Work Text:
October 27, 1985
The bell above the door dinged annoyingly loudly, and Jesus Christ if it wasn’t just too early on a Sunday for Steve to deal with over-eager kids trying to choose a movie at ungodly o’clock in the morning. Hell, technically they weren’t even open for another hour but somehow Keith in all his middle-management power had scheduled him to open up. Still, at least he was with Robin. Steve saw Robin look up at the door, annoyance evident on her face, and Steve braced himself for what would inevitably be a long lecture about remembering to lock the door until official opening time –
Steve watched Robin’s expression change to one of recognition and alarm, the well-practiced “we’re closed” dying on her parted lips. Steve finally turned around and realised what had caused it.
Max Mayfield was standing in the doorway, not looking at either of them. Her hair was down, messy, not even in a ponytail as she looked to one side. Steve opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, she started off towards the shelves housing a genre Steve thought Max avoided like the plague. She dived into the aisles that housed his personal favourite section, for which Robin had coined the term ‘dick flicks’. Steve watched through the aisles as Max picked up a copy of Fast Times, intently focusing on the back cover, frozen in place as she stared at Phoebe Cates’ headless figure, the only movement coming from Max being a slight tremor in her hands as the video shook.
Steve glanced over at Robin, who was looking back at him, concern clear in her eyes. She tilted her head pointedly towards Max, never taking her eyes from him.
Steve shook his head, taking advantage of his position between the two to mouth to Robin.
“No,” he breathed, before jabbing a thumb at Max as subtly as he could manage. “You go.”
Robin rolled her eyes so hard Steve was impressed she kept her balance.
“She knows you better,” she mouthed back.
“You’re a girl!”
“So?”
“So you’re better at this shit!”
Robin shot him a glare so withering Steve felt his insides shrivel up slightly. He let out a barely perceptible sigh before finally turning and stepping out from behind the counter. With every step, he felt more and more hesitant. Just as he was on the other side of the shelf behind Max, he turned back to look at Robin, starting to shake his head as he shrugged –
“GO!”
Never had a completely silent word felt so loud as she shooed at him from behind the counter. Steve swallowed, stepping around the end of the shelf and into the aisle where Max was studying the tape box.
“Uh…” Steve said, words failing him as he actually started to put a voice to them. “Hey… Max…”
No response. Steve couldn’t entirely blame her. He could practically feel Robin’s dramatic sigh from across the room.
“You… You know we don’t open for another hour on Sundays, right?” He tried for a laugh.
Again, no response. Steve watched Max, taking in the way her hands were shaking, the way her breath shook. Her head was turned slightly away from him, her long red hair hiding what little of her face Steve might have stood a chance of glimpsing.
“You know, if you like Phoebe Cates, Gremlins might be a little more up your street.”
Absolutely nothing.
“You know… more… your taste… bit more of a story…”
Zilch.
Fuck it. He’d tried. Robin was better at this sort of thing anyway.
“Well… if you need anything… let me know…”
He turned around slowly, heading back to the counter. He made it to the end of the aisle, bracing himself for Robin to silently castrate him for his appalling bullshit –
“Neil left last night,” came a tiny voice from behind him.
Steve felt ice drop down into his stomach. His eyes fell shut as his heart sank for Max.
“He got into a fight last night,” Max continued, her voice so quiet Steve could barely hear her. “With Mom. He… he wouldn’t stop yelling. At her. At… At me.”
Steve looked at her as she finally lifted her head. Steve could see her left cheek for the first time, and his eyes widened as he saw the bruise that blossomed there.
Words failed Steve. It felt a bit redundant to ask ‘are you okay’ when she looked like that. Her face was red and blotchy, her eyes bloodshot, and that bruise, printed on her face like a brand. Steve could barely take her eyes off it.
“Did-”
She nodded, ducking her head behind the curtain of hair before Steve could get the words out. Steve could only stare at her as she turned back to the copy of Fast Times still clutched in her hands. Steve felt completely out of his depth. He could maybe be relied upon for offering romantic advice, possibly mediating a dumb argument. Max’s stepdad smacking at her in an argument…
Nope. No way. He was not qualified for this shit.
“You should call the police-”
“There’s no point!” Max snarled, quietly but all the more venomous for it. “Weren’t you listening? He left!”
