When Eddie had been eleven, he'd moved in with his uncle. Family troubles, significant parental absence, the sky is blue. Wayne hadn't had the chance to purchase a second bedframe in the trailer yet, so instead he'd placed Eddie's mattress on the floor and that was how his nephew was expected to sleep that night.

But being in an unfamiliar place, guarded by someone who is not your regular warden, was tough for an eleven-year-old. He hadn't tried his first joint yet and had only tasted beer once, on accident, without much faith in its magical powers. So there was no easy coping with the creepiness factor of his new digs. And everything was loud outside, everything was dark and he was too nervous to take his eyes off the window. Eddie remembered ripping himself out of the blankets, rolling off the mattress, sneaking into Wayne's tiny room, and curling up on the floor. He was already too old to justify actually spending the night in his uncle's bed—he wasn't that scared—but it helped to have another warm body in the room.

The floor of Wayne's bedroom sounded like a four-poster in a mansion compared to this.

"Will you please, please move your leg up?" Robin snapped.

"Robin, relax, all right, I'm not even touching you!" Steve shot into a halfway-sitting position, gesturing moodily with one hand in her direction.

Robin was on the bleachers. Steve was also on the bleachers. This was by far the most brain-dead decision anyone in the group had made that night. Not only were they supposed to be sleeping in a building that held a portal into the Upside Down, but they'd eventually come to the conclusion that the gym was the most defensible position. It had two double back-doors they could easily bust open now that they were inside, it had wide-open spaces to allow for any kind of trip or stumble, it had a closet full of smelly, otherwise-obsolete sports equipment to hurl at monsters (what a joke), and it happened to be the side of the building closest to their getaway car. Actually, that last one was probably the main reason everyone seemed to feel a grain of salt safer in the gym.

So they were getting cozy on hard, glossy floors and long, metal benches.

They should have been knee-deep in Killing Vecna action sequences, or else home in their beds pretending none of this was real, but the basement wasn't going anywhere. The crew had voted haphazardly to stake out the school, get some sleep, come up with a battle strat, and take the gift of Spring Break as seriously as they could. An empty Hawkins High was a rare, probably-cursed thing. Words couldn't describe how thickly Eddie hated this building.

Anyway.

Harrington was lying flat on his back on the topmost bleacher, with Robin opposite him on the seat directly underneath. Her head was parallel to his feet, which apparently kept slipping down to dangle dangerously close to her right eye. As it turned out, Robin did not fall asleep easily. Every spare movement Steve seemed to make in an attempt to get comfortable had her spazzing out.

"Oh my god, it's like sleeping under an octopus!"

"It can't be like sleeping under anything, because you're not sleeping—"

"Neither are we!" shouted Dustin, smacking an arm down against the floor.

"Seriously, can you guys at least try to shut up?" Lucas agreed, rolling over.

Henderson and Sinclair had both joined Eddie, Max, and Chrissy underneath the bleachers. The prospect of sleeping on the ground hadn't sounded any better than sleeping up there, but at least on the ground you couldn't fall. The others had all brought sleeping gear, but had conveniently forgotten to fill Eddie in on the slumber party portion of the debriefing earlier. He had despaired of feeling his spine at all in the morning. That is until Chrissy had achieved full-on angel status by procuring the cheer squad's stretching mats for everyone to lay on. They smelled like cleaning fluid and were razor-thin, but it was better than nothing.

"Your shoes smell like vomit, your laces keep tickling me, and I swear if you turn over one more time— what is in your pockets, ten thousand pennies? Do I have to move spots, dingus, is that what has to happen?"

"Yes! Yes, please move spots, yes! Thank you!"

Dustin let out an exaggerated moan, pulling his hat further down over his eyes.

Eddie, arms tucked across his chest underneath the northmost leg of the bleachers, stared into space. "So is this what it's like to have siblings?" he said to no one in particular. Maybe all of them. "Because I gotta tell you, only-child status is suddenly making me wanna count my many blessings."

