Three weeks . . . it had taken three weeks — from the moment they arrived in Hawkins, to two days before Halloween — for Hawkins High to accept Billy and Max's transcripts. She couldn't understand it for the life of her.

"Max! Hurry up or you're skating to school!"

Billy barging into and out of rooms was a common occurrence that did not go unheard of. He stomped into her room, stomped to his car, stomped out of their house. She was used to it. She should have been used to it then . . . but when her brother yelled from the back porch, rattling the walls, she had been reaching for the doorknob. He nearly slammed into her, striding by and causing her to nearly trip over the rug underneath their feet.

"Jesus, Billy! Have you ever heard of watching where you're going?"

He ignored her. "The little shit is gonna make us late."

Rowen pushed her hair behind her shoulder a little too dramatically than intended. "Late for what? You've never wanted to get to school on time in your life."

He turned on his heel. "That's not the point."

"What is the point?"

He ignored her once more, walking outside, down the steps, leaving her to roll her eyes as he had done when she asked her question. She followed him, stood at the edge of the porch with an expectant look until he caved.

An exaggerated sigh left his mouth and finally, he said, "The point is, Rowen, I wanna get out of here as soon as possible."

"You don't say." Her sarcasm wasn't making his mood any less sour. He couldn't find his car keys.

"Max!" he yelled again. "C'mon!"

Rowen looked over her shoulder into the empty kitchen. A pair of tiny feet shuffled, but the familiar retort never came.

"You realize that the place you wanna get to so badly is probably just as bad as the rest of it, right?" she ventured, leaning against the peeling white wood that encircled their back door.

"You realize I could make you walk to your interview, right?" he retorted. Billy pulled at the door handle of his car as if that would help him find the keys.

She smiled as if she already knew the outcome of that circumstance. "I do, and you're not." And she did, because she held his car keys in her hand, having plucked them from his pocket. She jingled them.

Billy was making an effort not to throw his cigarette pack at her. He was beginning to squish the box with the way he clenched it.

"Listen, I don't care what the damn school is like," he snapped, stepping away from his Camaro, fiddling in his pocket. "I'm just trying to get there as soon as possible, so I can get out of there as soon as possible, so we can do it all over again and my time in this place can go by as quickly as possible."

Rowen couldn't argue with that. "Fair."

"Now give me my keys, dip-shit."

"Why are you using Max's nickname on me?"

"Because I can."

He held his hand out, assuming she would simply toss the keys to him. She ignored him. "Not until Max comes down."

Billy clenched his jaw, fiddled with the now-crushed box of cigarettes.

She was grateful for the snap of his lighter, however aggressive; it broke the silence of their neighborhood that had a habit of engulfing them when conversations were over — not a calming silence, though . . rather a dead silence that hung over you and left you aching to break it.

His lighter clicked shut. "Last time I checked, I don't remember you being the one to point out the obvious, so would you quit making this place sound shittier than it already is? If you're that bored, then walk around or something." Billy jutted a thumb toward the faint image of the treelines behind them. "Aren't you a tree hugger now? Go hug one."

She made an effort not to look past him where the woods would be, moaning and groaning and shifting from intimidating to normal as if it couldn't make up its mind on how to appear to her. This morning they were less inspirational and more ominous. "I'm not hugging those trees," she said bluntly. She thought of the branches that resembled bony fingers as Billy looked at her as if she had grown two heads.

"What are you guys talking about?" A smaller, slightly bored voice made itself known. Max appeared to her right, skateboard gripped in one hand, a small book bag slung over her shoulder.

"About damn time," Billy muttered, ignoring her question.

"C'mon," Rowen shoved the redhead's shoulder gently. "If we keep him waiting any longer his head might explode."

Max looked over her shoulder as they creaked down the stairs, little bits of dried paint falling to the ground. "We? Why are you coming?"

"I have an interview later," Rowen told her, smoothing out the creases in her pants. She tossed the keys to her brother as they passed him. "I gotta get a job since I'm not in school, you know? Adult stuff."

Max smiled as they walked to the passenger side of the car. It was as if there was a joke only she understood when she looked at Rowen's outfit. "I don't know how you're gonna get a job dressed like that."

"Dressed like someone who has style?"

Max avoided the question. "Don't grown-ups usually dress up in those matching suits or long grey skirts and stuff?"

"What, you mean those lifeless, stuffy things that suck all the energy from you when you put them on?" Rowen said, a little humorous, pulling back the passenger seat so Max could slip into the back. She caught her stepsister's smile and decided to make it more dramatic. "And the more you wear them, the duller you get until you're nothing but a brainless sack of flesh bumping into other sacks of flesh, doing the same thing day in and day out?"

Rowen became more animated with every word, amusing one sibling, annoying the other. She slid into the passenger seat and shut the door.

"Jesus Ro, it's not a disease," Billy said as she finished her performance.

"Oh, but it is," she objected, reaching into the glove box for a cassette tape.

He whipped the car out of their driveway, leaving a trail of dust over the narrow street. Rowen just barely caught the image of their neighbor on his porch, cigar between his teeth, waving at them. She wasn't sure if he caught her wave back.

. . .


ᖭི༏ᖫྀ

. . .

Rowen began to question every aspect of what she wore and what she said once her interview was over.

It had gone bad . . . had been a disaster, actually.

She tried focusing on her breathing in order to steady herself. In and out. C'mon, Rowen.

