This chapter will not contain any real spoilers for season 4 :)
Chapter 2 – Stricken
Max
November 1985
"You abandoned me, love don't live here anymore…"
Madonna's voice rang out through her headphones as Max sat staring out the window in Billy's room. When she cranked up the volume on her Walkman, the music could almost muffle the argument between her mom and stepdad.
Almost.
"Just a vacancy, love don't live here anymore…"
Their shouting matches had become noticeably worse over the course of the past month. The yells escalated to progressively nastier insults with each argument and Max was forced to compensate by blasting her music when she was in the house with them.
The music failed to block out the worst aftermath of those fights. The change in her mother's demeanor was shocking; perpetually slumped posture, avoidance of eye contact, violent startle responses. It gave her the air of constantly cowering. Max had seen it once before, when Susan had still been with her previous boyfriend, the one between Max's dad, Peter, and Neil, and Max hated it.
Max loved her mom, but she found this behavior was repulsive.
"Love don't live here anymore, just emptiness and memories…"
The revulsion she felt at her mother's subordination was overtaken by a sense of desperate anger when she first noticed a ring of blueish purple bruises circling her wrist like a macabre bracelet. Susan had refused to acknowledge their presence and on the couple of occasions when Max noticed that Susan's movements were more slow than usual, she wondered how many bruises Susan carried in places that Max couldn't see. Max started staying home more and turning her music up louder, hoping that Neil would be less likely to hurt her mom if she was in the house.
The flimsy plan failed. She hadn't really expected for it to succeed, anyway. She re-focused her energy, snatching one of Susan's pay stubs and attempting to work out whether and how they'd be able to get out from under Neil's thumb.
"Oh, sweetie, he's grieving. Billy was his only child. Grief does all kinds of things to people. Neil isn't himself right now, but he will get better," Susan had told Max once when she'd come to her mom with concerns.
One morning after an argument, Max emerged from her bedroom to find Neil with fingernail scratches on his left cheek and her mother with a bandage over her left temple. She felt the smallest surge of pride mixed with her anger at the situation—her mom had fought back.
"Everyone could see the loneliness inside me…"
Neil started drinking more, and in order to cope, so did Susan. The less Max wanted to be in the house on Cherry Street, the more she felt compelled to stay. She took to keeping a pocket knife of Billy's hidden in her sock drawer, just in case.
One Saturday night, Max had been out with Lucas, Dustin, and Mike to see the second Nightmare on Elm Street movie when she was struck with a sense of dread. She hadn't wanted to go home right away and was relieved when Dustin suggested going for pizza after the movie. When she had finally biked back to the house, she arrived just in time to see a police cruiser pulling away.
The sight of Susan alive and sitting in the living room was an enormous relief.
During the course of that evening's fight, three plates had been broken. A neighbor called the police. But everything was fine, Susan and Neil had reassured them, Neil chuckling about how clumsy his wife was. Susan had stayed silent, not mentioning to the officers how the plates had broken—what they had been smashed against.
With a pang of sadness, she thought of Hopper and how he would have seen right through Neil just then.
Max's feelings of disgust and anger intensified after that, but a new emotion entered the mix: fear. Before Billy's death, Neil had never laid a hand on either Susan or Max. Now, it seemed, Neil needed a new outlet for his frustration, and she was worried for her mom but also apprehensive about how long it would take to go after her next. As much fear as she felt for herself and her mom, the situation made Max's heart break for Billy all over again.
She took to carrying Billy's pocket knife with her at all times after that night, just in case.
"Why'd you have to go away…"
Less than a week later and Max was sitting in Billy's room and blasting Madonna through her Walkman while Susan and Neil shouted at each other. Again. She couldn't discern what they were saying and she didn't really want to. The words didn't really matter, only the pitch and tone of her mother's voice.
"Don't you know I miss you so…"
The volume of the shouting escalated and Max heard her name dragged into the argument. Almost immediately after, a door slammed down the hall and then heavy stomping footsteps growing nearer. The door to Billy's room was thrown open with sudden force and Neil stood silhouetted in the doorway by the kitchen light behind him.
