Clear blue water
High tide came and brought you in
And I could go on and on, on and on, and I will
Hawkins, March 21, 1986
"This is, uh, my castle," Eddie Munson told her, motioning to the trailer. He unlocked the door and held it open for Chrissy Cunningham. She rung her hands as she stepped inside, glancing around the space. It was lived-in and smelled pleasantly of masculine things. An undercurrent of cologne and aftershave was present beneath the lingering smell of the dinner someone had cooked earlier in the evening.
"Sorry for the mess," Eddie continued, swiping some food wrappers left out on the table. "The maid took the week off."
"You, um, you live here alone?" It was homey, she decided. A tiny bit of the tension went out of her stiff shoulders. Chrissy took a deep, steadying breath.
"With my uncle. But, uh, he works nights at the plant. Bringing home the big bucks." Eddie puttered around the kitchen while he explained.
"How long does it take?"
"Sorry?"
"The Special K. How long to kick in?"
"Oh, uh, well it depends if you snort it or not. If you do, then, uh, yeah, It'll, uh, kick in pretty quick." She couldn't decide which of the two of them seemed more nervous. Chrissy pulled her jacket sleeves over her hands and balled the fabric in her palms to hide how they shook. "Oh, shit," Eddie said into an empty container.
"You sure you have it?"
"No, no, I got it. Uh, somewhere." An idea lit up Eddie's face and he disappeared down the hallway, leaving Chrissy alone in the living room. She shifted her weight from foot to foot.
Her mom would kill her if she knew she were here. Maybe Dad, too. But its Mom's fault I'm getting drugs, she reminded herself. Mom and her stupid comments and the too-small prom dress she bought me. The way she had taken Chrissy's cheer skirt again, without permission, and now it bit uncomfortably into her hips.
A cold, creeping dread began to fill her as she waited. It spread through her chest, freezing her lungs and heart alike. She watched it play out in her mind's eye, how she had come home earlier that week and heard the whirring of Mom's sewing machine. Sure enough when she pushed the door open, there was Mom altering her skirt.
"Found it!" Eddie's voice broke her reverie. With a small start, Chrissy's eyes focused again on her classmate. He held the little metal box up like a trophy. "Peaceful bliss just moments away."
The cold began to fade away from the warmth of Eddie's smile. She swallowed hard, trying to force her own lips to smile. "Yay."
It was the same cold she had felt in the girl's bathroom at school, before little Max Mayfield had knocked on the bathroom stall. Chrissy made to step forward, to hold her hand out to accept the little case of pills Eddie held, but his suddenly shoved it in his pocket. His movement gave her pause, curling her hand protectively against her chest.
"Chrissy, no offense, but you don't look so good." He canted his head to the side, almost like a puppy. "I, uh… I don't think I should give you this. Specifically. Ketamine can be a hard high sometime. Would you be willing to, um, take a drug dealer's choice instead?"
"But you just said it would be blissful," Chrissy argued, eyeing the hand he had shoved in his pocket.
"It can be, but something tells me you've never taken street drugs before. Some people have shitty trips on ketamine." Under his watchful, dark gaze, Chrissy twisted her sweater sleeves in her hands.
"Well, what's the drug dealer's choice?"
"Weed," he said simply. "Not as strong as ketamine, but that won't be an issue since it will be your first time."
"Okay," she acquiesced, her voice soft. "But… please, don't leave me alone again. Can I, um, come with you to get it?"
"Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, c'mon. I have some in my room."
Eddie waved her forward and Chrissy let out a sigh of relief as she followed him down the hallway. He let her walk into the room first, revealing a bedroom that was chaotic and busy. The walls were crammed with band posters on most walls, save for a space set aside for his guitar, which hung beside his dresser. With a vague flick of the wrist, Eddie motioned for her to take a seat on his bed. Chrissy did so gingerly, perching herself on the edge.
She watched him rifle through his old-school metal lunchbox again, plucking a large weed bud from the baggie he had in there. This got placed into a little round container and quickly ground a few times. He dumped the roughly ground weed into a paper before he began to roll.
"Honestly, ketamine probably would have made it worse. You looked like you were about to have a panic attack. This, though? You're gonna be riding the clouds, not a care in the world."
