Chrissy's blouse felt too small.

She was pulling at it, pulling it down, straightening it out. Trying to tug the sleeves down further past her shoulders. Trying to make sure the sides didn't hug her hips. Hitching up the waist of her pants. She wasn't cold—it was cold here, in this version of town, in this version of the woods. Actually, it was almost freezing. Like a rainy autumn night wound up to a thousand. It stunk, and it was filthy, and it was scary. They might not make it to Skull Rock at all, the last of their senses used up on this awful, disgusting not-Hawkins.

And she was worried about her clothes.

Chrissy swatted one of those weird white flakes out of her face. There was mud streaking cotton that had been stainless this morning. She felt flecks of it drying and itching on her right arm and the bridge of her nose. Her makeup was definitely running. Well, it had probably been running since they'd fallen in.

She wasn't cold. Her blouse was too small.

Who was going to see it? The monster back at school? The bats? Just Eddie. Eddie would see it. And the mud, and her makeup, and she couldn't get herself to stop tugging and swiping and blinking. Not a nervous tick or anything. Just—important. Top priority. For now. While nothing was attacking them. While everything was quiet except for the thunder. And whatever animal was making that crooning noise somewhere off to the far east.

It was a familiar worry. Her brain was on autopilot. That was why she was doing it. Maybe she should stop.

She had to look at something other than the wrinkles. Chrissy's eyes slid in front of her, over the gross mesh on the ground and that branch and those vines. Snagged on Eddie's feet, a little way ahead. His reeboks were exactly as smudged and wet as hers. We have the same shoes. Do my feet look that big?

He was going kind of slow. No—wow—he was actually limping. And he was doing it quick, either because he was sharing that uncomfortable urge to become a blur so the creatures wouldn't catch them, or because he didn't want her to notice. It was hard to miss. But she got the feeling she had missed it this whole time, until just now. Maybe he'd been limping since before the bats. What kind of person was she, that she hadn't seen him hobbling this far into their hike?

Eddie didn't seem too disturbed by it. He wasn't even making any noises, or breathing different. He just kept heaving his bad ankle, barely bending that foot when he walked. It was made more animated by how long his legs were. That was a lot to drag around.

She wanted to say something. Something like how's your leg, but she'd already said that back at the rocks. And does it hurt was so stupid. Instead, she said, "Do you want to stop?"

He turned slightly as they went. "What?"

She kept her attention on his foot, hugging herself.

Eddie followed her gaze. "Oh, uh—" He made a face, scrunched, screwing up his eyes. Shrugged his palms more than his shoulders. Made some weird noise that was almost the word no. "Doesn't hurt."

"It doesn't?" It came on a breath of disbelief. She watched that breath puff out aggressively in a snack-size cloud, hard to track in the lack of light.

"C'mon, it barely got me."

"Eddie. You're limping."

"I can't even feel it, look." He paused and shook that leg around like it had fallen asleep. His whole face was tight and working hard. Maybe he was trying to be funny again, but since he was obviously in pain it fell flat.

"You're…really bad at lying," she told him, scoffing, trying to smile and not sound surprised. That would be mean. She'd been mean enough. She'd thought he'd be mean, and he was so not. She didn't think he'd be the kind of guy to playfight with the freshmen, or the kind of guy to try to share his Trail Mix, or the kind of guy who liked fantasy in a—super devoted way. And to her mortification and endless guilt, she'd made those beliefs clear. Out loud. Not on purpose, but…

She'd been mean enough.

Eddie stopped jiggling his leg, blinking at her. Had she hurt his feelings? How could being bad at lying be an insult? Then he said, "Yeah alright, you got me."

He shuffled to the nearest tree and sat down with a thwumph, wet leaves flattening beneath him. The ends of his hair were just as wet, and there were smudges on his jaw and his knuckles. His club shirt was totally ruined. Did he know there was a leaf in his hair? He didn't care. Meanwhile she thought she could feel every piece of dirt that had streaked itself across her person.

