A/N: New chapter! Hope you enjoy :)
-Millie
A Promising Skein
Her childhood had been a lonely one.
Homeschooled and hidden by her mother for too many years, she'd had no friends and no confidantes.
Until the morning she'd woken up and found her mother cold in her bed. Gone.
Just like that.
An aneurysm, they said.
In the days leading up to the funeral, Aunt Becky had arrived, white-faced and smoking incessantly and they'd watched, both of them dry-eyed and numb, as Terry Ives was lowered into the black earth beneath their feet.
She'd loved her mom. But nothing about the funeral moved her. It was as though she'd turned to stone.
After the funeral, things happened quickly. The house was sold and packed up, and within three weeks of the death of Terry Ives, it was as though she and her strange daughter had never lived there at all.
The town of Hawkins, sleepy with thick woods and heavy mists, was small and quiet.
Nothing much happened there.
It was late September, and there was nothing special in the air to suggest that his whole world was about to change. He'd overslept – again – and was hurrying to the office to get a late pass.
He knew it would mean detention, and another lecture from his mom, but he ignored those thoughts as he walked up the corridor of Hawkins High. As he stood at the office, waiting for his pass, and hoping that Principal Vernon wasn't going to show up, his eyes fell on a girl sitting across the hall, right outside the Principal's office.
She was scuffing worn shoes against the floor absently, fiddling with a bracelet on her wrist.
New girl, he thought to himself.
Then she looked up and caught his eye.
She had large brown eyes, intense and knowing, and an unreadable expression on her face. He stared back at her for a moment, then caught himself, and looked quickly away.
"Michael Wheeler," came the bored voice of Mrs Jackson, the school secretary. "Here's your slip. Now don't let me see you here again this week, you hear? Or I'll be calling your mother."
"Sure," Mike mumbled, taking the slip. "Thanks Mrs Jackson."
He slouched away from the office, lingering just a little, watching the girl once more. There was something... something familiar about her.
Shaking his head, he shouldered his bag and made his way to class, unaware that the girl's dark gaze followed his form as he disappeared down the hall.
Nor did he hear her as she breathed a small sigh, and mouthed a name she knew as well as her own.
"Mike..."
It was easier at night.
Searching for someone was always tough, but at night it seemed to come more readily to her. And she preferred that Becky didn't know what she was up to.
She rarely searched for him. He found her all by himself, usually. But it had been a while, so she decided to seek him out.
Tying a scarf around her head, and shutting off all of the lights, save for one low, flickering light in her room, she sat cross-legged on her bed and focused.
She drew her breaths out, long and slow and even, thinking only of the endless black in front of her eyes and the sound of his voice. The silence of the house was profound; not even the ticking of a clock disturbed the quiet.
And then she was there, in the endless, echoing dark of her own head – was it her own head? – and she knew she was close. She could hear the muted tones of his voice, carrying to her in the far distance.
Sometimes, she was able to use the red string to find him. But not always. It was a strange thing, that thread. Frustrating. Sometimes there, and sometimes not.
It usually led her to him – to this boy.
To Mike.
He was talking to someone, as usual.
El. Whoever that was.
... and, you know, we haven't been out to the water park in ages so we decided we'd go. It's been really hot and Jonathon said he'd take us. It was so cool. We went on the lazy river and the waterslides and we had a huge water fight in the shallow pool. Maybe... maybe next time you can come... if you're back... You've been gone for so long now... 218 days, El. I'm still counting.
She approached him, slowly, taking her usual quiet steps, like treads on a well-worn path. She'd always had questions – not that he'd have been able to answer anyways – and now she had even more.
This Mike, the one here in her head, was not the same Mike she'd seen today. This Mike was younger - twelve, thirteen, maybe.
And yet they were the same. Or seemed to be.
He'd always been there, in the rippling ether of her own mind. At first, just a distant voice, words scattered on a fickle wind and a lost dream. And then, one day he'd simply been there.
She'd heard about his friends, about Will, and Dustin and Lucas. About his sisters and his mom. His complaints about his dad. How much he missed El.
She'd heard him. She wondered if El had.
Sometimes, there in the blue-black depths of herself, she would hear his words and feel a resonance that rang like a sounding drum, feel the tugging of her soul and itching of her skin, and she would try to speak to him.
It was futile though. She'd tried enough times to know.
Was it really him? she asked herself. Were they one and the same?
She had to know.
Blinking rapidly, she pulled the scarf away from her eyes as she fell abruptly out of the trance. She heaved a frustrated sigh and ran a hand through her tangled curls, ignoring the trickle of blood which fell from her nose.
It was cold that morning, for September.
