Chapter 8: Dancing in the Dark

"Man, I ain't gettin' nowhere

I'm just livin' in a dump like this

There's somethin' happenin' somewhere

Baby, I just know that there is"

Friday. January 10th, 1986.

POV: Winter Reid

I drift back into the present and I can hear the radio in my bedroom playing Phil Collins. But I'm not feeling as confident or gleeful as the girl from my memory. I'm anxious. The feeling rolls down from my head to my abdomen.

It's a sensation like my body is being lifted off of the floor. You know when you sit in a chair and lean just a bit too far back? You hang in the space between tumbling backwards and reaching out to steady yourself. It's a halfway feeling, you're both falling and floating. The radio is supposed to distract me, but it's not working, so I turn on the hair dryer in the bathroom too. What is my thought process here? Create enough background noise to drown out the incessant, nagging thoughts in my head.

I continue to pace my room, back and forth, my eyes scanning every corner. With a brain as scattered as mine, one that constantly fast-forwards and rewinds through my own memory, I try my best to keep this room simple, organized, predictable. Now, however, I've almost run out of time and I'm missing one essential piece of my outfit.

"Green scrunchie, where art thou?" I call into the space, expecting some reply from the inanimate object.

I pick up my pillow to find nothing underneath, and set it back down at the head of my bed neatly. I drop to my knees and use both hands to feel and scan the carpet quickly. I only find a nickel and bobby pin which I set gently on my dresser.

The dresser! That's it, I need a high vantage point!

My fingers grasp the top of my door as I hoist myself onto the dresser. It has three good legs and one very wobbly corner so the slightest pressure will send it toppling over. This is a precarious endeavor, but I cannot leave without my cheer regulation scrunchie.

The room is small and my dresser can only fit behind the door, meaning I can't open the door into my room all the way and also the door must be shut if I need to open the drawers to find pajamas. But in lieu of a lock, shutting the door and then pulling out drawers works quite well and keeps people from entering my room uninvited.

It kept Eddie out one afternoon as he chased me from his trailer. I had stolen his van keys which he said prevented him from leaving for his "hot date" all because he said that Belinda Carlisle was a sell-out. Everyone knows the Go-Go's are punk. Just because they get radio play and are girls doesn't mean they're not rock n' roll.

I like my space. When my family landed in Hawkins, I needed a place to lock myself away when my dad sucked all of the oxygen out of our small trailer and I felt I couldn't breathe. This bedroom is nothing like the one I had in California, the renovated room in the attic with a huge bay window that faced the sandy dunes on the edge of the ocean.

The attic was accessible by a door at the very end of the hall, which opened to reveal a steep set of wooden stairs that spit you back out through a rectangular opening in the floor. It was capacious and drafty, but I loved it. I lived most of my childhood in that room, reading comic books, creating dance routines to whatever song floated over the radio, watching the rain patter against the glass with Tarzan's loving head nestled in my lap.

I was always alone… but it was safer that way.

My current bedroom doesn't have the exposed wood beams that create an A frame across the ceiling adorned with twinkling lights. It doesn't have the loose brick at the base of the wall just to the left of the doorway where I hid treasures I had found down on the beach.

I settled into my childhood bedroom and allowed myself to fill every available space with something that made me happy. The room might've functioned like a stone tower keeping me away from reality down below, but I needed my seashells and my books. I needed the line of glass coke bottles in front of the window that absorbed the sunlight and splayed prisms across the floor. I was content in that room with Tarzan, my radio, and my sketchbooks filled with drawings of local flora and fauna.

But, I left all of it behind.

One morning, my dad punched open the small opening at the top of the attic stairs and invaded my sanctuary. He grabbed Tarzan by the collar and told me to pack quickly. I was half-awake and terrified. I pulled the brick loose from the wall and grabbed my shoebox of treasures, scooped my sewing machine under one arm, and stuffed mismatched socks and random articles of clothing into a small backpack.