Eddie stuck his thumbs in between the severed hoodie sleeve and his skin, wedging the makeshift wrapping up, up, up his leg. He bared his teeth as it was yanked over the length of the wound. He cursed. "That's infected, right?"

Chrissy crouched, ginger, down on the forest floor in front of him, forcing herself to look at the gashes in his ankle. It wasn't infected—she'd seen her brother tumble on the track and rip open his knee, get stitches. That was infected. But even if this wasn't, a whole ball of gag me rose up in her chest at the sight of it. Her facial reaction made her eyes squint, until it was all a soft blurry mass.

"Oh—ew. Ew, ew, ew, ew—"

Eddie laughed a little, just a snort really, a tiny grin coming on.

Even as she was ewing under her breath, she was untying the sleeve from his calf and flinging it to the side. Unwrapping the rest of Jason's sweater from around her waist, Chrissy fumbled with it in her hands to find the remaining sleeve. She missed wearing it. She missed it being in one piece. It was so much bigger than she was. It hid every ounce of her, soft and warm. Jason's leftover cologne did nothing for her anymore—those first butterfly days seemed so long ago now—but the size and the feel of it had been comfort enough.

Without speaking, without being told, Eddie produced his pocketknife-thing, the thing with all the little devices on it. It was rusty and foreign. She kind of wanted one. Did they make them in pink?

Chrissy pursed her lips and focused on cutting the second sleeve off, avoiding the sight of Eddie's ankle.

"Sorry about the hoodie," Eddie said, words coming out in thuds.

She glanced at him out of lowered lids. "Really?"

A big curly devil grin. "No."

They chortled together, and Chrissy sliced the last of the sleeve off with a grand push of the little blade. She'd never held a knife this many times in one day, except when she helped her mom chop stuff for salad. It was nerve-wracking, especially since her hands kept shaking these days—but kind of invigorating, too. Plus the tiny knife was cute, rust and all.

As she was re-wrapping his ankle, she said, "It's not infected, but—just don't…touch it. Okay?"

Eddie nodded, following her with his huge dark eyes as they stood up. Chrissy was used to people staring at her. All the cheerleaders were. Others gawked partially because of hormones, partially because of the pecking order—and partially because those uniforms were bright. She was a mess now. No uniform, covered in dirty and the smell of hours-old sweat, the camouflage of a high school social ladder long gone. There was no reason to be stared at.

But he went on watching her as they picked their way through the woods. She wasn't sure if it was because everything else was nasty to look at, or because the blouse was too small and it was probably so obvious. Too many wrinkles. She never should have ripped up Jason's jacket.

He seemed to think he was being discreet. He'd wait like ten full seconds and then glance at her again. Once. Step over a vine, walk a few more paces. Twice. Look to the left, falter at a monster's call out there somewhere. Three times. Around the fourth head turn, the fourth time his hair swished in the corner of her eye, Chrissy looked up and let him know she noticed.

"What?" she asked, mouth twitching. Pretending it didn't bother her.

Eddie pulled his own mouth down, ostrich-style. "Nothin'."

A bit more walking. Fifth glance. Lingering.

"What?" Chrissy repeated, almost puffing an annoyed half-laugh now. Trying to ease a familiar, weird tension brewing between her and her audience.

"Uh, just—" Eddie stopped walking. He let out a short, nasally breath. His hands went limp at his sides. "You alright, cuz you look…"

Chrissy waited a beat for him to finish. Bad? Tired? Frazzled? Slower? The possibilities were endless. Frazzled was a favorite of Mom's. It encompassed bad hair, ill fits, and smudged makeup all at once. One of the most helpful adjectives in the English language when you got home from school, or sometimes when you were heading to the movies on the weekends. A word that propelled you toward that blessed hall mirror.

Her arms wound tighter around her middle. Her eyebrows came together, sharp and fast, urging the headbanger to continue without a verbal cue.

"…kinda freaked," he said, and where her brows came down, his just lifted higher and higher.

