like you're in the Indy 500."
Neither blinked as they stared each other down.
Billy broke first. He licked his lips and looked Ana up and down as that shit-eating grin returned to his face. "You gonna call the police chief on me?"
He probably posed the question as a challenge, but the bark of laughter it drew from Ana proved Billy's confidence was misplaced.
Ana took a step away from the Camero as she spotted Max making her way towards them in the distance. Looking back at Billy, Ana corrected him. "You're sorely mistaken if you think Chief Hopper is the scary one in our relationship. But, you're well aware that girls can handle business, right, Billy?" Her pointed glance back at Max wasn't lost on him, and Ana could almost see the image of Max wielding a baseball bat flash behind his eyes.
The redhead in question was almost to the car, but Ana wasn't finished with the teenage boy in front of just her yet. Stepping back up to his window, so that only the two of them could hear her words, she continued, "I don't know what has to happen to make a young man wake up every day hating the world, but taking your anger out on everyone else around you won't stop it."
With the sentiment imparted, and after taking several steps back, Ana greeted Max as the younger girl approached the vehicle and climbed inside, occupying the seat next to her step-brother.
"Y'all get home safe now," Ana offered before heading back in the direction of Hawkins Middle. Billy watched the school teacher's retreating form for a moment before throwing his long since extinguished cigarette butt out the window, onto the spot where Ana had previously been standing.
Ignoring Max's questioning glance, Billy pulled out of the parking spot and started the drive back to their home at a more reasonable speed than anyone had seen him take before.