Ironically, driving wasn't such a difficult thing to do after spending Halloween night at a party where alcohol was taken in like water, that got too big for the house it was hosted in. She hadn't downed as much as she could have. Rowen recalled the bodies that littered the couches, the snores that ensued from multiple places. Some people collapsed on the lawn and passed out, some people fought; others swayed to their cars and Rowen felt worried for more than one person who had insisted to drive home despite that fact. But she didn't do anything to stop them.

She was pretty buzzed herself, and there had been a ticked-off brother waiting for her to get in his car so they could go home. He'd gotten even more ticked off when a BMW pulled out in front of them and sped away, not bothering to see how they almost dented his pride and joy.

Rowen still didn't understand why Billy had wanted to leave earlier than his usual time. In truth, she had been prepared to find a spare room in Tina's house to crash in, maybe leave him there to walk back considering all he'd done . . but she didn't question the change. It didn't make any difference in the morning, anyway.

Somehow she was spared from waking up with a splitting headache — if anything, it was mild. Billy's, however, was not.

He woke up in an exceedingly bad mood and while he looked as perfectly primped as ever, his attitude was even worse than usual. Their dad, despite drinking as much as he did himself, was gone before their alarms jolted them awake, so thankfully Rowen was left to deal with one grumpy family member rather than two . . . but that didn't make the first few hours of the day any more bearable.

She was thankful being social wasn't required after the party, and that she could make a quick getaway once he stepped out of the car and into whatever glory Hawkins High was waiting to present him with. She was not thankful, however, that when she looked at her watch that afternoon, she somehow thought two-fifteen was actually three-fifteen. Rowen sped down Main Street thinking she was ridiculously late in picking her siblings up.

But she ended up arriving early — very early — and didn't realize until she had gotten out of the car, wondering where the hell everyone was.

She ended up wandering, as it was always her solution when she was bored, letting her mind race and her feet carry her wherever they felt like. There wasn't anything special about Hawkins's high school, she thought as she ventured around the grounds. It looked like the typical setting of a suburban educational building; red brick and other kinds of stone, dirt walkways, tracks, gates. It looked like her own high school had been picked up and dropped into a more remote, colder setting, and she fought the urge to give the lookalike building the finger when she thought of the days, months, years she spent there — spent climbing out of the windows and running away.

Somewhere along the way, she had become unaware of just where exactly she had wandered to, not particularly wanting to find out. She was thinking about the conversation with her dad, how he had dismissed it in a way that was so foreign to her. He was mildly drunk, of course, so words did not register as fast as they did when he was sober, nor did they smell of the lies he so easily managed to sniff out . . . but he had bought it. How the hell did he buy that? When it was so obvious she —

A blur of grays and fluffy hair almost knocked her to the ground, knocked her out of her thoughts completely.

The blur turned on its heel and grabbed her upper arm before she could tumble.

"Woah — oh, shit! Sorry!"

Thankfully, Rowen hadn't been so out of it as to be unable to steady herself. She stumbled a little but wasn't about to topple over. The steady hand on her arm was much appreciated, though.

She managed to collect her thoughts, looked over to the blur. "Hey, it's Tom Cruise."

Steve Harrington took a clumsy step back, avoiding her gaze as if he had been attempting to compose himself, but was caught in the middle of it. Maybe he was.

"You okay?" she asked, registering something of the state she'd found him in.

He shook his head. "Yeah, uh — no, it's nothing." He rubbed at his nose, sniffed, then looked up at her. He took in her appearance. "You look great," he said, not so amused by it as he was trying to be.

Rowen didn't narrow her eyes at him, but she might as well have. She may have had a headache, but that didn't make her any less perceptive. It didn't help that she had caught the back of who she guessed was Nancy when Steve had caught her arm. She had been leaving from the same place he had come from — was still leaving, because Rowen could still see her figure a ways off. Rowen obliged him anyway. He looked a little desperate to avoid whatever had just happened.