Kinda freaked? They were stuck in a place that definitely should not have existed. Bats tried to eat their faces. A demo-thing clawed his ankle to shreds.

She pursed her lips and took a few steps onward, willing him to take the lead again. Keep moving. Make it out of here as fast as possible. "I just…I guess I'm…still having sort of a hard time believing any of this is real." Then she hesitated, looking steadily back at him. "And you look freaked too."

"Yeah, but—" Eddie held back the dripping branches of a bush for her, the two of them now weaving through some heavier underbrush. "—I mean, which one of us is on Vecna's hit list?"

Chrissy tilted her head in agreement, facing forward again. She'd been doing her best not to remember Vecna. Not to think of her dad with his face all sewn up, or her mom with her body half-rotted, following her around. Or whatever that whole thing had been. A hallucination. A monster's hypnotism trick on her or something. Vecna. Of course, every time she'd closed her eyes, she'd seen it. The only sufficient rest she'd gotten had been here, of all places. In the Upside Down. Not curled up under constantly-washed-and-aired sheets at home, or nestled in her sleeping bag at Nicole Ferguson's house on a Friday night, or nodding off at the movies beside Jason, unable to get rid of the nightmares after dark. None of those places gave her any peace. But here, in the crazy scary Alien dimension, she'd managed to sleep and keep on sleeping.

"Hey."

She paused, resting a hand against a tree to help balance as she navigated a particularly complicated web of vines ahead of them. Chrissy glanced at Eddie again, drawn by the extra intense way he was looking at her. That wasn't the normal kind of staring. The cheerleader stare. It looked too warm. Weeks ago, she'd never have thought the big bad Hawkins High Freak could be capable of that kind of expression. The crazy kid in middle school with the shaved head, maybe. Not the Eddie Munson her friends gossiped about. The one they all relished being afraid of or grossed out by.

Up-close, he was disarming. But this week he was like a totally-removed person from the boy who climbed cafeteria tables, the guy who made creepy hand gestures at the teachers from the back of the class. (Those were fake, she was sure now. His own weird little joke.) This week's Eddie was actually probably the real Eddie Munson, not the demonic wayward on the bottom of everyone's M.A.S.H. preference at a sleepover. So now it was disarming in a nice way.

He had eyes like a baby cow. Lashes most girls on the squad would stab you for with a rusty kitchen fork.

"You can't still…" Eddie pointed to his own temple, twiddling all the fingers on that hand. "Feel him. Can you?"

Max Mayfield had said she could feel Vecna, and Chrissy knew what she meant. He was there in the back of her skull, little images and tremors, little echoes of the things he'd already made her see. Some freaky psychic thing. None of it made sense to her—but if she'd ever relied on anything in life, it was her own feelings. They'd always been strong about everything, always at a ten, and she didn't understand people who seemed to have a handle on them. She could cover them up just fine, but when it came to disregarding them, to not following them—she was worse than a novice at that; she was a virgin at it. And she felt Vecna. She felt him with every negative thought that came her way. Couldn't get rid of it.

But, again—not in this place. Not so much. Hardly at all, actually.

Chrissy shook her head, slow. "Not here. I don't know, um, it—it sounds weird. I mean—yeah, he—he's there, but—it's like, faint. Like he's...farther away."

Eddie nodded, head and eyes still on her even as his body moved around the vines and the trees. "Okay." His voice was soft, like he was getting lost in thought. Or trying to reassure her. "Well, that's one good thing about this…crap heap. Guess he's too busy living here to find you."

"Yeah."

He was worried about her. Eddie wasn't focusing on how weird she was being or the dirt on her shoes or the blouse or any of that. The warm look infected her, spread through her chest and made her slouch a little. Her shoulders suddenly felt achy. Her back had been all tight. This was better.

Then she found herself saying, totally and horribly out-loud, "If it is a good thing."

