There are no spoilers in this one, it's just pure happy fluff (because the kids deserve to be kids when they aren't fighting the Upside Down).
Additionally, I'm struggling a little with the lack of reviews. It's always hard to go without feedback because 1. I love hearing if you like the fic and 2. If you hate it, I'll never have the chance to improve. Suggestions for future chapters are always welcome.
Chapter 3 – Snow Day!
Max
December 1984
It wasn't the usual obnoxious buzzing of the bedside alarm clock that woke Max from sleep on that mid-December Wednesday, but by the sound of soft footsteps in her room. She groaned softly and rolled over to look up at her mother, reluctantly pulling her brain out of its sleepy fog. She blinked in the semi-darkness. Susan's features were cast into shadow by the sliver of light filtering in through the half-open door of her bedroom.
"Mom?" Max asked groggily. A glance at her bedroom window told her it was still nighttime.
"Morning, sweetie," Susan stroked her daughter's head. "I turned your alarm off. They canceled school today because of the snow so you can sleep in if you want."
"What?" Max sat up and looked out the window. Sure enough, everything—even the street and the cars—was blanketed with several inches of new snow that glittered in the light from the streetlights. It was the most snow Max had ever seen at once. "Wow."
"Your first snow day," Susan smiled. "Go back to sleep."
Max nodded and snuggled back into her blankets. When she opened her eyes again, it was to weak sunlight streaming in through the window and the smell of breakfast wafting in from the kitchen. She stretched her hand out for the sweatshirt on the floor and, as quickly as she could, pushed aside her blankets and pulled on the sweatshirt.
One of the worst things about Hawkins, aside from the interdimensional hellscape that paralleled the town and the fact that her dad was 2,000 miles away, was the cold. Max did not like being cold.
She emerged from her bedroom quietly, her footsteps muffled by the socks she slept in, and started untangling her hair with her fingers during the short walk into the kitchen. Her mom was standing at the kitchen window, coffee mug in hand, and keeping a watchful eye on the stove. Max approached her mom and hugged her around the waist.
"Morning," she said. "Thanks for letting me sleep in." Susan kissed her daughter atop her head. Max had always been the most affectionate in the mornings; whether because she still wasn't fully awake or because the day's events hadn't yet prompted her to withdraw into herself, Susan wasn't sure.
"That's what snow days are for, sweetie," Susan told her, setting down her mug and running her fingers through Max's hair. She went slowly to avoid yanking at the tangles and Max closed her eyes at the touch.
"Did you have a lot of snow days growing up?"
"Sure, about two a year when we lived in colder places." Max nodded. She knew that her mom and Uncle Jack moved around a lot as kids because her grandpa had been in the Air Force. Susan had lived in Florida, North Dakota, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, and Georgia before the move to California had been the family's last one. Susan peered into the skillet and then smiled back at Max. "You hungry?"
"Yeah, it smells great Mom," Max told her earnestly. While Susan doled eggs and pancakes onto plates for them, Max retrieved the orange juice, butter, syrup, and hot sauce from the refrigerator and carried them to the table. They sat at the table together, just the two of them, for the first time in weeks. Susan set the plates on the table and the two of them began to eat. "Where are Neil and Billy?"
"Oh, Billy's still asleep. I'll save him something for when he gets up," Susan told her, pouring Max a glass of orange juice. "And Neil had to go in to work."
"So how did you get the day off?" Max asked, frowning.
"The hospital is down to essential staff only." Susan worked in the medical records department at Hawkins Memorial Hospital, so this made sense to Max.
They had a pleasant breakfast and Max helped her mom clean up before she went to her room to get dressed for the day in her usual jeans and a particularly thick sweatshirt. The phone rang as she finished braiding her hair back.
"Max, phone!" Her mom called softly from outside her door. Max hurried out of her room back to the kitchen, where Susan was holding out the phone for her. "Dustin," she whispered loudly. Max put the receiver to her ear.
"Hello?"
"Hi! Wanna go sledding with us?" He asked enthusiastically. Max could hear low-level chatter in the background and suspected he wasn't alone.
"Like, right now?"
"Well, as soon as everyone can get there. The whole party is in, even El is coming."
"Yeah, sure. Sounds like fun. Where?"
