In hindsight, coming to Hawkins for her year abroad hadn't been one of Fiona's best ideas. While it had seemed like one initially, and continued to seem like one pretty much right up until she'd taken nothing less than one aeroplane, two buses, and a cab to get to her new digs, reality wasn't quite matching up. Unfortunately.

The place was just so small - and she had no right to be upset by that, considering it was why she'd chosen it in the first place. It was the only American town on offer from her university back home that she'd be able to feasibly get by in without driving. She'd figured she could walk or cycle everywhere depending on her mood, get away from the big city, bask in the quiet, and that maybe it would even help her art to do so. All of that was still the plan, and she was even kinda liking the quiet, but she hadn't counted on the stares.

Back in London, and she hated that she was already becoming the tourist who harped on about how much better things were back home, you could hop onto the tube in a clown wig, a neon pink feather boa and black lacy lingerie and nobody would bat an eye. Here? Hawkins was another kettle of fish entirely. Apparently here, a Mötley Crüe tee and a potential slight excess of eyeliner was the equivalent of a clown/feather boa/lingerie combo. Who'd've thunk it?

Whether it was because of the panic surrounding the so-called curse that gripped the town, the nature of small-town life, the fact that she was now dealing with Americans in general and how they ramped their paranoia over that shit up to eleven, or a winning combination of all three factors, she had no idea. All Fiona did know was that all of the things that had people complimenting her on her style back home apparently shocked and appalled those here - anybody would've thought she'd chosen to decorate her legs with the blood of the innocent judging by the openly appalled stares her ripped tights drew in from a little granny on her very first day here. Maybe they were taking her as another sign of the big scary curse - frogs, flies, locusts, and rockers. All of the well-known plagues, right?

It was only a petty grievance rather than a full blown proper problem, anyway. London was better, sure, a bit more progressive, but it wasn't some utopia. People were shitty those who they deemed freaks all over the world, Britain wasn't exempt, it was just a bit slower to judge. Weird looks and snide comments came with the territory, and she'd put herself on this track a whole decade ago at the tender age of ten when she'd decided she much preferred her dad's Led Zeppelin albums over her mum's crap by the Osmond brothers.

It was what it was, she'd never changed it for the sake of an easy life and Hawkins wasn't going to strong-arm her into doing so now. It wasn't the only issue, though. The community college here was a bust. Academically that didn't matter too much - her own uni had sent her here with an alarmingly thick info packet detailing all of the work she needed to do over the course of the semesters she'd spend in the states, along with scheduled calls with the head of her course to make sure she was managing. Even if the college here had been impressively high-tech, it was always just going to be a base of operations more than a resource.

Well, it was going to be a base of operations with one sole exception. The social aspect. Which now put her shit out of luck, considering the place was basically derelict and those who did attend did so because they were juggling too many other things to move anywhere a bit more vibrant to study. All of those things that they were juggling meant they weren't too interested in making friends, and certainly not with the freaky Brit who owned more ripped than intact clothing.

All of that led rather neatly to her final, biggest problem. Money. Or a distinct lack thereof. The fire at the mall meant all of those who had previously been employed at said mall had then taken whatever jobs there were elsewhere. It didn't take a genius, either, to work out that the good folks of Hawkins, all brimming with family values and perfectly polished morals wouldn't have much interest in her paintings - the fact that they weren't even ground-breaking avant-garde statement pieces wouldn't make much difference so long as she was the one who was painting and attempting to sell them. Between that and the fact that there were basically no jobs going, it was a good thing that there was no crazy university nightlife to be found here, because she wouldn't have been able to afford it anyway.

It was all just a wee bit unfortunate. By the time her first week drew to a close, she was getting a bit of a dreading sense that her time here was going to be all ramen cups, school assignments, and very little else. Maybe that was a premature assessment, but compared to her first week of university back home last year, the difference was jarring.

Despite her moments of self pity, though, it wasn't like there was nothing she liked about Hawkins. While the town had all of the comforts one might reasonably wish for, it was fairly rural, with woodland creeping in at all corners, and she loved that. It gave the sense of being in the wilderness - the great wilderness, on a scale that one could never really find in England, where you were usually little more than an hour away from the next city at any given time. Things felt wilder here. Bigger. Unfathomably vast, really, for somebody who had never spent a massive amount of time outside of Britain. There was something thrilling about knowing she was only a handful of poor decisions from being lost without hope of being found thanks to the sheer extent of the land here.