"And whose stupid idea was it to make bleachers out of metal? Because to me if you're gonna build something to seat the masses for two straight hours, maybe more, you'd think they'd have the foresight to add cushions—"

"Robin, move spots!"

"Stop yelling at me, Harrington, this is bad enough as it is!"

"Name them one by one," Eddie sung low under his breath.

Dustin sat up, giving him a face and two arms full of what are you doing right now?

"Everybody, just—" Nancy threw her bag down on the lowest bench, taking a deep breath. "Try to get some rest. We won't be here forever."

Nancy was on what Dustin called MC Watch; M for Max and C for Chrissy. She was writing in her notebook, firmly seated on the edge of the last metal bleacher, the perfect vantage point. From there she had a clear view of the tenants underneath the stand, the squabblers up top, and the door leading out into the rest of the school.

Max was lying on her side, facing away from Eddie, head near Dustin's legs. She hadn't taken her headphones off since they'd all climbed through the window, landing on the top bench of the east-end bleachers. One leg was up, bouncing, and Eddie could tell her eyes were open even though all he could see was the crown of her head from here. Probably staring at the doors, probably focusing too hard on the music in her ears. Picturing little Red commencing takeoff in a graveyard, the way Dustin had described it the night of the championship game, Eddie felt a new wave of nausea overtake him. Kate Bush had better be next-level captivating.

As for the other half of MC, Chrissy wasn't pretending to rest either. She was sitting up, back against the middlemost bleacher leg, facing the window they'd come in by. Her sleeping bag lay unused, spread out on her mat underneath her. Eddie tried not to stare, tried to see whether or not she was shaking again without looking like a creep. Sinclair had been eyeing Max all night, Dustin volleying for second place in this weird little gawking contest they seemed to have going on, and eventually they'd suffered Max's wrath for it.

"You guys can stop looking at me like I'm already dead, okay, I'm fine. Staring at me isn't gonna change anything."

Eddie had taken the request to heart and applied it to the cheer captain who had tried to die in his living room. Maybe it was because Vecna had attacked on his watch, maybe it was because he'd been the sole witness to her big Almost, maybe it was because every time something remotely nerve-wracking had happened that night, she'd look at him first. Like a kid looks at their parents during a particularly loud thunderstorm. Whatever the reason, he seemed to be the member of the group most concerned with checking up on her. If he hadn't toppled over Wayne's radio that night, there wouldn't be any Chrissy Cunningham to try not to stare at. Surprise—that made him want to stare harder. As if his eyeballs alone could keep her breathing.

It took another hour for anyone in that room to fall asleep.

He wasn't sure what woke him. Could've been the nightmare wherein a number of Class 17 bulettes exploded from the hardwood floor and started chewing on him as the others slept. Or the other, foggier nightmare that had to do with Henderson's bones snapping in reverse. Maybe because of the whole collarbone-tooth thing. Either way, when he jerked back into the waking world, the half-light in the gym and the lack of conscious people around him omitted any possibility of crashing again.

Eddie blinked and blinked, trying to get the bad-dream images to stop poking out at him in the shadows. Nancy was still scribbling with one hand, a flashlight in the other, and Robin and Steve had finally started snoring in unison. Harrington was a sleep-talker. He was at that moment very quietly and spasmodically arguing with no one about corn dogs. Oh, if the female half of the student body could see him now.

Max might have been asleep—it was hard to tell from his angle. Henderson and Sinclair were absolutely gone, dead to the world in dual spread-eagle positions to his left. Eddie let his eyes linger on Dustin's chest as it rose and fell, rose and fell, bones pointing placidly in the right direction and the ground blessedly solid beneath his stout frame. Stupid little know-it-all could probably sleep through front-row seats to Judas Priest. Eddie leaned over and nudged Dustin's outstretched arm comfortably back onto his mat.

A sudden squeak of sneakers made his head snap to attention. As he watched, Chrissy stood up, inhaling fast. She tugged her headphones down, ducking out to walk around to Nancy. "I'm gonna…go for a walk," she said, muted and breathy.

