Chapter 1: The Living Years
Chapter Text
No matter how hard you tried to hang onto the past, certain things had a habit of slipping away. Memories of smells, the taste of your mom’s lemonade on a summer afternoon, the color of your best friend’s bike. It was the things you really wanted to hold onto that seemed to fade the fastest.
Steph Steinbrenner had heard that, from grandparents and parents, mostly, and once from her sister, ten years her senior, but she’d waved it off as something that old people just said. There were things she’d remember forever, things like the sight of the sunset over the docks, the sound of her best friend’s laugh, her first kiss, but it wasn’t in the way she thought she would. It was through a fog, trying to reach for the visceral moment that seemed to slip away the moment she tried to make it real.
It didn’t help that the memories she tried to hold onto the most were the ones that were the strangest, the ones that were so outlandish they must have been dreamed.
It had been seven years since Steph had helped save the Goondocks, seven years of realizing that her life had probably peaked at fifteen years old. It was honestly kind of embarrassing, being asked what the highlight of your life was during all of those stupid college icebreakers and having to tell increasingly abridged and nonchalant versions of a story that boiled down to: “I discovered a pirate ship, complete with treasure and booby traps.”
She really couldn’t blame her classmates and roommates for not believing her, or at least being skeptical. She could technically pull out the newspaper articles and the photographs, but that would probably seem a little attention-needy that she had those on standby, even though now it was more to prove to herself that it had happened than it was to anyone else.
Those pictures fueled her memory, kept the spark of it alive. As time had passed, she’d been sure she’d never lose the vivid, tangible feeling of being shot at, being chased through dark tunnels and caves, stumbling over skeletons and discovering buried treasure, but those memories seemed to fade as naturally as almost everything else had, a fond anecdote that nestled between high-school boyfriends and her first job.
Steph didn’t want the Goonies to fade. Some memories she wanted to stay as vivid and fresh as the moment it had happened, frozen in time, everyone and everything so young and new and shiny.
Somewhere in the back of Steph’s head, she was aware of the fact that time had passed inside Astoria as much as it had passed outside of it. She knew that of course, her parents were ten years older, that Andy, her best friend, was a young adult as much as she was. It added up, she supposed, that in the time it had taken for her to graduate from college in Rhode Island, it made sense that Andy had also graduated college, and was just as much twenty-five as she was.
Nevertheless, it still felt like a sledgehammer between the eyes when Steph received the invitation to Andy’s bridal shower in the mail, beckoning her back to Astoria.
You are cordially invited to a bridal shower in honor of
Ms. Andrea Carmichael
October 17, 1992
RSVP by….blah, blah, blah…..
Steph’s fingers rubbed over the familiar print, tracing them subconsciously as she stared out the window on the bus as the plains of Washington faded into the familiar woods and hills of Oregon.
The sight tugged at something old in her chest, old and slowly waking up as memories shook the dust off of themselves and rose up before her, obscuring the view of the tiny pink and white card in her hand. Despite having received the invitation nearly a week previously, something about it still didn’t quite feel real. Even now, maybe especially now, watching the landscape change, it felt like a blow more than ever.
It wasn’t exactly like she was stunned by the announcement, mind you.
Brandon Walsh and Andrea Carmichael had been a given since tenth grade. Nobody had been surprised when Brand had taken her to the prom, or even when Andy had chosen a college close enough to commute to in order to avoid a long distance relationship. Even this announcement wasn’t so much a surprise as was the realization that Andy had made a decision, a huge decision, without Steph knowing before everyone else did.
She supposed that sort of thing happened, as one got older. Somehow, she’d forgotten that as she got older, everyone back home had also.
Then again, the mountains hadn’t changed. Maybe Astoria hadn’t, either.
Steph glanced down at her hands. For years, she’d helped her father on the docks, with her hands bearing the marks: weather-beaten fingers and calloused palms. In the past few years, those marks had slowly faded as her hands became more accustomed to deskwork, typing and writing. She’d have to have her nails done for the wedding, she thought absently.
She wondered if Andy’s hands looked different, too.
The bus rolled to a halt at a familiar stop, faded green boards surrounding a lonely bench, wind whipped and dust-beaten. Slowly, almost in a daze, Steph stood up, clutching her bag like it was her most prized possession, jumble of half-folded clothes and toiletries that it was, ambling her way to the door and stepping down, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Steph was standing on Astoria soil.
