Author's Note:

I was so inspired by Stranger Things season 4 that here I am… attempting my very first work of fan fiction. This story is ongoing and I have written quite a few chapters already which I will be slowly uploading on here! You can also find this story on Wattpad, which includes pictures & links to songs that help establish the world of our characters. Just search my username or the title of this fic!

This is a Hawkins adventure story that roughly follows the events of Stranger Things s4. I have created a character, Winter Reid, to serve as an audience insert as she navigates her friendship with Eddie Munson and deals with the fallout of learning the truth about the people she thought she knew and the town she thought she understood.

While writing, I think about all of the moments leading up to the events of s4 that I would have liked to have seen, so this story will move slowly as we follow our main character as she navigates high school, new friendships, and growing up. I wanted to put my own spin on the material, so I've created a lot of unique storylines and new characters to expand on the world we all know and love.

Synopsis:

What would it be like to live in the trailer just across the dirt from Eddie Munson? Your friendship bloomed from proximity, but your bond runs much deeper than that. As Eddie prepares to graduate from Hawkins High, you decide it might be time to step out of his shadow & find a place where you belong. When you join the cheerleading squad, Eddie worries you two will drift apart. But... something else is coming that will make you question everything you thought you knew about yourself and your town.

This story features an original main character named Winter Reid. I do not describe body types, hair color, eye color, skin tones, or height. I hope you can see yourself in this character & follow as her journey unfolds. other original characters have been created to expand the world & they will interact alongside our favorite heroes.

This fic discusses anxiety & dissociative disorders. Minor tw for parental abuse.

Prologue: Twilight Zone

"Help I'm stepping into the twilight zone

The place is a madhouse,

Feels like being cloned

My beacon's been moved under moon and star

Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far?"

I suppose growing up in any suburb in any corner of America in 1986 is largely the same. There's all the markers of a "thriving" small town. A locally owned grocery market, a brick library building, sheriff cars rolling down quiet streets looking to catch teens getting high in the alleyway outside the movie theater. You will probably pass a quaint elementary school just steps from the high school, where kids park their bikes and teenagers park their cars not too far apart. And, of course, it wouldn't be the 1980s without the local video store.

Inside, two teens stock the shelves with movies about young boys riding their bikes searching for buried treasure, movies about girls who sit in class and pine after the jock with the luscious hair who sits with his feet up on his desk one row ahead of her, or, if it's to your taste, scary movies, ones full of nightmares, kids toys gone wrong, or brushes with something extraordinary and extraterrestrial.

The neon, the flashing lights, the fireworks... it all keeps our heads swiveling. We look incessantly for opportunities to waste hard earned dollars on the latest trend or gadget.

Madonna and Michael J. Fox.

Walkmans and Weird Science.

Hair Metal Bands and Farrah Fawcett Hairspray.

It's the simple life, right? Everyone is looking for distraction.

Mom sets a casserole on the table at dinnertime and secretly crushes on the lifeguard at the community pool; a teen turns up the radio in her room and sneaks out of the window to meet a boy in an idling Ford outside; dad grabs a can of beer, leans back in his la-z-boy, and laughs at sitcoms on TV.

Follow the trends, don't look up.

It makes people feel safe. It makes people feel normal. But Hawkins is far from normal.

Ignorance can be bliss. We try not to worry too much about the missing boy from the outskirts of town or how the brand new mall tragically burnt down in the summer of '85. Those are unpleasant events in a small town life, the dark underbelly living under all the newness. If you are able to, you will ignore it.

The illusion begins to waver once you leave the big houses with their long driveways and Reagan/Bush 84' lawn signs. If you travel outwards, you'll pass dense trees and black roads littered with potholes. A deer struck by a car is left out in the cold, taking its last shuddering breaths in the ditch, its eyes watching the first few drops of rain beginning to fall. This is the edge of Americana, not as shiny or as new, but real nonetheless. A lopsided wooden sign at the top of a sloping dirt drive reads: "Forest Hills Trailer Park".

