Chapter 3: The Arcade And The Denim-clad Flirt
JEAN Grey loved when the wind entered through the car's open window and hit her face, blowing her locks off her shoulders.
In all honesty, the quietness of the town agreed with her, the structures surrounding her all looked slightly abandoned though. She calmly watched as a few people tended to their shops duties down the road as Jim drove.
As promised, Hopper got off work to take the girls to the Palace Arcade. He was hesitant at first, but seeing now how Downtown was beginning to clear out due to the recently opening mall, he dropped them off relieved.
Jean and Eleven stopped outside the place for a moment, observing the white upside down triangle sign spinning slowly above the place.
Once they entered, Jean looked around the dark near empty place.
Then the redhead -followed by El- pranced towards a machine, colorful lights of the video game swallowing her up.
For some reason, when she had walked in, one of the workers' - an incredibly tall one- breathing hitched when his eyes landed on her. He scampered from in front of a game, wiping his cheetos stained hands on his pants and went to hide behind the counter.
A bemused Jean teared her eyes off him and entered a quarter, courtesy of Hopper, and began playing. It was a game called Road Fighter; a racing game.
Eleven just stood by her side, watching the girl struggling at first then getting used to the arcade game.
"So," Jean began, her eyes glued to the bright screen. "The boy that came over yesterday-"
"Mike." Eleven added.
"Yeah, Mike. You've been talking to him all night, right?" Pressing the 'A' button to skyrocket the speed to 400, Jean, for a fraction of seconds, occasionally glanced to El to see her blush. The couple would usually spend every waking moment chatting with their walkie-talkies.
"Yes." She replied, smiling bashfully. "He's my boyfriend."
The Amnesic girl's lips stretched in smile from how precious El sounded just now.
Almost reaching the final stage of the race, Jean unfortunately lost and ran out of fuel. Once 'Game Over' appeared on the screen, the tall girl turned sideways to glance at Eleven. "You wanna play?"
Eyes widening nervously, El spoke. "... I don't know how."
"I thought you said you come here most of the time." To Jean's knowledge, El was home-schooled for the time, unallowed to go anywhere with a crowd, so this place was perfect for hef. She found it a bit odd, but given the situation of El possessing superhuman abilities, it made sense for her father to be careful.
"I just watch Mike play." Eleven replied.
"And where's the fun in that?" Said Jean, her lips stretching playfully, eyes glinting. "Here." She urged, moving away from the machine and gently pushing El towards it.
Eleven was dubious but complied.
"Just reach the finish line within the stages without running out of time."
"Try not to hit other cars." She advised, watching the tense girl struggling with the controls.
"Oh, you're running out of fuel, hit that car." Pointing at the multi-colored car, Jean said.
"You said not hit cars." El retorted.
"Yeah, but this one's special, it gives you fuel."
How can hitting a car give fuel? El logically thought.
Not paying attention, Eleven's car slipped on the occasionally appearing patches of oil, and the car will began to spin out. It happened so fast that she could not correct it and crashed into the side barriers.
"Not bad for a first try." The redhead cooed, bumping hips with El. "My turn."
After a while, a group of children walked into the arcade that only housed a few of people, Jean noticed. They were five in number, one girl and the rest were boys. They all seemed to be around El's age.
It was Mike and the rest of their party.
Seeing her boyfriend, Eleven rushed to his side by the threshold of the arcade, while the rest entered, walking past her.
"Hey." Mike said, smiling softly as he reached out to hold her hand in his.
"Hi," El greeted back. "Mike, Hop said not tell anyone about how I found her." She said in a haste, worried about the repercussions that Jim had warned her of.
Mouth open, about to speak, Mikael was interrupted by Dustin's loud voice.
"Are you the naked girl that El found in the woods?" The young boy inappropriately asked, smiling in awe at the rather embarrassed redhead.
"Dude," Will softly said, barely in a whisper, poking Dustin's side.
Eleven, after seeing the scene play out glared at Mike, but her harsh stare lacked bite.
"Sorry." Mike pursed his lips, giving his girlfriend an apologetic look. Eleven just continued to stare judgementally at the boy.
"Look, it's fine. They wouldn't tell anybody else. Besides, how are we supposed to help her without the gang?" He argued, El beginning to relent.