She hated it. She hated managers, hated corporate jobs, hated their fake pretenses. She hated how hard it was to find work. She hated how she was making it harder for herself. She hated this stupid town.

She felt her hands begin to shake again as she reached for the front door, storming not so smoothly out of the very place that left her nerves wrecked. For once, she should have listened to what her dad was saying, how he described the people there. She wasn't even sure what he had been doing, but somehow he had found himself in the company of the very people who interviewed her. He seemed as if he liked them . . . she should have taken note of that. If her dad enjoyed someone's company, that was enough reason for her to avoid them altogether.

But no. She had made herself go anyway, stepped into the proverbial flames, hoping it would make her tougher, somehow . . . but she came out feeling terrible. She hated that she couldn't take it, couldn't take the sight and sound of people like that. People who reminded her of her parent. Why couldn't she just deal with it? She needed a job, she needed money, not a friend group.

And yet she couldn't keep her skin from crawling when she thought of having to work amongst people she would more likely than not end up hating, doing something not at all interesting. As much as a performance it may have been, she wasn't kidding about the things she said to Max. A sack of flesh bumping into other sacks of flesh . . . she was scared of it.

Something about working with people like that, people like her dad, made her draw inward. Not all workplaces were like that, though, were they? There had to be someplace where people were remotely decent. Someplace sane, somewhat nice. Somewhat bearable.

Being laughed at almost pushed her over the edge. As if having little experience in anything was the most embarrassing thing in the world. As if trying to take a leap was a bad idea.

It was a bad idea. She regretted every bit of it. She wished she could still stand babysitting.

She needed to sit. She needed a bench or something.

"You okay, kid?"

Rowen jumped. Was she so shaken that she couldn't comprehend the guy that walked up to her? She shook her head, took in his appearance. Police, she thought immediately. He was tall, clad in a tan uniform and what she thought looked like a cowboy hat, but realized wasn't. He wore a sheriff's badge, a semi-gruff expression. He looked like the chief her neighbor had talked about.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, I just . . need to catch my breath."

At some point, the guy, who she assumed was the chief, had led her to a bench she hadn't even seen. Rowen didn't even register she was sitting down until she realized he hadn't left her alone. He stood to the side, silent, looking down at her with a concern that felt extremely foreign.

"Why is it that one minute, you feel fine around people, but then the next you suddenly feel like you have to get out?" she blurted. ". . Like you don't belong or something, you know? You can't sit straight enough or say the right thing. You're just . . there, being judged."

That seemed to catch him off guard. He scratched at his beard. "Uh, well . . I'm not sure," he was talking more to himself, trying to think despite the reality of his words. She heard him sigh.

He looked like he wanted to be helpful; but he also seemed stumped in the way a parent was stumped when a kid asked a loaded question, falling silent for a moment. "If it counts for anything, I don't always feel like I should be the chief of a police station."

So he was who her neighbor was talking about. The chief of police and his gruffness was more concern than the accidents themselves. He didn't sound very concerning, smiling at his own words.

The smile fell. He looked over his shoulder to the building she had run out of. "Listen, those guys in there are a piece of work. If they were giving you trouble, I wouldn't pay any attention to it," he told her, lowering his voice to a mutter, "Holloway is an ass as far as I'm concerned."

Rowen caught it and laughed a little. The chief's mouth quirked under his beard.

"I don't wanna ask the same question twice, but . . are you okay?" he asked.

She nodded this time. "My pride is a little bruised," she admitted, "but . . yeah. As far as being okay goes, I'm fine."

He nodded in return. "M'kay. I just gotta make sure. Don't wanna file Hawkins Post for giving a kid a panic attack."

"I'm not having a panic attack," Rowen said, shaking her head. "It's just — a lot . . moving, having to find a job. I'm not good at handling it. Any of it," she admitted, taking a deep breath. "I thought I was fine, but . . I haven't lived anywhere except California and — I don't know, it just all kinda hit me at once, it's . ."

She trailed off.

"A lot to take in, huh?" he said.

"Yeah," she breathed.

She heard the chief hum to himself. He didn't say anything for a moment.

Then: "Well, if I can tell you anything, it's don't try and rush it: getting used to a new place, working in a new place. Just go at your own pace."

Rowen scoffed. She wanted nothing more than to do that . . "I don't know if I can."

A beat of that dead silence passed. "You can," the chief said.

He didn't get it. She didn't try to argue the point, though. She didn't exactly want him to get it; that would cause problems.

"Well," he began his sentence in the way a lot of people did when they didn't like to walk away quietly. Rowen wasn't one of those people. She would have walked away without a word. "If they ever give you any more grief, just let me know, alright?"

"I'm not going near that place again, trust me."

That made him chuckle a little. "Uh-huh . . well —" she wanted to roll her eyes at the reoccurrence of that word."— I wish I could have given you a better first impression of Hawkins but, nevertheless, welcome to Hawkins."

She huffed at his attempt. He didn't seem to like the way his words came out. They couldn't exactly get any better though. "I'm Hopper," he introduced. "Chief of Police. You already knew that, but . ."

"Rowen," she introduced in return. "Californian. But you already knew that."

He didn't, actually, but she had gotten a smile out of him. He nodded a silent goodbye, trailing back to the SUV a few feet behind them. She wondered how she had missed the thing when she had seen it trail down Cherry Road many times before.

. . .