Karen
A long time ago, many years before the thing that they were not supposed to talk about occurred, Hopper and Lonnie arrived at Hawkins High School wearing matching black eyes and split lips. The halls buzzed with the sound of whispered speculation. Lonnie caught Hopper necking with Joyce in the woods behind her house. Hopper jumped Lonnie when he heard him call Joyce a stupid bitch. Joyce arranged to meet both men at the same time just to goad them into fighting. Karen didn't think any of that was true, or that what really happened was any of her business, but she was curious just the same. It was hard for her to believe that Lonnie had been cruel to Joyce. Those two were just crazy about each other, and Lonnie was one of the most popular boys in school. Practically everyone in Hawkins knew him and what a charming young man he was. She wasn't surprised that Hopper had been in a fight, she had seen more than a few of his tussles in the hallways between classes, but Karen never saw Hopper go after a boy who didn't deserve it.
Once, when she was late for cheerleading practice after school, she came out of the locker room alone and suddenly found herself being herded into the corner of an empty hallway by Joey Martin. Karen had politely declined his invitation to homecoming the day before and thought she had been kind enough to him, yet there she was being pinned against the wall by his hips. She tried to push him away when he tangled one of his hands in her hair, and shrieked when he shoved his other hand up under her sweater, but Joey didn't stop pawing her until Hopper appeared from who-knows-where and hauled him off by the neck of his shirt. The last thing Karen saw as she ran out to the field was Hopper shoving Joey into the locker room and following him in. Karen never told anyone about what happened in the hallway that afternoon, but the next day she brought a batch of fresh apple fritters to school in a paper bag. She had stayed up late preparing the ingredients and gotten up early to bake them, and she felt jittery from lack of sleep and the memory of the dark corner in that lonely hallway. Karen found Hopper by his locker and shyly handed him the pastries. She waited while he opened the bag and stuck his nose into the top, sniffing appreciatively.
"I added some extra cinnamon," she said – as if the extra cinnamon explained everything that happened and everything he had done and the overwhelming weight of her gratitude towards him. Hopper nodded at her, smiling with one side of his mouth. And that was that. Karen never asked what happened in the locker room, but Joey Martin limped for a week and never even looked at her again. So she couldn't believe that Hopper would fight with Lonnie without a good reason. But, Karen supposed that Joyce was probably reason enough. Joyce was a doe-eyed waif with a smile that was half-helpless, half-sly, and could send just about any boy in school into a state of stuttering foolishness. Karen couldn't find it in herself to be jealous of Joyce the way a lot of girls in her grade were. She thought their jealousies were petty and misplaced. Joyce only had eyes for Lonnie, after all. Besides, Karen had ambitions beyond high school boys. Her cheer captain had promised to take her to a fraternity party one day soon. Karen felt her heart skip with excitement at the thought of it. At a fraternity she could meet college men with careers and prospects – maybe even meet a man with whom she could make a home and start a family. A reliable husband, a nice house, her own kitchen where she could work on new recipes, her own children to love. It could be perfect. Karen could make it all perfect.
...
After it happens, the thing they weren't supposed to talk about, Karen drops off enough baked goods at the police station to equal to Mike and Nancy's weights combined. Over the next few weeks there are loaves of bread heavy with nuts and raisins, savory scones, eight different types of cookies, flakey pastries sweetened with glaze, pies piled high with fruit and cream. She never asks Hopper if he likes them, never even tells him what she is doing, but Flo lets her know what kind of treats make their way from the kitchen into his office the fastest, and Karen writes a list inside the cover of her cookbook to keep track of what he likes for future reference. She plans to bake him treats on every holiday, on his birthday, and on Mike and Nancy's birthdays for as long as she is able. Karen knows it's not enough. It can never be enough to thank him. But she can never speak of what he did, or what was almost lost to her, and so she tries to do what she can.
Nancy
A few years before it happened, the thing that broke her heart and her brother's as well, Mike asked Nancy to play Dungeons and Dragons with him. Nancy felt she was too old to play dress up, but Mike pleaded and whined incessantly that they absolutely needed Nancy to play the elf or else the quest and everything else in his life would be absolutely ruined. Tired of her homework and lonely, Nancy pretended to be more annoyed than she really was and made a fuss about finding her old box of dress-up clothes in the back of the basement closet. Dragging it into the bathroom, she changed into an old nightgown of white silk and the wings Mom made for the ballet recital in which Nancy danced the part of the little fairy who brought all the flowers in a magical garden to life. She hoped to God no one besides Mom remembered that. As if everyone in her class needed more ammunition to make fun of Nancy Prissy Princess Wheeler.