The moment’s spell was only slightly cracked by the exhaust billowing from the bus as it trundled away. Steph stood, transfixed by the sign, the wave of memory cresting. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or laugh or both at once, so she settled for neither.
She just stood for a moment, taking it in.
It was odd, how a place could live and breathe, could change with age, grow tired and contemptible, frightening and dangerous, then back to dull. Every season of her life had reflected back in the old buildings, the docks, the windy mountain roads, up to right now. Now everything looked fresh and beautiful, like an old friend, or a postcard found in the bottom of a drawer. Familiar and new, all wrapped into one.
She hadn’t told her parents when to expect her, just what day. She knew it was expecting a lot to anticipate a welcome committee, her parents with the old Volkswagen, maybe even Andy herself. Still, she found herself somehow disappointed by the emptiness of the bus stop and the sidewalk around it. Astoria wasn’t a big town, she used to bike it all the time, but still, she wasn’t looking forward to the walk, especially with a suitcase. She eyed the payphone a few feet away, sighing before digging into her pocket to pull out a handful of loose change.
“I’m here, Mom. I’m in town. Right now I’m at the bus stop.” Steph shifted on her heels, glancing over her shoulder.
“Already? We weren’t expecting you until tonight!” Her mother’s voice was just left of shrill, a hint of aggravation of the loving variety.
“Well, I’m here now. Do you want to send Dad to come and pick me up?”
“Your father is still at work.” There was some shuffling on the other end of the phone.
“Well, could you come pick me up then?”
More shuffling. Vague hemming and hawing noises.
“Mom?”
“I’m thinking, Honey, I’m thinking. I’ve got to get your room ready. We’ve been using it for storage…I’ll send someone along in a minute.”
Someone?
Steph pressed her lips together, breathing out a huff through her nose. “Mom. I don’t want someone. I want you or Dad to come get me, or I’m going to start walking. It’s cold out here, I’m freezing.”
It wasn’t the thought of a ride that bothered her quite so much as it was the questions.
How’s school? How have you been? Are you looking for a job? How are your roommates? Do you have a boyfriend yet?
That last one especially had become an increasingly large thorn in her side. As much as Steph wanted to see her old friends, as much as she wanted to see Andy, she didn’t want to answer all those questions just yet, especially from her very engaged best friend.
“ Just hold your horses, alright, Stephanie?” Her mother was the only one who called her ‘Stephanie’.
“Holding,” Steph grumbled. “Bye, Mom.”
Last she knew, her parents were only about ten minutes away from the bus station, eight if her father was driving. It shouldn’t take that long for someone to arrive. Steph just hoped it wasn’t one of her mother’s friends, or one of the people that her mother thought was a friend of Steph’s. It would be nice to wait a few more hours before she, and Astoria, ripped the bandaid off together.
Steph hung up the phone and sat down on the hard, paint-stripped bench, her bags by her ankles and her shoulders by her ears, and resigned herself to wait.
Chapter 2: Out of Touch
Chapter Text
Fifteen minutes felt like a long time, especially in early October, when the wind was beginning to whip charmingly colored leaves past and the sun’s appearances were intermittent and fickle. It was made worse by the cars that drove by, cars that probably contained passengers who may have recognized the college-age figure seated in a self-conscious heap on an infrequently-used bus stop bench.
After what felt like an eternity, a passing car slowed, enough for her to make out the driver’s expression, if not the features, exactly. It was a male face, that much she knew. It wasn’t her father, she knew that too.
It wasn’t until the car came to a complete stop by the curb and the driver’s door swung open that she realized, to her complete horror and shock, that she was well acquainted with the driver.
That could not possibly be who she thought it was.
For five years, Steph had thought she was very aware of what Mouth Devereaux looked like. He was about shoulder height on her, with very well groomed hair and a trouble-making expression that only let up when in mortal peril. He was loud. He was obnoxious.
And the young man leaning over the top of the car, both arms folded, was not Mouth Deavreaux.