"There's a really good hill out near Will's house, but we wanted to ask you because there's a smaller one closer to your house if you can't get to Will's," Dustin explained very fast.
"Hold on, let me check—" Max said, her heart sinking. Neil had the car and there was no way Billy was going to wake her up to drive anywhere, especially with the roads as icy as they were. She stood for a moment with her hand pressed over the mouthpiece. "Negative, I don't have a ride."
"Ok, let me check—Guys, Max doesn't have a ride," Dustin's voice was quieter as he turned his head away from the phone.
"Wait, how is everyone already there?"
"Snow Day protocol," Dustin told her, as though this explained everything. Max rolled her eyes but let it go.
It turned out that Hopper and El hadn't left their cabin yet and Hopper agreed to stop by and pick up Max on the way to Will's. In the meantime, Susan enthusiastically helped Max to dress in her warmest layers in preparation, insisting on 3 pairs of socks and even giving her a pair of her own nylon jogging pants to put over her layered jeans and sweatpants to block "the water from when the snow melts." It was so much that Max started to sweat with the heat just standing in the living room.
"Are you sure this isn't overkill?"
"I don't want you freezing and miserable. Plus, that's the beauty of layers. You can always take something off if you get too warm." A car horn honked and Max peered through the window to see Hopper's truck in front of the house. "Here, your backpack," Susan hurried to hand it to her daughter before she opened the door. "Have fun, baby!"
Max and Eleven found Will, Dustin, Mike, and Lucas waiting for them on Will's front porch when Hopper dropped them off. The boys excitedly waved to them and Max started forward, but El hung back to grab something out of Hopper's truck. It turned out to be an old wooden sled.
"All right! Let's go!" Mike exclaimed happily. They boys grabbed their sleds and Max helped El drag hers through the snow around the side of Will's house.
"So what's the 'Snow Day Protocol?'" Max asked Lucas, who was walking next to her.
"Oh, it's just a thing we came up with back in 4th grade," Lucas explained. "When they call off school, we get in touch to figure out how to best maximize the snow day fun."
"Seriously?"
"Hey, we take days off of school very seriously," Mike said. "And the planning got way easier once we all had our walkies."
"What is there to plan?" Max asked, still sounding a little skeptical.
"Well, sometimes it's below zero, and when it's too cold we usually play D&D in Mike's basement," Will said.
"And sometimes, the roads are so bad that we can't leave our houses," Dustin said. "Those days are kind of shit because you're stuck home by yourself."
"And sometimes the snow day isn't because of snow at all, so we can't go sledding or do any of the usual snow stuff."
"How can you have a snow day without snow?" Max asked, genuinely curious. They were now traipsing through a dense cluster of trees and headed slightly uphill.
"Well, usually it's because a pipe freezes and bursts at the school," Lucas told her.
"But once, it was the sewage line!" Mike laughed. The other guys joined in.
"Ew!" Max said.
"Yeah, they had everything cleaned up when we went back but it was still gross," Will told her.
"Sew-age?" El asked, looking a little lost.
"The pipe where everything goes when you flush a toilet," Mike explained, still laughing. There was a wave of renewed laughter at the look on El's face when she processed his words.
The six of them continued to trudge through the trees until they emerged into a large clearing. A moderately sloping hill about 150 feet high sprawled out to the right of where they stood at the base; to the left, the hill leveled out into a field with the half-frozen serpentine Eno River cutting through in the distance. A dozen or so children were already there, some accompanied by their parents, in varying stages of speeding down the hill or trudging back to the top. Max watched a teenage girl zip by in a blur of color on a disk-like sled similar to the ones that Lucas, Mike, and Dustin carried.
"Cool," she said, grinning. Lucas caught her eye and grinned back.
"Wait, is this your first time sledding, Max?" he asked.
"Yep!"
"Let's go then!" Lucas said enthusiastically, leading the charge up the hill to get started.
"Have you seen snow before, Max?" Mike asked, sounding genuinely curious.
"Sure, we used to go up to the mountains sometimes in the winter, back when my mom and dad were still together," she remembered. Memories of mugs brimming with hot chocolate after hiking in the snow, her dad teaching her how to build a snowman, making side-by-side snow angels with her mom, sitting snugly around the fireplace playing board games or listening to her dad tell stories since there wasn't a TV in the cabin. "They even put me in ski school one year when I was little."