"Oh. Is…that really such a good idea right now, I mean—" Eddie couldn't see Nancy's expression, but her tone was low and baffled. "Do you—need the bathroom or something; I can take you? It—it's just, with Max—"

Chrissy's face became more and more wooden, closed, sickly as Nancy spoke. "Never mind. You're right—it's okay—"

"I got it." Eddie shuffled and scrambled out from underneath the bleachers, raising a hand of curled fingers like he was back in middle school. He was surprised at how much better his voice sounded, just from that short stint of sleep. Still throaty and harsh (a weed addict's trademark) but distinctly stronger, now. "I can take her."

Nancy looked surprised to see him up. "You want to walk her to the women's restroom?" she asked, skeptical, bow lips framing something that seemed too much like distaste.

"It's not that," Chrissy interrupted, glancing up at Eddie and back down to their supervisor. "I just—need to move around." She shifted her weight to her other foot. "I'll keep the music on. I promise."

Nancy paused, weighing, debating with herself. She tapped her pen against her notebook pages, which appeared to be full of ridiculously-neat handwriting and lists about weapons. Eddie thought he caught a peek at the word kerosine. "Okay," she said, shaking her head slightly. "Just—don't go far. And don't go anywhere near the basement, okay? Not until we come up with a plan." Her dark blue eyes flitted to Eddie. "You can go with her."

"Yeah. Thanks, Ma," Eddie said under his breath, stretching. He followed Chrissy across the gym and out into the hall. He could feel Wheeler's eyes on them all the way out, maybe even through the door windows. Something about the Queen and the Freak walking in tandem, he was sure, would grab anyone's attention.

The halls were practically black, the only lights coming from the exit signs or emergency lighting over certain doorways. The last thing Eddie had wanted to do was to leave the surely-false sense of security the gym offered. But the moment Chrissy had started backtracking, something in him had propelled him to his feet.

I just—need to move around.

He knew that feeling all too well. In every class, it fizzed through his brain. Sitting anywhere. Driving for too long. He couldn't even be still when he was completely blitzed; he hadn't just collected all those rings for style. Eddie wore rings so he could twist them around, clack them together, slide them on and off again. Switch them from finger to finger. When he was high, the rings were the simplest thing to access to ward off the flames ordering him to move. Going to the movies was different, TV was different, that helped him go statue. But the majority of life seemed to be begging him to get up, walk this way, turn, move your arms, back up, leg bounce, mess with your hair, now the other hand, chew on your straw, chew on your pencil, stand up, tap your toe, repeat. Everything around him went in one ear and out the other when he couldn't move. It helped onstage at the Hideout, of course, but everywhere else it seemed insatiable.

He held no premature dreams that Chrissy Cunningham ever suffered from that same dancing fire, the urge, the thing he was certain had kept him from graduating thus far.

She was scared; there was a target on her head. That was why she'd needed to leave the gym.

But the tightening in their chests had to have been the same. The desire to get out was no joke when the right mood hit. So he'd escorted her, because this was one thing he knew he could help with. Last time she'd needed help late at night and he'd been there, all he seemed able to do was scream. This was easy. Way easy. Kind of a copout, actually. But at least it was something.

She was wearing her headphones now, and they walked from corridor to corridor in the laziest way possible. Eddie tried not to turn around too often, tried not to make it known how fried his nerves were. He wasn't afraid of the dark—but the moldy hole in the school's underbelly, the one they'd gone to scope out an hour or two ago, the one that lead to Vecna's nasty world? He swore he could taste the lack of clean oxygen wafting out from it, even a floor away.

Something was weird. Something was making his skin prickle. He realized it was the fact that Chrissy was glancing at him sideways. He got the budding feeling that she had been watching him and trying to catch his eye, maybe for the past two hallways.

He looked back, lids hooded, and raised his eyebrows higher than necessary.

She gave a little quirk of a shy smile, removing the headset briefly. "Sorry, um. It—I just remembered—I never paid you."

Eddie cocked his head, almost kicking the base of a water fountain on accident. High school was bad enough without crappy lighting.

