Chapter Text
Body too goddamn exhausted to keep him awake for another full night, Eddie did manage to get a few hours of blessedly dreamless sleep. Monday came with the shriek of his alarm, and his eyes popped open to the first few rays of sunlight as he rolled to slap the damned thing off.
f*ck. f*ck.
He’d talked to Chrissy the night before until after ten before she admitted that she needed to get to sleep. Eddie wanted to f*cking scream at her to put some music on, to let Pat Benatar carry her through her dreams, but that would be suspicious even for him.
He did tell her to sleep well. And she went so goddamn quiet, like asking as much simply wasn’t possible but she didn’t have the heart to voice her distressed disagreement.
Wayne wasn’t home yet – Sunday nights were his long shifts –so Eddie put his own music on to drown out the suffocating silence of the trailer as he prepared for the day.
As he prepared to see Chrissy again. After talking to her on the phone, like that wasn’t super f*cking strange in and of itself. Where she asked him if they could hang out.
Today.
Christ. Would this have happened before? If they’d, for whatever reason, been thrust into each other’s orbits long before that fateful day in March, would she still have wanted him to remain there? To have her own personal moon as it circled the Earth, at her beck and call by the mere force of her gravity? Or was it that same f*cked up, cosmic joke that yanked him back in time that kept her reaching out?
Would the spell break if and when he managed to save her life? Allowing her to drift back into the vacuum without circ*mstance to hold her to him?
Would he die again before he knew?
Unknown after unknown floated through his stupid brain as he mindlessly prepared for the day. Casting psychic damage with every blow that made him want to rip his hair out and scream instead of going to stupid f*cking school, of all places.
He wanted to skip. Go back to bed and lay there until his mattress swallowed him whole. Who gave a sh*t about a degree when his literal, actual second life was on the line?
But she would be there. And that was the only thing that pushed him out the door.
He had no idea what the protocol was for something like this. Should he say hi if he saw her? Wave? Would she have forgotten that she talked to him? A night of sleep to put her weekend mistakes out of her mind?
Did she consider him a mistake?
Bombarded with these thoughts through his first three hours, Eddie wandered blindly to his locker to switch out the books he hadn’t cracked open all day. He’d spent his classes looking as though he were furiously taking notes, but he was instead notating every single thing he could possibly remember about what happened before in the format of a horror story.
Just in case someone glanced at his notebook and saw what he was writing. He could handle being known as the freak for using class time to write a f*cked up story, but he didn’t need anyone to assume he was plotting Chrissy’s murder by using her real name.
Opening his locker stopped his heart as he watched a pink slip of paper that had been stuck in the slats flutter slowly to the ground. The wave of déjà vu that punched him in the gut nearly doubled him over.
It had been cloudy that morning in March. The sun hadn’t made an appearance until just after lunch, giving everything a wet, dreary feel as he opened his locker, just as unsuspecting then as he was now. On a day that would never again happen, where Chrissy had ripped a note for him out of a little pink notepad that asked him to sell to her.
He’d used the same paper to respond with his normal meeting point. Because, back then and never again, it had been a normal ask on a normal Friday. A normal question from a normal girl who was living her normal life. Who would be attending a normal high school party that night and wanted a pick-me-up for the evening.
Or so he’d assumed.
f*cking insane how his assumptions ended up turning his entire existence on its head. How he’d had his barely-cobbled-together belief system about real versus not real thrown into the garbage disposal, shredded by the blades of his own stupidity until there was nothing left but the taste of blood in his mouth as it expelled itself from his lungs.
The note, of course, wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be. She didn’t know to ask for the same things.
“Eddie,
Can we meet by the west entrance a few minutes before the final bell?
— Chrissy
Huffing out a laugh at the irony, Eddie tore the paper. Making sure to preserve her quick little note for himself as he wrote out an affirmative response.
Of course she doesn’t want me to talk to her at school.
He’d forgotten, briefly, the way she avoided being seen with him.
Eddie had to wonder all over again what Chrissy’s motivations were for making sure they were leaving at a time where no one might be around to see them together. Was it her social standing? Not worth risking the throne she sat in at the tippy top of the social pyramid? But, despite how little he still knew about her, that specific explanation didn’t feel right. Not unless she felt threatened or trapped.
Like she had some inkling of an idea, however conscious or unconscious it was, about the true nature of her boyfriend.
Or maybe he was projecting.
Before, when she’d asked him to meet her after the crowd from the game had cleared out, there’d been a little niggling worm of shamed hypocrisy in the back of his mind he’d had to quash. Swallowing some hurtful statement he could no longer recall, because agreeing to take her back to his place felt far more important than pointing out how f*cked it was that she was afraid to be seen with him.