The thrill she felt at that thought probably made her more of a freak than any amount of rock albums or leather skirts.

No, Fiona loved the wilderness. Having arrived in late September, she loved how the woods all around were cloaked in shades of crimson and amber, she loved how much she got to bask in it thanks to the sheer extent of walking she did, and - like any self-respecting spookily inclined gal - she loved the fact that there was already a mild buzz surrounding Halloween here, whereas it was barely even a thing back home.

It was just the sad truth of the matter that no amount of majestic scenery or cheap Halloween decorations could make up for the pitfalls, nor ease the slow and steady ache that came with having little to do other than painting and staring at the four walls of her student accommodation. It turned out that studio apartments began to feel remarkably like solitary confinement cells once you reached your eighth straight day of sitting in one with absolutely sod all else to do. Other than walking. But that was becoming her equivalent of yard time. Drinking wasn't even an option here, given that she was a little less than one full year shy of her twenty-first.

She was still managing to put on a brave face for her phone calls home - although it'd be pretty pathetic if she couldn't, given how little time had gone by - but on what would've been her tenth straight day of hanging around her apartment getting embarrassingly ahead with uni work, Fiona had enough. Something had to change, or else she'd lose it and call it quits before her first semester here was even over.

Figuring that even mildly curious housewives and bored stoners were better than having nobody at all to talk to, she cracked and started to load up her most innocuous paintings into her battered plastic A3 carrier. Sure, scenes featuring wraiths, witches, and orcs were out, but that didn't leave her completely shit out of look - she had plenty of stuff that could fly under the radar and maybe even be of some novelty to the good folks of Hawkins.

And, worst case scenario, it got her a bit of fresh air and a break from counting the hair-thin cracks running across her ceiling.

One attitude-adjusting walk later found Fiona sitting on the waist-height ledge in the wall outside of Hawkins Library, a handful of her (hopefully) most universally appealing paintings lined up beside her. Absolutely unwilling to play the role of sleazy used car salesman, she sat with one of her uni books in hand, looking up only when somebody paused to take a look at her work, or to offer an attempt at a warm "I promise I'm not a devil-worshipper" smile at passers-by. Some of them smiled back, so maybe that was a win. Or maybe they were just worried she'd curse them if they didn't.

"Holy shit."

She hadn't paid much attention to the kid walking by until he spoke.

"Holy shit," he repeated, pausing and inspecting her paintings, bending at the waist so he could really peer at them.

His eyes were wide with undisguised excitement as he took them in, and he wore a cap that just barely kept a lid on the mass of wild curly hair atop his head.

"A compliment?" she blinked, offering an unsure smile as she lowered the book to her lap..

"You're goddamn right it's a compliment - Lothlórien, right? It's not just some random treehouse village? I mean, it's cool if it is - it's still good, but it just screams elf, y'know? That is what you were going for? Yeah?"

Having barely spoken to anybody here so far beyond "yeah, I'd like my change back please" and "no, I don't need a bag", the onslaught of commentary caught Fiona off-guard for a split second, but she caught up quickly, blinking and then stammering out.

"Yes- yeah, Lothlórien. You're a Tolkien fan?"

"Am I a Tolkien fan?" he echoed with a laugh - but it was anything but derisive as he answered "Is Thranduil King of Mirkwood? This one - it's Rohan, right?"

"Yeah, then Riven-"

"Rivendell! Elrond's library! What about this one?" he frowned as he reached the next one in the row.

"Oh, that's from The Great Gatsby - y'know, the green light at the dock?"

"Eh," he shrugged, visibly disinterested in that particular reference as he turned back to the others.

At least she knew now that he wasn't faking his interest in the distinctly nerdier of the drawings.

"Man, Will would lose his shit over these. I mean, he might hate you a little bit at first, what with you coming for his Artist of Hawkins title, but he's cool, you'd be fine after that."

"I'm only here for the school year, his title's safe."

"I guess. Plus, y'know, you're a girl, and older - not older just older - and English. Right? That's the accent?"

"Right-" she barely had time to confirm before he was continuing.

"Maybe it doesn't count as a competition, then, if you're in different divisions, y'know? Like putting a featherweight against a heavyweight. Just doesn't work that way."

Fiona made the very wise decision not to ask which category she fell into.

"Sounds like I'm safe unless this Will changes weight class, then."

"Yeah," the kid shrugged "And unless he moves back from California, too."

Ah. Well, that had been a rollercoaster - and there went her plan for a potential upsell.