"For the…you know." She looked away, lashes fluttering for a second, like she was embarrassed. "The Special K."

He gave a coughing kind of laugh. "Oh," he snorted, "yeah. Yeah, I'm out fifteen bucks. That's a big loss for me."

Chrissy's smile started slipping off, even further mortified. "Really?"

"Absolutely," Eddie teased. "Gotta find some way to pay for that Tiger Beat subscription."

Was it this easy for everyone to make her laugh? Had he just not noticed, over the course of their high school career, that Chrissy Cunningham was a giggly person? Was she? He'd never really gotten that sense before. Not that he spent a lot of time paying attention to her before the levitation crap. Cheerleading good girls lead very separate lives from every member of Hellfire.

She had a great laugh. Of course, in her line of work it was probably required. Maybe she practiced it in front of big, perfectly-clean bathroom mirrors on weekends.

"Actually, uh…" Eddie rubbed his ear, glancing from left to right as they came to a fork in the halls, passing the science classroom, "After that whole…ceiling thing, the—" he mimed his arms slowly rising from his sides, the two of them having paused for the moment, "—y'know, it's—it's not like you wound up getting anything anyway. So."

"Yeah." Her eyes flicked away at the mention of the attack, laugh dying a bit, but she pulled at the hem of her sweater and nodded slowly as he spoke. "Well…I'm…sorry about that, too."

Unbelievable. It was like someone apologizing for being sucker-punched. Sorry my eye's caved in. Sorry my lip's bleeding. Sorry I'm making this weird wheezing sound. Eddie shook his head briefly, tugging his mouth down in an exaggerated frown, trying to communicate that she had nothing to be sorry for. "I'm just glad Vecna's not a big Billy Joel guy."

She nodded again. She was getting quieter, getting paler. He needed to stop with the Vecna talk.

Sniffing, Eddie changed the subject. "I'd give you the stuff now, but ah—product's all the way back in the van. You can owe me if you want. After this world-saving gig is taken care of."

Chrissy tried for a smile. "Okay."

They chose the hall on the left, falling back into the lazy stroll. Eddie subconsciously listened for chiming or chittering or something slimy, eyeing the nearest glowing exit sign and wishing he'd brought a knife. Or a gun. Or beer.

Lordy. He was becoming his uncle.

"You know," Chrissy broke the silence again, in a clear nervous pattern, like she was listening too and hating the silence, "I never thanked you, either."

"Hey, I wasn't gonna get any more sleep anyway, trust me."

"No, I mean…for that night. After the game." Chrissy stopped again, turning to face him.

She pulled her headphones down and fingered the foam of the left side. It was obvious she remained exhausted, completely frazzled, and in spite of this she was making sure to look him right in the eyes. The hall was eerily dark, but he saw enough from one of the emergency, afterhours bulbs to know she still looked like a perfect, meticulous small-town Betty. She was being telepathically hunted by a gooey dark wizard and she smelled like jasmine. Hair was clean, outfit coordinated. Skin clear. How did she keep her skin so clear? Maybe cheerleaders were bred in farms. Maybe she wasn't a real organic human.

Maybe he needed more than an hour of sleep.

"You're kidding. Right?"

Chrissy's eyebrows lowered. "No, you—if you hadn't been there, I would've—" She broke off, swallowing hard. Blinking harder. Her arms folded tight in front of her as she stared up at him. "I wouldn't be here." She was almost stern, enunciating too much, trying to emphasize how serious she was.

He stared back, heart pounding. It wasn't because of the prolonged eye contact. It was because he remembered how he'd felt, two nights ago, how he was continuing to feel even now. He hadn't done anything. He'd yelled, snapped fingers in front of her listless, trance-ified face and stumbled, screaming, away from her as Vecna had pinned her to his roof. She seemed to be under the impression that he had helped in some way.