I never really allowed myself to plant roots in the room I'm standing in now. A large part of me thought my family would flee this place too, so I couldn't bring myself to treat it with any degree of permanence.

I chose function over style. Accessibility and order over trinkets and treasures. I didn't have anything when we arrived at Forest Hills anyways, and I didn't let myself accumulate too much. I sewed a pair of curtains to frame the window, found a floral duvet half-off at Melvald's General Store, and shoved my shoebox to the darkest corner in my closet. Four years later, and I still keep a large suitcase I found at the thrift store underneath my bed… just in case.

I shake my head. I'm on top of the dresser on my tiptoes, trying to prevent my full weight from pushing down on the wobbly side; it gives a small shake beneath me and I throw my arms out like a tightrope walker.

Suddenly my eyes zero in on the emerald green scrunchie, sitting on top of a stack of magazines. I get down slowly and cross the room. Beneath the hair tie, Blondie is staring up at me from the front page. My hand grasps the scrunchie and my movement lightly pushes the top magazine, exposing enough of the one beneath that I can see the top letters that spell TIME. If I moved it any more, I would see Ronald Reagan's face staring back up at mine from the front cover. I bought the magazine for a report on his presidency at school, and I came away from it decidedly more leftist than when I started.

"How was he ever in the movies?" I mutter as I push Blondie back to the top of the pile.

My hands flank down the stack, pushing and straightening the pile until it stands in a neat tower.

"Much better," I muse happily.

I turn towards my bed and see my floral pink duvet is wrinkled from when I sat down a moment ago and pulled on my socks. I graze the cover from top to bottom, smoothing it until I'm satisfied. Looking upwards, I study the posters on the wall above my bed.

One is of the movie "The Outsiders". I fell head over heels for Sodapop and Dallas, and I like gazing up at them on my wall before I fall asleep... don't judge me.

I remember the hot summer day when Eddie and I went to see it play at The Hawk. Eddie devoured the book. He read it at least a dozen times and dog-eared the pages that contained his favorite passages.

I can understand why he loved it so much; it's a coming of age tale about kids from the wrong sides of the tracks, kids who just wanted to make it through their adolescence alive. It was gritty and honest, and Eddie saw himself represented in the characters in a way I don't think he ever had before.

We walked our bikes downtown and traded my babysitting money for two tickets. We sat in the front row of the balcony and leaned so far forward we almost fell over the railing. When the movie ended I sat sobbing in my seat, feeling paralyzed and betrayed. I turned to Eddie, and he gazed over at me with his forehead creased in sympathy. I was mad at him for putting me through that and not giving me a significant warning beforehand.

He stood up suddenly, held his hands out to signal for me to wait, then turned and jogged out of the theater. I blinked my eyes in confusion and gave myself a few minutes to compose myself. I exited through the swinging theatre doors and furiously wiped my eyes.

"Hey! Kid!"

I heard a thunder of footsteps from down the hall.

I looked to my right and saw Eddie running towards me with a roll of paper under his arm and the owner of The Hawk pursuing him.

He was smiling widely with a look of pure chaos and glee.

"You get back here, you little shit!" The man yelled, his belly jiggled over his belt and his white hair lifted and blew back from his scalp.

It almost looked like Eddie was being chased by Santa Claus. Eddie ran past me and grabbed my wrist, pulling me next to him and dragging me out of the lobby.

"We're leaving now!" Eddie yelled as he pulled me through the double doors.

"Eddie-" I tried to protest, but he guided me to my bike and jumped onto his.

"We gotta go Winnie!"

I blinked and looked over my shoulder. The owner had reached the doors and doubled over to suck a deep breath into his lungs.

"You... you get back... here," the man huffed.

Eddie stood up on his pedals and gave me a wild look. He shook his head with his eyes wide, signaling that I needed to get on my bike and follow him.

I obeyed, hopped onto my seat, and began pumping the pedals, trying to match Eddie's lightning pace.