Steve swallowed, eyes wide as his stomach twisted. He hadn’t meant to make her more angry.
“Sorry,” he started –
“No,” she murmured, cutting him off. “No, I’m sorry, I… I know you’re only trying to help.”
The silence they lapsed into was a fraction more comfortable than Steve had felt the entire conversation. She was opening up. That was… something.
“We’ve, uh… got a first aid kit in the back,” he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the window in the direction the back decidedly wasn’t. “And I’ll have you know, I’m forty percent qualified to use it.”
Steve enjoyed the surge of victory as Max cracked a chuckle at the self-deprecating humour.
“Wow, forty whole percent?” Max gave a watery laugh. “Have you ever been so qualified to use anything?”
“I know, right? I’m working on improving myself,” he grinned as Max stepped forwards to follow him.
“Well, it shows, Steve,” Max managed to look up at him properly, giving him a small smile as they stepped out from behind the shelves into the view of Robin. Robin gave him a subtle thumbs up and looked positively proud of him as they headed past the counter and into the back room.
“I’d, uh… offer you coffee but…” Steve glanced sceptically at the two old pots that Steve had made the mistake of drinking a coffee from on his first day to discover that the granules were so old and stale that they didn’t fully dissolve in water that barely got above lukewarm. “…Don’t drink that.”
Max nodded sagely as she sat down on the only chair in the room, a hard plastic chair with a back in immediate peril of falling off. Steve let her get as comfortable as she could as he dug the bright red first aid kit out of the back of the cupboard. He opened it up, looking for… what worked on bruises again? Maybe an icepack or something?
He ferreted through the fabric case, trying to find where it would be –
“It’s too late for an icepack to really do anything,” Max pointed out. “You’d need to use it to immediately cool and reduce the swelling.”
He turned and looked at her, confused.
“You were muttering,” she explained. “Also… wouldn’t icepacks be in the freezer or something?”
Steve… realised that she made a very valid point.
“Well, you see, they only teach us how icepacks work at fifty-three percent qualification in first aid kit use,” Steve tried for a grin. “But since you seem to be far more qualified than me, what would you recommend?”
She glanced over at the kit, before plucking a small white tube out of the case and handing it to him.
“Arnica goes on bruises,” she explained with an affectionately patronising smile. “It helps soothe the inflammation.”
Steve did his best impression of someone who had learnt something for the first time as he nodded, taking a small blob of it on his finger and gently lifting it up to her face, hesitating to give her a querying look.
She nodded, and he gently rubbed it against her cheek over the bruise, trying very hard to be as gentle as possible. A silence fell between them as Steve gently rubbed the cream in, Steve concentrating as Max used the opportunity to turn her head away from him, her face slowly falling to the floor.
“There,” Steve murmured. “All done.”
“Thanks,” Max muttered, and Steve noticed that the smile of the previous minute had dropped with her head.
“Was that it, or is there anything else you need looking at?”
Steve tried to keep his tone as clinical as possible, but he prayed to God that there was nothing else. Quite apart from anything else, Steve just about felt comfortable applying arnica to Max’s face. Anything else and he’d have to get Robin in here while he left them to it. Or – god forbid – it might be a hospital trip.
Jesus Christ, Steve did not want her to need to go to the hospital.
Fortunately, Max shook her head, and Steve felt a wave of relief was over him. Not that there was a good amount of child abuse, but a bruise to the face was a level of physical damage he could handle. She could handle.
Now they had to deal with the far more difficult task of dealing with the emotional damage.
“Okay,” Steve murmured, sitting back on the floor and trying not to think about the last time the carpet had been cleaned. “Why don’t you tell me what happened last night?”
Max looked down at the floor, but made a concession by at least turning her body to face him to Steve was talking to the top of her head.
“It started like it always does,” she breathed. “Neil got drunk.”
Steve was not a good enough liar to feign any kind of surprise.
“God, I don’t even remember what set him off this time,” Max shook her head, her eyes closing. “Could have been anything. The news. What Mom was cooking for dinner. Someone not tidying the living room. But… it wasn’t long before he was yelling.
“Started saying everything was bullshit. Called my Mom a… a whore. Told her she was a dumb whore who couldn’t do anything right. Then… Then she said something about the apple not falling far from the tree.”