The second time around, he wasn’t quite so hurt by whatever her reasoning might be. Far too focused on the continuation of the fact that she had motivations at all. That she maintained those motives so long as she maintained a beating heart.
The note was covertly slipped into her locker, and Eddie edged into his fourth period a few minutes after the tardy bell rang. Mr. Irwin didn’t even glance away from the chalkboard, just pointed in the general direction of Eddie’s desk and went back to droning on about ancient Mayan culture. Shrugging off the eyerolls and dirty looks from the Grade A students in the front row.
Maybe if he hadn’t already passed this class twice, Eddie might care more about the curriculum. Instead, all he did was yank his notebook out of his backpack and return to the task of memorializing the future’s events as they happened once before.
An unfortunate side effect of a public school was the way unassigned seating worked. At the beginning of the year, teachers who gave their students way too much goddamn freedom had a sea of hormonal teenagers spilling past their doorway and jousting for the seat that best fit their personality.
Kids with good grades always sat near the front, but it was a war waged between full-of-themselves jocks and burnouts like him that had the back of the classroom becoming a battlefield.
Jocks like Andy Dick-Muncher Traynor – Eddie was pretty sure that was his legal middle name – who’d attempted to reserve the seat Eddie now sat in for one of his friends on the first day. A goddamn hissy fit had been thrown over the sh*t-eating grin Eddie wore in response as he made himself comfortable.
Ever since, it was like Andy couldn’t quell the impulse to shoot stupid sh*t in Eddie’s direction through class. Like he’d made it a game to see how quickly Eddie could piss him off with witty responses to his snide remarks.
“Bit late to be putting the effort in now, don’t you think, Munster?” Andy snorted. “Not like you’re gonna graduate this year either.”
Like Eddie f*cking cared.
“Who said I was taking notes?” Eddie shot back after he’d finished a sentence. “This is just me detailing my invigorating experience about hooking up with your mom.”
Dick-Muncher’s face went red with anger when Eddie waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“Again.”
“You freaking psycho—”
“Are you quite finished, Andrew?” Mr. Irwin asked from the front of the room. Eddie looked at their teacher with a knowing smile. Mr. Irwin met his gaze with a brief smirk before casting his eye toward Andy in unamused exasperation.
“Munson—”
“I think, of the two of you,” Mr. Irwin continued in his droll, bored tone, “that Edward is perhaps the one who can afford not to pay attention in my class.” A quirked brow as Eddie buried his snort of laughter behind his hand. “So be quiet, hm?”
Thoroughly chastised, Dick-Muncher sank back into his seat. Awarding Eddie nothing more than a sneer for his forced hand in being reprimanded from an authority figure.
Still, just to stave off the poor guy’s further distraction, Eddie closed the stupid notebook and slid it into his backpack. He’d finished the quote-end-quote “story,” anyway.
So, if nothing the f*ck else came of today, at least he could feel accomplished in this ridiculous endeavor of remembering everything he’d rather forget. Everything he was f*cking terrified of forgetting.
He hardly got two steps out of the classroom once the bell rang before a yank on his jacket had him turning, hand fisted and half-raised. The younger Wheeler was curled there, arms up in an expectant defensive pose.
“Whoa, whoa,” Dustin said, half-hidden behind Mike. Lucas stood at the rear, playing way too f*cking hard at nonchalant as he leaned casually against the lockers. “We, uh. We were sent by Nance to retrieve you. We’re, uh.” Peering around Eddie at the mess of students on their way to the cafeteria, Dustin grit his teeth. “We’re having lunch in the journalism room.”
Goddamnit. The fleeting normalcy from the day before – barring Chrissy’s phone call, which, outside of being overtly weird as a concept, contained no real strangeness – blew away in the breeze. One quick thrust of a reminder, and Eddie was shoved head first into the Upside Down all over again.
Everyone, save Erica’s middle schooler title and The Hair and his fancy high school diploma, was already in the journalism room when Eddie filed in with the Hellfire chitlins. Elder Wheeler and Robin were sitting awkwardly across a table from one another and Red was on the other side of the room, headphones wrapped around her neck as she took notes from a textbook.
“Okay, perfect,” Nancy said in abject relief after the door shut behind them, standing as the awkward silence lifted. Max and Robin both sat up a little straighter as the guys fell into their own chairs. Except Eddie, who crossed over to the window, cracking it open and lighting up a cigarette. Nancy glared at him but said nothing.
“So what’s the big news?” Max asked. “You said you had an announcement.”
“Yes,” Nancy agreed, marching up to the front of the classroom like the college professor she probably could be. “I got a pretty big update last night from Jonathan.”