We soared down Main Street, passing through an intersection and weaving in between cars who blared angry horns at us. I followed him as he cut right through the park and drove over a canal. When we were finally far enough away, he turned his handlebars, sliding his bike to a stop and setting his converse down on the dirt. I slowed next to him and gave him a bewildered look.

His hair was long and shaggy, not quite the length he has now, but his curls fell over his deep brown eyes that blazed with determination and delight.

My chest burned from our race and I was out of breath.

"What... the hell... was that?" I managed to ask him.

Eddie smiled at me, his dimples etched into his cheeks, and slowly climbed off of his bike. Squished under his arm and held protectively to his side was the roll of white paper I saw him fleeing with down the theater hallway. It reminded me of a treasure map.

Eddie was laughing madly.

"Did you see the look on Santa's face?" He asked in between cackles. "Man, he was so pissed!"

I shook my head at him. My mouth threatened to turn up to a grin, but I still needed an explanation.

"Oh no... what did you do, Eddie?" I asked. "So far that movie theater is the best place in this town. I don't want to get banned!"

I let out a frustrated sigh and Eddie's face fell slightly. He walked up to me slowly and held his treasure out in front of him.

"I'm sorry that movie made you so sad." His round eyes looked up into mine. "But... we're a lot like them, y'know? Street kids. We're like a gang of two, and I'll look out for you the same way they looked out for each other."

My eyebrows scrunched together and I felt my chin wobble; his words pulled at my heartstrings. I've never felt like I've belonged anywhere, but maybe where I belonged was racing my bike alongside this boy. This insane, wild boy who spoke before thinking and lived life dangerously on the edge.

Eddie slowly unrolled the poster. I let out a shocked laugh when it unfurled completely. I looked from the movie poster back at him; he was smiling timidly.

"Where did you get that?" I asked him.

"I removed it from the wall with my knife," he said simply. "Might've damaged the wallpaper a little bit, but I think it was worth it."

"You're insane, Eddie Munson." I said through a fitful of giggles.

He smiled widely at me and carefully rolled it back up. He held it out to me. "It's for you."

I took it from him slowly. We rode home, him in front of me with his legs stretched away from the pedals and his feet in the air, cruising slowly in and out of the yellow lines of the road. The poster sat in my bike basket, and I watched it roll back and forth, feeling misty-eyed and inextricably linked to the boy who rode in front of me.

Eddie took me in the minute he saw me; he didn't care that my parents and I were shoved into a small trailer, or that I had crooked teeth and secondhand clothes. He just accepted me.

When we got back to our trailers, I unrolled the poster and looked at it with fondness.

Eddie began walking to his door and I called out to him.

"Thank you!"

He turned around and gave me a shallow shrug. "No problem."

I smiled and turned toward my home. I walked up the porch steps and yelled over my shoulder, "Stay gold, Ponyboy!"

Eddie laughed and watched me go inside.

I smile at the poster now, feeling a wave of nostalgia from the memory rise and crash over my body. Just to the right of it hangs two smaller posters, one of The Smiths, who are my go to band for when I'm deeply depressed, and one of Molly Ringwald, the actress from Sixteen Candles and my personal role model.

I don't have a lot in my room, but what I do have lives in precision; everything has its place.

Satisfied with the order before me, I move slowly in front of the narrow mirror that hangs on the back of my door. A quick glance shows me a girl in a Hawkins High cheerleader uniform. I turn my head slowly to give the full reflection a thorough pass. Her uniform is perfectly pressed; her shoes are stark white after she had scrubbed at them with a toothbrush and bleach. The pleated skirt I wear falls perfectly above my knees and swishes when I move my hips, it feels totally ridiculous yet exciting. I pull back my hair, which is shiny and thick, into a sporty ponytail.