"You can ski?" All the boys looked impressed, and Max could imagine that none of them knew how. Where was there a ski slope in Indiana?
"Oh, no," Max told them. "I hated it and cried so hard my mom pulled me out."
"Seriously?" Dustin teased her. Max made a face at him.
"I was 5, give me a break."
They reached the top of the hill sweating from exertion but their faces and lungs stinging with cold. The boys laid their sleds out and looked strategically between Max and El. They began to point among themselves and squabble about how they would share and who would go with whom. Max nudged Eleven.
"You haven't been sledding before either?" she asked. El shook her head and Max grinned. "Want to go together while the boys are bickering?" Eleven looked hesitantly down the hill, and Max could see how it looked more intimidating from up here than it had from the base.
"I don't know," she said with a note of discomfort in her voice.
"Come on, what's the worst that can happen?"
"Crash," El pointed out, but Max shook her head and grinned at her conspiratorially.
"You can stop us from crashing in an emergency. Come on, let's try out Hopper's sled."
Before the boys realized what they were up to, El and Max had dragged the sled to the edge of the hill and El sat in the front with the ropes in her hand and feet on the steering levers. She gave Max a tiny smile and a nod, looking eager for the first time that day, and Max nodded excitedly.
"Okay, here we go," Max said quietly. "One, two—"
"Hey, wait!" Dustin exclaimed, but Max was already shouting "Three!"
She grabbed the rear portion of the sled and pushed as hard as she could. After a few seconds of gaining momentum, she leaped onto the sled behind Eleven, landing awkwardly on her knees and grabbing the wooden sides of the sled for support. The hill was steepest for the first twenty feet or so at the top, plenty of time to gather speed before starting to level out a little.
They weren't going as fast as some of the other kids but the Flexible Flyer was speeding along, wind nipping at their cheeks. Max cheered at the thrill of the ride and El laughed with her. About halfway down the hill, they hit an unexpected bump which caused the sled to turn suddenly to the side, throwing both girls into the snow. Once they'd recovered themselves, they looked at each other and laughed.
"That was fun" El said. Max grinned, stood, and extended her hand to help El to her feet. They brushed the snow off of themselves and started back up the hill, dragging the sled between them.
"Pretty good for our first run," Max said. They paused on the walk back up the hill to watch as Mike and Will flew past them, going impossibly fast on two round plastic disk-like sleds. Lucas and Dustin whooped from the top of the hill. Max and Eleven kept their eyes on Mike and Will until they'd reached the bottom of the hill before finally slowing to a stop. "Holy shit, that looks awesome!"
They reached the top of the hill just as Dustin took a running start and dove onto a long yellow plastic sled, shooting down the hill on his front. Lucas, Max, and Eleven watched and cheered for several seconds as Max and El approached where Lucas was standing with his sled in his hands. He pointed a finger accusingly at Max.
"You went down without me," he said, eyebrows raised.
"Was I supposed to wait for you?" Max asked with her lips pursed and eyebrows raised.
"Well—I mean, I just thought…you hadn't don't this before, so—"
"You thought I'd need help to sit on a sled?"
"To be fair, you crashed like halfway down."
"Okay, we did not crash—"
"There was a rock," El chimed in.
"Okay, okay, fine!" Lucas resigned, shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose with his gloved fingers. Max rolled her eyes.
"Come on, El, let's go again." And the two girls marched to the edge of the hill dragging the sled between them. Max started to take her place at the back, but El shook her head.
"No," she said. "You ride in front." Max looked at her quizzically.
"You want me to steer?"
"Yes. You steer, I'll do the speed." She gave Max a mischievous smile and Max grinned back.
"Cool," she said, settling at the front of the sled, picking up the rope, and placing her feet on the handles. El sat behind her and held onto her waist.
"Do you need a push or anything?" Lucas asked, clearly trying to redeem himself.
"Thanks, Stalker, we're good," Max waved him off. She looked back at Eleven. "Ready when you are!"
They picked up accelerated impossibly quickly and before long both Max and El were hurtling down the hill, cold wind whipping against their cheeks, screaming with delight. They careened toward the bottom of the hill without obstacles in the way, past other sledders who turned their heads at their unlikely speed, past Will and Mike at the foot of the hill, until their speed carried them another 10 yards before the sled came to a stop. Max hopped up and turned to El, extending a hand and helping to pull her friend to her feet.