"Thanks," she said. "I feel even better." Rowen began to rub her temple. It was pounding a little at the moment. "I'm Rowen, by the way," she added. "I saw you last night, but I don't think we actually met . . . I think I called you a lady?"

Steve brushed the last bit off, introduced himself in return. "You dressed up as Stevie Nicks, right?"

Rowen threw him an unapologetically baffled look. "You know her?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Jesus," she breathed. "Then you're one of the few, party-pooper."

"Party-pooper?" Steve echoed. "Why party-pooper?"

Rowen shrugged. "Dunno. It kinda fits, actually. Anyways, it's a little nicer than what other people were calling you last night —"

A sudden wave of pain in her temple made her cut off abruptly, made her place a hand on her head. Steve gave her a look of mild sympathy.

"I bet being one doesn't sound all that bad now, though, does it?" he said. She figured he was joking, but he sounded like he meant it too. He might have been. Party-poopers didn't get hangovers.

"Are you kidding?" she said, sensitive temple forgotten. "I'd rather suffer the mother of all hangovers than be what you were."

Rowen dragged her feet. She wasn't exactly sure where she was headed, but she kept walking in the same direction the red lines under her feet were going. Steve kept following for a reason she seemed to have missed. Only a moment ago he seemed like he wanted to get as far away from her as possible.

"What, sober?" he asked.

"Duh," she said, pulling a cigarette from the stash she kept in her jacket pocket. Rowen took it between her fingers. "I may 've been drunk, but at least I didn't lose my girlfriend over spilled punch. Or at least, that's what people are saying . . —" she paused, then asked, "Did you break up over the punch?"

Steve opened his mouth to answer as she pulled a lighter out of her other pocket, but then shut it tight, probably thinking better of it. Rowen knew it was an exaggeration, her words. No one breaks up over punch; but even if he was sorting out a lie, he would've admitted to breaking up with Nancy. She wasn't sure how true the rumor of them breaking up was . . but, with what she just walked into, neither did she think it was something totally wrong. Billy wasn't one to gossip.

She laughed suddenly, an amused giggle. "You remember when it just splashed all over her? You know? When she went 'screw you'," she recalled, imitating Nancy's movements. "And you went, 'put it down!' I was just waiting for something terrible to happen." She looked at Steve from over her shoulder, a smile on her face. His uncomfortable expression went unnoticed.

"Are you still drunk?" he asked, posing the question in her head.

Though she knew the answer.

Rowen shook her head. "No, I'm just tired. Things tend to be funnier when I'm sleepy. Why?"

"Because you're not supposed to be out here," he said, a little humor in his voice.

Steve stopped as if to emphasize his point, though when Rowen stopped too, looking around, she began to realize where she was. They were on the track field.

So that's why he hadn't walked off. She still didn't understand his point, though. "Why not?"

"Out of the way, dipshits!" someone yelled.

Rowen barely had the time to register the words, never mind being roughly pulled one way. Steve had yanked both her and himself off the track before two guys could knock them over.

"Hey, watch where you're going asshole!" he yelled back.

"You watch where you're going!" the guy said, even louder as they ran further.

Steve said nothing in return, sighed instead. "'Cause there's a track team waiting to train," he laughed out, though there didn't seem to be anything funny about it. "I think you're holding them up." He jutted his thumb towards the one who had called them dipshits, then towards the opposite end of the track.

She looked past his shoulder, seeing the group of teenagers in sweats and running shoes; some she recognized, some she didn't. Some were staring. All of them were staring, actually. Unlike the other two, they hadn't started running yet.

"Oh . . sorry!" she called out to the small crowd on the opposite end of the field.

One guy shouted back that it was okay, though the others were not so enthused by his words. Another smacked his head.

Steve shook his head at the scene, intending to do something once he turned back to her . . . but then soon realized he had no idea what it was he had planned to do.

He froze in an awkward stance, ended up gesturing towards the parking lot, wondering if he would need to lead her back. Rowen followed him without complaint.