“Yeah, you hogged the phone for two hours,” Mike complained. “I didn’t even get to talk to El!”
Grimacing, Nancy shook her head. “El isn’t going to be available for a little while. Jonathan talked to Joyce, and they managed to get in touch with Dr. Owens.”
“What?” Lucas asked. “That psycho?”
“He’s not that bad,” Dustin argued, and Lucas shot him a dirty look.
“He tried to keep Will locked up at that shady ass hospital!”
“Language,” Robin piped in, though she didn’t seem to actually care. Eddie just scoffed, and Robin glanced at him with a grin.
“We don’t really have a lot of options,” Nancy supplied, her own expression a begrudging acceptance. “Joyce told him what we were potentially up against, and he said he had some preliminary testing he wanted to run that might reawaken El’s powers.”
“You’re joking,” Mike said, jumping to his feet and stalking toward Nancy. “What, they wanna do some freak experiment because it might help her? Joyce isn’t going to let them do that, right?”
“She’s already agreed, Mike,” Nancy said softly, crossing her arms as she gave Mike her best look of understanding. “El, I mean. She’s already gone to get started.”
Mike staggered back again, collapsing into another desk and hanging his head in his hands.
The quiet lasted a beat, then two, as Eddie finished his cigarette and dug a plastic bag of pretzels out of his lunchbox.
“They’re gonna torture her,” Mike moaned after a minute as the group absorbed Nancy’s reveal. “They’re gonna dunk her in that freaking tank and keep her there until she goes crazy!”
“That’s her choice,” Max argued. “She chose to do this, idiot. She knew what she was getting into when she agreed, and she agreed anyway.”
“And whose fault is that?” Mike shot back. “If you weren’t involved––”
“It’s not like Max decided she was gonna get hunted by some creep from another plane,” Lucas interrupted, his voice low and angry. “You can’t put this on her, man, that isn’t fair.”
“None of this is fair,” Dustin said, casting an umbrella agreement to cease the ridiculous arguing. Eddie rolled his eyes, popping another pretzel into his mouth as the conversation happened around him. Beside him. Without him. “But it’s happening, alright? We don’t have a lot of choice here, guys. And El knows that.” This was said while looking pointedly at Mike.
“Exactly,” Nancy said. “Our options are extremely limited. Especially because only Eddie truly knows what we’re up against. We have to work with what’s available to us, and around the brief advantage that we have.”
“When did Chrissy die again?” Robin asked, way too casually for the way it made f*cking nails scratch down the chalkboard of his mind.
“March twenty-first,” Eddie said through a clenched jaw. “Night of the championship game.”
At that, Lucas perked up. “We make it to the championships?”
Eddie snorted. “Yeah, kid. You actually make the winning basket.”
Sinclair blinked at him, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“That’s not really important right now,” Dustin stated before Lucas could ask anything else. “We, arguably, have way bigger fish to fry in the meantime. And, if everything goes well, this will all be over by spring break.”
“How long do they think this program-thing will take with El?” Red asked. Nancy shook her head.
“Owens told Joyce it depends on how receptive her mind is to it,” Nancy said around a breath. “The more resistant she is to accepting it, the longer it’s going to take.”
“Consciously, she isn’t going to be resistant,” Max supplied. Nancy nodded.
“‘Consciously’ isn’t the issue, though,” Dustin responded. He looked at Eddie. “Do you know how long it took them?”
“Nah,” Eddie said as he lit up a second cigarette. He really needed to slow the hell down on the chainsmoking – his wallet could not afford to burn up this f*cking quickly. “We were basically on our own. And, y’know, I died before we got to the real good stuff, so.”
The awkwardness returned tenfold in the ensuing silence left behind by his statement. As though everyone had conveniently forgotten why he harbored the plague of insider knowledge. The weight of the future settled on leather-clad shoulders that had shrugged and shirked every other responsibility of knowledge their entire life.
“So, uh, all this is new territory,” Eddie added after a deep inhale of smoke. The nicotine settled the rapid thundering of his heart for a moment before it kicked back up. Like the anxiety wouldn’t melt away; would only allow the briefest reprieves of a breath.
“Okay,” Nancy said as she chewed on her thumb. “Okay, that’s okay, though. Because everything that apparently took us most of a week to learn before is all known now, right? The music, the location; who Henry is and how he operates. His motives, his background.” She nodded to herself as she ticked through the mental list.
“But there are variables that we’ve cast from known into unknown by having that jump,” Dustin replied as he held up his hand, lifting a finger for everything Eddie had apparently f*cked up. “The order of victims, the location of the portals, the viability of El’s powers.”
“We can’t really do anything from this side without a portal,” Lucas added. “No way in, no plan of attack.”