"Princess Pigtails," Steve Harrington had whispered last week from his seat behind hers in class as he tugged on one of her braids. Nancy had felt her face and neck burning crimson, and, to make it worse, Tommy guffawed and leaned over to reach across the aisle, yanking on her other braid. When Nancy hissed in pain, Miss Leighton saw them and made both boys stay after class to be assigned extra homework as punishment. "Thanks a lot, Princess," Tommy spat at her in the cafeteria that afternoon, and had made a point of loudly calling her a priss every day since. Nancy would pretend not to hear him and would purse her lips to stop herself from crying while people laughed at her. She also stopped wearing her hair in pigtails despite Barb's gentle accusations that she was letting them change her. But, she reasoned as she tucked her dark curls under the cap of a wig, next year she would be in high school, and things could be different there. It could all get better for her. Madame Lena at the dance studio said she was old enough to dance ballet en pointe now, and Mom promised to take her to Indianapolis to buy toe shoes if she got A's on her report card – which she would, so Nancy should be able to move up to the older girls' class soon. There she could get to know the upper grade girls who were more grown up and sophisticated. And (maybe, perhaps, if she was lucky), a grown up, sophisticated boy would finally notice her, and he would think she was beautiful and ask her to dances and kiss her by the front door in the moonlight. Just like a movie, like a fairy tale. The synthetic hair fell to her waist in yellow waves and she turned to admire the effect of the blonde hair in the mirror. She used to love playing dress-up.
When Nancy rejoined the boys, she read the lines of script that Mike wrote out for her and watched their gleeful enthusiasm for the imaginary world they created. As she tried hide her amusement at an impassioned argument between Dustin and Lucas over whether or not an elf should be allowed to wear fairy wings, she felt school, the pigtails, the laughter, and everything in real life that was making her life miserable just slide farther and farther away. She smiled and played with her little brother, and for a while she could escape into his fairy tale, too.
Then the basement door opened and Jonathan Byers clunked awkwardly down the steps, calling out for his brother. In an instant Nancy felt her body freeze and her face burn. Jonathan was already in high school, and now he was going to see her dressed up like a stupid elf (with fairy wings – Mike had finally put his foot down on the issue just to end the argument), and playing fantasy games with a bunch of little boys. Her life was over. Nancy's eyes darted around the basement for something to hide behind as Jonathan reached the bottom stair and started talking.
"Hey Will. Change of plans, buddy. Mom asked me to come get you."
"I thought Dad was coming to get me later."
"We'll talk about it at home, ok?" Jonathan's shoulders were hunched and he sounded angry. Nancy prayed that he was too distracted to notice her, but as Will tried to pull his older brother into the basement she saw his eyes dart over towards her and then quickly bounce back to Will as the little boy spoke up again, entreating.
"Jonathan, you should play with us. You can be the elf lord, and you can marry Nancy and rule over the hidden elf kingdom. We'll teach you how to play. Nancy's really good at it." Nancy would have to ask to be homeschooled. She could never show her face at Hawkins High, ever. Jonathan didn't look back at her, he just reached out and gave Will a gentle push towards the stairs.
"Will, come on. I've got to get back to work. Let's go, buddy."
"Alright," Will replied, apparently resigned "Bye, guys. Don't go any farther without me. Bye, Nancy, thanks for playing with us. You look really pretty."
"Bye, Will," Nancy whispered, not trusting her voice. And then she heard it - the swift exhale under the breath of Jonathan Byers. He laughed at her. Nancy felt her lips pursing into a thin line and commanded herself not to cry. She didn't want Jonathan to see she had heard him. She didn't want him to know.
As soon as she heard the front door close Nancy left the boys in the basement and ran up to her room. Taking up the scissors from her desk and grabbing the hank of synthetic hair in one fist, she chopped off the long golden tresses of the wig. When Mom asked why she had ruined such a pretty thing she used to love, Nancy said she just wanted to experiment with a new style without cutting her own hair. But the truth was that Nancy wanted to destroy that stupid wig, and cut off the childish impulse to imagine life could be like a fairy tale. She was tired of being a silly girl people laughed at. She wanted to grow up.
...
After she goes there - after she sees it, after it kills Barb - Nancy never stops running through the dark wood. Mike tells her the monster is gone. Hopper assures everyone it is all over. "You're home now," says Mom. "You're safe now," says Steve.
"You don't know that," is Nancy's unspoken reply to each of them. Now she lies awake for hours at night with the lights on until her exhausted mind slips reluctantly into unconsciousness. She won't turn up the volume on the radio or TV, worried that she might not be able to hear something scratching through the walls. She asks Steve or Mom to drive her everywhere she needs to go. There's an old croquet mallet under her bed, and a newly acquired pocketknife in her purse. She does all this to make herself feel safe, but none of it matters. The upside down is always there. She will never be safe again – she knows now she never was. Monsters aren't fairy tales. They are real, and now Nancy will always be running from them.