Trailers sit at odd angles like monopoly pieces left out in the mud, abandoned by a careless child. They are identical in their desolation, with the same rectangular shape and dirty exteriors. There aren't any pools or lawns, unless you count clumps of grass spread across the dirt like patches of hair on a balding man's skull.

People live here too, although no one thinks much of them. We all go to the same schools, because there is just one Hawkins High and one Hawkins Middle. Inside the trailers you'll see people working to live. They get home after a long shift to their quiet box and find comfort in a microwave dinner and a can of beer. The drink is not entirely cooled because the fridges here are always lukewarm, but they open it and sip nonetheless. They're trying to be oblivious too, although it's much harder when you don't have all the modern comforts to stack around you and create a wall between yourself and reality.

The air smells different here, it isn't spiced with pies cooling in window sills or the scent of fresh cut lawn. The wind cuts sharper against the exposed cheeks of the residents. Lights buzz and flicker at random. Stray cats drink out of muddy puddles. Sheets hang on clotheslines, billowing and floating like ghosts in a graveyard.

It's quiet here... well, quiet enough.

Eventually, you get used to the sound of the guitar blaring from the Munson trailer or the incessant barking from the Johnson's dog. Even the sounds from the woods, the low groans and chitters, it all turns to white noise at some point.

We do our best here. You learn to accept what you can't change and you find comfort in dreams and wishes.

I remember sitting outside on the picnic table a few days after the mall fire. Eddie Munson stood smoking on his porch. He wore cut-off blue jean shorts, a chain hung through the belt loops on his right hip. He held his arms out like a tightrope walker, setting one black hightop converse shoe down, then the other right in front. He walked heel to toe and tried to maintain a straight line. His tongue poked out between his teeth in concentration. He wore a white sleeveless band tee. The fabric frayed over his tanned arms.

I was dressed in a pale sundress. My oversized denim jacket slipped lightly off my shoulders and hung at my elbows. I could feel the warm sun graze my shoulders and upper back as my pencil sketched across the blank page in front of me.

"I can't believe the mayor's precious mega mall is now a pile of ashes," Eddie said and set a cigarette between his lips. He took a long puff and tilted his chin up, blowing the smoke upwards.

"People died, Eddie."

I looked at him and drew my eyebrows together, bothered by his lack of sensitivity. He looked at me with a small smile. He always found my tendency towards compassion a little naive.

"What's the official story?" He tilted his head. "Oh yeah... Teenagers break in and set off a Roman Candle through skylight."

His voice boomed like a newscaster reading a scrolling headline. One hand lifted and his fingers stretched to resemble a firework bursting in the air as he made an explosion sound effect.

He looked at me with his lips pursed into a smirk. I shook my head at him in disapproval. This caused his lips to part into a full grin. He jumped off of the porch steps and shuffled over to me. He sat on the picnic bench, his legs straddling the seat, and faced me. I focused on tracing the stem of a marigold, but I could feel his eyes on me.

"I'd say it's a win in the battle against conservative, conformist culture," he said.

I didn't look up. I was unimpressed with his big words.

He smiled slowly and continued, "Now that they've burnt down their precious The Gap and hot dog on a stick... where, oh, where will the moms go to do Jazzercise now?" He waved a hand dismissively and cigarette smoke curled in the air.

I snorted out a laugh. He leaned in, trying to force me to pay attention to him.

I finally rolled my eyes over to his. "Well, with any luck, maybe the moms will move their Jazzercise club here. That way you can watch them from your bedroom window."

He scoffed at me, "Yeah, that's not really my type."

"Don't lie, Eddie, I know you have a secret thing for Olivia Newton-John." I batted my eyelashes at him innocently.

His hand suddenly reached over and snatched my pencil.

"Hey!" I protested.

He leaned back, the pencil twirled through his fingers and rolled along his knuckles.

"This town is cursed, Winnie," he said. He used the nickname he picked out for me when I first moved here... even though I hate it.

"It's just another Hawkins tragedy," I said and reached for my pencil.

He slid backwards on the bench and taunted me by swishing my pencil through the air.

I set my elbow down on the table and leaned my cheek into my palm, "Just like that boy who everyone thought was dead two years ago. Just like the pumpkins that were all poisoned last Halloween..." I shrugged my shoulders. "Shit happens."