"You!" He bellowed angrily, and something in the look on his face sent a bolt of fear through her. Her eyes widened involuntarily and she slid her headphones down around her neck, wracking her brain for anything at all she might have done to anger her stepfather. She started to stand but Neil roughly seized her left arm and yanked her painfully the rest of the way to her feet. Max stumbled, sending the Walkman clattering to the floor.
"Stop it, you're hurting me," Max gasped loudly, trying to yank her arm free from his grasp, but he held her fast around the elbow. Her pinky and ring fingers started to tingle. "What did I do?"
"What did you do?" Neil spat mockingly. "You think just because you have the dumb luck to survive that fire, you're somehow better than your brother?"
"What?" she sputtered, trying desperately to follow his train of thought. If she'd known she would be dragged into this argument she would have paid more attention earlier to what her stepfather had actually been shouting about.
"—That Billy dying somehow that entitles you to his space in this house?"
"Please, Neil," Susan pleaded from where she stood across the kitchen. "She just misses him."
"Misses him? Your little shit has never liked or respected my son. You expect me to believe that she misses him now?"
"I'm sorry, Neil," Max said in a strained voice that didn't sound like her own. She tried to pull free from her stepfather's grasp. His grasp on her arm was growing tighter and her eyes were watering from the pain. "Please let go."
"You know, you are the only person in this family who hasn't learned respect," he said, seeming not to have heard her. Neil's mustache quivered with anger and there was fire behind his eyes. Max wondered briefly whether he was under the influence of something. She had never seen him with anger quite so intense that was directed at her.
"That's not true, I swear." Max hated the note of pleading she heard in her voice.
"Shut up!" He bellowed.
Neil raised his arm so fast that Max had barely processed the move, she jerked her arms up as fast as she in an attempt to cover her head but it wasn't quick enough.
He hit her backhanded, hard, across the face. Her head was knocked to the side and she was blinded by hundreds of white dots that sprang in front of her eyes as they began to water. Susan screamed in terror. Max stumbled but somehow remarkably didn't pass out. Her arm free was wrenched free from Neil's grasp as she stumbled. Without fully thinking about what she was doing, she dug into her pocket for Billy's knife and flipped it open.
"Get away from me," she shouted, holding the knife in front of her threateningly. "Get away." The look on Neil's face was dumbstruck, as though Max had been the one who'd hit him. Max took a couple of slow steps backward, keeping the knife up and her eyes on Neil, stepping fully into her bedroom. She slammed the door shut and locked it behind her.
Max was conscious only of the single thought that she had to get out of there, and that single thought consumed her complete focus. Her heart and her head were pounding as she darted around her bedroom, hastily stuffing her walkie, spare socks and underwear, and a sweatshirt into her backpack. Her toothbrush and hairbrush were out of reach in the bathroom, so she'd have to leave those behind.
Neil was pounding on the door and shouting angrily and Susan was crying and calling her name, but the thrumming of her adrenaline-charged pulse in her ears seemed to block out their words.
Max tugged on her jacket and pushed open the window silently. She could hear the doorknob rattling through the din but mercifully the lock held. In one fluid motion, she dropped her backpack out the window and climbed out herself, landing on the tinder box beneath her window before hopping onto the yellowed grass.
As quietly as she could, she slipped around toward the back of the house to get her bike.
Max could no longer hear Neil or her mom anymore, only the relentless pounding in her ears. She mounted her bike and sped off down Cherry street, veering off into the woods near the end of the street, thinking only of evading Neil in case he was coming after her.
It was a good mile of riding before she gave any thought to where she was going. She wanted to go to one of her friends' homes, but she knew they were the first places Neil might look for her. Besides, they would ask questions and, worse, their parents would probably get involved.
She thought of the bus at the old junkyard, but the November chill whipping through her jacket took that option off the table. The reality was that it was almost dinnertime, the temperature was dropping with the setting sun, and she couldn't go back home.
So Max found herself 20 minutes later stashing her bike behind a large shrub and pulling open the door to Family Video, hoping that Steve or Robin would be there. The bell on the door tinkled cheerfully at her arrival.
"Hey!" Robin greeted from the right-hand side of the store, where she appeared to be re-shelving the videos. "What's up?"
"Hey. Can I hang out here for a bit?"
"If I said no, would that stop you?" Robin chuckled, approaching Max. "Want to help me—Oh my god. Steve!" She shouted suddenly. Max winced as Robin got a good look at her face because although she hadn't seen it, she knew the blow must have left a mark.
