Suffice it to say, Beanie may not have known entirely what she was getting into with all of this. Chrissy had been uncharacteristically quiet for a few days after having gone to see her mother, but had also become determined now to enroll in college and start doing something with her life again. Eddie, on the other hand, had busied himself for the past couple of days trying to piece together what he could of what had become of his Uncle Wayne. Wayne Munson had always been a man who kept very much to himself, so asking around would have never yielded much information.
It had been a blow to him as well to learn that Uncle Wayne had passed away, though it was helpful to know that it had been peaceful of old age, and that his younger sister whom Eddie didn't even really know that well had been able to fly out to Indiana for a while to spend his last days with him, to make sure he wasn't alone. Perhaps more importantly, Eddie had uncovered that Wayne Munson left behind a storage unit - but it had since been taken over by the city, and was going up for auction.
Eddie had no idea what he was doing or how he was going to pull it off, but he knew he needed to get his hands on the unit somehow. He would show up at the auction, and he would... do something. Somehow. Planning was not necessarily his strong suit, so sheer determination would have to be a good enough substitute.
The lady in charge of the auction had scrawled the number of the unit onto a Post-It note for him, which he had now stuck onto his index finger. Unit 630B. He hurried to catch up to the group that was following an auctioneer from marked unit to marked unit and placing bids, and tried to tuck himself into the back of the group to remain unnoticed; it was a welcome surprise that this came with much more ease than it would have in 1986, when others found his appearance so jarring that he was always noticed and always unwelcome. He peered over people's heads as they bid on each unit seeing only what was visible in the unit from the outside. He felt a twisting in his gut as he realized he genuinely had no idea what to do when 630B came up for auction. He had no money, nothing to offer as collateral. What was he going to do? Try and run in and grab what he could? Swipe the key from the auctioneer?
"Next up, 630B! Step this way!"
The auctioneer lifted up the door to the unit to reveal a small space packed high with boxes, none of which you could see into, as well as some car parts strewn over the floor, and a beat up leather armchair.
"Let's open the bidding at seven-hundred - seven hundred right there!"
Eddie's eyes widened and his mouth dropped at the fact that someone had immediately made a bid before he could even get his had straight - a heavier-set bald gentleman in a Hawaiian print shirt who clearly just came to these sort of things for fun. His tan also let on that he probably wasn't even from Indiana.
"Seven fifty, from the gentleman in blue."
Shit, Eddie cursed internally, glancing over at said man in a blue dress shirt, who seemed to be eyeing the armchair with great interest.
"Eight hundred, from Mister Hawaii -"
Mister Hawaii could go fuck himself.
"Eight fifty from Mister Blue -"
Mister Blue could go fuck himself too.
"Do I hear nine hundred?"
The area went still, and Eddie could feel panic rising in him when he realized this meant no more bids were coming in, that the two men were drawing the line at eight hundred and fifty and soon this would belong to them.
"Going once..."
He would just need to break in later, Eddie rationalized, before the new owner could remove any of the unit's contents.
"Going twice..."
But how? He had been observant enough to realize that it was much easier to get caught on camera these days, and that there was a good chance all he would achieve would be a shiny brand new mark on his long-closed criminal record.
"Oh, and nine hundred from Miss Ohio State in the back! Do I hear nine-fifty?"
"What?"
Eddie looked in confusion at the auctioneer and saw that he was gesturing in his direction; Eddie looked to his side to Beanie Cunningham in her dad's Ohio State t-shirt and a pair of jeans, her hand raised in the air to get the man's attention.
"Mister Blue, I see you for nine fifty, do I hear one thousand?"
One thousand fucking dollars? Eddie processed the figure with his eyebrows raised, and it made his head feel like it was going to explode. But what blew his mind more is that Beanie gave another wave to place the bid. He reached out to swat her hand down so she wouldn't do this, but it was too late. The auctioneer recognized her bid, and she looked over at Eddie with a slightly proud little smirk as the auctioneer called out, "Going once. Going twice - sold to Miss Ohio State."
And after a few niceties with the lady back at the front desk, where Beanie signed a few papers and wrote them a check, the key was handed over. Beanie promptly turned and grabbed a hold of Eddie's hand, pressing it into his palm.
"You can pay me back by not drinking all of my orange juice straight outta the carton," she said with a crinkle of her nose before nodding towards the door. "Come on, let's see what's in there."
Eddie was a little too awestruck by the event to do much than mumble a barely coherent 'thank you' while they walked over to the unit, while Beanie had already launched into a slightly rambling explanation that she had been out giving Chrissy a ride to the college to see if she could go about getting enrolled, and she had been able to surmise what Eddie had been up to as well.
"You just threw a thousand dollars around to help me get a room full of boxes that are probably just full of Uncle Wayne's old work clothes, you realize that's insane, right?"
"A thousand would have been insane, but I bid nine-fifty. I'll make that back," Beanie said matter-of-factly, plodding along ahead of Eddie towards the storage unit before he gave a slight groan, reaching forward and catching her by the crook of the arm just as they turned into the now-empty row of doors containing Unit 630B. He stopped her and gave her arm a brief but firm tug so she stopped in her tracks and turned to face him, stumbling slightly so that she stopped a little bit closer than even Eddie had initially planned.
"Nine fifty isn't nothing," Eddie said, his voice uncharacteristically low and his eyebrows raised as he released her arm. "And you didn't need to do that. At all. You didn't need to do that for me."