Meanwhile, the poor Jean Grey was bombarded by an array of questions from the fourteen year old boys.
"So do you really have superpowers like Eleven?"
"How did you walk around the woods if you weren't wearing any shoes at the time?"
Seeing how visibly uncomfortable the fellow redhead was becoming by the second, Max groaned loudly.
"What?" Lucas asked, the sound his girlfriend made grabbing his attention.
"Shut up, losers." She rebuked both Dustin and Lucas, and the two immediately shut their mouths. And Jean was honestly impressed by her domineering persona.
With a roll of her blue eyes at her friends' lack of delicacy - save for Will- Max Mayfield turned to the tall girl. "That your score?" She asked, looking over the machine behind her, to which Jean nodded in reply.
Max slightly smirked. "Not bad. Come check out Defender, I have the highest score." As she spoke, she held Jean's hand and practically dragged her away from the boys.
"I'm Max, by the way." The redhead introduced. While Max' hair was slightly orange-ish in color Jean's was a deep shade of red, resembling an angry flame.
"Jean."
"Yeah, I know." Max smiled politely. After what Mike had told them, about El finding her, her amnesia and how much she suffered according to her jumbled 'memories'. And while her friends chose to let their curiosity get the better of them, Max tried to distract her with the only way she could.
She hoped she could be friends with Jean, especially since El flat out rejected any friendly gesture from her ever since they met.
"So, uhh, how do I play?" Jean asked.
"It's just a basic side-scrolling shooting game."
"Oh, it sounds easy enough."
"Trust me, it's not." Maxine was quick to reply. "It's set on the surface of an unnamed planet, your goal is to destroy alien invaders."
"She looks... Normal." Lucas commented, his, Dustin and Will's eyes following the two redheads' interactions.
"What do you mean?" Will asked, his eyebrows slightly furrowed.
"I mean, there's no way she's from the lab." Lucas exclaimed, turning his head to look at the boys. Mike had proposed the possibility that somehow she came from the lab as well, or at least experimented by the government somewhere and she escaped. But as he analyzed her demeanor, he gathered that it wasn't the case. "Think about it, El was acting entirely different from her; she didn't know how to speak or deal with people, and she kinda looked weird, too." The boy said, earning agreeing looks from his friends. Eleven's vocabulary was limited when they'd met her, and she behaved cautiously around them at first. With her shaved head and staring eyes, she completely stood out.
Will nodded even though he'd never met El until last year, and by then she was an entirely different person from what his friends had described.
"Also, she's really pretty." Dustin breathed out, his awestruck eyes focusing on Jean.
"Come on, let's see if today's the day you beat my girlfriend's high score on Dig Dug." The african american boy smugly said, bragging that he had such a cool girlfriend.
Meanwhile, Jean began controlling the space ship as it navigated the terrain, using the joystick to elevate the ship.
Watching closely by her side, Max added, "Make sure you protect the astronauts."
Hearing what came out of Maxine's lips, the whole of Jean's being experienced a shiver.
'Ladies and gentlemen of NASA, this...-Help is on the way.'
Jean paused the gameplay once she'd heard a man's voice echoing through her head. Most of the words were powered over by a loud ringing noise that didn't make much sense.
"Wh-what?" She muttered.
"Yeah, the whole planet sort of explodes if they get hurt. It's weird, I know." Max replied, apparently missing the other girl's tense state.
Jean attempted to shrug off her thoughts, pressing one of the five buttons to control the horizontal direction of the ship and its weapons.
Throughout the entirety of the game, Jean's pulse was clear in her ears.
Breathing picked up as flashes took over, the screen becoming hazy. Everything was becoming blurry.
With that, her ship exploded after it was hit by an enemy projectile, causing her to jump back.
"Hey, are you okay?" Max's voice was a mere whisper compared to the man shouting in her head.
'Jean! JEAN!'
"Jean!" Said girl was forcefully dragged out of her daze when Max began to shake her shoulder.
"Is everything okay?" Asked the concerned blue eyed girl.
With a sharp exhale, Jean hesitantly nodded, glancing at Max. "Yeah, yeah. I just need some fresh air." She lied, walking away without waiting for a reaction from the girl.
Jean's heart was pulsing overtime in its ribcage as she roamed the arcade, which felt incredibly stuffy now. She was becoming disoriented.