“So, what, should we just wait for someone to die?”
“That’s not what I––”
“Lucas is right,” Nancy interrupted. “Without El or a portal, we can’t really start to build a plan of attack. We’re sort of in limbo right now.”
“We need to talk to the other people Vecna’s after,” Dustin reiterated, looking toward Max before casting an eye between Nancy, Robin and Eddie. “Any progress on that front?”
“Fred wasn’t at school today,” Nancy said. “I was going to call his house when I got home. Make sure he’s okay.”
“Steve’s picking me and Patrick up after our respective practices, since he and I are both off from Family Video,” Robin stated with a shrug.
“I’ve, uh, got something planned with Chrissy today, too,” Eddie finally admitted. Afraid that this tentative new thing was at risk by speaking it into reality. But no one batted an eye, just giving encouraging nods as they mulled over their positions in the coming fight. Nullifying his fear of judgment or disgust, as though either of those were ever a real possibility from these people.
His friends.
Right?
They talked around Eddie for a few minutes more before the bell rang. Everyone gathered up their bags and books, the younger boys all complaining about missing lunch before Nancy gave a weary parental sigh and pulled a few crumpled ones from her wallet, telling them all to stop by a vending machine on their way to class.
Eddie grabbed Dustin by the shoulder before he could escape. The notebook he’d spent all morning adding words to was dug from his backpack and shoved into the young Henderson’s hands.
Dustin blinked curiously, looking down at the skeletal puppeteer Eddie had inked onto the worn yellow cover. It was weirdly fitting of a symbol, he realized, to have been the chosen notebook to bear his story.
“It’s supposed to be for English, so just skip past all the notes and bullsh*t,” Eddie informed him with a clap on his shoulder. “I got everything else down that I could remember.”
Eyes widening in alarm, Dustin looked around for a second before shoving Eddie back into the classroom.
“Eddie,” he hissed, clutching the notebook against his chest. “C’mon, man, there’s a reason we don’t write down what happened!”
“I didn’t,” Eddie shot back. “I wrote down sh*t that hasn’t happened. sh*t that might not happen.” He rolled his eyes. “And I was a little bit more discreet than a goddamn diary entry, kid, Jesus. Have a little faith in your dungeon master, yeah?”
Staring for a long moment, Dustin finally looked down at the notebook. He flipped through the pages, glancing over sh*tty doodles and half-coherent notes before finding the beginning of the story.
The first few lines were skimmed, and Eddie chuckled as Dustin let out the smallest, “Oh.”
“Get to class, Henderson,” Eddie said as he stepped past the kid. The little sh*t. “Read it at home, alright? No reason to fill that big brain of yours with new ideas unrelated to its Hawkins High Honor Roll placement.”
Dustin didn’t respond as Eddie slipped from the room , taking the stairs two at a time to make it to his sixth hour.
Then seventh hour.
Eighth hour he didn’t bother attending. It was woodshop, and Eddie could whittle f*cking circles around Mr. Sillerman, thanks to crash woodworking courses he’d received from Wayne to keep the trailer from collapsing in on itself.
Plus, Eddie’s final project from the year prior was already finished, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to turn it in for the third A of its life in that class.
He didn’t leave the building. It wasn’t like anyone was going to be patrolling the halls, so Eddie sat on the stairs that bordered the west entrance and pulled out his own Walkman, loading up the tape he’d purchased on his way to band practice from the record store.
As the first song began, Eddie listened. Eyes closed and body leaned fully back against the wall, he methodically picked apart the notes of the music. Separating drums, guitar, bass, keyboard. Rewinding when the song finished and stretching his leg out to use as a makeshift fretboard. In his mind, he tried to recreate the notes, cringing every time he mentally hit a sour one. Rewinding again, turning up the volume to identify exactly where the guitar ended and the synthesizer began.
Time became incorporeal. Moving and flowing around him like an unenthusiastic phantom that had no interest in keeping his attention. Lost in the unrelenting haze of pause, listen, rewind, volume up, rewind, volume down, note, note, wrong note, correct note, pause, rewind, talk himself out of a cigarette, pause, listen.
When a light weight tapped against his shoe, he was so f*cking lost in the music that he nearly threw himself down the half-flight of stairs he’d settled on. Windmilling his arms, one wrist slapped against the handrail and Eddie grabbed onto it with a shout as his legs slipped down a few steps.
Chrissy was standing above him, her hands covering her mouth and her eyes wide as she watched his absolutely ridiculous display of what could only be described as the polar opposite of machismo. Clinging to the handrail for dear goddamn life, Eddie used his other hand to stop the tape and yank the headphones from his ears.
