Frog Hunting
Chrissy saw Jason and his friends off on the first Sunday morning of spring break. On Monday night, a persistent, dreary rain began that would last until Wednesday morning. The constant drizzle left Chrissy, Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair all damp as she ushered the younger boys into The Hideout that Tuesday.
"We're going to get kicked out," Lucas said somberly. Chrissy wasn't so sure. With his flattop hairstyle and the leather jacket he wore, she thought he could pass for seventeen rather than fifteen.
"They don't card here," she reminded them. Still, Chrissy pulled Dustin's baseball cap down a tad more for good measure. Dustin was both shorter than Lucas and still retained the softness of a baby face. "Eddie drank here last week, after the show, and they never once asked him for his ID."
"Eddie's nineteen and has tattoos," Lucas pointed out.
"Dude, chill!" Dustin snapped. The low lighting glinted off the boy's braces, making Chrissy groan internally. Okay, maybe Dustin will get kicked out. "Confidence is half of sneaking into places."
"Just follow me," Chrissy instructed, catching Lucas' hand when he made to strike Dustin. The other boy laughed and dodged behind Chrissy. "Don't say anything, just stay close to me."
Despite the chill from the rain, all three of them wore Corroded Coffin t-shirts courtesy of Eddie himself. Chrissy wore hers tied up beneath her jacket. She smiled at the bouncer, who was too preoccupied with the girl he was chatting with to pay much attention to them. With Dustin and Lucas close on her heels, she walked into the muggy space and deposited the boys at a table.
"Don't go to the bar yourselves. I'll get you drinks if you want them. Non-alcoholic ones," Chrissy clarified.
"I've drank before!" Lucas argued, but Chrissy shook her head.
"Yeah, I've heard. We're not doing that tonight," she reiterated firmly. Chrissy left the boys with strict instructions to keep to themselves and went to the bar to retrieve sodas for them. The female bartender already had a lemon water waiting for Chrissy. It was a balancing act to get all three drinks back to the table but she didn't want to risk the boys walking around the bar and drawing attention. "Where did you get peanuts?"
"That guy." Dustin pointed to another of the bartenders. At least they make sure kids don't drink on an empty stomach, I guess. Chrissy's stomach growled at sight of the nuts; more so when Dustin and Lucas started cracking them and she could smell the salty, earthy scent beneath the haze of cigarette smoke. She chewed on a piece of ice from her water instead.
She didn't like to linger in the bar before the shows, so she intentionally picked the boys up and brought them in mere minutes before nine. Seeing Eddie play held much more appeal. That night, Chrissy was able to name a few songs. Metal Gods by Judas Priest. Motōrhead—Overkill. Fever by The Cramps. She repeated the ones she knew to herself to keep them in her mind, to tell Eddie later.
Unlike Chrissy, Dustin and Lucas were not simple foot-tappers. Instead, they mimicked both Eddie's headbanging and his guitar playing. Dustin lost his cap at one point, the hat sliding from his head and getting trampled on by a couple making their way through the bar before he was able to snatch it up again. By the time Corroded Coffin's set was over, Dustin's carefully coiffed curls were mussed, and Lucas' cheeks were slick with sweat. They looked as if they had been up on the stage with the others. Eddie's own hair was damp and sticking to his face when the show was over, and he made his way to the table.
"Hell yeah, Chrissy, I told you that you'd be able to get these two doofuses in!" He clapped the boys on the shoulders. "Mike's off with his little California girlfriend, huh?"
"And visiting our other friend, Will."
"Yeah, yeah. We all know what he's really there for." Eddie reached past the boys and grabbed a handful of shelled peanuts from the bowl. He popped one in his mouth and smiled, dark eyes twinkling. "You ever in the trailer park to visit me, Sinclair? Huh? Nah, you're there for Little Red."
Smiling bashfully, Lucas tried to punch Eddie around his middle, but the older boy dodged easily while laughing. "You two go help the guys." Eddie bodily moved both Dustin and Lucas, all but tossing them from their seats. "Consider it payment for Chrissy driving you here."
Ignoring the grumbles from the younger boys, Eddie took Lucas' vacated seat and smiled at Chrissy. He pulled his guitar into his lap, cradling it there and leaning over it with his chin pillowed in one hand. "You know you can drink here," he rapped her glass with the ring on his right hand.
"I didn't want to press my luck with bringing two fifteen-year-olds in here and underage drinking." Eddie took her glass then, drinking straight from the straw. He scrunched his face at the taste and stuck his tongue out like a little kid.
"Maybe one day fate will smile on me and I'll get something besides water when I come begging a drink off you after a show."
Panic rose like an echo of hot bile in her throat at that. He doesn't know, she reminded herself. The face before her wore a smirk but was guileless all the same. Eddie had no idea that he had, again, edged close to her secret. "Maybe it will." She hoped her tone was as light as his.
"Hey, mind bringing Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum over there by my place? I have something for them. I can take them back home after."