"What?" Steve's exasperated voice called back. He emerged from the doorway that led to the back rooms and the playfully annoyed expression fell from his face after he took one look at Max. He inhaled sharply. "Max, what the hell happened? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Max said, shaking her head as though it was no big deal. "Can I hang out here for a bit? Robin said it was ok with her." Steve and Robin exchanged a glance. Steve stood in front of Max and gave her a scrutinizing look. Max found that she couldn't meet his eyes, staring at her shoes instead.
"Yeah, of course," Steve said, crouching down in front of her to get a better look at her face.
Just then the bell on the front door jingled again and a customer walked in. They all looked around to see a Hawkins High senior whose name Max didn't know walk in. Robin hurried over to meet him at the door and Steve put his hand on Max's shoulder.
"C'mon," he said, guiding her back through the back hallway and into the employee's break room. Max had been back here before. It was pretty basic: fluorescent lights, linoleum floors, a table with mismatched plastic chairs, a refrigerator and microwave, small television mounted in the corner, a large bulletin board plastered with employee schedules and workplace codes. There were no windows here, which suited Max just fine right then. Steve pulled out a chair for her and motioned to sit. She slid her backpack off of her shoulders and sat reluctantly, leaning hunched forward onto her elbows.
"Thanks," she muttered. They sat in silence for several moments.
"So, are you going to tell me what happened or are we just going to sit here?" Steve asked
"Nothing to tell," Max shrugged. Steve gaped at her.
"Bullshit. And don't try to tell me you fell off your skateboard because I know nobody gets hurt like that from a fall." Max looked at Steve. The look of concern in his eyes made her feel sick. She hated pity.
"Does it look bad?" she asked quietly, bringing her hand up gingerly to touch her cheek. The skin there smarted even at her lightest touch, but the skin didn't seem broken.
"Looks like my face after I take a punch."
"Not like I would know," Max smirked at him. "I've never seen you take just one punch.
"Ha ha," Steve said wryly. He stood up and with a few long strides he retrieved his bookbag from a cubby on the wall, rummaged in it for a moment, and withdrew a small mirror. When he returned to his seat next to Max at the table and handed the mirror to her, she couldn't help smirking at him. "Shut up," he said preemptively.
"You carry a mirror with you?" Max teased. "Do you have it with you, like, all the time?"
"And yet, it has been surprisingly handy."
"I can only imagine the number of hair emergencies," she quipped, chuckling.
Her laughter quieted when she lifted the mirror to look at her injured cheek. There wasn't any blood or swelling there, but the upper part of her cheekbone under her eye was covered with a deep reddish-pink mark stippled underneath with a cluster of tiny pink-red dots. She examined the injury with a neutral expression, keenly aware that Steve was watching her reaction.
"No black eye yet," she said hopefully. Steve grimaced.
"Give it a day or so. You'll probably have a nice shiner."
"Awesome," Max sighed sardonically. "How long do those usually take to go away?"
"Like a week or two, depends."
Max fell silent. This was going to be impossible to hide. Sure, school had just let out for the Thanksgiving break, but that was only 5 days. She'd have to go back to school like this. She'd have to try to come up with a better story to tell her friends and, more importantly, to convince the teachers so that nobody would ask questions that would get her into worse trouble with Neil. Max was already starting to feel awful for leaving her mom in that house, and she couldn't do anything further to risk her mom's safety.
Steve saw that his young friend was doing some very quick thinking and after several seconds his face fell when he saw a rim of tears appear in Max's eyes. But she wouldn't let them fall. Max rarely cried. She blinked the moisture back so quickly that he would have missed it if he hadn't been paying attention.
"Who did this, Max?" he asked quietly.
Max crossed her arms in front of her chest and kept her gaze focused on the floor in front of her.
"It wasn't one of the other shitheads, was it?" he asked, referring to Dustin, Mike, and Lucas. Max rolled her eyes at him and the corner of her mouth twitched.
"I'm a little offended at the suggestion, you know I could take any one of them," she said with mock indignance.
Steve, however, wasn't laughing, because he knew that with Billy gone, there was only one other person he knew of with the power to inflict Max's injuries that she would go to lengths to avoid naming.
"Where's your mom?"