She heard whispers, somehow bypassing her ears and intruding her head. She felt like she was going mad.
'We haven't played DD in a while.'
Hearing a soft boyish voice, her head turning abruptly to identify the source.
'Yeah, you can do it, Keith. Just go up to her and ask her out.' Jean glanced in a haste to the other side of the room to see a guy sitting at the counter, he was nodding to himself as he stared at her. 'Holy shit, she's looking at me. Abort mission. Abort mission!' His face held a panicked expression.
Jean's perplexity was peaking, her eyes now as wide as saucers. How was he speaking without moving his lips?
Her breathing was now uneven, she moved to the exit in a hurry, unable to stay there any longer.
She left the arcade but not before hearing a boy wearing a hat shouting at a game without his mouth opening. 'Die! DIE! DIE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!'
The light rays that the sun irradiated outside managed to blind her vision for a few moments, motivating her to slightly squint. The voices had dissipated from her head and nerves wrapped around her in its place.
Once she saw a nearby water fountain, she sprinted across the carpark towards it. She needed to cool down. After taking a few sips from the cooler, Jean used some of the water to splash on her face.
Ahead of the red haired female was a video store that was part of the arcade establishment, she saw her reflection in its window. Growing anxiety in Jean's heart felt all too much like electricity when her image became distorted, her eyes glowing in a golden color, streaks of gold resembling veins were splayed out across her face and neck. The sight terrified her.
This wasn't her staring back at her.
Jean felt that all her senses had heightened for this brief moment as she stared at herself?
At that moment, with no warning whatsoever, the glass cracked.
Did she do that?
Whatever was happening was too intense for Jean. She grabbed her neck and shut her eyes. Her heart beating at an abnormal speed and cold sweat took place on her forehead.
Admittedly, after some time of deep breaths, leaning her back against the hood of a dark blue car, she managed to calm down.
'Who the hell is this?'
With a violent jolt, Jean looked back to the source of the deep voice.
The winds paused momentarily as if the wind itself was watching with a held breath as a guy wearing denim on denim, and boots approached her.
"I'm- I'm sorry?" She asked in a whisper, hoping to understand why he was talking to her.
The boy who held car keys in his hand -this car presumably being his- shook his head, his blonde locks of hair slightly moving as he did. "I didn't say anything."
"Oh, I- Just.. Nevermind." With a harsh gulp, Jean mustered the best polite smile that she could before turning to walk away.
"You okay?"
Jean tilted her head back to look at him and she saw that he had approached her. "Yeah, I'm fine."
The guy smirked before resting his palm onto his car hood. He leaned forward, bringing himself closer to Jean and completely invading her space.
Despite the disheveled appearance and baggy rags that she was wearing, Billy bad to admit that this girl was the prettiest he'd encountered in this god forsaken town.
She was tall, with a lovely figure that those oversized clothes failed to hide. She had translucent green eyes, and rosy pink lips. But what had first caught his attention was her firey red hair, silky smooth tresses falling down her shoulders to her back.
"I'm Billy, Billy Hargrove." He smirked, extending his hand to hers toshake, to which she complied.
Billy held her hand for a longer period than Jean would have liked.
"Jean, Jean Grey." She copied his style of self introduction, a lighthearted mockery entangling in her tongue.
But the stun from before still didn't leave her as she looked somewhat anxious.
Billy chuckled, falsely assuming that she was nervous to be in the presence of his handsome self. He wasn't going to lie, the boy enjoyed how girls turned dreamy when seeing his perfect pearly smile, or how his jeans hugged his ass in the most glorious of ways.
"So what's a pretty thing like you doing in a shithole like this?" He was suave and charming as he asked her.
"Hanging out with friends." She replied, her light green eyes traveling to the arcade for a second before she turned them back to the slightly taller male.
"This is a small town, how come I haven't seen you around before?" Billy asked, he definitely would have noticed her in school, crappy clothes and all.
His question took her slightly by surprise, but remembering what Hopper had told her, she answered almost robotically. "I'm just visiting."
"Right.." His gaze was unwavering on her entire figure.
While most girls would swoon with a single look from the blonde boy, Jean felt nothing but awkward, like he was objectifying her.