A lyric floats into my brain… look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, lousy with virginity.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting this turn of events either, but I feel... good. It's nice to wear something that is just so. The crisp skirt and the double-knotted white Reeboks. The green scrunchie secured around my hair. I like the order, the expectation, the regulation, that this uniform provides. It's not often in my life I'm handed stability.

But this year is different. I will be perfect and I will look perfect.

I reach over to my dresser to find a small, golden Cover Girl eyeshadow palette. Using my pinky, I spread just enough of the blue shade over my lids. I set down the eyeshadow and pick up my Orange and Green pom-poms. I don't bother with lipstick. I have too much fear I'll find myself enthusiastically speaking to someone while my two front teeth are covered in Fuchsia Pink.

I do a celebratory twirl in the mirror, feeling a little silly seeing myself in this costume, but taking a deep breath I push away the discomfort.

Mrs. Kelley said "life starts outside of your comfort zone". She's been a quiet comfort ever since my dad died one year ago. Although his presence is not missed, it still exists like a large stone laid on the center of my chest.

Looking at myself now, it finally feels like a fresh start.

I decided to reinvent myself after my wire braces were pulled from my teeth back in July and my perpetual chin zits were cleared up by a bottle of Ten-O-Six that felt akin to pouring acid in an open wound. My hair got shinier and healthier too, although I'm not sure what caused that, considering the water pressure in our trailer is the same it's always been, which is to say it's bad.

Just one day, I woke up, and I didn't feel so foreign looking at myself. I didn't feel like an alien inhabiting a teen girl's body who wasn't sure which way to move her arms and scared of her own voice.

No, I decided that if I ever had a hope of getting out of Hawkins, maybe all I needed to do was listen to what my mother said and … blend in.

If you think that's counterintuitive, think about being a poor girl living in a trailer park, with a dead father, and an overworked mother, and then look at the kids who actually succeed at leaving Indiana. At the very least, maybe I'll just try to look like them and hope their shimmer somehow rubs onto me, and maybe, just maybe, I can get the fuck out of here.

My vision blurs a little and I can feel a slow crawl of anxiety seep into my brain.

This isn't you. She isn't you.

Shit, what did Mrs. Kelley teach me to do? She said I have dissociation problems. I fly out of my body when reality becomes too scary or tough. She's probably right.

I recall her advice now.

"Look in a mirror. Remind yourself of your name, how old you are, where you are, and why you're there."

I take a deep breath. "My name is Winter Reid, I'm 16. I'll be 17 on March 23rd. I'm in my room. I'm getting ready for the basketball game." I repeat these words twice more.

My reflection is beginning to look less like someone off of a poster and more like me. I feel my feet planted in my sneakers. My hands clutch tightly around my pom-poms.

I'm here. I'm okay.

During my last meeting with Mrs. Kelley I picked my cuticles raw when she asked me why I refused to take a school yearbook photo that year. And the year before that, and oh yeah the one before that too. In the yearbook I existed as a gray question mark, with only my name under the box to denote that anyone was supposed to be there at all. Not that anyone would notice. I have always hated photos.

On my first school photo day at Hawkins middle, Eddie Munson had told me to just make a hideous face on purpose, so you know what to expect when you see it. I chose instead to hide in the bathroom during my turn.

Before tonight, I never really wanted to be remembered... but maybe I do now.

On the surface, I look perfect and poised, which hides the tornado of self-doubt just below the surface. Maybe I am ridiculous, but I'm also quite stubborn, so I steal another glance at Molly Ringwald on my bedroom wall while another voice floats into my consciousness.

It's deeper in tone and mocking in its cadence, it says,"Forced conformity is killing the kids". I push it away; that is not the voice of reason, that is the voice of Eddie Munson, who lives in the trailer directly across from mine.

Whenever I step outside my front door and glance across the dirt and tufts of weeds, I can see his beat-up van and hear the pulse of his guitar blaring from his room.