Eddie smiled and leaned forward, offering me the pencil back. I reached out for it, but he snatched it back again and quickly tucked it behind his ear. He slapped his thighs, and stood up suddenly on the bench. I looked up at him, bewildered.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He held his cigarette in one hand which hung by his side, the other slowly raised to his mouth, forming a fist. I raised my eyebrows at him. Suddenly, a discordant jumble of sounds fell out of his mouth, causing me to flinch and let out a surprised giggle. His neck snapped left to right and he continued to produce a sound effect that I gathered was meant to sound like radio static.

He jumped atop the picnic table. He towered above me and looked as if he was on a stage. I held my breath in anticipation, not sure what he was going to do next.

He began to speak softly into his closed fist, as if it was a walkie talkie.

"Status report: USA, Indiana, 1985...", he enunciated every letter in 1985, his body remained still while his eyes darted around him as if he were observing something foreign. "This is Starman speaking. It seems the American dream experiment has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Somehow, the creatures who inhabit this place made a wrong left turn straight into conformism and unchecked capitalism. No signs of intelligent life anywhere, but... plenty of fried foods." I stared up at him amused. He pointed the hand that held the cigarette at me.

"I have just found one being with an IQ higher than 75," he said.

I looked behind me quickly, then back up at him and mouthed me?, finding it hard to resist playing along.

"She informs me that the outlook here is bleak. My ship crash landed and is beyond repair. I seem to only have two options," Eddie sighed.

His voice grew low and sounded defeated, "One, enter the ranks and join a weird ritual where men sweat on each other, I believe they call it a sports team." His eyebrows knitted together. "The creatures of the male variety here seem devoid of any basic communication skills or emotional depth. They seem to have designed an entire system of ball throwing and back slapping just to allow them to touch one another and express affection without being judged."

He made a good point and I found myself nodding my head in agreement.

"My second option..." he continued, "is to fling myself off of the nearest cliff and promptly dive into the unknown."

He lowered his closed fist, and raised the cigarette, sucking the smoke into his lungs. He thought to himself for a moment.

He rolled his neck around, as if coming to a difficult decision. He cleared his throat and continued, "This is Starman again. Informing HQ that this will be my last transmission."

I watched as he walked slowly to the end of the picnic table, the toes of his shoes tipped past the edge.

He raised his head, a steely determination lit up his deep brown eyes. Once more he raised the closed fist to his lips and whispered wistfully, "It has been a pleasure serving with you boys. Starman, signing off. Over and out."

His voice then mimicked static again, as if the "radio" call had abruptly ended. He stood on the edge of the table and flicked his cigarette. He turned and gave me a wink and a two-fingered salute, then dramatically fell forward to his "death". I gasped loudly in surprise as he plummeted forward and fell onto his back. I watched as he lay convulsing on the ground and pretended like blood was spurting from his chest.

I slowly brought my hands together in light applause.

"Outstanding performance, Eddie. But I think Sigourney Weaver made a better point about the destruction of humanity... and she looked better doing it," I said and shook my head in amusement at his theatrics.

He was still on his back in the dirt but his eyes rolled over to meet mine. A look of offense passed over his face and he slowly held up one middle finger in my direction. I laughed and slammed my sketchbook shut.

Was he dramatic? Yes. But, he's not totally wrong. Hawkins is full of people pretending and conforming, but not Eddie Munson. He'll stand on the cafeteria tables at school and give a loud rebel yell while the boys in his Hellfire club are sitting there, watching him with sparkling admiration. Most days, I wish I was more like him. Instead, I clutch my books to my chest and walk down the hallway, observing life blurring past me.

In Forest Hills Trailer Park, the homes are certainly not split level ranch houses on Oak Street. The first two trailers you'll see as you drive in stand close opposite of each other, separated by a patch of dirt. In the back bedroom of the one on the right, a teen boy headbangs while Poison blares in his room. Across the way, a girl sits at her desk and writes in her journal while a Fleetwood Mac vinyl spins on the console in the corner.