Steve tilted his head in alarm, his brow furrowing, but he had enough nous not to interrupt.
“Said I was a fucking… a fucking…”
Max swallowed, turning her face towards the ceiling as it twisted, her eyes pressed tightly shut, as though she couldn’t quite get the words out. Steve felt his alarm grow as tears formed in her eyes, slowly rolling down her cheeks.
“He knew about Lucas,” her voice shattered. “Turns out he’d known for weeks, maybe even longer. He knew we were at Starcourt together, and he said…”
Steve’s stomach dropped, a chill creeping up his arms. If Neil knew about Lucas, and was perfectly capable of hitting his own stepdaughter… Billy would only have been the warmup –
“He said it was all my fault,” Max muttered in a broken voice, her eyes falling to the floor. “Said if I hadn’t been sneaking out to go out with this-”
She broke off, shaking her head as she ducked her head behind her hair again, eyes tightly closed.
“I’m not saying it,” she breathed.
Steve wasn’t sure whether he was even supposed to hear her last remark. Steve filled in the blanks – saw what Neil had called Lucas – what Neil had called her.
“He said I never cared about Billy,” she muttered. “Said I was glad he’d died. That I… I was the one that killed him. By being in that mall with Lucas… By sneaking out to hang out with him – making Billy come and get me – like that’s even what happened-”
She broke off, tears streaming down her face. She pulled her foot up onto the chair, leaning against her knee.
“He… he went into Billy’s room,” she said. “Started… started tearing down his posters – literally. They tore as they came off the wall. And then started throwing his – his records onto the floor – smashing them-”
She choked on a sob, and Steve leant forward.
“I’d been trying to save his room!” Max sobbed. “I’d been trying to keep it how it was – I know it’s stupid – but I didn’t know what he would have wanted – I was trying to save it so I could work out what to do with it all! I… I had these ideas that maybe I would start listening to all his favourite bands – take some part of him with me – keep some part of him alive – I know it’s so stupid but… I wanted to save his room for him!”
She buried her face in her hands, and Steve was left completely at a loss. He wasn’t sure whether to reach out and touch her, try comforting her somehow – an awkward pat on the shoulder didn’t seem enough.
“Nobody ever cared about him,” Max murmured, so quietly Steve could barely hear her. “His dad sure as hell didn’t – my mom didn’t – hell, Nancy was ready to shoot him even before he showed up that night – you hit him with a car-”
Steve felt a twist of guilt, not for the first time. Sure, in the heat of the moment it had been the right thing to do – the Camaro was about to hit Nancy and the others – it was the only thing he could think of in that split second – but he hadn’t even given a second thought to Billy. As he’d leapt out of the ruined convertible and into the back of Nancy’s station wagon, he’d exclusively been thinking about himself and Robin. Sure, he’d been running for his life. A giant flesh monster was about to come and kill them. There hadn’t been time to check on Billy. But it hadn’t occurred to Steve until days later – at Billy’s funeral, something he’d attended purely to support Max – that his actions could have killed Billy, and he hadn't even given him a second thought. That it hadn’t – that Billy had survived for the Mind Flayer to use him once again to knock out Max and Mike and find El – did very little to alleviate that twist of guilt.
“I get it,” Max muttered. “I know you didn’t really have a choice. And given a choice between T-boning Billy and letting Billy kill us all and the Mind Flayer winning, I’m glad you made the choice you did, but…”
She shook her head.
“I’m so… I’m so tired of always having to understand,” she tilted her head back. “Things go wrong – I get it. The Mind Flayer is stopped because Billy sacrificed himself – he died for the greater good. Neil fucks off and now we might have to sell the house-”
She broke off, and Steve’s heart sank. His eyes fell shut as he finally realised what was so, so wrong.
“Max, I’m so sorry,” he breathed.
She sighed. “Either way, I’m screwed,” she laughed bitterly. “Either Neil comes back and my Mom takes him back and I end up having to live with a fucking psycho as my stepdad, or… he doesn’t come back, or my Mom doesn’t take him back, and we… we have to sell the house. We have to… we have to sell…”
Her voice wavered, and finally she fell forward. Steve reacted on impulse, pulling her into a hug as she sobbed onto his shoulder.