It's a room the exact same size as mine, with the same carpet, and the same wallpaper, but disastrously maintained. Band posters decorate the walls. Magazines are stacked in various piles, ordered from least explicit to most, which is a system only he could come up with. A homemade banner painted in stolen grease paint on a stolen white sheet hangs across one wall. It's for his band, Corroded Coffin. Clothes, shoes, and piles of cassette tapes litter all the spaces in between.

There's an ashtray by his bed, which I regard with less judgment, since he and I have been passing cigs on the playground in the trailer park since we were tweens.

The cigarettes abandoned in his ashtray are not sucked down all the way, as if he lights them mostly for the show of it, holding the cigarette lightly between his fingers, punctuating his sentences with its embers, only to haphazardly stub it out before it's even halfway gone because something else across the room caught his eye and distracted him from it.

I pull myself forcefully back into my body; my imagination has run away with itself again.

Sandy from Grease smiles in the mirror, not exactly Molly Ringwald, but it's a start.

I turn and shut off my radio. I pull open my bedroom door and step out into the hallway. The hairdryer clicks off and an unsettling stillness fills the small trailer. I pause for a second, hearing only the small ticking of the clock that hangs by the front door. I must be alone. I move towards the front half of the trailer and set my pom-poms lightly on the small kitchen table.

It's cramped and dark in here, but I try to bring in light wherever I can.

There are several vases filled with the wildflowers I pick from the edge of the woods just south of our trailer park. Last month, I made new lace curtains out of fabric discarded by the curb in one of the richer neighborhoods. They frame the dingy kitchen window nicely. Lamps stand in every corner to bring more warmth in.

I do my best to air out the space so my mom and I can breathe here.

We didn't move after my dad died because we couldn't afford it, and for a while it still felt like his presence was here. I could feel him invade the dampest corners, and I swore I could still see the impressions of his boot prints appear on the carpet. My mom and I slept with all the windows open in every room for months after his death, even though it was still wintertime. Neither of us said it out loud, but I think we were trying to expel the ghost of him out of here.

But, at present, a year and a couple days after his death... it's not so bad.

I move to the kitchen sink and begin washing and drying the dishes left there. I can never leave the house with a sink full of dirty dishes. I am about to set down the last spoon when a groan from the darkened living room startles me. The spoon clatters to the linoleum by my Reeboks.

I take a sharp breath in.

There's another small creak from the front room. I hesitantly peek my head under the kitchen cabinets that sit above the small patch of counter which separates the kitchen from the living room.

"Mom?" I call. There's a beat of silence.

"Babydoll? What time is it?" I hear my mom croak in a barely awake reply.

"Almost five thirty, mom," I reply, letting out a breath I didn't realize I had been holding in.

I bend down and retrieve the spoon and set on scrubbing it once, actually twice more. In my peripheral vision I can see her slump to a sitting position. She fumbles for the pull chain of the closest lamp, and it clicks on to illuminate her profile. Her neck cracks as she rolls it; she had fallen asleep again on the lumpy cushions. She straightens and staggers into the kitchen, her socks sliding across the floor.

She's dressed in faded Wranglers and a blue flannel with a pink shirt underneath. Her hair is flattened on the side she had fallen asleep on, and her face wears a slackened, exhausted look.

I hear the fridge door behind me open and close. I see her hand reach past my face to grab a freshly washed bowl, then her fingers pluck the clean spoon out of my hand as it hovered near the towel I was using to dry. I look over my shoulder to see her set down the bowl with a thud and pull out a kitchen chair. I grimace as it scrapes across the floor. I always pick up the chair and set it backwards because I cannot stand the sound it makes, scratching over the linoleum.

She begins to noisily pour a bowl of cereal. I walk behind her, mirroring her movements in reverse.

She pours the milk from too high up and it cascades loudly into the bowl like a tidal wave. She then sets the carton down, uncapped, which causes it to splatter the small table. I use the dish towel, still in my hand, to wipe up the dots and reach around her to close the milk, then I set it with the label facing out back inside the fridge.