"Well, Jean, why don't we-"
As he spoke, about to ask her out, Jean took notice that El and the gang had exited the arcade, eyes worriedly darting around, probably looking for her.
"I have to go. Bye." Her interest had slipped upon seeing the group of people exiting the arcade, and she vanished rapidly, leaving Billy vexed by his car.
Billy was flabbergasted as she ran to the group of children, stopping by their side and her expression was significantly lighter. And what took him by surprise is that Max seemed to know her, too.
His step-sister strided towards him after she'd noticed him staring at her and her friends and he muttered something about her being late.
After the events at the beginning of November of last year -Billy being sedated by Max at the Byers' house after he started a chaotic fight- Max and Billy's relationship dynamic changed.
They weren't crazy close or anything, but they were on the right path. With Billy no longer lashing out on the young girl or attempting to treat her in a controlling, domineering fashion, and she, no longer timidly taking his crap anymore.
But underneath all of that, the two cared deeply for each other. Not that they would admit it.
"That your friend?" The Hargrove boy asked, nodding towards the smiling tall girl who stood beside another girl who was about Max's age.
Following his gaze from across the parking lot, Max found that he was leering at Jean. "Why do you care?" She sassily rebutted after looking back at him to see his annoyed expression. She in fact knew the reason he was interested in the beautiful redhead, the same why he was with all of the girls he hung out with.
"I don't." Gritting his teeth, jaw locked, Billy rounded the car to get into the driver's seat.
"Okay." Max rolled her eyes, standing by the passenger door.
"Get in, you're late as it is." Billy said in a bored voice.
On the way home, Jean was absolutely quiet, contemplating the events of earlier in her head.
After they'd arrived to the cabin and entering the bedroom, El, who'd kept glancing at the restless Jean, finally broke the silence. "Are you.. okay?"
"Yeah, sure." Jean cooed, while her head was bombarded with thoughts and concerns. A lot had went down in the span of an afternoon.
The perplexed girl kept looking in Eleven's direction, contemplating on whether or not to tell her. The younger girl had been nothing but kind to her, and she really did want to help her, and God knew she needed all the help she could get. "Actually.." She trailed, grabbing El's attention. "Earlier, I did something."
"Did what?"
"I think I- I think that I was the one who shattered that glass window." She confessed. Earlier when they were about to leave, the group of kids saw an employee flabbergasted as the glass broke for no reason, but eventually shrugged it off as the summer heat. Which didn't make sense in the slightest.
"How?" Asked El, dark brows lifting slightly.
"Y'know, like.. With my mind.."
God I sound crazy.
A bright grin soon took over Eleven's face before she ran to the redhead to give her a hug. "...I knew you could do it."
Jean, slightly taken aback by El's affectionate action, gently patted her back, giggling as she did. It was obvious as daylight that the shorter girl longed to connect with Jean over this particular thing. "Let's not get carried away, I'm still not sure."
With Eleven's large smile on her face, Jean knew she didn't even listen to her.
"Hey, El," The green eyed girl began speaking once again after the two settled on the bed. "I heard voices, too." She confessed.
"Voices? What kind of...voices?" Confusion marrying her features, El hesitantly asked.
"Like, voices inside people's minds. I could hear them thinking or something." She explained, becoming distraught as she tried to put it into words. "It was...intense."
"Intense?" El repeated, not quite getting what she'd meant.
"Yeah, like way too much to handle."
"I can help." After softly inhaling, her shoulders rising as she did, El soothed.
"How?" Jean incredulously asked.
"Practice." El smiled.
Jean returned the grin, but hers only showed concern.
She didn't care to mention the visions that had intruded her mind prior to the thought reading incident. Ones she'd had about astronauts and spaceships. It was like trying to remember a dream, the more she tried the more vague it all became. Maybe that's what it all was; an old dream, after all how would she have gone to space.
Jean also chose to not speak or think of the encounter she had at the car park in her state of panic earlier. She could still vividly remember how her skin had felt under the handsome guy's strong and confident gaze.
The redhead shook her head, attempting to clear all thoughts of the boy, and she successfully did.
Because she had bigger things to worry about.
A/N:-
I hope you guys are enjoying the story so far!
These are the links to the story's trailers: Enjoy!
https/youtu.be/K9ouc1PhLEM
https/youtu.be/K9ouc1PhLEM