Chapter One – The Heartbroken King
It's 5:00 on a Friday night, and I, Jessica Harrison, am rummaging through my locker at Hawkins High collecting my textbooks for the weekend's hours of homework, just as I do every Friday night at 5:00. I have hung around for as long as I could, hiding away in the library to escape into the fantasy of my latest novel of choice for nearly two hours. The bell has rung, signaling the end of various after-school sports practices, and the doors will be locked soon. Unless I want to be stuck in the school for two days, I need to get out.
Closing my locker door with a slam, I sling my bag over my shoulder and turn right, heading in the general direction of the front entrance, when I'm stopped in my tracks by the vision that is Steve Harrington. He is walking towards me with his head down, hair dripping as the result of a recent shower. He must have had basketball practice again.
I haven't spoken to Steve since he started dating Nancy Wheeler; since he started hanging around Tommy and Carol. Now, Steve wasn't really speaking to any of them. He was different, but so was Nancy. Nancy and I used to be close before she started spending every minute of her life with Steve, or if not Steve, Barb; poor Barb. We had stopped talking until yesterday out of the blue when she had called me in the morning to tell me about the Halloween party; her run-in with Steve in the bathroom, and I had encouraged her to go to him and speak her mind. I suppose I had even expected the aftermath. Part of me had never really felt that she and Steve would work out in the end, and as Nancy grew closer to Jonathan Byers, I realized why.
Steve is now standing in front of me, blinking. Damn it, I've been staring, daydreaming this whole time and he's caught me.
"Hey, Jessie." Quietly, he breaks the silence, surprising me by even taking the time to talk.
"Hey, Steve," I smile up at him, almost apologetically, like it's my fault that Nancy broke it off with him. I know I have nothing to do with it, but I can't help feeling a little bad for encouraging her, after overhearing the end of their conversation yesterday. Steve had fallen in with the wrong crowd, but had distanced himself since last year, and was trying to fix himself up, for both him and for Nancy, as far as I could tell. He loved her, a feeling that proved not to be mutual. Nancy still blamed herself, and Steve, for Barb's disappearance.
"You know… I heard you yesterday, you and Nancy when you should have been in basketball practice." I mutter cautiously. His face falls, and he motions as if he's going to push past me, but stops when I open my mouth again.
"I'm sorry, Steve. I know you really cared for her," he just nods, "but will hear me out for a second?"
He looks up at me with glossy eyes and nods again. He wouldn't let me speak if he didn't want me to.
"I don't think she's the one for you, Steve." I choke out. The sight of this "King" in front of me, crushed, is utterly devastating. He is a different boy, and it hurts me to think that it took Barb's disappearance and the subsequent loss of his first real love to drive him to this change. Ultimately though, I think he's changing for the better, like the breaking of his heart has caused it to grow. He looks down at me like I've driven a dagger through his heart myself, but holds my gaze.
"After all, she is Miss… P-Perfect." My voice drops to a whisper as I glance away from his heartbroken face down the hall, to the most unexpected and unpleasant sight imaginable; California's bad boy.
Author's Notes: Thank you for reading the first chapter of the first fanfic I have ever written on my own! Please leave a review to let me know what you thought.
Stranger Things is such an engaging fictional world to explore, so a big thank you goes to the Duffer Brothers. The world belongs to you, I am but a fangirl borrowing your ideas.