She pours the cereal, also from too far away, allowing spheres of wheat to bounce across the floor. She slaps the box down without closing it. I gently take the box, close it and set it back on top of the fridge, then get to work chasing the small bits of loose cereal down. I find them all and throw the cluster triumphantly into the garbage. As I straighten back up, my mom turns her head and takes full notice of me for the first time that day.

With a loud gasp, cereal still sat half-chewed on her tongue and milk dribbling out the side of her mouth; she exclaims, "Oh, honey! Look at you!"

She's gushing at her once awkward teen daughter, whose only friend was (and frankly still is) the boy across the way and the bands on his tapes. Now I stand here, a 16 year old cheerleader, primed and pressed, ready to blend in. It makes my heart warm seeing an expression of happiness work across her tired face, a face that holds lines much older than it should.

"Do I look... alright?" I ask.

"You look beautiful. My girl, so beautiful." She says and shoves a bite into her mouth, still taking in every detail of my uniform. "If the bitches who went to school with me could see me now, with my daughter, prettier than their own most likely, well, they'd take back any nasty name they used to call me. Because I made a pretty girl who will be the envy of Hawkins High!" She says this amusingly, setting her elbow on the table and placing her face in her upturned palm.

I venture a small smile, point my chin down, and smooth the pleats of my skirt.

"Y'know, mom, if you really wanted to... you could come tonight! I've heard the season is going really well so far, the team might even take the championship. We could walk in together, maybe you can meet the other girls on my squad. And you could see me perform! I'm at the end of the row... in the back, but it's really something! We're doing a routine to Holding Out for a Hero!"

A quick, pained look flashes across her face, which is still set in her palm, elbow propped on the table. The look isn't there for long, and soon her expression morphs into an affectionate smile. She sets both hands quickly down on either side of the sky-blue plastic bowl, slapping the table.

"Oh honey, you know, I would really love to, but I'm not feeling too well tonight. Maybe, next time, though, okay?" My mom smiles at me and drags her spoon through her cold dinner.

I nod enthusiastically, trying to make her believe that I believed that promise.

"Okay!" I say and fold the dish towel in my hands.

Small town Hawkins gossip almost ruined my mom's life when she was my age, so I feel stupid even asking if she'd maybe like to waltz back in, see all the kids she almost graduated with now all grown up, and mingle. I walk over and place a small kiss on the frizzy hair that meets her forehead.

Her hair color is the same as mine; in fact I share most of my features with my mother, save for my eyes, which are the same as my father's wide, innocently set ones. Although on him they tended to bulge to an almost inhuman, gawked expression whenever he would come home and decide to reign terror on my mother over some small, perceived slight. Perhaps she'd been talking too long outside with Mr. Johnson, or the toast she had set on a plate for him at breakfast was too dark in color.

My mother was a uniquely beautiful woman in her youth, although one must search for it more now.

Her beauty still rises up again if you happen to catch her laughing, unaware of herself, wide-mouthed and flailing. You can see it, too, when she absentmindedly dances in the kitchen, broom in one hand, the other reaching outstretched and trying to catch the notes to the Conway Twitty song rippling from the radio.

We have the same cheekbones, the same pouted lips that stretch into wide smiles; the same nose, eyebrows, and earlobes. I am happy to look most like her, if only so she could forget the ghost of my father more each day; but I know that right now, looking at me, she sees a version of herself at my age.

Maybe this is why I decided this was the year.

1986 baby. The year I will turn 17, the same age my mom had been when she gave birth to me. I think I wanted her to see that it wasn't entirely in vain - her labor, her sacrifice, her demons. I could live out dreams for both of us.

I face her again, tighten my ponytail, and say, "It's alright. I know you're with me in spirit, which y'know... is the most valuable currency in cheer." I try to lift the mood with a cheesy cheer joke... it's not my best work honestly.

My fingers graze the golden heart that hangs on a chain around my neck. The necklace was my mother's; she handed it over to me after my dad died.