“Jesus––”
“I’m so sorry!” Chrissy squeaked, taking a half step back as Eddie bumbled to his feet. “I-I thought you–– Oh, jeez, Eddie, I didn’t mean to scare you, I––”
“Damn, Cunningham, way to make me embarrass myself,” Eddie chuckled as he dusted his jeans off, taking a deep breath in an attempt to right the off-centered beating of his heart. Chrissy stayed quiet, and Eddie adjusted the headphones around his neck before he looked at her again.
Oh, sh*t.
She was crying.
Those big eyes were brewing tears that hadn’t quite spilled over yet, looking up at him like she’d made some egregious error. Like she’d ruined their tentative friendship or pissed him off or––
“Hey, whoa, Chrissy, it’s alright,” he said, taking a tentative step forward that she automatically mirrored. Holding his hands up in supplication, he edged forward again like he was trying to approach a wounded animal or something. At least this time, she didn’t move away from him. “I’m serious, yeah? Not upset, I swear. I need to be jolted out of my little f*cking dreamland every now and again, you know?”
Rapidly blinking, Chrissy looked down at her hands like she couldn’t remember how they’d become attached to her wrists. One tear slipped down her cheek, and she immediately wiped it away before shaking her head. Unable to comprehend her own reaction.
“Oh nuggets.” A deep inhale, then a second around her stuttering chest. “I’m–– I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Eddie, I’m so––”
“Hey,” he interrupted with a pointer finger in her face. Her eyes crossed a little when she looked at it. “If the next word out of your mouth is an apology we’re gonna have issues, yeah? You ain’t got sh*t to apologize for, Cunningham. I swear.”
Her swallow was so heavy it made her entire throat move.
“Okay,” she whispered. Then, a little stronger, “Okay.”
Eddie grinned, giving her a little bow. “Well. Shall we make our great escape, now that that’s settled?” He held his elbow out to her. Chrissy looked at it in wide-eyed awe before a little giggle slipped up from her lungs. She reached out, resting a soft, gentle hand in the crook, like she was unsure if she was actually allowed to touch him. When he didn’t immediately pull away, her grasp became a bit more confident, and Eddie gave her a wide smile before leading her down the stairs and out the door.
It felt way too f*cking natural to have her next to him like this.
A breath that seemed to come from the deepest trenches of her lungs fell from her mouth as she settled in his passenger seat. Like she’d spent the entire day taking quick little inhales and hadn’t had a real opportunity to breathe all day. The walls of the building encroaching and suffocating her into something sallow and compliant.
“Where to?” Eddie asked as the van rumbled to life. “I dunno about you, but, uh, my lunch was an unfortunate victim of unavoidable interruption, so I could go for a snack or something. If that sounds, y’know, plausible.”
Fingers extended, then fisted in her lap as he spoke. Her silence stretched over the whine of the van for so long that Eddie nearly recounted his suggestion. Left it up to her. f*ck, maybe she just wanted to get high again and forget that she was a person? He–– He didn’t know how to feel about that, about the idea that she might just be using him for his weed, but, sh*t, did it really matter all that much? In the scheme of things, even if that were the case, was he not meant to be the willing party that pulled her in and out of her own reality to keep the monsters at bay?
“I’m, um,” she started as he spiraled, “I’m not particularly hungry myself, but I don’t mind if you eat.”
She didn’t look at him as she spoke. And maybe that wasn’t all that weird – how often did she look at anyone when she gave life to her voice? Could he relegate her unrelenting eye contact from Saturday to her high? – but he couldn’t understand the tremble in her voice. The strain of her shoulders as they curled up toward her ears.
“Hey, uh. Can you look at me, Chrissy?”
He almost thought she’d f*cking dive out of the van, the way she stiffened. Spine straight as a hardcover book, her fists tightened until her knuckles turned white. Resolutely turned away from him, like the slightest glance in his direction would release a hurricane for which she hadn’t prepared. No doomsday prepping in Chrissy Cunningham’s mind, it seemed.
A moment that stretched like a lifetime, and she finally let go of the air in her lungs as she gave him the quickest glance over her shoulder. Eddie didn’t move, barely breathed, as she cast her gaze down before bringing it back up to settle on his eyes.
f*ck, he prayed he looked as inviting as possible.
“This was your idea,” he reminded her softly. Speaking around the breath she took through her teeth, as though she wanted to argue or dissuade an argument that would never come to pass. “And I am more than happy to abide by whatever you had planned, if you had anything planned. I just wasn’t sure, and I should’ve asked before I made my own suggestion.”
Raising his eyebrows, he shrugged. Keeping up as much of an uncaring attitude as he could convey. Because he cared. He cared so f*cking much it terrified him.