He'd had to listen to another round of complaining from his mom at breakfast, while his dad made more useless sports analogies ("You gotta know when to swing, son, and when to pitch"), and made his excuses, diving out the door before they could get into full swing.
He met the guys outside the school, but he was the first one there. No surprise. Dustin and Lucas had arrived together, as they usually did, driving over from Lucas' house, followed up by Adam.
They'd made friends with Adam Prescott in their first year of high school, and he'd slowly filled the hole left by Will after he'd moved to Maine a few years ago. They'd bonded over their love of D&D and Star Wars.
"Hey guys," Mike asked, as they made their way into the school building. "You staying later to work on that History project for Edelman?"
"Shit, yeah," Dustin replied. "My mom says I gotta try pull up my grade a little if I want money for the movies on Friday."
"Who's going?" Lucas asked.
Dustin shrugged.
"I dunno. Adam, who's going?"
"I dunno. I thought someone was gonna ask Max?" Adam shrugged, looking at Mike.
"Son of a bitch," Dustin swore. "I was supposed to do it."
"What? So that's it?" Lucas asked, unimpressed. "Your little arcade buddy and us?"
"Um, excuse me," Dustin shot back, "but I thought the plan was that I would ask Max, and she would invite some of the girls, taking the hard part away from us."
"Yeah, so should you not have done that by now?" Mike asked. "It's Wednesday."
"Ugh. Its fine, Mike, shut up," Dustin groaned. "I'll do it today. She's in my Chem class. I have it fifth period."
"Fine. But get it done," Mike called out, as he carried on down the corridor, leaving Dustin and Adam by their lockers.
"What are we gonna see?" Lucas asked, as they continued walking.
"I dunno," Mike shrugged. "Beetlejuice is playing."
"Mike, that's a kid's movie," Lucas scoffed.
"I dunno. I didn't look. We'll check it out later," he replied, and stopped by his locker.
"See you later," Lucas nodded, as he carried on around the corner to his locker.
He stashed his books in his locker and grabbed the papers he needed for his first class. Just as he slammed his locker shut, the bell rang and he hurried off to class.
The last thing he needed was another detention.
The sound of the bell was shrill and urgent in her ears, and she didn't think she'd get used to it in a hurry. She'd been trying to find her English classroom, but she wasn't sure and the school was bigger than she'd expected.
She hurried down the corridor, looking around her for the room number...
Then just down the hallway she saw it, and picked up her pace, as she saw others doing. She wasn't the only one running late that morning.
When she walked into the classroom, she saw it was still only half filled, and took a seat in the second row, as close to the window as possible. She pulled her books and pens out of her bag, setting them on the desk.
As soon as she'd put her bag onto the ground, the teacher walked into the room. Mrs Timmons had wispy hair and a gravelly voice, and a passion for John Donne, as Jane would later learn.
"Good morning class. Take out your books – yes, all of you. Page one hundred and twenty, please. Now, let us continue with the discussion of the inherent themes of purity, and good versus evil. So we left off..."
Jane shuffled her book to page one hundred and twenty, and pulled out her notebook. She'd read Dracula when she was fourteen, and she enjoyed being able to go over it again.
As she sat taking notes, listening to the teacher talk about Lucy being turned into a vampire, and the corruption of her purity, she felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck.
She was being watched.
She threw a glance over her shoulder and saw him.
Mike.
As he caught her eye, he didn't immediately look away, but she did, feeling suddenly awkward, though she couldn't explain why. She could feel heat in her cheeks, and bent her head low over her notepad, trying to turn her attention back to class.
She did her best, but it was hard. And though she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck, ever-present, she did not look his way again.
The sun was hanging golden in the sky when school let out for the day. The guys had decided to meet at the at Lucas' car before going to work on their history project.
"Hey man," Mike said, as he strolled over to Lucas, who was sitting on the hood of his car.
"Hey," Lucas nodded. "You seen Adam?"
"Not since lunch. Why?"
"I was gonna ask him if he'd give Dustin a ride home. I gotta go. My mom needs me to help her with my Granma."
"What about the project?" Mike asked.
"What about it?" Lucas retorted. "I don't need to do extra work for History. That's just you losers."
"Nice," Mike rolled his eyes. "Hey look," he said, as his eyes caught sight of a familiar red head. "There's Max."
She was marching out of the school, head down as she yanked on the zip of her bag, oblivious to their stares.
"Hey Max!" Mike called out to her.
Her head shot up and her eyes fell on them, and then she swung the bag onto her back and made her way over to them.
"Hey guys. What's up?"
"Did Dustin ask you about Friday?" Lucas asked, sliding off the hood of his car.
"No," she frowned. "What about Friday?"
"Shit," Lucas swore. "He was supposed to ask you today."
"Yeah, okay," she nodded impatiently. "Ask me what though?"