The day of his funeral, I had found my mom in her room wearing her black dress with a pair of heels sat neatly at the end of the bed, waiting to be stepped in.

The bedroom was scattered with remnants of the man that had lived here still strewn about, forcing her to walk over and around the ghost of him, until she could only find the small corner of the bed free.

On her lap, she held a shoebox in her hands and gently moved one finger around the edge of the lid as if stirring water on the surface of a pool. I stood in the doorway, my toes barely past the threshold, afraid to move.

"Mom?" My wavering voice echoes in this memory. "It's time to go, mom. The Munsons said they'd drive us to the cemetery."

My voice didn't seem to reach her at all.

I hazarded one step into the room. The squeak of my too-tight black flat collided with a loud piece of floorboard. The room was so quiet and my one step jerked her head upwards, her eyes were glossy with tears. She seemed to look right through me. I took a quick, frightened glance over my shoulder to try to see what she was seeing, but I realized her gaze was firmly on my own.

I stood there, and felt myself try to shrink, trying to pull inwards. My chin pointed straight down and I stared at the tips of my shoes.

After a moment she spoke, "You look so much like me that it frightens me sometimes."

"What?" I asked cautiously, raising my head, not sure whether her tone was full of anger or fear.

Her face moved back down to the shoebox in her lap. I hesitantly crossed the floor to her, much quieter this time, and knelt at her side.

She stared at the box; it was a yellowish white with purple script that was no longer legible faded across the lid.

"What's in here?" I sat on my knees, my back stiff and straight, not sure what type of reaction I was about to receive.

"Hopes and dreams, babydoll," she replied mournfully.

"Is it... dad's stuff?" I asked, regretting it almost immediately. Her hand flew out and landed hard on my shoulder. My own hand fell on top of hers, defensively. I felt her hand soften and my fingers curled around her palm.

"It's okay, Mom." I said it automatically, but there wasn't anything about the day that could possibly be deemed okay.

She looked down at the box. "It's mine. It's from when I was your age. I put it together when I found out I was going to have you, as a time capsule, I guess... I haven't opened it since. Honestly, there weren't many times I wanted to look back, there was too much shame in it."

With one hand still on the lid and the other wrapped around mine, she opened the box quickly. The lid fell to the side and landed softly on the floor next to her heels.

Inside sat a jumble of pictures, postcards, and notes, but what caught my eye most was a green and orange cheer bow. Wrapped around its center, someone had spun a gold necklace, so the two would be joined together in the box. She pulled just that item out, set the box to her left on the bed, and held the gift she had plucked gently in front of her face.

"Was that yours?" I asked, realizing that all of my questions sounded small and childlike, pointing out the most obvious things because I could not bring myself to say much else.

Slowly, her hand slid from my shoulder and she brought both of her index fingers to the edges of the bow.

"Yes," she said solemnly. "From high school."

This caused a small smile to dance across my face. My mom didn't say much about her youth, but I know she had to grow up so fast. She never made it to her high school graduation; instead, she watched her belly balloon and move with my small feet and hands tightly packed inside. She told me once it felt like she had aged about 20 years in 9 months.

I knew why she didn't speak of herself before me... she didn't want to dwell on what could've been. And although she wasn't the perfect mother, she never blamed me for her lost youth. I think she believed if she spoke at all about herself before I was born, it would shatter me. As if the knowledge that my mom didn't get to be a kid for very long would steal my childhood away as well.

Still cradling the bow, she said, "Your father and I made choices back then, some bad..." She slowly unraveled the gold chain."... and some not so bad." She looked into my eyes. The expression that sparkled there now was of love.

I gave her a small, tender smile.

I could see she had more to say, and the words rushed out like water from a dam.

"Listen to me now, babydoll. I don't want you to spend this time of your life in the shadows, okay? I know your father put you, and I, in the dark for too long, and I'm sorry-"

"It wasn't your fault-" I cut her off, suddenly uncomfortable with her candor. One of her palms flew gently out in front of my lips, causing my next words to halt and slide back down my throat.

