Chapter Text
It was lucky Max had no friends by the time they moved to nowhere Indiana. The only person she had to miss back home was her dad and that missing was so big if there had been anything else thrown in Max would have lost her mind. As it was she was mostly still miserable in all the old California ways and her goals stayed mostly the same: survive until she graduated high school and then vanish back into the California hills. With that single minded aim she could take the reality of Billy, and Neil, and her mom’s emotional abandonment of her. She had five years, eight months to go.
They’d moved in mid-October and had Billy and Max set to transfer in the week of Halloween. Max was able to help unpack, settle in, even found the nearest Arcade and staked her claim of Dig Dug supremacy over DUSTIN with her usual tag.
There was no skate park in Hawkins so the arcade would have to do.
Just Max’s luck that Billy’s high school and her middle were right next to each other. It meant Neil insisted Billy drive her there and back every day. His “responsibility”. Max could feel the heat of Billy’s anger radiating off him when he was told, fit to burn. And she’d be the one it burned.
She didn’t understand why Neil insisted on Billy watching her like a hawk, blamed Billy for any mistake she made. Max leaves her skateboard in the hallway and Neil trips? “Billy why weren’t you watching?” and then the sound of fist on flesh, and then Billy is tearing up Max’s books and unwinding her cassette tapes, trapping her in her room when Neil and Mom weren’t around. It was like Neil wanted them to hate one another rather than like or even tolerate one another. Maybe he didn’t want them to accidentally become a united front against him. So instead everyone in that house was utterly alone.
.
“Get in shitbird,” Billy demanded, twirling his keys by his right pointer finger as he stared Max down.
Max yanked open the passenger side door and threw her backpack and skateboard in, glaring at Billy for a moment before slamming the door shut. Nearly as soon as the door was fully closed Billy was peeling away from the curb, zero to sixty in an instant. Max looked out the window and refused to engage. Brief defiances were calculate by maximum annoyance for minimum fallout. Just because Billy scared the shit out of her didn’t mean she’d ever have to let it show.
They were still late because Billy stopped for a pack of cigarettes. Max had to enter the principal’s office tardy for her introduction and wound up getting to her Science Class fifteen minutes late. Her teacher Mr. Clarke had the nerve to stop her before she could sit down and make a little speech about their “curiosity voyage” before calling her “Maxine”. “It’s Max,” she corrected automatically, causing a ripple of whispers at her decision to already contradict a teacher. She sat in the back.
In sync, four heads turned to look at her from the front of the class. A fifth head noticed, turned as well. She squirmed under the attention and was grateful that the rest of the class had already been sedated by the drone of fifteen minutes of science.
.
The same five kids watched her while she skateboarded at recess. They thought they were being sly but they were pretty obvious about it so before she went inside she threw out a piece of paper that read “Stop Spying On Me Creeps”. If this was some sort of weird haze the new girl ritual they could get it over and done with because she wasn’t interested in dragging it out.
They seemed to take the hint because Max saw neither hide nor hair of them the rest of the school day.
After school Max asked if Billy could drop her off at the arcade and instead of being a normal person about it they spent five minutes arguing with each other about Max expecting Billy to be her chauffeur (she wasn’t) and how Billy wasn’t going to wait on her hand and foot (she’d been planning to walk back home). She managed to get a few hundred higher on her Dig Dug score but didn’t manage to hit her personal best from back home.
.
The next day was Halloween and Billy had already managed to get invited to a high school party.
Max supposed it might be different in high school, it wasn’t as if parents called parents to see where their teenagers were. She wasn’t planning on going Trick Or Treating, she was too old and didn’t know the streets. She didn’t even have a Halloween costume.
Then the strangest thing happened.
Two of her stalkers approached her and Max realized they were the only goofballs at the whole school who had dressed up in actual costumes. The Ghostbusters, of all things.
They looked nervous as the one with curly hair and a lisp said, “Hi, Max, I’m Dustin, and this is-”
“Lucas!” The black boy rocked on his toes and smiled.
“I know. The stalkers,” Max drawled, unimpressed.
They scrambled to explain themselves and annoyance gave way to bemusement as they tried to tell her it was for her “safety”.
“Is that why you’re wearing proton packs,” Max snarked.
Instead of hearing the bite in her tone Dustin decided to show off one of his costume props. He stumbled into saying, “So we were talking last night, and you’re new here so you probably don’t have any friends to take you trick-or-treating, and you’re scared of bullies, so we were thinking that it would be okay if you come with us!”
“It’d be okay?” Max parroted sarcastically, suspicion rising. What was the endgame here? Were they gonna ditch her or something? Play a prank on the new kid?
“Yeah!” Dustin enthused, somehow still missing Max’s hostility, and continued, “Our party is a democracy and the majority voted you could come.”
“I didn’t realize it was such an honor to go trick-or-treating with you,” Max said.
Lucas seemed to be picking up on Max’s true meaning but Dustin remained unphased. “We know where to get the full-sized candy bars! We figured you’d want in.”