Mike and Lucas exchanged pained looks.
"Alright, so..." Mike began, "Dustin was supposed to ask you if you wanted to come to the movies with us in Friday?"
"You guys? Like all of you?" she asked, raising a brow.
"Well, yeah," Mike replied, looking a relieved.
"And well, we thought that..." Lucas jumped in. "Well, you know, you're a girl and"-
"Thanks for noticing, loser," she sniggered.
"Ugh," Mike groaned. "We just thought you might ask a few other girls as well. We could go as one big group or something."
Max cast a cool look his way, considering. Then she shrugged.
"Sure. I'll see what I can do," she said, before turning on her heel and sauntering away.
Mike saw Lucas watching her go, but decided not to comment.
She'd been to an arcade before, but she liked the one in Hawkins a lot more than the crappy little one in her old hometown. Not that she'd ever really been allowed to go. Birthdays, usually. And once when she'd snuck out, and been caught.
But this one was cool. Max had cajoled her into going with her, and she was surprised by how much fun she was having.
Of course she was awful at the arcade games, but she enjoyed watching Max go to town on them. She could see by the score boards that Max held a number of high scores.
"C'mon, we'll go check out Street Fighter," Max said, grabbing her hand and pulling her around a corner to another aisle of games.
But Max stopped dead when she saw a cluster of boys around the front of Street Fighter.
"Those little shits," she muttered under her breath.
"What's wrong?" Jane asked her, not really understanding exactly why she was so annoyed by this group of boys.
"Just some guys from school. They're assholes," she replied. "They're not really assholes. But... right now? Yeah. They're assholes."
Jane didn't reply. She sensed that one wasn't really required anyway.
Max straightened her shoulders as the group of guys let out a collective groan as someone clearly lost their go.
"Alright, my turn, my turn," one of them cried, pushing his way to the front.
Then another one of them caught sight of Max and called out to her.
"Hey Max! You coming over to show these guys how it's done?"
Jane looked at Max and saw that she was smiling already.
"Sure," she said, then she turned to look at Jane. "Coming?"
Jane nodded, and they approached the four boys standing in front of the arcade game.
"Who's this?" one of them asked.
"Oh, yeah," said Max. "This is Jane."
Jane smiled at them.
"That's Dustin," Max went on, pointing at the guy who had called them over. "This is Adam," she pointed at the tall guy with sandy hair. "And that's Lucas," she finished, the faintest blush on her cheeks.
"Oh, and that's Mike," Dustin added, motioning to the guy who was currently playing Street Fighter.
Jane froze, for the merest second.
Him. Again.
Ignoring how heart was beginning to pound, and how her palms had begun to sweat, she turned to the others and tried to join in on the conversation.
"So, Jane, where are you from?" asked Lucas.
"Up past Ruane," she replied, deliberately vague.
"When did you move here?" asked Adam, peering at her curiously.
"Yeah, you only just started at school, like what? Yesterday?" Dustin added.
Jane shrugged.
She didn't really want to talk about it. If she did, then she'd have to talk about her mom, and she wasn't ready to do that yet. Not even to Aunt Becky.
"Jesus, guys, what's with the twenty questions?" Max cut in with a laugh.
"We're just curious, Max," Dustin whined at her.
"Aw shit!"
They all turned to look at Mike, who was about to kick the machine in frustration.
"Seriously, guys, did you see that?" he asked, before noticing that none of the others were with him, and then turned.
His eyes immediately seemed to find Jane's, and she felt her stomach twist and her breath catch like a cough in her throat. He came over to them and joined the group.
"Who's this?" he asked, an echo of an earlier question.
Max raised her brow, and turned to Jane, a smirk decorating her mouth.
"I dunno, Jane, who is this?" she asked, pointedly.
Then Jane, wearing a sly grin of her own, brought her eyes to Mike's and was struck by them, in spite of herself.
"New girl," she said.
His eyes widened at that for the merest moment, and he let out a faint laugh.
"I'm Mike," he said, his eyes still on hers and she couldn't look away.
"I know," she replied.
And it was the strangest thing...
It was as though he knew, as though he understood the hidden meaning behind her words. And maybe he had seen her in that void of time and place...
Maybe he could feel that tug, something that was greater and more compelling than instinct-
Maybe he too could see the gleam of red which flickered between them like the finest strand of light.
A/N: I just wanted to say thank you to SallyJAvery who was good enough to beta this for me and offer some excellent feedback and guidance. You are a fucking diamond Sally and there is so much love and cake going your way.
I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who stopped by to leave a review - you guys are all so nice :)
Thanks also to everyone who faved and followed.
I hope you enjoyed the new chapter - and please do let me know what you think.
-Millie xx