"At home."
Steve saw tears collect in Max's eyes again and nodded. He squeezed her shoulder gently and stood.
"Ok. There might be some ice in the freezer if you want to look. To help with the swelling later," Steve suggested. Max was grateful that he turned and left the staff room when he did, because two tears dropped into her lap unbidden and she didn't want anyone to see her cry. She couldn't show how much everything hurt; her face was just the turd at the top of the shit pile that was trying to suffocate her.
Robin was checking a video out for their lone customer at the counter when Steve reentered the front of the store. He typed something into one of the store's computers before picking up one of the phones and dialing the Hawkins police station. Robin said goodbye to the customer and looked at Steve curiously.
"Hi, I'd like to report a domestic disturbance…" Robin's eyes widened and Steve pursed his lips at her. "It's 4819 Cherry… I'm not sure, I was walking past the house and heard a lot of screaming… " Robin made a 'what the hell?' gesture with her hands and Steve held up his hand to shush her before continuing to speak into the phone. "Can you just send someone by to check please?... Thanks, thanks so much." He hung up the phone, looked at Robin, and exhaled deeply.
"Care to share?"
"Pretty sure that's her stepdad's handiwork," Steve murmured. "She didn't say exactly, but she's worried that her mom is still at the house."
"Oh. Well I guess that makes sense, why she came here, I mean. The other children's houses are going to be the first places they look for her," Robin said with understanding. "Is she ok? What does she need? What can we do?"
"Not sure. She can stay here until the store closes, but then what?"
With no customers in the store, Robin and Steve made their way back to break room where they found Max dumping ice cubes from a tray into a ziplock bag. She looked around at them when they both took seats at the table.
"Can we just not talk about it right now?" she asked. Steve and Robin exchanged a glance.
"Sure."
Max nodded in thanks and returned to her seat at the table, placing the ice gingerly over her cheek. It stung with cold immediately and she winced in spite of herself. Robin jumped up and rummaged through a box in the corner of the room before returning with a Family Video employee vest.
"Here," she said, taking the baggie of ice from Max, wrapping it in the vest, and returning it to her. "You shouldn't put the ice directly on your skin." Max took the little bundle from Robin and replaced the compress on her face. The fabric was soft on her skin and gave off a pleasant cooling sensation.
"Thanks," Max told her. They sat in silence for several seconds before Robin opened her mouth.
"The store closes at 10—"
"Remember how we weren't going to talk about it?" Max cut in sardonically.
"Calm down, dingus, I'm trying to help figure out where you're gonna go after. You can't hide here forever."
"What if I just stayed here tonight?"
"We're not working tomorrow morning," Steve pointed out.
"I'll just sneak out the back before the store opens in the morning and figure something else out. My bike is hidden back there anyway, it would be easy."
"No," said Steve and Robin at the same time. "No," Steve said again. "You need to be somewhere safe and warm where you can get some rest."
"Steve, I can't," Max said. "Where can I go where someone's parents wouldn't ask questions?"
"I'm sure if you just asked the guys, one of them could help you out, even sneak you in. Didn't Mike hide Eleven in his basement for like a week once?" He argued.
"Maybe, but Mike's place will be the first place anyone looks for me and his mom won't be that oblivious again. Lucas' mom is a school principal and Dustin's is a nurse so they're both required to file a report with children's services if they suspect anything," Max pointed out. Steve and Robin both frowned at her. "It's a whole thing to catch—to catch child abuse." She said this last bit very fast. Besides, she thought, their houses would be the first places that Neil would try to look for her.
"Okay," Robin said. "Steve, what about your house? Your parents are, like, never home. I'm actually not convinced that they really exist," she added to Max, who gave her a halfhearted smile in response.
"No dice. They're around for the Thanksgiving holiday," Steve shook his head, expression pained. He looked more distressed than Max thought the situation warranted.
"It's okay, I really don't want anyone to see my face like this anyway." Max sighed and slumped forward, readjusting her ice pack. "I should just go back home. Face the music. I can't just abandon my mom." Robin and Steve exchanged another glance and Max raised her eyebrows. "What?"
"I made an anonymous call to the Hawkins PD, pretended to be a neighbor who walked by your house and heard shouting. They said they'd send someone by," Steve told her.