“We have to sell his room!” she gasped into his shoulder. “Neil destroyed all his stuff, and now we can’t even keep his goddamn room!”
Steve was at a loss for words, holding Max as she clutched at his top, losing all sense of composure.
“It’s not fair,” she gasped against him. “None of this is fair – nobody cared about him…”
She pulled away from Steve suddenly, all but pushing him back, and turned away. Steve knelt on the floor, watching as she twisted on the chair, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
“He… he made it so hard…” Max murmured. “It’s so easy now, but…”
Steve watched her as she pressed her lips together, eyes screwed up shut as she fought against something that threatened to leave her.
“He was an asshole,” she breathed. “I don’t need to tell you that.”
Steve tilted his head in acquiescence. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, he was.”
“But he didn’t deserve that,” Max turned to him, eyes shining with unshed tears, looking imploringly at him. “He didn’t deserve the Mind Flayer, he didn’t deserve Neil-”
She broke off suddenly, looking alarmingly guilty. Steve looked at her scrutinisingly, his eyes landing on the bruise on her cheek.
Oh.
Steve looked down at the floor, feeling slightly sick. He’d had no idea. All those times Billy was prepared to lash out at Steve, the fight in the Byers’ living room, all those times Billy had stalked the halls of Hawkins High with a face like thunder and no discernible reason…
This had been where that anger had come from.
“No,” Steve breathed. “Nobody deserves that.”
Not even Billy Hargrove.
Max let out a little choked sound, and Steve looked up at her again. She was looking at the ground.
“Everyone gave up on him,” she murmured. “I gave up on him. Not just when the Mind Flayer got him, but before…”
She looked around, head tilted upwards as she swallowed, trying to stop the tears.
“I keep thinking… maybe if I’d tried harder with him… Maybe if I’d gotten through to him, we might have been… well, friends. When… When Mom told me I’d be getting a brother, I was… a part of me was kind of excited. Like… I’d never had a brother – never really had anyone my kind of age to look out for me. It had always been me and Mom and Dad, and then me and Mom or Dad, so getting a brother was… I thought it would be pretty cool.
“But then he showed up, and he wanted nothing to do with me. I was some annoying little shit he got saddled with – hell, his dad had to tell him all the time to even do something as simple as drive me to school. God-”
She broke off, covering her mouth as her eyes widened for a split second, before she closed them tight.
“God, his dad probably hit him over that-”
“Hey,” Steve interrupted. “Hey, Max, that wasn’t your fault-”
“No wonder he didn’t want anything to do with me-”
“Max,” Steve said firmly, leaning forward. “Max, I need you to listen to me.”
She finally looked at him, pulling her hand away from her face as Steve tried for a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“You can’t blame yourself for what went down between Billy and his dad,” Steve said gently but firmly. “You didn’t go to Neil and say ‘hey, Billy’s being a dick, can you hit him please,’ did you?”
Max lowered her eyes and shook her head.
“Exactly,” Steve said. “You’re only responsible for your actions. His dad was the one who chose to hit him, and I bet you anything it suited his dad just fine for Billy to blame you. But the thing is… Billy was also responsible for his actions. And I know he was…”
Steve broke off, looking down at his lap. He thought about his own problems with Billy – the night he was knocked unconscious, how much fear he’d heard in Max’s voice earlier when she told them it was Billy’s car pulling up to the Byers’ house – how worried Lucas had looked.
“A lot of what Billy did was not okay,” Steve said. “And I’m not sure I ever forgave him for what he did last year. And I’m willing to bet… there was a certain amount that the rest of us didn’t see. And I reckon you bore the brunt of it.”
The way Max looked at the ground gave Steve all the confirmation he needed.
“I just keep thinking about what could have happened,” Max murmured. “What kind of person he’d be if he’d had a chance to get away from Neil. Who he could have been. We caught a glimpse of it, didn’t we? He saved El – he saved all of us! And I keep imagining us being friends after everything. But it’s only ever going to be that, isn’t it? Just a fucking imagination-”
She broke off bitterly, throwing her hand sideways.
“He never had a chance to change,” she spat venomously. “And it’s not fair. It’s not fair.”