It made him relax a little. He figured out very quickly in the past few days that he would have to walk on eggshells around Billy, tiptoeing around conversations that people tried to pull him in just because he was the designated popular kid, and his former title of Keg King had been taken. Steve's peace had been broken. Nothing was standing out, no problems were rising, no gossip was circling him before the new kid showed up. But, of course, he should have expected it to come to an abrupt end – after last year, how could he not? He had hoped he could. The temptation to avoid things was still tangible, very tempting . . . but he couldn't exactly avoid his new problem when it stalked up to him, jabbing a cigarette in his face. At least it wasn't another Demogorgon.

Before now, he figured there was a good chance Rowen might be the same as her brother; two problems instead of one . . . Yet, at the same time, he was beginning to think he might have been wrong. So far she hadn't snapped at him or exploded in his face. If anything, she was the one throwing out quips, giving him the right to be the one to feel offended.

He didn't want to, though. She was being more decent than anything.

"What are you doing here anyway?" he asked after a moment of silent walking.

Rowen glanced at him, then looked at the crowds forming and deforming in the parking lot they were inching closer to, heaving a sigh. "Well, I was waiting for my brother . ." She turned back to him, eyebrows raised. "You know? Mr. Keg?"

Steve didn't need to be reminded of who she was related to, but he answered her with an "ah" anyway.

"I don't have my own car, so I forced him to let me use his in return for bringing it back when they get out of school. It doesn't exactly help with his 'cool factor' . ." Rowen scoffed at this. ". . He wasn't thrilled about it, but he didn't have much of a choice. I don't even have enough money to buy some beat-up four-door. What, with me having to pay for things every time he gets into trouble."

Steve decided against saying anything then. The BMW sitting in the parking lot wasn't technically his, but he drove it more than his dad did and paid for the repairs and occasional dings himself. In a similar boat, but not quite close enough to open his mouth about it. Borrowed or not, having a BMW on hand was an expense, Steve knew that.

Then again, Billy had a Camaro.

Steve waited too long to get a word in, anyway.

"If Max shows up first, I could always leave him here," Rowen muttered, mostly to herself.

But he heard her anyway, snorted before he could think otherwise.

"Should I do it?" she asked, catching his response.

He would have thought she was serious had a smile not spread across her face. "Maybe not," she added before he could say anything. "He'd walk all the way back to our house just to give it to me if he was pissed enough . . which he would be."

Steve shoved his hands in his gym-short pockets. "It'd be worth it, I think."

"To you, maybe . . You don't know him."

"I know enough to know I wouldn't hesitate. I mean, seriously, leaving him in the middle of nowhere? First chance I got." It had slipped out. Steve had meant it; he'd meant it as much as anything, but he hadn't meant for her to hear it. The regret on his face was evident enough.

"Careful," she drawled out the warning as soon as the words slipped out of his mouth. Rowen leveled a look at him just as she crested the hill, leaving them in plain view of the lot she had previously come from. "I may be talking shit about him, but he's my brother. It's one thing for me to do it, it's another for you to."

Steve was already prepared for some kind of lashing, but he still looked at her askance, a little taken aback. He apologized lamely.

She stared at him for a moment, but then shook her head as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing, a ghost of her former smile on her face. "You don't have to apologize. I'm just saying don't get serious about it."

Rowen took another drag of the short stub of her cigarette, let it fall to the ground, then turned to survey the parking lot crowds.

"Did you talk to lover-girl?" she asked out of the blue, after a moment had passed, long enough for him to think she was done talking to him.

"What?" was all he could say.

"Nancy," she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world . . . which it was, now that he finally caught on to what she was asking. He didn't even realize she knew Nancy's name.

"Talked to her about what?" he chose to play dumb. He was not very comfortable talking about his girlfriend — former girlfriend, he reminded himself — with a stranger as she seemed to be. It reminded him of Tommy and Carol. It got under his skin, he realized. He didn't like the look on her face either.

"'Talked to her about what?'" she echoed. "Are you still drunk?"

He let out a nervous laugh. "No, I just . . What is there to talk about?"

There couldn't have been a more obvious choice of words. Rowen looked expectant. Great, he thought. Another Carol coming to badger me.