And for the first time in a few days - since that night in the park - Eddie had a brief opportunity to look at Beanie and really see her in the few moments she was stunned to silence at his sudden firmness towards her. She blinked a few times incredulously, her round brown eyes catching the sun as she moved her mouth a couple of times to speak to no avail before finally managing to push out a weak laugh, turning away and giving her neck a nervous scratch.
"I... I told you," she said, now sounding slightly more frazzled than she had moments prior. With her hair pulled to the side over one shoulder, there was a very slight redness creeping up her neck and into her face that Eddie wasn't sure had come from being out in the sun. "My parents left me some money, and I... I haven't wanted to use it. Not for more than a car and a place to live and everything. It's always felt weird," Beanie admitted, starting to take a few steps down the row which Eddie took as a clear indication that she preferred to walk and talk. "But if I'm going to use it, I want it to be for something that matters. And I can tell, this matters."
After a brief pause, Eddie sped up his steps to stand in front of Beanie to face her again, stopping her in her tracks while he looked down at her in gentle scrutiny - nothing ominous, but in curious examination in attempts to figure out what the hell was going through her head.
It wasn't that girls never did things for him - even when he was the token freak of Hawkins High, there were always girls who for whatever reason found themselves enamored with him. Girls who were entering a rebellious phase against their parents. Girls who for brief periods of them had thought themselves groupies of Corroded Coffin even though they had never listened to metal a moment in their lives. But this?
"You," Eddie finally spoke up with a gentle, waving gesture of his index finger that ended in him slowly pointing at her, "are a strange specimen of human indeed."
"Yeah, okay, anything you say Mister Time Traveler," Beanie laughed, giving his shoulder a gentle shove to turn him away from her and towards the door of the storage unit. "Get in there and see what's behind door number one."
So, the remainder of the morning while waiting for Chrissy was spent in the dingy storage unit - Beanie had perched herself in the old armchair that Mister Blue had seemed so determined on getting, and she couldn't help but feel a little smug at having beaten him. Eddie, meanwhile, had taken to opening boxes one at a time and sifting through the contents, ending up with a few odds and ends that he dropped into Beanie's lap to old onto, but finding that this was most certainly not a one-day job.
By the time they ended up back in Beanie's car to go pick up Chrissy, Eddie felt a little bit like a bird that had just gathered a bunch of random twigs and bits of string for its nest, all of which he had now plopped on the seat next to him in the back. It wasn't much of anything, but they were a couple things mixed into the mish mosh of boxes that he recognized as having once been his, intermingled between things that mostly belonged to his uncle. There were a few articles of clothing, guitar picks, bandanas... things that he never would have guessed would have some strange sentimental value to them. They arrived back at the college campus, where Chrissy plopped happily into the front seat with an envelope of papers in her arms.
"I guess I start in two weeks - oh! Eddie's here too?" she asked, buckling up and looking back and fort between Eddie and Beanie, then at the pile of things in the seat next to him. "What... are..."
"It is a long story," Eddie said with a grin. "About an armchair, a man in a Hawaiian shirt, and a thousand dollars."
"Nine-fifty."
"Correction. Nine fifty."
Eddie and Beanie shared a knowing, mischievous glance in the rear view mirror as Chrissy tried to piece together what any of those things had to do with one another and what the pair could've gotten into.
They had almost gotten back home when a tinkling sound in Beanie's pocket caused her to shift in her seat and pull her cellphone out, glancing between the screen and the road. From where Eddie sat, he could see the name on the screen: Jonny, with a little icon of a rocket ship next to it. Beanie paused and appeared to hesitate before giving a barely audible sigh, and hitting the button to answer it on speaker so she could hold her phone down by the bottom of the steering wheel.
"Hi Jonny."
"She lives!" came a male voice on the other end of the line. "Finally you answer your phone. Mom and dad came out here last weekend, they told me everything."
"Oh yeah," Beanie replied. "Your mom told me they were going to see you."
"Did you get the pictures I sent you a while back?" he asked - and inexplicably, Eddie found himself bristling slightly at the familiarity in this guy's voice when he talked to Beanie, even if there was no real reason for it. Chrissy, on the other hand, caught a glimpse of the shift in Eddie's expression and fought back a small, knowing laugh at what that look meant.
"I did! Of the labs up at Northstar?" Beanie said, excitement rising into her voice that caused the flicker of irritation in Eddie's expression to amplify as well. Northstar was an aerospace engineering firm where Jonny had just landed a student internship, and even when he didn't get responses, he always sent photos of what he was working on to Beanie, knowing that at least at one point, all of this had been her dream as well. "That is the most badass thing I've ever seen, I can't believe it," Beanie gushed happily. "You better be showing 'em how it's done -"
"I told them my best friend back home could engineer circles around all of them," Jonny responded through the receiver. "You know, they all are really excited to meet you one day." There was a pause, and it was evident that this was not the first time this had been brought up. Beanie gave a small sigh, and looked prepared to speak as she pulled into her own driveway, but Jonny quickly beat her to it "Come out for the long weekend," Jonny spoke up. "All of you guys. Mom and Dad told everything. You guys should all come out."
"To Chicago?"
"Yeah, to Chicago," Jonny laughed. "Come on. It'll be a squeeze, but - well, all you do is work, and eat, and sleep, and check on your grandma," Jonny pointed out. "Don't you need a break?"
"I'll call you back," Beanie said. "Talk to you in a second, okay?"
Beanie hung up, then looked back and forth between Eddie and Chrissy, giving a resigned sigh. "What do you say?" she asked, giving a slightly defeated, yet also slightly relieved smile. "Are you up for a road trip?"