Steve sighed, looking down at the ground. No, it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Billy died. It wasn’t fair that nobody had known about what Billy was dealing with. It wasn’t fair that Max had been forced to deal with what Billy had done to her, and was now left to deal with the guilt over what had been done to him. It wasn’t fair that the person responsible for everything had gotten to take off in the night after destroying what little Max had left of Billy after smacking her around, and wasn’t going to face any repercussions for what he had done to her. To Billy. To that whole family.
It wasn’t fair that she was losing everything she had left of Billy piece by piece.
“Max,” Steve said softly. “I wish I could tell you it’s all going to be okay. But I won’t, because I don’t know. What I will say is this.”
Max looked at him impossibly sadly.
“It’s hard to forgive someone who never changed,” Steve said slowly. “But you can be sad that they never had a fair shot. You don’t have to forgive what he did if you don’t want to. But you can grieve the person – not just who they were, but who they could have been. So yeah, remember the good he did. Remember the good moments you had together. And if you want to keep imagining what he might have been like without his dad, you should. I… I think you might know who that person would have been better than anyone else.”
Max gave him the tiniest hopeful smile, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards as she looked at him, surprised.
“Really?”
“Well, yeah,” Steve pointed out. “Who the fuck else would know better? His dad, who was actively trying to suppress every part of his happiness? His mom who hadn’t seen him in… what, a decade? You… you probably knew him best.”
Max’s smile grew, but didn’t banish the sadness from her eyes. If anything, the smile only accentuated it.
“My point is,” Steve continued. “However you want to remember him… whether it’s for what he was or what he could have been… that’s your choice. And it’s not always mutually exclusive. You can be… maybe not happy, but… relieved that the bad things are gone, and sad that the guy he could have been never got to exist. Billy was… he was complicated. People aren’t always black and white – good guys and bad guys. And people can change, given a chance. I like to think I have.”
Max chuckled. “Dustin told me you used to be a proper douchebag,” she murmured. “And then you were the best thing in the world, so…”
Steve gave a small laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I’ve been replaced with Eddie Munson.”
Max tilted her head a bit, tilting her hand side to side. “Uh… I’d say it’s about fifty-fifty, depending on the day.”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Well, we’ll see what that little shit has to say when I don’t give him a lift to school tomorrow.”
Max looked at him, a playful smile twisting the corners of her lips. “I can tell you what he’d say. He’d call Eddie.”
Steve snorted. Max finally cracked a proper laugh.
“I didn’t know you before, but you’re definitely not a douchebag now,” Max smiled.
“Only occasionally,” Steve conceded, grinning slightly.
Max looked down, pulling her knee back up to her chest and twisting her finger around the lace of her sneaker. The smile was gone, and her eyes were locked on her fingers.
“Do you…” she started hesitantly, “do you think he could have changed? If he’d gotten away from Neil…”
Steve’s face fell. “Max, I… I don’t know. I know he saved us, but… I didn’t know him… at all, really. We stayed out of each other’s way after last year. I didn’t want to hang around him, so I didn’t. I’m… I’m not the best person to answer that.”
Max’s face became impossibly sad.
“I like to think we would have become friends,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’d have told him about the Mind Flayer – told him what had happened – and maybe it would have been us against him.”
Steve knew that ‘he’ wasn’t the Mind Flayer.
“Well, like I say, if that’s how you want to remember him, that’s fine,” Steve said, trying for a warm smile. “But what you can’t do is carry around the blame for what his dad did to him. To both of you. He wanted Billy to blame you. It suited him to have Billy blame you. Because that put Billy on his own. That friction between you, the fights you had… that didn’t come from you. What his dad did to him, even if it was on your behalf… you didn’t ask for that. Maybe Billy did some shit that deserved a punishment, which was, frankly, on him, but the punishment didn’t fit the crime. If my dad asked me to give someone a lift and I didn’t, I’d… get my car confiscated, or have to pay for my own gas for a month or something.”
Max let out a very unladylike snort. “You’re so fucking rich, you know that, right?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Yes, okay, I do now have to pay for my own gas anyway… Being a gainfully employed adult and all now.”
Max’s smile didn’t drop, but it did sadden as she looked back down at her laces.
“The important thing is,” Steve continued, “you didn’t decide for his dad to smack him around. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been something else. Billy probably knew that, but you… you became an outlet. Because his dad made it seem like it was you. And you need to know – you need to tell yourself every single day – that it wasn’t. It was never you.”