"That was awesome, El!" Eleven smiled and pulled a tissue from her coat pocket to wipe the trickle of blood from her nose.
"Bitchin'" El agreed happily.
They trudged up the hill again and again for the thrill of racing back down, trading sleds and swapping partners, sharing the exhilaration of the good runs and laughing through their wipeouts, which were somehow just as fun. Max grew sweaty with exertion but chilled through from the cold, her mom's nylon joggers dampening with melted snow, but she couldn't remember having so much fun since moving to Hawkins.
They took a quick break when Dustin insisted he was about to faint from hunger to share the snacks and sandwiches they'd brought. Max had just accepted the half of a PB&J that Lucas swapped her for a Pop-Tart when one of the other teens on the hill caught her eye. Or, rather, what he held in his hand did. It wasn't a sled—it was a snowboard. She watched as the lanky boy strapped his boots into the board, hopped toward the slope, and tipped forward to start his run. Max watched as he zigzagged down the hill until he was a tiny figure in the distance.
"I bet you'd be a good snowboarder," Will nudged her with a knowing smile.
"It looks amazing. I've never seen someone snowboard in person," Max said. She bit into her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. It looked just like surfing or skateboarding, just all downhill and strapped to the board. Maybe if she could figure out how to fall without breaking her ankles—
"You've never been snowboarding? How about skiing?" Mike asked in disbelief. Lucas groaned.
"Dude! She just told us she'd never been sledding—"
"And flunked out of ski school," Dustin added, earning the side-eye from Max.
"—And I'm pretty sure you're the only one who's ever been skiing, Mike," Lucas finished. Mike shrugged.
"You don't know how to ski?" Max asked, looking around at the boys. She thought everyone in a cold-weather state learned to ski in the same way that anyone who grew up near the ocean learned to surf.
"We live in Indiana. It's pretty flat. Where are we going to ski?" Will asked.
"Mike's been on vacation to ski in New York, but none of the rest of us have."
"Damn," Max said, shaking her head. "I'd love to try that. It looks amazing. There's really no ski slopes around here?" Lucas and Mike shook their heads, but Dustin shrugged.
"Maybe one's been built recently? We can look it up later," Dustin assured. "When my mom and I go on vacation, it's usually to a city somewhere."
"My family are beach people, 100%" Lucas said.
"Wait, what beach do you go to?" Max asked with interest.
"Usually Indiana Dunes," Lucas mumbled. Mike, Will, and Dustin muffled their snorts of laughter. "But we've been to Florida, too." Max looked at him with a grim, almost pitying expression. The only beaches worth visiting were ocean beaches, in her opinion.
They finished their snacks and returned to their sleds. The rest of the party were watching Mike and El sail down the hill when the snowboarder returned to the top. He had dark blonde hair and wore sunglasses and a shabby red parka. Will gave a soft "ooh" of recognition and dashed over to the older teen. Max frowned at Dustin and Lucas.
"What's he doing?" she asked them, readjusting her hat. Both boys shrugged. They found out the answer to her question a minute later when Will made his way back to the group with the other boy half a pace behind him, snowboard in hand."
"Guys, this is Zack, he's a friend of Jonathan's." Lucas, Dustin, and Max raised their hands in waved greetings. "He says he'll show Max how to snowboard, if you want," he added to Max.
"Yeah, sure little Byers," Zack said with a casual drawl, looking from Will to Lucas and Dustin. "So who's Max?"
"Me," Max said, stepping toward the taller boy. "Short for Maxine. Your board looks so cool, is it hard to handle?" Zack looked surprised for a moment, then grinned.
"Nah, just takes balance and control. Little Byers says you've never boarded before?" Max shook her head. "But you skateboard?"
"Yeah, I can surf, too," she said, finding that her eager curiosity was fast outweighing her impulse to stay quiet and aloof around new people.
"Excellent, so you've got the basic foundations down." He set the snowboard on the ground and gestured toward it. "Go on. This plastic is almost indestructible." Max looked at the other guys, who nodded in encouragement, and nodded.
Jonathan's friend showed her how to strap her own boots into the board, adjusted the straps for her smaller feet, and get the feel of moving a bit. He had her practice a how to fall backward onto her rear if she lost control, to avoid twisting her ankles, and how to get back up again. Not long after, Max found herself standing at the edge of the hill.