Chrissy removed a slightly shaky hand from beneath her thigh. She had sat on them when she took her seat, to hide the tremors. Now she took the joint and obediently placed it between her lips.
Eddie knelt before her, using a Bic lighter to get the end of the joint going in. "Suck it in."
She did as he told, letting her mouth fill with the sweet, earthy smoke. Eddie had her hold it there for a moment before he prompted her to exhale. He didn't flinch when the white, wispy smoke washed over his face. "Keep doing that. I'm gonna open the window."
More and more of the tight-wound tension melted from her back and shoulders as she continued to inhale. Eddie dropped himself beside her on the bed, making her giggle as he flopped back. "It feels good, huh? Lucky you to have a friendly neighborhood drug dealer."
"Oh, a superhero, are you? What kind of spider bite gives you drug knowledge?"
"Uh, one from TJ, five trailers down." He smiled up at her. "Know about Spiderman, huh? You keep surprising me, Queen Chrissy."
"My brother has all the comics," she told him, blushing despite herself. He took the joint from her when it was spent, carefully smothering the fading flame in an ashtray that sat on the windowsill.
"Feel better now?" Eddie asked. Chrissy hummed her agreement and laid down on the bed beside him. Head in the clouds, he had said. That certainly wasn't a lie. She felt unsteady even as she sat. Laying down was definitely more grounding.
Chrissy could see a sliver of the night sky through Eddie's open bedroom window. She watched the stars twinkle above her and enjoyed the weightless feeling of her head. That is, until a clock chime told her it was 10 o'clock. The sound had her sitting up bolt-straight, "What's that?!" she all but shrieked.
"Huh?" Eddie asked, clearly startled. "The church bells?"
Church bells. Yes. These were tinkling and light, not the dreadful doldrum of the grandfather clock she heard in her head. Still, she looked all around Eddie's room, convinced the macabre hand that had reached for her from beneath the bathroom stall was going to return. She drew her legs up onto the bed like a little kid hiding from a monster.
"Chrissy! Woah, hey!" Eddie took hold of her shaking shoulder. The creeping fear was returning, squeezing her lungs and heart. His hand was warm but there was the metallic bite of his rings, too. "Hey, Chrissy, you gotta breathe."
Desperately, she focused on Eddie Munson's voice, his rings, the smell of weed smoke that still tinged the bedroom. Chrissy managed to keep herself in her body. With the gentlest of touches, Eddie convinced her to plant her feet on the ground again and to hunch forward with her head nearly between her knees. "Breathe," he prompted her again. "Slow. In and out."
He kept one hand splayed between her shoulder blades, feeling the rise and fall of her stuttering breaths until they evened out. After several long minutes, Chrissy felt securely in the here and now again, no longer on the verge of one of the waking nightmares that had been plaguing her for the last month. Slowly, she pushed herself up, Eddie's hand still supporting her.
"I'm so sorry," she managed. Tears began to flow hot and thick down her face. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she sobbed.
"You had a panic attack," he told her simply. There wasn't an ounce of annoyance or judgment in his tone. "The church bells…?"
Chrissy shrugged, grateful for the warmth of his palm on her back. "I… I keep having these, these…. episodes." Was it the weed making her speak so freely to Eddie? More freely than she had yet managed to be with anyone other than Ms. Kelly? "It's l-like nightmares, but I'm awake, and there's a… a grandfather clock. It ch-chimes in the background."
"The church bells," he said again, nodding.
"You don't think that's crazy?" She asked, peeking up at him while drying her face with her sweater sleeves. There was nothing but genuine sympathy on Eddie's face. It made her want to start sobbing all over again.
"Panic attacks are a bitch," he shrugged. "They don't have to make sense to do damage. I used to have them when I was a kid, when I first started living with my uncle."
"That's why you knew what to do?" He shrugged again, sheepish.
"It's what Wayne used to do for me."
Chrissy took another deep breath, inhaling the fresh, damp scent of spring coming in from the open window. That helped. So did the loose spring at the edge of Eddie's mattress. It dug into her thigh a little, not painfully, but enough that she was able to focus on it when her mind started to wander again.
"It makes me feel crazy," Chrissy admitted. "I mean, how can you listen to that and think any of it sounds normal."