“That’s presumptuous of you,” Max almost laughed, amused that Dustin was still oblivious.
The boys puzzled over her five-dollar word and Dustin finally ventured, “Yeah! Totally! Um, so you’ll come?”
Max rolled her eyes and walked away. What was the point of all that? Was it really some prank? Or had they actually asked her to come along to, what, protect her from bullies? She could handle herself fine. Why would they care?
“We’re meeting at the Maple Street cul-de-sac at 7! That’s seven on the dot!” Dustin called after her.
Max had to make up work in history and English so her teachers piled her high the second day with homework to turn in over the next week. It made her late to the parking lot and when she approached the car, Billy refused to look at her.
As she reached for the door he said, “You’re late again.”
“Yeah, I had to get catch-up homework,” Max explained.
“Jesus, I don’t care,” Billy said, making Max feel dumb for even trying to explain in the first place. Of course he wouldn’t care, he would be mad no matter what. “You’re late again and you’re skating home. Do you hear me?” Max swallowed the retort that he’d wait. He would, to an extent. Then he’d speed off furious she hadn’t shown. Depending on how long it took her to get home and if she beat Neil, which was a distinct possibility but not a certainty, they could both get in trouble and Billy would have her head.
They rode in silence per usual until Billy decided to try to strike up conversation. “God this place is such a shithole,” he complained.
Was he looking for camaraderie, for her to agree with him in hatred of this town? She couldn’t agree with him even if she shared similar thoughts. “It’s not that bad,” Max replied.
“No?” Billy asked, started to roll down her window. The wafting smell of sulfur hit her full on and she winced. “You smell that Max? That’s actually shit. Cow shit.” Max rolled her eyes. It didn’t smell any worse than Coalinga just upstate from their old town.
“I don’t see any cows,” Max replied, knowing full well it didn’t matter except for the burning desire to be contrarian in everything he said. She rolled her window back up.
“Clearly you haven’t met the high school girls,” Billy grumbled. Such a charmer. When she didn’t reply he snapped, “So what, you like it here now?”
“No,” Max said.
“Then why are you defending it?”
“I’m not.”
“Sure sounds like it.”
“It’s just we’re stuck here, so…” Max trailed off. They didn’t need to like the place but it would sure as shit be better to just deal.
“You’re right. We’re stuck here,” Billy said. “And who’s fault is that?”
Max thought about Nate and disdain swam up her throat. “Yours.”
It was wrong even before it passed her lips.
“What’d you say?” Bill asked quickly, as if startled she’d had the balls to say it.
“Nothing.”
“Did you say it’s my fault?”
“No,” Max said. Familiar fear bubbled in her stomach.
“You know who’s fault it is. Say it.”
Max stared forward, the fear acidic enough to melt her throat shut. She couldn’t give it to him. If she did it would be the worst victory in their war yet. It wasn’t her fault that they’d been forced to leave California even if they used the excuse of her dad’s proximity as a reason why their blended family wasn’t working.
“Maaax,” Billy said in a dangerous sing-song. “Say it.”
Fear fizzed through her whole body like unpopped soda, spilling through her veins and curling her toes. She kept her mouth shut.
“SAY IT!” Billy screamed in her ear, lunging his whole body towards her. Her heart scampered in her chest but she managed to stay still. He leaned back after he didn’t get a reaction and pressed the gas pedal down to the floor, speeding them down the quiet Hawkins road over twenty miles passed the speed limit. He did this sometimes when he wanted to scare her and it had worked at the beginning. She had genuinely feared for her life. Or maybe she still did fear for her life, but it was common enough of an occurrence now he didn’t get the fear on her face, the demands to slow down. She just sat and gripped the door handle out of his view.
Then suddenly there were three boys on bicycles in front of them. All three wore grey jumpsuits and proton packs.
The stalkers.
“Billy slow down.”
“Oh, are these your new hick friends?”
Panic hit Max’s spine as she realized what he would do if she said they were. “No! I don’t know them.”
But her tone must have been too alarmed because Billy replied, “Well I guess you won’t care if I hit ‘em, then? I get bonus points if I get ‘em all in one go?”
Max was pretty sure that Billy wouldn’t actually hit three kids on bicycles but she wasn’t naive enough to discount the possibility. If he got mad enough, or he wanted to hurt her enough, would he be capable? “Billy, stop, it’s not funny,” she tried to protest, keep her voice calm, but the edge of fear betrayed her in her tone and he stared at her, eyes black holes. “Bill, come on, stop it, IT’S NOT FUNNY! STOP!” She yelled, eyes wide, heart hammering.
“BILLY STOP IT!” Max dove for the steering wheel and pushed with all her strength. The car veered around the boys, missing them by only five feet.
“YEAHHHHH that was a close one huh?” Billy bellowed into her face, laughter filling the car end to end. Max was able to turn around to see that one of them had fallen but was getting up and the other two were on their feet.
Safe.
Max leaned back in the passenger seat and looked at her shoes, adrenaline crash making her whole body heavy.
“Do you know who’s fault that was, Max?”