"Is that a ploy to get me to come over tonight?" Chrissy asked, raising an eyebrow. Eddie slapped a hand over his heart with an audible thud and for one moment she thought he would launch himself backward out of his chair in mock death like he had that day in the woods. Rather, Eddie adopted the most convincing case of puppy dog eyes she had ever seen.
"You wound me, Chris."
"You know what?" She asked, sliding her class back across the table and taking a drink from the straw. "I think you just might live."
Even with the rain-slick streets, Eddie beat them back to his trailer. Chrissy followed his tire tracks carved into the muddy road and parked just behind him. Though Lucas and Dustin both knew Eddie intended to give them something, they both ran off toward the figure of Max Mayfield once they spotted her. From under her jacket hood, Chrissy watched them sprint through the drizzling rain.
"See, I told them. Wheeler's in California for their friend just as much as Sinclair is here for me—even though I told him to come." Eddie sidled up beside her and took her by the elbow, drawing her into the cover of the canopy over the porch. Even with the rain, moths flitted around the porchlight. Chrissy shook back her hood and watched the three younger teenagers.
"What do you think they're doing?"
"Frog hunting. Max is out here every time it rains, trying to keep the frogs away from her dog so he won't eat them."
"Frog hunting?" Chrissy titled her head to the side. Dustin and Lucas collided into one another beside the dog's fence, knocking each other down in a fit of laughter. "Huh."
"What, you've never been?" He didn't wait for her to say no before a devilish grin spread across his lips. "Well, buckle up, Queen Chrissy! We're gonna get you a frog prince to kiss."
Unabashed as always, Eddie took her hand in his and hauled her off the porch. Chrissy had to practically sprint to keep up with his stride, though Eddie himself was running easily. Her sneakers squished through the mud and the chilly rain dampened her hair.
He dropped her hand at first sight of a frog, sliding on his knees to catch it before it could disappear into the grass. It squirmed in his hands as he turned to her, victorious. "Here!"
Eddie dumped the frog unceremoniously into her hands and she squealed, actually shrieked like a little girl, fumbling to keep hold of the slippery amphibian.
"Did you get one?" Dustin shouted from across the trailer park. The plastic bucket he carried slapped against his thigh as he ran toward them. He pulled back the lid just far enough for Chrissy to see the shine of dozens of wet eyes looking up at her before she dropped in the newest addition. That was all it took for the five of them to band together, chasing frogs all through the trailer park until a flash of lightning brightened the night to day. A massive thunderclap followed, the kind that could be felt in the bones. When the drizzle was replaced with a sudden downpour, there was much screaming as the frog hunters scattered.
Lucas and Dustin ran with Max to her trailer. From the living room window, the trio watched Eddie take Chrissy's hang again and tow her to the closest shelter: his van. Between the night and the rain it was impossible to see what was going on behind the windows, but that didn't stop speculations.
"They're totally hooking up," Dustin declared, shaking his head vigorously to dislodge some of the raindrops clinging to him. The motion earned him a glare from Max.
"Don't say that! Chrissy's with Jason. I'm, like, an accessory to the crime if she's cheating. He's still technically my basketball captain for a month." Lucas shot a furtive glance toward the van and turned his back to it. "I can't be complicit to what I can't see."
"Stop being dramatic, you two. They just, like, smoke weed and get high together."
"Chrissy Cunningham smokes weed?!" Lucas and Dustin exclaimed in unison, wearing twin shocked expressions. Max rolled her eyes at them and yanked the string, drawing the blinds closed on the van and Eddie and Chrissy alike.
The key was still in the ignition. He gave it a turn, bringing the car to life and cranking up the heater. Chrissy swiped at her face with the sleeves of her jacket. "I probably look like a mess right now."
Her makeup was smudged from the rain and her hair clung to her cheeks and neck, but 'mess' was not the word Eddie would have used to describe her. He clinched his teeth against those words and instead looked out the windshield at the onslaught of rain.
"I think we might be stuck in here for a bit." Eddie nodded toward the windshield.
"Guess we better settle in then, huh?" She did just that, peeling her soaked jacket off and laying it flat over the dash. "Wanna play a game?"
"What game are we gonna play stuck in a van during a rainstorm?"
There was just enough porchlight bleeding into the cab for him to see when Chrissy turned to him. Resting her elbow on the console, she held her hand out in challenge. "Winner gets to ask the loser something."
"Thumb war?" Eddie laughed and hooked his fingers with her. "We're bringing out all the kiddie games tonight?"
He liked the idea, though, and immediately joined in. After the tussle of the first round, Eddie was left with two points of knowledge. One, Chrissy was tricky; she had baited him into putting his thumb down on hers and, like a hair trigger, had swooped and trapped him. Two, he was suddenly annoyingly, frustratingly shy at the idea of Chrissy wanting to know more about him.
"What's your favorite song?"