"It's not," Eddie said after a long pause. "Crazy or normal, I mean. It's not normal, but it's not crazy, either, you know? Having a hard time isn't a crime or anything."
She took those words and stared down hard at her shoes. Ms. Kelly told her the same things, basically, only she used more technical language than Eddie did. She was warm, here, sitting in Eddie Munson's bedroom. Just like she was when she was in Ms. Kelly's office.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I didn't mean to freak out on you. That's the whole reason I came here, so I could stop freaking out for a little while."
"Don't worry, I'll just commit a little B and E, then those pesky bells will be a non-issue." That made Chrissy laugh despite herself. She hoped he didn't hear the slightly hysterical edge to it.
"You can't just go commit crimes on my behalf," she protested. He bumped his shoulder into hers, making her giggle again.
"Presumptuous! I would be doing it for the good of all Forest Hills residents, Miss Cunningham." He turned to her, head canting to the side again as he regarded her. "Uh, no offense Chrissy, but I'm not going to sell you anything tonight."
"I don't blame you." All the fuzzy weightlessness had left her. Chrissy knew she wasn't high anymore, not even a little bit. "I couldn't even handle weed."
"Nah, don't blame yourself. Weed can make you paranoid. I just don't think it's a good a idea for you to be taking anything alone."
Chrissy sat considering that for a moment. A third time senior, nearly twenty. A drug dealer who was funny and caring despite the scowl he wore in the hallways at school. Eddie Munson was a puzzle. At length, she nodded. "I think you're right. You, um, you said you used to have panic attacks? And your uncle helped you?" Chrissy asked, peeking up at him from beneath her bangs.
"Yeah, he did."
"What else did he do? To help you?" At that question, Eddie motioned around his room at the band posters and his guitar hanging on the wall.
"Music helped a lot. Listening to it and learning to play guitar. When he was at work and I would feel too anxious, I would put music on and lay on the floor. I would pay attention to one of the instruments, or the lyrics, or on making sure I was perfectly straight and still. And I would lay on the floor until the feeling passed."
She digested that. It wasn't really all that different from the grounding techniques Ms. Kelly had given her to try. Chrissy nodded. She could do that.
"Okay," she said, peeking at him. "I can try that. Um, again, I'm so sorry about… tonight."
He was shaking his head before she even finished the sentence. "Don't be sorry. And, uh, you can still try things, if you want. To see if something I have might help. But I don't think you should do it alone, you know? You can try it here, if you want to. Wayne's only off on Mondays and Tuesdays. The rest of the week would be open for it."
"Really?" She asked. "You'd help me like that?"
"Haven't I already redeemed myself from the 'mean and scary' public opinion?" he teased. "I'll help you anytime you want to try something. But tonight, I know you must be tired."
Eddie stood up only to stoop at his backpack, which had been slung without care in the direction of his dresser. He retrieved a pen and a notebook from inside and began scribbling. Chrissy watched him carefully tear a square of paper off. He pressed it into her waiting hand and she saw his phone number looking back up at her.
"Call me whenever," he told her. "If you want more weed, or you still want the ketamine after you think about it, or you just want to talk. Whatever. It sucks feeling like your mind isn't your own."
Chrissy carefully folded the paper back on itself and tucked it securely into her pocket. "I will," she promised, surprising herself with how much she meant it. "Thank you."
He ginned at her, wide and close-lipped. "Let's get you home, yeah?"
Though she did admittedly feel sleepy on the drive home—Eddie drove more carefully this time, and he turned the heater up for her to combat the early spring chill—Chrissy knew she wouldn't be sleeping. Once inside her bedroom, she laid out the square of paper bearing his telephone number beside her personal phone. Would it be too soon to call him tonight? Probably. Tomorrow, she decided. In the afternoon.
Leaving Eddie's number to wait beside the phone, Chrissy changed into her pajamas and retrieved her Walkman tape player from her desk. She rifled through her collection of tapes before deciding on The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. It was practically the soundtrack of her childhood, played on repeat by her father.
Ironically, 'With a Little Help From My Friends' was the first song to begin playing from the tape. Chrissy hadn't rewound it after her last listen. With the familiar notes filling her head, Chrissy settled into bed to wait out the rest of the night and, hopefully, catch a little sleep.