Jonathan
In the year before it happened, the nightmare that almost tore everyone he cared for away from him, Jonathan Byers had a lot on his mind – the drudgery of high school, extra shifts at work, the prospect of college, the fact that his father was an asshole, the gnawing fear of what would happen to his mom and Will if he left for New York, a panic that he would never be able to get out of Hawkins – but none of that had stopped him from noticing Nancy Wheeler. They had never been friends, but their paths crossed sometimes around their little brothers, and he used to see her a lot at school. Jonathan had a gift for observation (the gift of the outcast, he would wryly think to himself), and he had gathered a precious store of knowledge about Nancy. He knew that she was a smart and determined student who hated drawing attention to herself in class almost as much as she hated getting an answer wrong. He saw that she was inseparable from Barb, who was the only person in school Nancy appeared to be comfortable around. He knew that she was polite and kind, but also shy and nervous around most of her classmates. He knew that her eyes tended to smile before her mouth did, and that she blushed whenever she noticed a boy looking at her. Jonathan knew he wasn't the only guy who had started to notice Nancy. He also knew that the Hawkins Dance Studio, which he passed on his way to and from work, had a large picture window next to its front door, and that Nancy was there three nights a week. He tried not to make it a habit, but he would spot her sometimes through the glass; a flash of movement, a body whirling, leaping, bending impossibly with a grace that was somehow gentle and fierce. He never lurked, and did his best not to stare, but sometimes he couldn't help himself and his glance would linger too long. He knew he shouldn't look, because if he kept looking he would see something he was not supposed to see, but he always looked anyway.
One evening as he walked past the window and let his eyes drift towards its light, he saw Nancy sitting in a chair by the door with her feet propped up on the edge of the seat. She was hugging her knees to her chest and looking down. When Jonathan's eyes followed the direction of hers, he saw a streak of angry red and white blisters across her toes. The pale skin of her feet was torn with scabs and scars and open wounds - one of the nails was a ghastly shade of purple. His glance skittered away and fell on a pair of pink ballet slippers that were discarded in a pile on the floor. Shoes just like the gold charm Nancy wore around her neck, except the insides of the silk slippers were stained brown and red with splotches of blood – the hideous reality of the pretty charm Nancy wore over her heart. He knew he had already lingered too long, but he risked a glance back to her face and saw that her eyes were unfocused, as if she had cast her mind elsewhere to a place outside of her pain, somewhere far away where he could not follow. Jonathan suddenly understood that he knew nothing about Nancy Wheeler, and never would. How could anyone truly know a girl like her?
He used to think that maybe, possibly, if he asked Nancy to the movies she would go with him, but on that night he decided that he shouldn't be spending money on movie tickets anyway. Jonathan knew he was infatuated, but he also knew that infatuations faded, and he would eventually get over it.
...
After that week of desperation and chaos, Jonathan finds that he has learned a lot about Nancy Wheeler. Some revelations came as a surprise; her dead aim for one, and the fact that her initial trust in Steve was no more unfounded than her suspicion that Jonathan was a creep (Jonathan learned some things about himself as well). He saw the way her brow playfully tilts when she is amused, and how devastatingly quiet she can be when she is angry. He also learned forbidden things that he never expected to know, like the feel of her body pressing close against his, the heat of her breath on his neck, and the awful shuddering of her ribs when she was sobbing in the grip of his arms. He knows what her skin smells like after a shower, the texture of her bed sheets, and the sound of her voice whispering his name. He has felt the brush of her hair against his face, and the shape of her delicate fingers gripped in his hand. But more intimate than all this, he knows that she would risk her own life for a chance to kill the thing that took her friend. And now Jonathan is no longer sure that he will eventually get over it.
Author's Note: Thank you for reading! Here are a few points of clarification if you are interested:
- The title, "Turn and Face the Strange," is from the David Bowie song "Changes," released in 1971. (It is possibly a bastardization of the lyric "turn and face the strain," but it's hard to tell from listening, and, obviously, "strange" just works so deliciously well here.)
- Although we don't yet fully know Hopper's history, I am writing under my own theory that he was born and raised in Hawkins, moved to the big city at a young age, married, began a family, and had a successful career in law enforcement. After Sarah's death and his spiral into a debilitating depression, he decided (or was convinced by his friends) to move back to his quiet hometown in the hopes of settling into a healthier lifestyle.
- Although I find it an interesting topic to write about, I do not condone Jonathan's behavior towards Nancy in this fic or in the beginning of the show.
- And the standard disclaimer: I do not own or profit from Stranger Things, its characters, or Netflix.