“I’m up for whatever, kid,” he continued as her posture slowly relaxed. “We can go paint this sh*tty town red if you want, yeah? Say the word.”
Chrissy didn’t look away this time. Instead, she pulled in an inhale so great it rounded her chest before letting it all out in a rush. Eddie hadn’t realized she’d gone pale until color began filling her cheeks again.
“Maybe, um,” she started, sniffling a little. “Maybe I could, um, go for a snack. Like–– Like a taco, maybe?”
“Yeah?” Eddie chuckled. “Well, uh, I happen to know a killer taco place.”
A sniffle, and then a giggle. “Does it include a little yellow bell?”
“It sure as sh*t does,” Eddie agreed, pulling out of the Hawkins High parking lot significantly later than he intended. Behind them, kids had begun filtering from the doors – the final bell must’ve just rung. Luckily no one ever paid mind to the sh*tty white-striped van that came and went as it pleased.
Taco Bell secured – with literally nothing more than a single soft-shell taco for Chrissy –they ended up, at her request, at Lover’s Lake. It took every ounce of self control Eddie possessed not to drive the van off the side of the road when she suggested it. The memories flashed through his mind like light bulbs popping as they burned out. Rick’s boathouse; Steve and Dustin; the lake nothing more than a dark mass, so black Eddie couldn’t even recall if it reflected moonlight; the jocks chasing him through the water.
Patrick McKinney’s body as it rose up from the waves cast by his sh*tty little rowboat. The way his bones sounded as they snapped, almost exactly like Chrissy’s, but it seemed so much louder out in the open. Heavier. And Eddie’s screams reflected in the chest of her boyfriend as he bore witness to what he’d convinced himself Eddie had done to her.
Still, he made the drive. Trying to keep his chest from convulsing around water that didn’t exist as its weight crushed him. Chasing tentative friendships into the cold depths like he could offer them anything that they didn’t already possess.
Watching that red glow grow larger, swallowing the darkness in fluorescent blood.
But the lake itself was serene, almost. Soft. Dappled with tiny ripples as the breeze brushed out from the woods and skittered along the surface, untouched as it was by that oozing mass of black. Harboring no secret portals, no unfathomable decay.
Not yet.
Not ever.
The wrapper of Chrissy’s taco crinkled in her lap, fingertips fidgeting with the paper as she looked out over the water. He’d parked them on the other side, as far away from Rick’s house as he could get.
“Would you want to go for a walk?” she asked, voice hesitant, like she expected him to say no.
“Uh,” Eddie said, his hand digging around at the bottom of his meal bag to grab any stray cinnamon crispas. The burrito supreme would be easy enough to eat while walking, he supposed, and the chips would be fine until later. “Yeah, sure.”
He really didn’t. He didn’t want to get out of the f*cking van and go for a leisurely stroll around his fellow student’s unmarked grave. It was a battle, having to constantly remind himself that Patrick McKinney, as of a few hours ago, was verified still alive and breathing.
They walked in silence for a little while as Eddie inhaled his burrito. Convincing himself, rather unsuccessfully, that the churning in his gut was because of how quickly he ate, not because he was walking along a trail that surrounded horrific memories.
“Thank you for the jail break,” Chrissy said after she’d finished her taco, allowing him to take her wrapper and shove it in his pocket.
Eddie swallowed his last massive bite of food, tortilla and meat scraping painfully against his esophagus as he pulled it down sooner than he should have.
“I mean,” he teetered around a shrug. “We were, like, what, ten minutes out from the end of the day? Does it really even count?”
Chrissy responded with her own shrug, stepping broadly over a tree root before looking out at the sun as it sparkled against the surface of the lake.
“I had cheer practice today,” she admitted after a moment. “But I, um. I told my coach that I wasn’t feeling well. I never miss practice, so she told me to go home and rest.”
“Oh.” A pause, and Eddie’s big ass mouth spoke before he could wonder if it was the right thing to say. “Aren’t you, like, their leader or whatever?”
She flinched, but her chest still swelled with a little giggle, and, sh*t, if he was gonna f*ck up, at least he could make her laugh on the way down, right?
“I’m the captain, yeah,” she responded around a grin. Just broad enough to show off the slight tilt of her front teeth. God, she was pretty. “But, um. We’re practicing for a pep rally right now, in the event we make it to the championships. And I came up with the choreography, so it’s not like I need to practice.” Fisting her hands in her sweater, her eyes seemed to roam over the trail before them like they couldn’t pick any one place to settle. Which Eddie knew, because his own eyes were rapt in absorbing all her little mannerisms. “I haven’t missed a single practice since, like, the beginning of junior year, so I think Coach can forgive me this one.”