"Seriously, Steve? You think that's actually going to help?" Max looked at him in disbelief, bright blue eyes blazing with anger. She shook her head.
"They're sending cops, just to check that your mom is safe! What's wrong with that?" Steve argued.
"The cops have been out to my place before, nothing happened," Max gave a humorless laugh. "Nothing ever happens. Neil waves them off and my mom stands in the corner and nods. Billy and I stay in our rooms—or, we did. Then Neil either storms off or takes his anger out on someone else. The only one who ever saw through Neil's bullshit was Hopper, and things have gotten exponentially worse with him gone and Billy gone, and now he's going to be pissed off that someone reported the argument and the only one left at home for him to take it out on right now is my mom. And I know that's mostly my fault and you were trying to help, but now it feels like she's royally screwed and there's nothing I can do about it."
Max was breathless, chest heaving with anger and fear. It didn't help that her headache was getting worse and her cheekbone had started to throb, she supposed because the adrenaline after Neil's initial blow was wearing off, and she had run from the house but was now at a loss of what to do next, both to protect herself and to protect her mom.
She briefly wondered whether she could simply march back into her house with Billy's Leatherman held high, retrieve her mother, and…then what? Drag her to the police station to file a police report? Hide in Mike Wheeler's basement? Leave town?
It was a fantasy and Max knew it.
Both Steve and Robin were looking anywhere but at her, at a loss for words.
"Where's the bathroom?" Max asked.
"Across the hall," Robin told her. Max murmured a thank you and hurried out of the room. Once her back was turned, Steve leaned back in his chair, watching to ensure Max actually headed into the bathroom instead of slipping out of the store. The door clicked and Steve groaned.
"Way to go, dingus."
"Oh shut up, like you would have done something different?"
"No, actually," Robin said seriously. "I thought it seemed like a good idea." Steve sighed heavily.
"This is all such bullshit. Isn't it the parents' job to make sure their kid is safe? What's even the point if shit like this is going to happen?" He stood up and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
"Some parents are better at that than others, I guess." Robin paused, the room briefly filled with a dismal silence. "So what do we do?"
Their thoughts were interrupted when the bells at the front of the door tinkled. The two looked around and then back at each other.
"Your turn," Robin said. Steve pursed his lips and glanced at the closed bathroom door across the hall. "I've got her, don't worry." Steve gave her an appraising look before he nodded, stood, and disappeared around the corner to help the customer who had just entered the store.
Max was a little surprised to see Robin still sitting in the break room when she returned. She felt a little better after splashing water on her face and neatly re-braiding her hair, but her head was still pounding. She wondered briefly if Neil had hit her hard enough to get a concussion.
"Don't you have a job, or something?" Max said lightly, sitting back down. Robin shrugged.
"Harrington's got to pull his weight sometime," she grinned back. "I know you don't want to talk about it and I swear I won't after this, but do you need anything? There's a drugstore down the street and it's slow right now so I could run over."
"I'm fine," Max said instinctively, but she looked over and saw such an earnest expression on Robin's face that she gently bit her lower lip in thought. "Actually, um, do you have any Tylenol or ibuprofen?"
"Of course," Robin grinned, jumping up that her chair almost fell over in the process. "I'm prodigiously klutzy. Between that and soccer injuries, I've always got Advil on me. Plus I get horrific period cramps, so all of this overshare is to say that yes, this I can help with." She retrieved her bag from a corner and returned to the table several seconds later with a bottle of Advil which she promptly set in front of Max. The younger girl looked at Robin with relief.
"Thanks," she said, helping herself to two tablets and dry-swallowing them on the spot before sliding the bottle back across the table to Robin. They sat in silence for a minute, Max staring into her lap and wishing she'd been able to bring her Walkman with her. Not wanting to force any further conversation, she rested one arm on the table, lay her head atop it, and held the slowly melting compress over her left cheek with the other hand.
What the hell was she going to do? Max was sick with worry, the thoughts coming faster now that she was no longer in physical danger herself. Her mother was not winning the "Mother of the Year" award anytime soon, but she was the only person in Hawkins who Max was certain loved her. Isn't this why Max had been so careful to stay in the house in the evenings, to be there in case Neil tried to hurt her mom? And now, at the height of his anger, she'd jumped ship.