Eddie made an exaggeratedly baffled face, scrunching at her distractedly, then turned to scan the trees in the distance. Making sure they were going the right way. It could have been the not-actually-a-serial-killer thing he had going for him, or that sweet way he kept teasing her or looking at her like a normal, sane person would. Or because they were totally friends now. Bizarre. Fun. She didn't think of why she was talking like this, or about this, especially right now, but talking she was. She kept going, for the same reason she'd slouched. It was like breathing and moving were easier while she was doing it.

"I've been thinking," said Chrissy, coughing without any hope of turning it dainty. "If…if I was the bait, and not Max, um. Maybe it would be…better."

She waited for him to roll his eyes, or pull the lid off a barrel of oppositions. Or talk at all. He didn't; he just slowed down so they were walking a little more side0-by-side. And he did the one-two-five glances thing at her again, so she knew he was listening.

"I don't know. It's like—" Chrissy slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans, as deep as she could with Jason's hoodie fastened around his waist, eyes tracing vine after vine as they stepped over or around them. "I'm so…tired, you know? Like—with…Vecna—" it was so strange saying that made-up name aloud, "—and the monsters and…all this, I just think of my—my life, and I'm just sick of it."

There was a crunch, squish, crunch, crunch, as they walked and she took a breath. It felt like she'd been talking in slow motion. Eddie still wasn't interrupting. She sniffled, wet and feeling the cold again. Not crying. Weirdly not crying. These days she thought she was all dried out—but there was always something new to cry about, some new well to tap into.

"And I—I don't mean the, like, 'curse' or whatever, it's not that," she hastened. "The visions were bad, yeah—" She stopped. She shouldn't whine. Not everything was horrible. It wasn't. It wasn't. But some things were tough. Some things felt like they'd never change, and not in the after-school special way. Chrissy swallowed.

"Hey, listen," Eddie began, and now he was edging around a small-ish boulder, not looking at her much. "Far be it from me to pass on a message from the bright side, but uh—small-town charm, super popular? Rich family? Your pick of colleges after graduation, and hey, graduation, singular?" He tossed a smile that looked way too thin at her over a shoulder. "Can't be all bad, I mean. You are the Queen—"

"No—" Chrissy stopped, dirt and sloppy forest detritus piling at the toes of her shoes. Something in her chest felt pressed in on, boiling. She felt it pinching her expression. "No, I—I have all that stuff, yes, but—it's not like that, it's—"

Eddie stopped too, near a spindly tree trunk, turning all the way around to face her. He lifted his hands, which looked odd because they were tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket. "Woah, hey, I wasn't—"

"It's not like that," Chrissy repeated.

She wasn't angry, not exactly. A little desperate, maybe. To be understood. She didn't often complain, not even to Miss Kelly. Not even to her brother, and they used to share everything with each other. But now that she was saying it, out here in the Upside Down where nobody but Eddie could hear it and it would hopefully never have to be thought of again—no way was it getting misinterpreted.

There was something in Eddie's tone that had started to sound like it did when he was bellowing from tabletops. On any regular old boring school day. And that made the pressed, boiling sensation stronger. He couldn't think of her that way too. What was he always saying? Forced conformity, or hierarchies or something, some other loud, loud tirade. She didn't used to care or pay more attention than anyone else did. Actually, she didn't even think she could fully define forced conformity on a blackboard to any teacher's satisfaction. But she hated how it sounded, hated how he said it, and she didn't like the way it felt to suspect he might lop her in with those targets. With the hierarchies. The Queen suddenly didn't seem all that sweet of a thing to be called. The teasing had felt more playful before.

"It's all b—it's all fake," Chrissy stammered. "It's all fake anyway, it—I mean, the perfect house, the perfect—perfect body, the perfect life? All that crap people tell you is important? Like—look at this place!"

She whipped around, arms out, gesturing to the general awfulness. Thunder snarled over them, punctuating for her. Why didn't it ever rain here, anyway? Were her arms jiggling when she threw them around like that? Thank goodness, he wasn't watching her arms; he was watching her eyes, then her mouth.