"Why do you have to do that to me?" Eddie flopped back against his seat, staring up at the ceiling as he thought. It took a few moments for him to decide. "Iron Man by Black Sabbath."
"Really? Why?"
"Oh, uh-uh. If you want more snippets of my soul, you gotta win them in the thumb wars." They played again but now that Eddie was wise to Chrissy's tricks, she didn't manage to start a winning streak.
"Same question to you. Be aware I'll be intensely judging whatever comes out of your mouth next."
Unintimidated, Chrissy laughed. "I already knew that you would. It's Time After Time."
"Cyndi Lauper?" Eddie groaned. "Just when I was starting to think you were redeemable."
"How about a temporary peace treaty?" She laid her thumb war hand out flat on the console. "We'll both explain ourselves and then play for the next question."
Eddie obliged and laid his hand out flat like she did. He raised his eyebrows at her, waiting, and then took in the same expectant look on her face. "Oh, am I supposed to start? You're damn bossy with this game. Well, uh, Iron Man was the first song my uncle showed me when I came to live here with him when I was nine. And it's the first song I learned to play on guitar. So… Time After Time? How're you gonna defend that one?"
She glared at him, but Eddie found it adorable. Then she dropped her gaze down, watching their hands rather than his face. "I don't know, I just… It's about love, you know? About someone always being there for you, like really there for you, whenever you need them, no matter what. I… just really like that idea."
He studied her downturned face for a few beats. The way her lashes brushed her cheeks, cloaking whatever emotion he might have seen in the blue of her eyes. Her brows were furrowed together and her lips downturned. Eddie bit back the question forming on his lips and instead held his hand out again.
They clasped hands and Eddie came out victorious for this round. "Jason doesn't make you feel that way?"
Chrissy only shook her head in answer and offered her hand again. Though Eddie won the next round as well, he didn't press her further on that issue. "What's your favorite food?"
Relief flooded Chrissy's face and the rigid set of her shoulders relaxed. "French toast."
"Oh, a breakfast girl! Let me guess, with lots of powdered sugar and syrup and fruit. Like, you're gonna have a mouth full of cavities by the time you finish the plate." Chrissy was laughing and nodding. They continued on this way, revealing that Eddie could talk at considerable length about Star Wars—"My uncle took me to see A New Hope when I was ten, we've watched all the movies in theaters and we have the VHS set"—and The Lord of the Rings—"It's all sold as one book now, but I have the original three volumes that they released between '54-'55."
On Chrissy's side, she told about how Olivia Newton-John's performance as Sandy in Grease was her inspiration to become a cheerleader—"I used to idolize her, she only cheers once in the whole movie but I was obsessed. My mom took me to see it over the summer when it came out and I begged her to put me in cheer camp right after" and that she watched Hawaii Five-O reruns every Saturday morning with her brother—"It's really the only time we hangout anymore, he's almost fourteen and he tells me I'm annoying and lame every day of the week except Saturday mornings."
It took an hour for the rain to peter out. Eddie was sad to see it calm into the drizzle from before. Too soon, too damn soon, they left Eddie's van and he walked Chrissy the few feet to her dad's car.
"I have mini cheer camp for the elementary school girls tomorrow," she told him, ducking into the driver's seat when Eddie opened the door for her. "But on Thursday, we're going to the library, and we're gonna study until you know everything you need for finals in a few weeks."
"You're gonna teach me all the science I haven't managed to learn in three years in one day?" There was a determined set to Chrissy's jaw. She raised one eyebrow in challenge.
"You might suck at science, Eddie, but I am acing Ms. O'Donnell's chemistry class. Do you want to flip Principal Higgins the bird and run like hell out of Hawkins High or not?"
Eddie decided a lesser man might have been embarrassed to have pretty little Chrissy Cunningham parroting back his own words to him with that much sass in her voice. Instead, he only smiled and leaned into the cab to whisper, "I still think you're a little shit, but if it gets me out of the hellhole that is Ms. O'Donnell's, I'll do whatever you say."
He stood in the muddy driveway, cupping a hand around a cigarette fished from his pocket to get it to light despite the dampness all around him. Chrissy's taillights were muted by the low fog rolling in after the storm. They blinked out of sight when she took the turn out of the trailer park and became swallowed up by the trees. Truthfully, Eddie had no idea how long he would have stood out there were it not for Henderson slamming into him. The younger boy's weight nearly toppled them; Eddie grabbed Dustin by the shirt and rocked them both back so they slammed against the van rather than the muddy ground.
"What the hell, man!"
Dustin was laughing, eyes crinkling and disappearing into his cheeks. "Just breaking you out of your Chrissy trance."
Eddie swatted at him, smacking the brim of the kid's ballcap so that it fell forward and hid his smug little face.
A/N: Thank you all SO MUCH for the reviews! I've been having a blast writing this and I'm nowhere near done, but I wanted to let y'all know how much your kind words mean!