Not in this light, anyway. If she squinted and turned her head just right, there was something familiar around the eyes, the way they crinkled in the corners and the way his upper lip curved around the grin he was giving her. But it could not possibly be the same person. She knew that because this person was taller than her shoulder, if not much, and his hair was floppier, and the expression on his face didn’t make her want to smash his teeth in with a baseball bat.
“Hey, Steph,” this figure said, and the voice was sort of familiar, but deeper and older and slightly scratchier than she remembered.
“Hey…” She trailed off, grabbing the handle of her suitcase more tightly, afraid to say a name, afraid to be wrong.
He raised an eyebrow and he grinned wider, and she could catch a glimpse of the boy she’d known, buried in the body of this young man in the jean jacket.
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember,” he teased.
“ Clark? ” she finally got out. Mouth didn’t seem to fit him now, not as much as it had, anyway. She couldn’t saddle that name onto this figure.
“Clark? ” He barked a laugh, pushing away from the car and coming around the nose of it, hands in his jeans pockets. “Steph, it’s Mouth. ”
For a split second, she was almost possessed by this strange urge to give him a hug. He looked different, but much like Astoria, he looked familiar, and like home, and those things made him worthy of momentary forgiveness for over seven years of irritation. She couldn’t very well hug him, and she couldn’t very well forgive him, not out loud, not now, so instead, she smiled, as big as she could muster at him.
“You look…”
“The same, right?” He was still grinning from ear to ear, like he’d played this massive joke by looking like this, by smiling at her like this, like any minute he’d revert back to the way he looked when he was thirteen.
She smiled back, weakly. “Yeah.”
He sounded odd to her ears, the echo of his younger voice bouncing around the inside of this deeper, slightly raspier tone, fully adult. He laughed again, a warmer laugh than she was used to hearing, and Steph found herself waffling between this strange relief at seeing him again and nervousness that the rest of Astoria would be like this: like a funhouse mirror. Distorted, with the parts she recognized turned inside out.
Finally, she shook herself, pulling herself back into real time as she took a step forward, her words and voice fully returning to her:
“Mouth! What on earth are you doing here?”
“Your mom didn’t tell you? I’m here to pick you up.”
Steph’s mouth dropped open just slightly. “What?”
Mouth cocked his head to the side. “She didn’t tell you.”
“Obviously, she didn’t tell me, smartmouth.” She could feel color rising in her neck, heating the underside of her face. “Don’t tell me you’re my ride?!”
“Alright, I won’t tell you, then.” Mouth shrugged, still grinning, and just like that, the magical spell of his adulthood broke, and he was thirteen again, and all Steph wanted to do was to shove his smug face into the nearest mud puddle. “Guess you’re walking.”
“I just might. I’d rather hop on one leg than ride with you. Since when can you drive, anyway?” The words fell out dripping with derision she didn’t feel as wholeheartedly as she used to, but they came naturally.
“Since I was sixteen, which was four years ago. Honestly, Steph, college might have scrambled whatever brains you had to begin with.” He raised a thick eyebrow. “Just get in the car. If you walk, your mom will kill me.”
“My…” Steph’s jaw hung open, the remaining words dying somewhere between her brain and the air. What on earth was her mother doing consorting with Mouth Devereaux and sending him like her personal taxi service? What else had changed?
“Just get in.”
Steph’s mouth snapped close like a hinge and, in a bit of a daze, she hauled herself and her suitcase into the front seat of the car, and tried very hard not to hope that nobody around had seen her.
Astoria, surprisingly, had changed.
There was a supermarket where a bank had once been, and there was new paint on the movie theater. The best pizza place in town had been bought out, or renamed at the least, and there was a sign on the window proclaiming that they were under new management. The roads were the same, for the most part, and Steph found that she still knew where every road turned off. That was some comfort; as different as some things were, the skeleton was always the same.
It gave her something to focus on besides her chauffeur, who, given his namesake, pointedly refused to remain quiet enough for her to forget.
“How’s college going?” Mouth asked. He gripped the steering wheel loosely with his left hand, the other resting casually on his lap as he glanced into his mirrors, cranking into a turn.
“Hm?”
“College. Y’know, the thing you left to do. Unless you’re lying to your mom and you’re really just partying it up out there. Which, if you are,” and here he raised his right hand. “No judgement. I just didn’t think you had it in you.”
