The woman got out and popped her seat forward. Billy was, astoundingly, still out of it so Steve was left to his own devices while she tried to wriggle him free.

He squeezed himself out of the passenger's side and used the car for support as he stood, stretched, and surveyed his surroundings. They were parked in front of a cabin in a small space that could barely be described as a 'clearing'. Trees and shrubs ran right up to the side walls of the tiny bungalow and it didn't look like the place had been tended to in years. Possibly decades.

Steve's mind was flooded with inquiry. How far out of town were they? Why was he taken here? Who's cabin was this and was he about to get iced? Why not restrain him if she was planning on killing him… wouldn't she be worried about him trying to fight her off or run?

"Hey, mop head!"

He spun around and saw the woman struggling with Billy slung over her shoulders. Her knees were doubled under his weight as she kicked the car door closed. "Are you gonna give me a hand or just stand there?"

Steve opened his mouth to respond but shook his head, confused and partially offended.

"'Mop head'?"

Nevertheless he ran to her side, unsure of why he chose to help her but feeling like he was supposed to anyways. He slipped a hand around Billy's waist and nearly gasped. His denim jacket road up with his arms over their shoulders and the patch of skin revealed was smooth to the touch, silky even, but taut. Steve tried to carry most of Billy's weight while his mysterious captor straightened and muttered a tight, "thanks".

Once inside, she turned on a light switch and Steve struggled to adjust to the dim campfire-coloured lighting.

There was a single bulb in the center of the room that cast a series of ominous shadows on the walls, but otherwise the inside looked nothing like how he imagined. He had pictured every inch covered in cobwebs and mountains of dust, but instead he found the place… lived in.

There was a couch and two arm chairs facing one another with a tiny, oval coffee table between them which held a dog-eared paperback and an empty coffee mug. The kitchen was tidy except for a small pile of dishes in the sink—nothing rancid, just untended to. A large queen-size bed with a weathered purple comforter and two white pillows was somewhat made in the opposite corner. There was a shelf of board games collected through the years, a tiny stack of VHS tapes with no television in sight, a half-set of Encyclopaedias, and various other knickknacks that made Steve wonder…

"Do you live here?"

She answered with an indifferent 'mhmm' and pointed to one of the couches. "You can set him down there. He should come out of it soon enough... Water?"

Steve obediently slithered out from under Billy's arm, setting him down gently on the sofa. She returned after a moment with a damp rag which she folded and placed atop his forehead. He gave another moan but his eyes still hadn't fluttered open. Something was wrong. However long ago it was, he was just kicking Steve's ass… why was he so out of it?

"What happened to him?" Steve questioned.

"Jesus, you're full of questions."

"Maybe I wouldn't be if some of them were answered."

She heaved a sigh but gave in. "Fine. Over here, then."

Once again, he did as he was told. Steve followed the woman to the bedroom area of the cottage, where she provided him a sealed bottle of water and a cool dishtowel filled with ice cubes for his eye. He accepted both quietly and plunked down on the foot of her bed while she curled her legs beneath her by the pillows.

"His sister drugged him," she explained curtly. "I don't know with what, but after those kids handed his ass to him on a silver platter she had a syringe and she stabbed him in the neck. He fell like a sack of rocks and one of the kids—the one with the curly hair and a bit of a lisp—"

"Dustin," Steve interrupted, his brow furrowed. "His name is Dustin."

"Fine. Dustin told me not to worry and that he'd wake up in a few hours."

Steve nodded. It wasn't like he needed an explanation as to why a bunch of preteens were running around with syringes—the last he saw of the Byers' house they were littered everywhere like candy bar wrappings on November first.

He cast a wary glance over to Billy who was starting to move his legs more. It wouldn't be long until he was back on his feet, fists swinging.

The woman gave him a look. "Out of questions already?"

"No," Steve brought his attention back to her. He had minutes, at most, to find out everything. "Who are you?"

"Seriously?"

He took a sip of water, forcing himself to maintain eye contact. Her eyes had narrowed with disgust and scorn. He immediately regretted asking, but he had a right to know. She did technically kidnap him, after all.

"We were in the same class every year until junior high."