Max tried to ground her thoughts, focusing on her breathing and allowing Madonna's "Angel" to play out in her mind. She fixated on the single fact that she was safe at that moment. Nobody would hurt her here and now. She didn't know how the rest of the day would play out, but at least she'd have a short respite here with Steve and Robin where neither Neil nor the police would think to look. For several minutes, she repeated those consoling thoughts in her mind even while she involuntarily cried silent fearful tears for her mother.
At some point, her headache disappeared. Her arm relaxed, allowing the ice pack to slip onto the surface of the table, but she couldn't bring herself to pick up again.
She was asleep before Robin slipped out of the room.
A hand on Max's shoulder sent a jolt up her spine and through her extremities. She startled and sat bolt upright so fast that she nearly fell out of her chair.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," Steve said gently. "It's just me." Max blinked at him for a moment before she was able to remember where she was. She looked around the dingy break room at the Family Video for a moment before meeting Steve's eyes.
"Shit, how long was I out?" she said with a note of panic in her voice.
"Just over an hour."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep."
"No worries," Steve shrugged. Max noticed then that Robin wasn't there and that other voices were audible.
"Store busy?"
"Not exactly," he squinted a little as he said it. "Are you hungry? We got dinner." Max started to say that she didn't think she could eat, but just then Robin bounded into the room.
"Hey, is she awake? Oh, good!" Robin grinned, spotting Max sitting up and blinking at her. "You hungry? We've got pizza and a plan." She stuck her head around the corner of the doorframe and motioned to someone outside. Max nodded, noticing that Steve had a somewhat pained expression on his face. It didn't take long to see why.
Robin was closely followed into the room by Nancy, who carried a large purse and gave Max a small smile. Max hastily rested her face in one hand, elbow on the table, hand strategically oriented so that her palm and fingers covered the mark on her face.
"What the hell, Steve?" Max said angrily as Mike followed his sister into the room. Dustin and Lucas brought up the rear, nodding greetings at Max and carrying two pizzas and a 12-pack of Coke. "Seriously?"
"Told you she'd hate this," Robin said pointedly as Nancy took the seat beside Max and the others began to fill in the spaces around them.
"She definitely does," Max glared around the table, careful to turn her body so that she could keep her elbow and hand in position to cover her injury. "Remember the last time you did something like this without me?" A new wave of worry began to wash over her and she gave Steve a murderous look. She wanted to storm out of the room, but realized that would require exposing her face and chose to stay put.
"To be fair, this isn't totally Steve's fault," Robin said.
"It's true," Dustin nodded, opening one of the pizza boxes and taking a slice.
"Care to fill me in?" Max asked, watching Lucas pass cans of soda around without meeting her eyes. It was as though he didn't want to look at her without permission.
"We needed Nancy," Steve told her. "And when I called, Mike answered the phone—"
"—And continued to eavesdrop on the other line during our conversation," Nancy finished, shooting a nasty look at Mike. Mike looked completely unabashed.
"Well your mom called my house, Dustin's, and Lucas' not long before that. My mom said she sounded pretty panicky," Mike told her.
"And you either had your walkie turned off, out of range, or not with you," Dustin chimed in with a mouth full of pizza.
"We were worried, Max," Lucas said, looking her in the face. Max pursed her lips and shook her head at the ceiling. The boys, at least, knew that things had been pretty rocky in Max's house every since Billy died. "So when Mike radioed me and Dustin that he knew where you were, we wanted to make sure you were okay."
"I'm fine, okay? I'm fine. I just needed some space, but I'm fine." Max carefully avoided looking at Steve and Robin as she said this.
"And yet you still haven't put your hand down," Mike pointed out doubtfully.
"So? You never freak out when someone else isn't answering their walkies. What, you think I need looking out for because I'm a girl?"
"No, it's because we're your friends, and we care about you, dingus," Dustin nearly shouted it. "God, I've spent too much time with Robin."
"And we'd freak out if any one of our mothers called panicking that they couldn't find a member of the party, especially if we couldn't reach them," Lucas said.
"If you recall, the last time that happened, it was because Will got sucked into the Upside-Down, so yeah, we were worried. So sue us." Dustin challenged.
Max gave them a hard look, fixing her gaze on Lucas, Dustin, and Mike in turn. She couldn't think of a retort, so instead she sighed sharply and shook her head.