Steph scoffed, rolling her eyes and keeping her gaze fixed out the window. “College is fine. It’s just more school.”
“That’s not what I hear.” The tone in his voice spurred Steph to whip her head around, fixing him with an incredulous look.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged, but only with one shoulder. “Your mom says you’re some kinda super genius or something.”
Steph raised her eyebrows so high her forehead cramped. “What? My mother?”
“I think so. Short woman, blonde hair, wicked long fingernails? That’s her, right?”
Steph’s mother, the esteemed Martha Steinbrenner, had thought and said many things about Steph over the years, but the word ‘genius’ had never slipped her lips. At least, not in Steph’s hearing. Plenty of other, equally colorful words had, but few of them could be counted in the same ring as ‘genius’.
Of course, Steph knew that her mother was proud of her, in an abstract way, and that she missed her, in the same way that she technically knew that the earth was round and that it was orbiting the sun, but without much in the way to prove it herself.
“That’s her.” Steph folded her arms across her suitcase in her lap. “I can’t exactly see her calling me a genius though.”
“That’s what I figured. I bet on you being a total party animal instead.” He flashed a grin at her sideways, his canines showing. “Which one of us was right?”
“Neither. For that matter, what are you doing hanging out with my mother, anyway?” That was the biggest question of the hour, the question that had been hanging over her head since Mouth had first opened the car door. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like the Steinbrenners had much to do with the Devereaux family, unless the pipes had suddenly developed a leak.
And even so, that would be the business of Mr. Nick Devereaux, not his son.
Mouth made a turn onto a street that looked so familiar, it made Steph’s chest ache and her breath catch.
Suddenly, it didn’t really matter how Mouth knew her mother, or what he was doing at her mother’s beck and call, and she really didn’t mind that he’d come to get her at all, because she was home.
As much as she’d come to rely on the four walls that had made up her dorm room and apartment (respectively) at Eastern Oregon, at this moment, Steph realized it had never been home. Home was the rickety, shallow steps up to the front porch that had long needed new paint, and the little sailboat and fish decoration hanging on the door. Home was the fenced-in patch of grass where she’d learned to ride a bike.
Home was this tiny, two story structure that had nearly been torn down, in a little nowheresville called Astoria, Oregon, and it had been, all along.
Her house still looked the same, maybe a little faded, but hers. There were bumblebee wind chimes hanging from the porch now, and the stairs were perhaps more rickety than they had been the last time she’d been home, but she’d know that porch and those stairs anywhere. She perched forward, on the edge of her seat as her chest tightened with a feeling she had come to know very well:
Homesickness.
Mouth slowed the car to a stop by the road without pulling into the driveway. The engine rumbled for a moment, idling before he shifted into park, leaning back in his seat with his forearms draped over the steering wheel. Oddly enough, he didn’t say anything.
Stef reached for the door handle, pushing the door open and shakily stepping out, clutching her bag in front of her. She suddenly felt very fifteen again, or rather as she had felt on her first day of college. Young, almost afraid of the unknown, even though in this case, that was completely ridiculous. This was as old and familiar as it came.
She paused at the gate, turning around to peer back through the car window.
Mouth ducked his head, meeting her gaze through the window. He lifted three fingers in an approximation of a wave before he pulled out, smooth as glass, and disappeared down the street.
Stef walked up the familiar path, her luggage knocking against her knees with every step as questions and conflicting feelings bounced against her brain on every side until it hurt. She wondered if her room had been left the same, or if it was now full of stuff that wasn’t hers anymore.
She hesitated at the door, one hand halting in it’s movement before it lifted past her hip. For some reason, she didn’t want to knock on her own door.
She cleared her throat, glancing up the side of the house, bouncing on her toes, rocking on her heels, before she shook her head, clutching her bag tighter.
“ Mom! ” she hollered.
There was a rustling inside, in what sounded like the upper floor, then a gentle thump, then a few more soft thuds. After a moment, the front door to the Steinbrenner household swung open, and before her, in all of her middle-aged glory, was Martha Steinbrenner.
PopcornPeril on Chapter 1 Sun 08 Jun 2025 02:56PM UTC
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VasquezLives on Chapter 1 Thu 17 Jul 2025 06:39PM UTC
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