"Yeah, well…" His voice came out slow as he sifted through possible replies. Trying not to blow her off quite as bluntly as he felt like doing. She was attempting sincerity—rare for Carver's crowd, but maybe not rare for her—and he didn't want to screw that up. "I wouldn't exactly call knocking over Wayne's stereo a big Superman moment for me."

She grinned, amused, but he got the feeling it was only added to make him feel better. It faded after a moment, and she went for Sincerity Round Two: "I still say you saved me. One way or another. If it wasn't for you, I'd be dead."

Eddie pursed one corner of his mouth, shrugging with his hands in his jacket pockets. "If you ever need someone to scream like a girl and turn up that…truly insipid song, you know where to find me, I guess." He pointed at her, jerking one of the hands out. "Hey—shouldn't you be, uh—"

Chrissy's eyes widened and she reached for the headphones. Then she stopped. "Actually…?" To Eddie's surprise, she tugged the chord out of the Walkman tucked through one of her belt loops. She stuffed the headphones in her pocket (as best she could fit them) and pointed back at him, mouth floundering for a moment. "I've got an idea!"

She took off down the hall, jogging.

"Wait—Chrissy—"

Chrissy made a sudden turn out of sight. Eddie thought he felt his heart stop. Nancy Wheeler was going to cut his head right off of his body. And now he was alone in a hall that seemed altogether too long and too quiet. He could see, in his mind's eye, Chrissy floating again, this time slamming against the already-unstable ceiling tiles of the school. Or maybe a big slimy demon grabbing her tiny frame in a big slimy clawed hand, dragging her away to the freaking hellscape in the basement.

He cursed, loud and many times under his breath, taking off after her.

"Chrissy!"

When he rounded the corner, reeboks squeaking on the floor, Chrissy was much closer than he'd anticipated and standing still. He practically bowled her over; she staggered sideways with a tiny squeak. It would have been cute or something, for sure, but he was too busy trying to regain feeling in his chest to linger on the semantics.

She turned around and he backed up a few steps, breathing hard. It must be nice to be a sporty person, never out of breath at the slightest exertion. Chrissy was looking up at him as if he were freaking her out, or else he was being silly, her massive blue eyes like saucers.

"Sorry—uh—"

She blinked as he stammered, and for a second it looked like she was trying not to laugh again.

Eddie gulped in more air, attempting to seem way less out of breath than he was. It wasn't so much the distance traveled but the insane, sleep-deprived fear he'd find her hovering above the ground when he caught up. Took a lot out of you.

"Maybe we stick together, huh?" Eddie gasped, desperately pushing nonchalance into his town. Were his hands trembling? "Safety in numbers. And…you know, music." He nodded to the Walkman in her pocket. "Promised Wheeler you'd keep it on."

She pointed with both hands to the small, metal door she was standing in front of. "This is my locker."

That didn't solve the music situation. That didn't mean anything, actually, in response to what he'd said or the stunt she'd just pulled. Eddie was half tempted to snatch the headphones from her pocket and jam them over her ears himself. He knew if anyone had tried that with Max, she'd probably bite their fingers right off. He couldn't see Chrissy responding with nearly as much ferocity (only three days and she was breaking down every cheerleader footnote the Munson Doctrine had), but doubtless she wouldn't appreciate the show of force.

Chrissy was jiggling and jangling at the door of her locker, twisting and twisting at the lock. It didn't seem to be doing anything.

Eddie watched her, standing close behind, eyes moving rapidly from her to the padlock. "What do you need in there, anyway?"

"My boom box."

His head jerked backward. "You have a boom box in your locker?"

She glanced back at him distractedly. "Yeah."

Eddie felt his eyebrows knitting. "Mmkay. But…what do you need a boom box for, I mean—"

"This can be backup." Chrissy blew her bangs out of her eyes, scowling at her locker door as it refused to open. "And I can't talk to you while I'm wearing these, so—" She pinched the headset's arch for a second.

Eddie's eyes did another once-over, and he felt a closed-lip smile curling up. Well, at least she wanted to keep talking. Not many metalheads could boast that when it came to sparkly belles of the high school elite. The Munson Doctrine was looking more and more outdated as the minutes wore on.