"The punch, what else?" She almost sounded like she was joking with him. Or maybe she was just ignorant of the situation. He wasn't sure.

"Was it that bad?" he tried.

"No, that was funny. You walking out by yourself was bad," she said, pointing a finger at him as if she was telling it how it was to a younger sibling. He wondered if she did that to Billy.

"Hey, Rowen!"

Another voice broke them away from the conversation, though it felt like it had already ended.

It took Rowen a moment to register the girl that was walking up to them: brunette — a deal shorter and much darker than her own honey-colored — jeans, a gray sweater two sizes too big, combat boots like Billy's. She was a little shorter than herself.

"Samantha?" she realized after a moment. "Damn, I didn't recognize you without all the makeup."

Samantha smirked. "Yeah, I went a little overboard last night . . —" she turned to Steve. "Hi, Harrington."

"Hi, Samantha." His greeting reminded her of the way Billy's friend, Jordan, had always reacted when he saw her: like two people who'd known each other for a while, because they had. A handful of years passed with him coming and going, with them growing used to each other's company without even realizing it; there was some unsaid comfort that had been there ever since they met and they had been okay with that. They were never close, but they were used to each other.

"I see you've met the one and only Stevie Nicks," Samantha joked, pointing her gaze towards Rowen.

"Yeah, I narrowly saved her from getting run over by the track team," Steve said, earning two smirks.

"And for that, I'm thankful," said Rowen, getting a smile out of him.

"Where's Nance?" Samantha asked.

The smile disappeared. Steve scoffed, gaze now on the track field, away from them. "Hell if I know," he eventually muttered. Rowen wasn't sure if he meant to let that slip or not.

Samantha raised her brows. "Okay then . ."

Her words seemed to have poked at something in Steve; he almost deflated like a balloon. "No — sorry. We just . . " he trailed off, shrugged. "I don't know. Things are all messed up right now."

"Don't wanna talk about it, huh?" she guessed.

He gave her a look as if to say 'what do you think?'

"Okay," she said, hands raised in surrender. "No big deal, we'll just avoid it like the plague."

The scowl that had been on his face slackened. "Yeah, well . . since you're probably gonna ask, dinner at Benny's isn't gonna happen either."

Samantha quickly shook her head. Her small smile didn't fall, but it shifted into an awkward version of what it had been. "No, it's fine. To tell you the truth, I wasn't looking forward to being a third wheel."

Steve's scowl disappeared completely. "What happened to the date you said you got?"

She shrugged. "Didn't work out."

"How?"

"Last night, that's how," she said, slightly waspish. She looked a little more bitter than she was letting on. "Same as you."

Rowen raised her brow but said nothing. A part of her felt like finding a way to wiggle herself out of the conversation, but she wasn't entirely sure how.

"But, hey, that doesn't mean we can't still go. Maybe we could take Rowen?"

Too late. Rowen and Steve shared an off-guard look.

"Really?" the former asked.

"Yeah, totally. Maybe we could meet up at the diner? Give you a proper introduction to Hawkins."

Rowen wondered how the Halloween party from the previous night lacked the makings of an introduction. Just as well, Samantha clearly didn't know all the details of Billy's carefully constructed story about Rowen's schedule — of which Rowen didn't feel like filling her in on.

Instead, she said, "Well, I've kinda subjected myself to my brother's 'rules' —" at this, she quoted her fingers, "— with his car, so I don't know if I could do dinner. He gets it after school and I get it during."

"Oh, okay . . well, what about during lunch?"

Rowen began to bite her lip in a sudden fit of nervous habit. Admittedly, she wasn't sure what to say. She felt slightly taken aback by Samantha's forwardness — she hadn't thought that they had hit it off that well. But she seemed to have taken what Rowen said the night before seriously. She said to find her in the parking lot, and that was what she did . . . Though Rowen hadn't expected her to actually do it.

And yet you have nothing better to do, she told herself. What's the harm?