"This is insane," she muttered to herself, shaking her head.
"Go for it," Zack encouraged. She hesitated.
"You've got this, MadMax," Lucas encouraged. The other boys started slowly chanting "MadMax! MadMax!" The words grew faster and louder and Max grinned.
"Okay, here goes nothing," she said to herself. She hopped forward a couple of steps and tipped the front of the board over the edge of the hill.
It was just like skating, she thought, only less bumpy. Having her feet strapped to the board somehow felt more secure. She bent her knees a little to maximize her balance as she picked up speed and couldn't help but smile. Max could almost pretend that she was surfing, except that this was downhill and it was freezing and she was wearing a hundred layers of clothing instead of a wetsuit and her face was being peppered with snowflakes instead of salt spray.
Feeling emboldened by how comfortable she felt, she shifted her weight a little and found it was easy to zigzag to the left and right as she raced down the hill. The wind whipped across her cheeks and she could feel her braids knock against her shoulders with each direction change.
This was wonderful. And it was over too soon, she thought when she reached the bottom of the hill. She was uncertain how best to stop the snowboard, so she simply rode in a straight line until friction took care of it for her.
She turned back toward the top of the hill and saw the tiny figures of her friends jumping up and down excitedly at the top, Mike and Eleven cheering her from their position at the base of the hill not far from her. Max couldn't help but laugh.
None of the other sled rides that afternoon could hold a candle to the snowboard.
"You should ask your parents for a snowboard for Christmas," Mike suggested later. The six of them were sitting around the fire in the Byers' living room with mugs of hot cocoa and a giant bowl of popcorn between them. Max smiled uncertainly from her seat closest to the fire, drawing a blanket around her shoulders.
Her clothes had started to soak through by mid afternoon and when they'd returned to Will's house, Max was shivering violently as she stripped off her wet outer layers to find that her jeans and sweatshirt were cold and damp underneath. Joyce had noticed right away and treated Max to a scolding about the dangers of hypothermia while she gathered a clean pair of her own sweats, insisted that Max change into them, and sat her in front of the fire with a blanket draped over her shoulders.
"That would be so cool," Max said. She wasn't sure how costly the boards were, but there was really no harm in asking. She sipped her hot chocolate.
"You guys want to watch a movie or something?" Will asked. The rest of the party shrugged.
"Ooh, I know! Let's play 'Werewolves,'" Dustin suggested.
"Yes! I'll go get it," Will jumped up and dashed out of the room just as Joyce poked her head in from the kitchen.
"Hey guys, who all is staying for dinner?" she asked. Every hand shot up. Joyce looked at them with raised eyebrows and asked, "Are your parents aware that you're staying?" The kids looked at each other for a beat before a scramble for the phone ensued, which Lucas won because he'd been sitting closest to begin with.
"I'm not sure what time Hopper will be done with work," El said quietly.
"Oh, he called a little while ago," Joyce said, "He'll be here to get you around 7. Said he could take you back too, Max, if you need a ride," she told Max. Max nodded and thanked her. She found herself the last to use the phone, calling her mom briefly with her updated plan before rejoining the others in the living room for a round of 'The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow.'
The rest of the afternoon flew by and after a dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup, the party started to dwindle as their rides arrived. Max and El were the last ones remaining and both said goodbye to Will and Joyce when Hopper pulled his truck in front of the house.
"Thanks for dinner and drying my clothes, Mrs. Byers," Max said.
"You're welcome. I'll call your mother later about where to find you a pair of snow pants."
Max waved and followed Eleven out the front door and into the cab of the truck where Hopper was waiting. The heat was blasting but it hadn't quite reached a comfortable temperature. She scooted closer to El before closing the door behind her.
"So, ladies, how was your first snow day?" he asked. Max grinned at El and Hopper. She hadn't had so much exuberant fun in a while, and it was hard to have anything but a positive outlook when she was so content; tired from sledding, full of grilled cheese and hot chocolate, and wearing clothes still warm from Joyce's dryer.
Maybe the freezing Indiana winters wouldn't suck as badly as she'd thought.
Thanks for sticking through to the end! Please leave a review if you have a minute to tell me what you think, good or bad. I also am open to your ideas for future chapters :)