"It's stuck or something—"

"Okay. Scooch." He put a hand on her shoulder and tugged her gingerly away from the locker, taking her place and fishing around in his vest pocket.

"What are you doing?"

"Just a second," he said, unearthing a slightly-rusty multitool.

"What's that?" Chrissy was hovering at his shoulder, chewing her lower lip.

He turned his head slightly to meet her giant, worried eyes. "Patience." Sticking the multitool between his teeth right in her face, eyebrows bouncing, Eddie turned back to the door and reached for padlock with both hands.

They didn't have Wheeler's big freaking rock, but he never left home without the multitool. It had once been Wayne's, it was a hundred years old probably, a Christmas gift to Eddie, and it had yanked him out of more than one unsavory situation over time. His uncle swore by it. Eddie was beginning to swear by it too. Chrissy watched, pulling her sweater sleeves further over her wrists, as he carefully flipped out one of the mini screwdrivers.

He stuck it up into the lock, pushing slowly. Too big. Wouldn't go all the way through. Eddie removed that one, using the second screwdriver. This one was smaller, and went in deeper. He felt Chrissy lean in closer, full of interest, full of jasmine scents. Eddie blinked, tongue jutting out, concentrating. He moved the screwdriver in and out of the lock, in and out, jiggling slightly. The pins on the inside slid and clicked, aligning randomly the more he moved the screwdriver.

Finally, with a happy little snik, the lock slid open.

Eddie let it drop into his waiting palm, stuffing the multitool back into his pocket. He knocked a fist against the door and it popped toward him. He turned around and leaned back against her locker's neighbor. Might have been wearing a very Grinch-like grin, too.

"I…" Chrissy's mouth hung open slightly, and she let it bloom and gape into a little smile back, huffing out more laughter. "I can't believe you just did that!"

She dove into her locker, shuffling some things around and resurrecting a boom box that had been resting vertically. Chrissy lowered it to the floor, reaching back in for something else. Something else turned out to be a big, heather-gray hoodie. She tugged it on over the sweater, and it seemed to calm her somehow. Her shoulders relaxed.

"Do you…" Chrissy let one hand rest on the little door, tilting her head at him. She appeared to be trying to choose her words carefully. "You don't…do this a lot, do you?"

"Break into girls' lockers?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, all the time. They have the best snacks."

Chrissy stared for a heartbeat, looking doubtful. Then she burst into a new laugh, louder, happier than before.

"Fat-free, whole grain, oh—man, I live for that stuff."

She kept laughing, and he grinned. The bad news was, a bone-cracking cretin was after her. The good news was, she was clearly capable of being brought into high spirits. Max had explained, that night in his trailer, that Vecna only seemed to see the darkness in people. Apparently, Chrissy had darkness of some kind—though he couldn't imagine what that might be, with her candy-coated lifestyle and flawless grades. Regardless, as long as she could still find it in her to laugh, Vecna was that much further away.

"Nah, don't worry—yours is the first." Eddie got comfortable against the locker, stretching his legs out a bit. "Thanks for giving me a chance to live out my safe-cracking fantasies, though."

"No, thank you," Chrissy countered. "I—I never would've thought of that." She bit her lip again. "And—I'm sorry for…I don't really think you break into lockers."

"Good to hear." Eddie furrowed his brow, slipping into more serious tones. "You know, you do the apologizing thing a lot."

She seemed to get a little grayer, then, but the smile hadn't left the edges of her mouth. "I…have kind of been a pain, lately."

Eddie scoffed, sliding down into a sitting position on the floor. "Hey—nobody here is more of a pain than I am. Ask Ms. O'Donnell. I can't even pass the twelfth grade."

Chrissy sat beside him without a thought, stretching the gray hoodie over her drawn-up legs. She didn't respond directly, resting her chin on her knees in a minor display of flexibility. The jasmine smell was muted now, mixed with something else. Something slightly familiar that did not fit her.