"We're in Hell! And every day of my life was supposed to be so perfect. It's not perfect, okay? It was already so not perfect."

Eddie was staring at her, probably in the same way people stared at him when he made those big cafeteria speeches. Or walked down the hall. Or breathed, really. It wasn't like any of them could help it. High school was boring and everything about Eddie Munson was scary and unfamiliar, but you couldn't say it wasn't interesting. Plus, what girl from freshman year onward wasn't coveting that hair?

None of that mattered. At least he was listening again. Cow eyes.

"And I'm such an idiot, I thought—" She sucked in a breath, realizing that while saying all this was cathartic to a point, it was also threatening to make her cry, and she was definitely not going to cry in front of the town triple-senior. "—I thought it couldn't get any worse, like—home's been just…heinous, and school, and now…with Jason freaking out—"

Eddie let her gather herself, twisting some of those giant gaudy rings around and around his fingers. Maybe he was just waiting for her to be done. After everything that had happened, she might actually be allowed a little bit of a meltdown. She'd made it this far without one, anyway. Grandfather clock and all. If she was going to let loose, this would be the place to do it. Mom couldn't possibly tell her not to raise her voice from another freaking dimension. And if she was going to relinquish her cool, at least it was in front of him. Someone who let her breathe. So far.

"It's an act. Okay?" Chrissy put a hand to her stomach, pressing it in, letting the other hand clap to her bangs, making sure they were still straight. Dropped them both down to her sides, a kind of full-body shrug. Do not cry. Things were crazy enough. "Sometimes…I want it all to stop."

He kept his back to the tree, still messing with the rings. Just watching her. No, it wasn't like he was waiting for her to finish. And when she did let the silence linger, letting him know there wasn't another outburst coming on, he just cussed. Once. Bluntly.

She crossed her arms hard over her chest, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Looking between his eyeballs. Trying to tamp down the way her stomach growled and her legs wanted to shake. No fear of crying; that was gone now. She hadn't released some of this in a long time; her body was twirling and rolling with it like creamer poured into coffee. More of it wanted out.

Eddie licked his lips. One corner of his mouth was quirking up, ever so slightly. "Look, I guess I'm uh—guess I'm a little biased, alright, I just figured…you were predestined to have it made." He spread his palms. "Munson Doctrine."

Chrissy wasn't super sure what to say to that. Or how to explain away the past two minutes of total wig-out now that her heart rate was winding down. Instead, she huffed out, "Well—it's flawed."

"So it would seem," he agreed, looking her up and down. Tongue obviously rolling around in a now-closed mouth. What was that? Was he impressed? He really was a weird guy.

"Okay," she said, because it was all she could think of.

"Okay."

They kept moving, Eddie hiking up his jeans and grimacing at the friction against his demodog scratch. Chrissy let her arms swing at her sides, limp and tired. Maybe some of the creatures had been closing in, or warbling to each other through the woods, but they wouldn't have known. She'd been talking right over most of it, for sure.

Then Eddie said, "So uh, can I ask you something?"

Chrissy prepared herself for some ribbing. He'd probably throw his whole body into it, big hands and wide mouth and everything. He seemed to take her silence, her expectant sideways glance, for consent.

"For the sake of amending the laws of the universe. Just so I can get all this down. Why keep up the pretense?"

She turned her whole head to look up at him, confused. His shoulder nudged hers as they walked. When had he started walking so close? The uneven slap of his shoes against the earth and the leather slipping against her arm every now and then was nice. Grounded her. After all those big, dramatic feelings came dribbling out, having someone just walking casually next to her calmed her down.

"Seriously," Eddie went on, head swiveling to examine the terrain as they crossed into a little clearing. "If it's all crap anyway? I say drop the act." His hands were in his pockets again. So nonchalant. He made it sound simple.

Chrissy's eyebrows knit, scowling into the middle distance at this. Feeling her heart twist. "It doesn't work that way."

"Bull."