The harm was that she knew someone might see them. The harm was that Billy might ask, especially when there were multiple people who could easily spot them now. It had only just dawned on her then — to her annoyance. She was hovering close to a tangled mess of things that had been explained to her against her will, and now it felt like she was being given the invitation to step into it . . . It didn't feel good.

She didn't want to be rude, she didn't want to be an ass, but she swore to herself that any business of her brother's would remain as such. His, not her's . . . and it sucked, because Steve seemed nice. Samantha was nice. Unfortunately, though, none of that mattered. What supposedly mattered was that she would be associating with someone who was clearly becoming her brother's rival, and if she did, things would get complicated . . .

All that reminder did was piss her off.

Shit, what was she doing? That was Billy's problem if questions were raised, not hers. Not hers . . so what if she said yes? It was one lunch, it was one time. They would go and it would probably never happen again.

The frenzy of her thoughts made Rowen frustrated, the reminder of Billy made her angry. And both made her shrug, say, "Why not?"

. . .

〝 𝑖𝑖.

Samantha had settled the whole thing with a grin and a nod that was more authoritative than Rowen had expected. But she didn't mind it. Samantha seemed cool (if her love for Stevie Nicks wasn't enough to convince her), and if getting him out of the stupor he seemed to be in — though pretended not to be — meant letting him tag along, then Rowen was alright with Steve being there too.

The three parted ways, and she was left to find her brother's car.

Billy would be fuming, she thought. 'Fraternizing with the enemy' were the words that came to mind now that she was unwillingly filled in on the details of Hawkins's popularity tier and the fact that Steve had once sat at the top, thus stood as Billy's competition. But, the thing was, Billy didn't exactly have to find out her plans. What Rowen did with his car while he was at school was her business, he had all but said it himself when they made the deal in the first place. Discretion was the key, and she had no problem with being discreet. If anything, she considered it her forte.

Though right now, she had a couple of questions to answer. Billy was leaning against the trunk of his car, waiting both for her and Max, who seemed to still be inside the junior high building.

"The hell were you?" he asked without looking up.

"Wandering," Rowen said simply.

"Wandering?" Billy echoed. He looked up at her this time.

"Yeah, you know. Walking around, taking in your surroundings. I wouldn't expect you to know what I'm talking about, though, seeing how you're physically incapable of spending time by yourself."

"You took that long to have some trippy alone time?" he asked, dubious.

"I ran into someone I met at the party last night."

Billy visibly tensed. "Ro, I told you not to go looking for that Byers guy —"

"It wasn't him," Rowen interrupted, annoyed.

He relaxed. "Good, 'cause he's not just a freak, he's messed up . ." Rowen opened her mouth to retort, wondering why her brother was bashing this guy so much, but Billy beat her to it. "He took some creepy stalker photos of Harrington and his friends last year. One of them caught him in the photography room and called him out on his shit."

Rowen forgot whatever it was she was going to say. She didn't know what to do with that. Jonathan seemed nice enough . . . then again, she had been surprised by people more than once, by secrets they had wanted to keep or sides of them they never meant to show. Enough for the surprise not to be so surprising anymore. It was still a little hard to believe about Jonathan, though, even if Billy wasn't one to lie about things like that.

"So who were you talking to if not him?" he asked.

"Samantha."

"Who?"

"Do you care?"

"After being told about stalker pictures? Yeah."

Rowen rolled her eyes, but indulged. "She was the one who dressed up as Siouxsie Sioux."

"Who?"

A groan escaped her lips. "The one with the spikey wig that was standing next to Jonathan."

He threw a confused look over his shoulder. "That chick?"

"Yeah?"

Billy scoffed. "Why?"

"Because that's what you do when you wanna get to know people. You know? Socializing."

It felt a little ironic to say so when she herself had hesitated over the whole thing in the first place.

Max had rolled up to the Camaro by then, going straight to the passenger door rather than trying to pry into whatever conversation her stepsiblings were having.

Billy saw her, sat up from his place on the trunk. "Whatever," he said to his sister.

Rowen stood there, glared at his back. "Whatever," she hissed, mocking his dismissal.

. . .