"Let me say this, please; this might be the only day I'm brave enough to." She sighed deeply, as if she was exorcising some long-imprisoned demon. "Your father put me in a cage, long before I had you, and as a consequence you were born into captivity too."

My eyes shifted downwards to my lap. I didn't want to hear this. I didn't think it needed to be said.

Her voice was beginning to crack now. "He had control of... of everything, and all I could think to do was cover you up the best I could, but... I - I never could open the cage door. I think after a while I was comfortable there, or maybe I just wasn't strong enough to leave."

I began to pick at my cuticles, wishing I could melt into the floorboards.

"But now..." One of her hands found its way under my chin, gently pushing it upwards to face her. "Now, babydoll... he is gone. He is gone." She repeated it for emphasis, as if she didn't quite believe it the first time.

She inhaled sharply and continued, "Now you and I need to learn to live without that cage. It's harder than I expected, suddenly being free. And I woke up from that place a lot older than when I entered it, but you, babydoll, are so young. And I don't want you hiding anymore."

I didn't know what to say. I was angry at her in part for minimizing the way she enabled him and stayed with him; but seeing the look on her face now, I knew in my soul she was a scared woman trapped so badly and for so long.

My anger melted into sorrow, and all I wanted was to hug her tightly until I could feel the guilt leave her bones.

Before I could reach out, she unraveled the gold necklace fully from the bow and gently clasped it around my neck.

"It's a locket," she said.

I picked it up between my fingers, it felt heavy with meaning although the metal was thin and inexpensive. I cautiously opened it, but there was no picture inside.

"It wasn't from your father," she added quickly when she saw my initial expression of discomfort. "I bought it for myself on the day I found out I was pregnant with you in the public bathroom of Albert's drugstore. I was in a daze, numbly moving toward the counter, and then I caught a glint of it. I saw it hanging there, on a hook next to pairs of glasses. It looked so out of place and shiny."

She let out a dry chuckle. "Anyway, I picked it up. I wanted something private, something just for myself that I could keep close to my heart. But... then I had you, and I didn't need it anymore. Now, I want you to have it. Make your own private wishes, your own promises."

Her gaze remained on the heart; my hands sat in my lap, picking my cuticles raw. She saw what I was doing, and suddenly seized both of my hands and drew them upwards. Her gaze locked into mine.

"You make your own promise now. Make a thousand of them, just be sure they are promises to yourself, nobody else. And don't break a promise to yourself-" Her voice broke, caught over a small sob that she quickly swallowed down. "-ever. Or you'll live to regret it."

I zoom back in from my memory, finding my feet no longer in tight black flats but back in my Reeboks, planted on the linoleum, a golden locket slides in small, nervous movements across the chain that hangs around my neck.

I take a deep breath in, trying to recenter myself after getting caught in another moment from the past.

I had somehow moved away from my mom. My back is now towards the door, almost pressing against it. My mom stares at me with a small, knowing expression, as if she can tell exactly what memory I had just been lost in.

She looks down at her soggy dinner and says, "Tell you what, tomorrow night we'll go out and eat someplace. Your choice. To celebrate you."

The promise almost brings tears to my eyes. "That sounds really nice mom," I answer.

I set the necklace down against my skin and reach toward the hooks by the door for my white cheer zip-up to complete my transformation.

I slide it on. I am now head to toe Hawkins Tigers pride, and I don't feel so silly anymore. I know it's not completely me, but suddenly it feels better to try and step into the spotlight, instead of running from it.

I am turning into a different kind of girl, perhaps just for the night, but whoever she is I think I like her. Not Sandy, not Molly... me.

Author's Note:

Aaaand we're off. Prepare for some more flashbacks, but now we'll follow Winter at her first basketball game and slowly move forward until we get to March, the championship game, and when shit hits the fan.

Thank you for reading!