"No, it—it doesn't," she insisted. "And—even if I did, I—straight A's, cheer captain…people expect so much." She shook her head at the dead leaves beneath them. "I can't disappoint them."

Chrissy could feel him staring her down again, but this time she pointedly looked the other way.

"So…heavy is the head that wears the crown, huh?"

She didn't know why she fought the smile. She let it come, daring to meet his gaze. It was warm again. "Kinda."

"Right." Eddie clicked his tongue, mulling that over. After a few more seconds of the crunch, squish, he said, "Gotta be straight with you here—being Vecna food isn't an option."

"Well," Chrissy scoffed, "dropping the act isn't an option, either. Not…for me."

Eddie didn't respond to that. Far off, behind them, up high, there was the screech of a bat. They both turned to make sure they weren't being hunted. Nothing. Just another freaky sound from a freaky, dark, sludgy world. The walking got more rhythmic, more automatic. Avoiding vines, helping each other over huge broken trees, pushing as quietly as they could through slimy thickets. His shoulder kept bumping hers, and it kept feeling nice.

"I'm kind of…" Chrissy huffed, half-coughing, half exasperated with herself. But it was too good to have someone to talk to like this. It was too good knowing Jason and Mandy and Miss Kelly and her mother couldn't hear it. Couldn't hear the things she was always telling herself not to think. "…jealous, I guess."

Eddie cocked his head.

"Of you," she added, smiling when he made a huge show of looking shocked.

"Come on."

"Yeah, you—you can do whatever you want." Chrissy's smile got bigger, her mouth open with it, not quite laughing. "You're always yourself. I mean—it's a weird 'yourself', but—"

She added it to lighten the mood, maybe sweep away some of that drama, and it worked. Eddie's mouth dropped open, but it was riding on a grin, just like hers. A little bubbly, throaty laugh came with it. He mixed it with a faux-offended sound, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline. It was all really cute.

"Hey, if it's any consolation," Eddie chortled, coming down, letting his tone even out into more genuine, serious thunks, "the whole be yourself thing only works if you like what you get, and uh—there are some little items I'm finding out about myself here that are…not exactly rewarding."

Chrissy wrinkled her nose. At this moment, she was having trouble coming up with anything about the nerd beside her that could be worthy of self-deprecation. Not after he'd put up with her spiel like that. "Like what?"

"Didn't notice?" Eddie wasn't meeting her gaze now, voice light. Clipped. "C'mon, even in the trailer. I run. When the going gets tough, I just—" He snapped his fingers. "Run away."

Chrissy wanted to say so what? She couldn't see any way of letting it out without sounding like a complete jerk. But she felt it, tense and quick. So what if he ran away? In the trailer, who wouldn't have wanted to run? Or here? It was crazy not to. Just instinct. But the way Eddie was suddenly quiet, the way he allowed his hair to hide his eyes, she could tell it was really weighing on him. It mattered to him. She'd have to take it seriously. And besides—she got the feeling anything she might think to argue with wouldn't be heard. Wouldn't do much.

So after wracking her brain for a minute, swatting another of the white flakes away, she went with the second thing that came to her head. Right after so what?

Slowly, eyes flicking from the back patch on his vest to the nearest tree, she said, "You know—for what it's worth—I like you."

It sounded juvenile. It sounded pretty dumb, actually, when it was out in the air like that. Chrissy was just about to bowl over it with something else, change the subject, summon another earthquake with a special cheer chant, maybe. But Eddie turned to smile at her, lids hooded, and she decided it didn't matter that much after all.

"Yeah?" he checked, lips quirking again like they had right after her teary confession. The surprised, impressed quirk. With extra warmth in it now.

Chrissy grinned back. "Yeah."

"Well." He cursed, swallowed, making another ostrich face. Something pleased and kind of bashful in the way his shoulders moved. It made him look younger. "I like you too, Cunningham."

The restriction in her chest fully eased up. All the specks floating everywhere, all the rotting scents, they really didn't faze her. Now, for whatever reason, even the air seemed better in the Upside Down.