Max looked up at him, no trace of a smile. Just a sad, longing look in her eyes, like she couldn’t quite believe what Steve was saying, no matter how much she wanted to.
“You’re not to blame for any of it,” Steve smiled at her, trying for his warmest, most genuine smile. “None of what happened was your fault.”
Her lips turned up at the corner, but to call it a smile would have been generous. Tears rolled down her face as she looked at him.
“Thanks, Steve,” she murmured.
“Anytime,” Steve shrugged, looking down with a smile. “Seriously, any time you need me to remind you of that…”
“I know who to call,” her mouth turned up into an actual smile.
Steve finally stood up off the floor, really wishing he’d brought a spare pair of jeans so he could decontaminate the ones he was wearing at that moment. Max stood up at about the same time, looking around the room as she tucked her hands in her pocket.
“I should… probably head home…” she muttered. “You know, while we’ve still got it…”
Steve’s stomach twisted once again. He reached into his pocket, trying to find his car keys.
“Do you need a ride-”
He was cut off very suddenly as Max flung her arms around him, pressing her head against his chest. He tensed as she collided with him, before he finally realised what was happening and returned the hug.
“I’m sorry about your house,” he murmured.
She didn’t let go – if anything only tightened her grip around his chest. She leant against him, and Steve patted her back in a gesture that he felt should have been more awkward than it was.
“Thank you, Steve,” she breathed. He would have barely heard her had she been any further away.
Steve couldn’t help but smile as a warmth spread in his chest. He leant his cheek against the top of her head.
She finally let him go, pulling away from him.
“You going to be alright getting home, or do you need a ride?” Steve asked, pulling out his keys.
“No, I, uh… I should be okay,” she said, tucking her hands in her pockets. I’ve got the bike, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Steve said. “Oh – one sec!”
Something suddenly occurred to him. He grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled down a number on it.
“I didn’t know Billy that well at school, but… here’s someone who knew him a bit better than me,” he said, folding up the piece of paper and handing it to her. “He might be quite a good person to talk to.”
She looked at the folded up piece of paper nervously as she took it.
“Oh…kay…” she pocketed it.
“He’s not exactly my biggest fan, but… my mom is really good friends with his mom, so I’ve got the number engraved in my brain, apparently.”
She nodded sagely. “Cool,” she said. “Oh – and… would you do me a favour, and… not mention that we had this conversation to anyone?”
“What conversation?” Steve grinned. “We don’t open for another hour.”
She gave him a warm smile as she opened the door to the back room.
“I mean… you couldn’t have even gotten into the shop,” Steve continued as he followed her out into the main shop past Robin, who was giving them a querying look. “The door was locked, because I always lock it until we’re officially open.”
Robin rolled her eyes as she went back to stacking shelves as Steve made eye contact with her. Steve opened the door to the main shop and saw Max out.
“For the record,” Max said. “You may be forty percent qualified to use a first aid kit, but you’re… at least sixty percent qualified to give emotional pep talks.”
Steve grinned. “I will put that on my resume,” he said. “You sure you’re going to be okay getting home?”
She nodded.
“Look after yourself, Max,” he said. “And you’ll tell me if your stepdad comes back, right?”
She nodded. “Thanks, Steve. For… everything.”
He smiled at her as she cycled away, stepping back into the shop and remembering to turn the lock on the door. Robin looked up from stacking tapes on shelves.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Steve paused, looking around. Truthfully, he didn’t know how to answer that question.
“Not really,” he said slowly. “But… I've done all I can do, I guess.”
Robin looked at him scrutinisingly.
“Look, I’ll help you open up in just a second, I just need to do one more thing.”
She nodded. “Okay, but you’re vacuuming at closing.”
He gave her a flat, unamused smile as he stepped behind the counter, pulling the phone over to him and dialling a number.
“Hey, Tommy, it’s Steve, how’s college treating you? Look, I was wondering if I could ask you a favour – you know Max Mayfield? Billy’s stepsister? Well, I don’t know if she’ll call, but I think she needs someone to talk to about Billy, so I gave her your number, ’cause, you know, you knew him at school. If she calls, would you do me a favour and maybe have a chat with her?”
END