Eddie held some branches out of the way for her to duck beneath, and she looked up at him with a grateful little smile. Her eyes were the same color as the lake – a sort of dusty blue that shimmered in the sunlight.
“I, um, needed a little break anyway,” she admitted after a moment.
“Yeah?” Eddie hedged, fishing for more. Not even to potentially stall the onset of Vecna symptoms. He just–– He just wanted to know.
“Yeah.” She stopped all at once, body turning as she looked out over the lake. Wind made the water dance as it cast rainbow fractals in every direction from the reflection of the sun. “Do you, um. Do you ever feel like… you’re losing your mind?”
f*ck.
“Uh.” God. God damn it. “Just, y’know, on a daily basis.” Why the f*ck did his chest hurt so much?
She turned back toward him, eyes wide and imploring.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind right now, having a lackadaisical meander through the woods with Chrissy Cunningham. The Queen of Hawkins High.” He smiled like it was a joke, and Chrissy let out a delicate little snort.
“‘Lackadaisical meander’?” she shot back, her nose scrunched up as she considered his vocabulary. “I think you’ve been reading too much fantasy, Eddie.”
Letting out a noise of offense, Eddie cast his hand over his heart and staggered back a few steps. Letting his feet slip a little against the dirt and making a show of righting himself. Her hands automatically reached toward him, like she was going to pull him back upright, and he smirked at her. “Cunningham. You take that back! There’s no such thing!” Scoffing, he rolled his eyes. “‘Too much fantasy.’ The mere implication!”
“My apologies, sir. I had no idea you talked like a high elf in casual conversation.”
Briefly stumbling over his own words, Eddie was suddenly struck with the recollection of rifling through her belongings. Finding her own hidden fantasy paperbacks, well-worn and obviously loved.
But he couldn’t tell her that. Couldn’t imply that he knew any part of herself she hadn’t offered willingly. Her book preferences; her mess; her death.
“Chrissy Middle-Name Cunningham,” Eddie said, voice deep as he took two large steps to close the distance between them. “You know what a high elf is? And yet you infer that I am the one who spends too much time lost in fantasy realms?”
Chrissy pursed her lips, eyes dancing with humor as they darted between him and the lake. High above, a cloud moving lazily through the sky overtook the sun, casting them in a brief respite from its shine, and the glimmer in her eyes faded in the same instant.
“My mom doesn’t like fantasy,” she said after a moment. “When I was a kid, she would monitor what books I was allowed to check out from the library. I really liked the Wrinkle in Time books, but Mom wouldn’t let me read them. She said the inclusion of witches made them anti-Christian.” Chrissy snorted, wrapping her arms around her midsection. “I reread them when I got older and could, um, buy them from a used bookstore. And they–– Gosh, there was so much religious symbolism I didn’t remember. But she saw one inkling of a witch, and suddenly the books must’ve been published in Salem in the sixteen hundreds.”
Eddie laughed. He couldn’t help himself. And, after a moment, Chrissy laughed with him. But it didn’t take long for that brief glimpse of joy to taper off. She turned away from the lake, continuing along the path Eddie had forgotten they were traipsing. He stumbled to catch up.
“As I got older, her focuses shifted,” she continued after a while. “It was less about what I was putting in my brain and more about––” Huffing, Chrissy shook her head. “I’m being ungrateful. I’m sorry.”
“Ungrateful for what, exactly?” Eddie asked in genuine confusion.
“I mean, my mom feeds me,” Chrissy stressed. “You know? She houses me and clothes me and––”
“Yeah, princess, but, uh, all of that sh*t is in the parental job description, is it not?” Oh, sh*t, there was that goddamn nickname again. Eddie looked up, trying to play it as cool as a f*cking cucumber, but he could feel Chrissy’s eyes on him. The sun had returned, little streams of light sprinkled through the canopy of leaves above. “I mean, that’s what she signed up for, right? sh*t, my uncle isn’t even my dad, and he took on that sh*t when my mom died. Because kids can’t fend for themselves, y’know?”
For a long time, Chrissy didn’t say anything at all. Minutes ticking by, each second reminding him that he was the goddamn king of overstepping. What the f*ck did he know, anyway? Wayne was probably the best f*cking role model he could’ve asked for, all things considered, but, besides the blurry memories he had of his mom, he couldn’t guarantee how other households were meant to operate. How could he, with a dead mom and a deadbeat dad?
When she next opened her mouth to speak, Eddie figured she’d ask to go back to the van. Instead, she sniffled a little, and he finally worked up the courage to look at her again.
f*ck, the tears were back. Eddie took a few steps, turning to face her and coming to a stop. His hands twitched like they wanted to reach for her, to comfort her, but he had no f*cking idea if he was allowed that. Something so simple suddenly felt like an insurmountable question for which he’d never have an answer.