"So what's Nancy's role in all this?" Max turned to look at the three older teens. Everyone went silent. Steve looked meaningfully at the younger boys with an eyebrow raised and Max got the impression that there was a secret there that she'd been left out of.
"Who's telling her?" Steve asked Mike, Dustin, and Lucas. They glanced at each other before Dustin told Steve cheekily:
"She's least likely to hit you." Steve shook his head in disappointment, scoffed, and ran his hand through his hair nervously. Max looked expectantly between the four boys with both eyebrows raised.
"Okay, these three doofuses—" he indicated the younger boys "—came to me a few weeks ago because they were getting the impression that things weren't going great for you at home. And since you kept brushing them off whenever they'd ask about how things were going and how you were doing, they got worried." Steve paused for a moment, looking right at Max. "And listen, Max, I saw enough of how Billy treated you, and so did these guys, and even knowing that they weren't concerned for your safety then. So it was kind of a red flag that they got more worried after he died. They wanted to come up with a plan to help keep you safe if something was to happen at home and you needed to get out and stay under the radar for a while."
"We came to Steve because your mom and stepdad know you spend a lot of time at our houses and would look for you there first," Dustin explained. "And his parents are hardly ever home, so we asked if you'd be able to lay low at his place for a bit if needed."
"Unfortunately, we failed to account for the possibility that Steve's house might not be an option," Mike added before taking a large slurp of soda.
"So when you came in today, Steve panicked a little because his parents are home—" Robin started.
"I did not panic."
"Many 'shits' were said. Anyway, I thought it would be less weird if you spent the night at my house instead," said Robin.
Max frowned. She hardly knew Robin. I mean, sure, they'd all helped fight off the Mind Flayer together and she guessed that you couldn't go through something like that together without winding up as some kind of friends, but still. She generally thought of Robin as a weird, hyperactive girl who was only a friend by association with Steve.
"Yeah, we could just, like, say that you're a friend from band or something. Anyway, my dad works nights at the plant but my mom will probably be home, so we needed to try to cover up your face. Not your whole face, obviously, but just the, um, the bruisy part, just so my mom doesn't ask questions. But I don't have much makeup, and none of it's here, enter Nancy," Robin finished.
"Steve called to see if I could help," Nancy said in an even, calming tone, gesturing to the large purse in her lap.
Max was working hard to keep her face blank. On the one hand, she was surprised with how much thought her friends had put into keeping her safe, and on the other, she was still miffed that after everything they'd all lived through they still though she needed their protection.
"And you didn't tell me all of this before because…?" Max had her eyebrows raised almost threateningly but her tone was noticeably softer.
"Honestly? Because you tend to take even the hint of an offer of help as a personal insult," Lucas said simply.
Max opened her mouth to argue, but she knew that he wasn't wrong. She stayed silent for a long while. The others busied themselves with handing out pizza and sodas, giving her a little bit of mental space. The front door's bell jingled again and Robin hopped up to assist the customers who had entered the store.
"Does my mom know that I'm okay?"
"Yeah," Mike said, swallowing a bite of pizza hastily. "Nancy called her anonymously once we got here."
"I told her you're safe and that you will come home when you're ready." Nancy reassured.
"And we can keep Cerebro tuned to the Hawkins PD frequency, just in case there's mention of… other news," Dustin suggested. "Mike brought Will's old walkie so you can just keep that turned on while you're at Robin's."
"Oh, yeah, I actually do have my walkie. Grabbed it before I left my place. I just forgot to turn it on, I guess," Max said with an apologetic shrug. Dustin, Mike, and Lucas rolled their eyes at each other. Of all the members of their party, Max was the one most likely to neglect her walkie. This was generally more of an annoyance than anything else, but on that day, when radio silence could equal mortal peril, it had been chilling.
Several seconds passed without words, the silence only broken by the sounds of chewing and slurping from Dustin, Lucas, and Mike. As slovenly as they could be, Max couldn't help feeling a swell of affection for all of them at that moment. They had seen her struggles at home and not only had they given her space to deal with things on her own, but but also meticulously designed a safety net around her just in case her best efforts failed. And of course they hadn't told her because, as much as it pained her to admit, Lucas was right.