"I like the look," he said, glancing at the hoodie. "But, uh—" he dropped his voice to a whisper, head tilting toward her with his eyes on the ceiling, "—don't take this the wrong way. It smells kinda…ripe."

"It's Jason's."

Eddie nodded slowly, eyebrows stretching to his hairline. He inhaled and exhaled even slower, letting out a long breath. "Precious."

Chrissy fiddled with the cuffs of the sleeves, wrinkling them in and out of her palm, gripping them with all ten fingers. The two of them sat there for a few more heartbeats, listening to the other person breathe. After all that laughing and lovely human interaction, the corridors of the school didn't seem quite as menacing. Eddie got out a package of Camels and a lighter from his jeans, turning them over in his hands. He wanted to smoke. It would take the edge off this entire bizarro night. But something about Chrissy Cunningham sitting comfortable beside him at 4 in the morning made the cigarettes feel out of place. She was straight as an arrow. The only reason she'd come anywhere near drugs, near him that day in the woods, was because she'd been freaked out of her mind and wanted it all to go away fast. Smoking smelled bad, looked bad, and wasn't going to win him any buddy points. He stared longingly at the package, willing it to understand.

With an inhale-exhale of her own, Chrissy shoved a few stray hairs behind her ears, snapping into motion. She pulled her boom box up to her feet, switching the accursed white tape from the Walkman to the stereo.

In seconds, Joel's wretched voice crooned out into the hall.

"Uptown girl,

She's been livin' in her uptown world…"

Eddie let out a very loud, very long yell, trying to drown out the music. "No!"

"I bet she's never had a backstreet guy,

I bet her momma never told her why…"

Eddie pretended to go into cardiac arrest. He flopped to the ground like a fish, clutching at his chest and vibrating his entire body as though someone were electrocuting him. He couldn't help it. It was Billy. He was audible kryptonite.

Chrissy's chest was heaving, cackling, arms dropping to rest on the floor beside her legs. Her head was leaning back against the locker. She dodged one of his feet as he flailed, quickly putting both hands out to bat his shoe away from her face. "I have to! Eddie!"

"She's been livin' in her white-bred world,

As long as anyone with hot blood can…"

"Chrissy please," Eddie flipped onto his stomach army-crawling to her side. "Please, end the suffering."

"I can't!"

"Well, pick another favorite song!"

"I can't!"

With an enormous groan, he went back to dying.

"No—stop it! Stop it, stop, this isn't fair—" Chrissy paused between gusts of laughter, trying to catch her breath, hopping and scooting away from his legs as they jerked around.

"And when she wakes up,

And makes up her mind…"

"I can't control what works!"

"Ohhh, my god, it's like listening to paint dry," Eddie moaned, rubbing his eyes. He sat up on his elbows with a jerk to face her. "You like this?"

She was still in the throes of giggling, hands clasped around her knees now, nodding hard.

"You gotta let me show you some real music. When this whole thing is over, I swear—crash course in the finer arts. It's coming." Eddie slid back to her left, pushing himself up to sit beside her again.

"Okay," she sighed, dropping her head until her nose perched on her knees.

Thankfully, blessedly, she reached over to turn it down a little. Eddie sat next to her, lighter and Camels forgotten, legs outstretched to their capacity in front of him. He realized that he'd just offered to show the Queen herself his metal collection. Then, directly after that thunderbolt, he realized that the Queen herself had accepted the offer to be shown his metal collection. That had never happened before. No one—no one outside of Corroded Coffin ever agreed to try his music. Not even if he slipped the suggestion in, all stealthy. Nobody ever fell for it. He wondered if Chrissy had even been paying close attention to the proposition. She was probably still giggle-drunk.

Well. At least he'd gotten her light again.

"Hey—Eddie?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks again. For helping with my locker—I owe you."

Eddie risked nudging her with his elbow. "We're gonna have to start you a tab."

She nudged him back. "That sounds like a fair deal to me."

(Author's Note: Again, detailed comments let me know you want me to continue and you're actually paying attention. Thanks for reading! Next chapter up soon. -Doverstar)