“sh*t, I’m––”
“Why does she make me feel like a burden, then?” Her voice quivered around her emotion, a few tears slipping down her cheeks. “Why does she make it seem like, if I’m not totally perfect, then I don’t deserve what she’s supposed to provide?”
f*ck, how was someone supposed to answer that?
“I don’t know,” Eddie said after a moment, taking a chance and letting his hands fall to her shoulders. She looked up at him as her own hands came up, wrapping loosely around his wrists. Holding him there, like he was some anchor, some grounding presence. “But it isn’t fair that she does, y’know? It isn’t fair, Chrissy.”
She sniffed again. Looked down, digging a toe into the dirt.
“Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I, um. C-Can I hug you?”
To say his entire brain flatlined would’ve been the understatement of the goddamn millennia. Mouth agape like some brainless little guppy, he just… stared. Running her question through his brain again and again like he could sparse out what she actually meant, because surely she wasn’t saying she wanted physical comfort from him. Him, out of everyone in the f*cking city. Jason Carver and Nancy Wheeler be damned, Chrissy was asking Eddie f*cking Munson for a hug.
“Uh,” he responded, ever the picture of eloquence. High elves could get bent. “If–– I mean. Y-Yeah, Chrissy, of course.”
He opened his arms, marveling when she immediately stepped into them. Small, his brain supplied. Small enough that she fit perfectly against him, her head tucked so that he could rest his chin atop it if he wanted to. She folded into him like a guitar folds into a case, letting his arms envelop her completely. Burrowing into his warmth like she could hide away, shielded from the cold, prying eyes of everything that stalked her in the dark. Eddie let her fall into him, let himself fall into her in turn, until they were clinging to one another like the rest of the world couldn’t possibly have the nerve to interrupt.
He couldn’t say how long they stayed like that. How long her little body breathed against his, pulse thrumming against the thumb he had gently stroking the back of her neck. She’d tucked her hands beneath his jacket and vest, so her palms were pressed into the thin fabric of his t-shirt, and kept them there. Feeling every rise and fall of his lungs, until her own breathing matched his. Breathing out as he breathed in, like they could absorb each other in microscopic pieces with every bit of oxygen they inhaled and released.
He couldn’t say how long they stayed like that, yet it was still far too soon when she eventually pulled away.
They didn’t touch again as they walked back to his van. Making quiet conversation that did not address her need for an embrace, his willingness to give it. Making a ten minute walk into thirty minutes as their conversation rose and fell with the gentle waves that lapped against the lakeside. Chrissy mentioned, at some point, that her cheer practice had ended a half hour before, and that she should be getting home. Eddie mentioned having assignments and club stuff to work on. Neither of them moved any faster.
He helped her into the passenger seat, and Chrissy gave him a small, lovely smile as her fingertips curled easily around his sleeve.
“Thank you for today,” she said. “It was really lovely.”
“I am at your beck and call, princess,” Eddie responded with a grin. “Literally. You have my number.”
“And I didn’t even use it to prank you.”
“I’m still holding out.”
He shoved her door closed, trotting around the front of the van and hoisting himself into the seat. Turning the key over a couple of times before the engine sparked to life, Eddie looked out the windshield to gauge how much space he had if he needed to make a tight turn.
There was something on his hood. Stuck against the vents that lined his windshield, like it’d been shoved there intentionally. Like whoever placed it knew it otherwise would’ve slipped off.
Lips curling in confusion, Eddie opened his door, reaching around and digging the obstruction out. He squinted, head tilting to one side as he climbed back into the van.
“What is it?” Chrissy asked, leaning across the center console to see.
“I can’t tell,” he said, holding the thing up. It was tiny and pink, with a plastic hook attached. Cleaner than one might expect it to be, given it was stuck in the dirty vent of his van in the middle of the woods. “A keychain or something.”
Chrissy held her hand out, and Eddie dropped the thing into her palm as he reversed away from the lake.
“Oh, cute!” she exclaimed after a brief examination. “It’s an elephant!”
Eddie snorted. “I didn’t know elephants were pink.”
“How do you think it got there?”
“Probably just some kid being a dick. Trying to f*ck up my engine.”
Chrissy hummed, leaning across the center console again and messing with the keys he had in the ignition. He almost stopped her – what if she pulled on them or something, his starter was already not living its best life – but she was finished after a half second.
“You should keep it on you,” she said with a grin. Eddie chuckled.
“Yeah? How come?”
“I dunno.” Thoughtfully, her eyes drifted between the new adornment on his keys and him, a smile still curling her lips. “Seems like a good luck charm.”