"Okay," Max said. Steve's eyes shot briefly toward where the younger boys sat.
"Okay?" he asked, dragging out the second syllable just a little as though requesting clarification.
"Yeah," she said. "Let's go with your plan."
"Perfect!" Nancy exclaimed, sounding relieved. "But if you want me to work my magic, you're going to have to put your hand down."
So, at last, Max lowered her hand, and it was a mark of their friendship that although she could feel the guys wincing, none of them said a word. Steve grimaced at her face and scooted over into Robin's vacant chair next to Nancy while Nancy rummaged through the contents of her bag.
"The swelling's a little worse, but I'm sure Robin has a cold compress or two at her house. She's, like, the definition of 'klutz.'"
"Tilt your left eye towards me and up a little, just like that," Nancy said. Her voice was gentle but matter-of-fact, which Max found soothing. She'd never noticed before that Nancy could be reassuring and helpful without being patronizing. Max did as instructed and held her face still, concentrating on keeping her expression blank as Nancy painstakingly dabbed, brushed, and blended makeup over the tender skin of her cheek.
Aside from a little residual swelling, there was no visible trace that anything out of the ordinary had happened that day.
They put on E.T. in the breakroom and polished off the rest of the pizza and Coke, hanging out until it was time to close the store. Before Nancy took Mike, Lucas, and Dustin back home, the boys all pressed Max into the center of a group hug. After they had pulled apart, Lucas pressed what looked like a plastic pencil case into her hands. Max popped open the latch with a curious frown etched onto her face. Inside was a toothbrush, plastic comb, travel sized toothpaste and soap, a folded slip of paper, a package of Pop-Tarts, and a set of batteries—
"For your Walkie. Maybe keep it on this time?" Lucas quipped, his face somehow containing both humor and apprehension.
"Sure thing, Stalker," she grinned, and she deposited the box into her knapsack and climbed into the back of Steve's car.
Robin, it turned out, lived less than a mile from Max's house and they took a slightly longer route in order to drive past 4819 Cherry. Neil's car wasn't parked out front. She wasn't sure what that meant and she was too tired to consider the possibilities at length.
Steve insisted on walking them to the front door when they got to Robin's, earning eye rolls from both girls. He wasn't going to say anything, but he didn't love how close to her stepfather's house Max would be sleeping, regardless of the low odds of him actually finding her here. He reached over and laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey?" Max said, turning the single word into a question.
"Just—" Steve paused, looked up and then looked back at Max as though he was looking for words. "Just try not to do anything stupid." Robin made a disapproving 'tutting' noise and started to rummage around in her bag for her keys.
"In my sleep?" Max asked. Her raised eyebrows told Steve she thought he was being ridiculous.
"Listen, asshole, I'm just trying to be a half-decent babysitter here." Max's expression softened and she gave him a small smile.
"You hate being the babysitter. But, thanks," she said.
And then she did something that took them both by surprise, and hugged him.
"Thank you Steve," she whispered, so quietly that Steve almost didn't hear. He returned the embrace, patting her back gently and wondering whether this was what it might be like to have a younger sibling.
They pulled apart at Robin's cry of "Awwww!" Max headed inside after her, not looking back at him, and Steve pulled a face at Robin before saying goodnight and heading back to his car.
Max got on with Robin unexpectedly well, killing the time before bed flipping through past editions of "Women Sports" magazine and listening to the Smiths. Robin's mom, it turned out, had gone to bed before Robin and Max had even arrived there. Robin lent Max shorts and a T-shirt to sleep in and ensured Max had enough blankets for the pull-out trundle bed in her room.
Later, as Max lay snuggled under the blankets—on her back, so as not to disturb Nancy's makeup job—and listening to Robin's deep breathing in the bed next to hers, mind full of worries about her mom and the future, her last thought as she drifted off to sleep was of the immense affection and gratitude she felt for her friends.
Quick author's note: I know it's a little on the nose, perhaps to the point of cheesiness, but Madonna's second studio album, Like A Virgin, came out in 1984. I imagine that Max was still in a headspace of wanting things to be normal at this point (listening to a sad song from an otherwise perky artist), and hadn't fallen fully into Kate Bush level depression.
Hope you enjoyed reading this, please feel free to leave reviews (ideas for future chapters or improvements are also welcome) 😊
