Chapter Text
I
Steve’s eleven when his parents switch from a live-in nanny to a regular babysitter. The sitter, Missy, is fresh out of high school and saving up for college. Working for the Harringtons is not only lucrative, but promises perks in her post-graduation future. She only has to take care of their only child.
Steve wakes up alone almost every day. Brushes his teeth and hair, eats breakfast. Missy drives over to take him to school. After his classes – or baseball, swim, basketball – Missy picks him up, makes him dinner and helps with homework. She makes sure he doesn’t stay up too late, but ultimately is gone before he fully falls asleep. He can see the headlights shift as she backs out of the driveway, lighting up his room for a second before the sound of her car disappears.
On weekends he’s alone with leftovers Missy labeled and put in the fridge. At first he’s scared of using the stove and lives off cold food for two days. By thirteen he just makes his own food, mostly Kraft mac and cheese or Spaghetti-Os.
Summer is his favorite time of the year. Missy just stays with him at his house, swimming in the pool with Steve and making sure he doesn’t die of boredom.
On his fourteenth birthday Missy gets him a chocolate fudge cake. It’s too sweet and they both barely eat a slice. She puts her music on in the living room and they dance to REO Speedwagon until he’s breathless. Steve can’t remember a better birthday. They end that warm and stuffy August evening cooling off in the shallow end of the pool.
A week later his parents come home for the first time since June. They tell Steve he’s not going to start high school with a babysitter, that it’s time to man up. Missy waves to him out of the driver’s seat of her car and Steve stays sitting next to the window, staring at his driveway until nightfall. Two days after he begins his freshman year, his parents are gone again. Steve stares at the note they left on the dining room table, his eyes burning.
He finds Missy’s tape still in the deck. He brushes his thumb over the fading title.
Hi Infidelity.
He pockets it.
II
The door to the boathouse opens with enough vigor to make Eddie jump out of his skin. He’s ready to meet his maker when the tentative faces of Henderson, Mayfield, Buckley and Harrington – seriously, him of all people? – appear behind the door frame.
“Hi” Dustin smiles way too wide for how shitty Eddie feels. Harrington gives him a small wave before holding up a plastic bag of junk food. “We brought supplies.”
They also brought news. Hawkins PD was looking for him along with their entire town.
The Honeycombs and Yoo-Hoo are somehow exactly what he needs to slightly calm the storm brewing in Eddie’s head, but something breaks in him the longer they talk.
“Hunt the freak, right?”
And there is something too vulnerable, too raw in the way he says it. Reveals more than he wanted to in small-town, bible-thumping America.
“Right.”
He catches Buckley’s eyes, a mirror to his own.
Oh.
Oh.