"You got anymore Middle-Earth ones?" he abandoned his thorough inspections of the paintings already set out to turn to her.

"Not here," she scratched the back of her neck "I only trotted out the, erm, socially acceptable ones. Last thing I need is for some local to see a Balrog or something and think I was out here selling paintings of Satan, y'know?"

The responding face - and hum - he gave told her all she needed to know about how incredibly founded her fears really were. Great.

"How much are these?" he asked, digging his hands into his pocket.

Fiona hesitated. She didn't really have a set price, but that wasn't something to admit - mostly she took a guess about how much she thought they could afford. It was mostly in the very small, vague off-chance that somebody who looked even slightly well to-do showed an interest in her stuff (hence the more high-brow literary references on display), in which case she figured she could buck up the prices to even something like five dollars. She could dream.

But that wasn't the case here. This kid was, what? Thirteen? Foul-mouthed, sure, but still a kid - and she could respect the bad language, anyway. He was genuinely interested, and he'd provided her with the first decent conversation she'd gotten since arriving here. She wasn't about to punish that by trying to rip him off for money he probably genuinely did not have anyway.

"Two dollars each," she said.

He pulled a face, staring at her in disbelief "You did, like, the conversion from British money to American dollars before you gave me that price, right? Because something's seriously lost in translation here."

"I can respect a true Tolkien aficionado," she shrugged "But I'm flattered by the surprise. Take your pick."

Without hesitating he picked up the painting that had first caught his eye - the one of Lothlórien - and then handed her the two dollars she'd requested.

"New decor for your room?" she hazarded a guess, somewhat surprised by the choice.

"Nah, this is going straight to the Hellfire Club. Mike and Lucas are going to love it, trust me - d'you sell your stuff here often?"

"Sure," she lied - because she could start turning up more often from here if it meant actually selling her stuff.

Plus, part of what he'd said caught her attention - the Hellfire Club? Maybe there was hope for Hawkins after all - maybe not for her, she was a good half a decade too old, but for the future. It was something, at least. And if this little gaggle of teenagers bought even just one painting each, it would cover her ramen noodle budget for the foreseeable future. Ah, silver linings.

"Great. I'll bring 'em by, bring your other stuff next time - the real stuff, not the Hawkins HOA approved shit, yeah? I'll bring Mike, Lucas…maybe Max, I don't know if she'd…oh, but Eddie would definitely…huh, I don't know if you're ready to meet Eddie."

Fiona snorted - she could picture the kid from that sentence alone, some teenage mad-lad whose friends thought he was a wildcard because he flipped off the local police officers when their backs were turned.

"I don't know if Eddie's ready to meet me," she countered.

There was something about the snort he gave in response that suggested he knew something about this Eddie that she didn't. Which, to be fair, was highly probable, given that she'd never met the lad.

"Don't give them the same discount you gave me, though, it'll ruin all of my bragging rights," the kid warned as he visibly deliberated over how best to carry the painting.

They weren't on full-blown canvases - just big, thick sheets of acrylic paper. Part of being fairly damn certain that nobody would buy a thing meant that she didn't really have a good wrapping system set up. She'd have to think of that for next time, if he really came through with his promise to bring his friends. In the end, though, he carefully wedged the painting under his arm. It was fine - it wasn't raining, and it was just acrylic. It wouldn't smudge.

"I promise to strictly play favourites," Fiona replied with the utmost seriousness.

The kid grinned at her, and stuck out his hand for her to shake with all of the confidence of a middle-aged businessman.

"Dustin Henderson," he introduced himself.

"Fiona Hellborn."

"Ha! Your name is not Hellborn. No way were you born with that."

"I'm afraid so," she replied drily, used to that response since black overtook her wardrobe "The look was a self-fulfilling prophecy from thereon."

"Oh, you're really not ready to meet Eddie, he's gonna lose his shit," he shook his head - it seemed like everybody he knew lost their shit over pretty much everything, if he was an accurate judge of such things "Alright - nice to meet you. I'll bring them, you have my word."

"Thanks," she blinked, and then he was gone as quickly as he'd turned up.

Maybe there was hope for Hawkins after all.

A/N: I'm not going to draw things out too much before our leading man and lady meet - if they don't in the next chapter, they definitely will after that. Two dollars in 1985 - which is when this story begins, in the autumn of 1985 - is the equivalent of around five dollars nowadays. Still laughably cheap, but not as cheap as two dollars today.

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