It was Steve's turn to narrow his eyes. "I don't think so."

She leaned forward and cracked her knuckles. "Let me jog your memory. In the first grade you and your friends used to chase me and my friends around the playground. Sometimes you threw things at us, like pebbles, dirt clumps, or snowballs… but one day… you found a frog."

Steve raced to find the memory she was talking about.

"Jiminy," he snapped his fingers. "We called him Jiminy. Todd Posey ended up taking him home and kept him as a pet."

The woman nodded. "Yes. Do you remember how the tale of Todd and his Frog turned out?"

Steve winced. It was one of those playground urban legends that everybody heard about by the next recess—even the older kids. Todd had been running around trying to scare the girls with the slimy amphibian and most of them screamed and ran away but there had been one girl who didn't run, a girl who thought Jiminy was cool and wanted to hold him. Todd tried to bribe her and said she'd have to give him a kiss to have a turn with his frog, to which the girl defiantly proclaimed she'd rather kiss the frog than him, and then proceeded to do just that.

His eyes cleared with recognition. "Darla… Darla Hastings!"

She nodded once. "Tis I."

"I thought you moved away after fifth grade?"

"I did, for a couple years. My Parents split up, mom moved to California to live with her sister and my cousins, and she wanted me to go with her. It was fine at first but… well long story short, that arrangement didn't exactly work out... Came back as a Junior to live with my dad but you know how it goes. New family, new set of kids… There wasn't exactly room for me there so he ended up fixing this place up for me. He used to use it with his buddies on weekend hunting trips but he hasn't been out since he started wearing a suit to work and coaching his step son's little league team every Tuesday and Saturday."

"California?" Steve's brows shot up again. "Is that how you…"

Darla shook her head, sending her dark waves spiralling over her shoulders. "No. I only met Billy here in in Hawkins. What can I say… we connected."

Steve rolled his eyes so far back in his head that it physically hurt. "Right."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He chose to ignore the prompt and instead leaned forward, suddenly fascinated with the label on the bottle of water.

"How did I not know you were back?"

"Well, we don't exactly run in the same social circle."

"Yeah, but still."

She exhaled loudly through her nose. "I guess 'King Steve' was too busy ruling his empire to notice the rumblings of the peasant world then."

The sudden urge to punch the box spring mattress welled within him. "Alright, I'm sorry for not remembering you right away but cut the attitude. I'm not going to apologize for being popular. It's not like I asked for it, I just… you grow up, things happen, and people fall into their architypes, okay? That's high school. That's just how it works."

"It actually doesn't have to work like that. It only 'works like that' if you make it."

"Whatever. Don't blame me because you wound up on the lower end of the social food chain, okay? I didn't do that. I've never seen you at one of the games, or at any parties and let me guess, you're not part of any clubs or anything are you?"

Darla looked at him for what felt like an eternity before the ghost of a smile cracked on her lips.

"Wait… do you think I'm jealous of you? Because of your 'popularity'?"

He opened his mouth to respond but held back.

She laughed. "Now that's sad."

"Excuse me?"

Darla calmed down and met his gaze steadily. She leaned forward and crawled to the end of the bed slowly, every move looking calculated like a tigress on the hunt. Her gazelle sat still, oddly terrified to look away. He didn't want to miss the attack. She paused merely inches away from his face and Steve's pulse quickened. It was too reminiscent of his most recent confrontation which didn't exactly go too well.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I have no regrets about my 'social standing' or whatever you want to call it."

His breath caught in his throat. "Then what do you regret?"

As if in response, Billy groaned from across the room and lifted his hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. He coughed and leaned forward with his head between his knees, the cold rag falling to the floor.

The tension dissipated almost as quickly as it appeared, replaced with a new sense of urgency.

Steve spun back to Darla. "Why did you bring me here?"

Darla pushed herself off the bed and past Steve without a glance.

"I brought you both here because you have some things to work out, and fighting about it in front of kids in a stranger's front yard is not the place to be doing it."

She retrieved a second bottle of water from the tiny fridge in the kitchen and knelt down in front of Billy. She ran her fingers through his hair and whispered something to him as his eyes began to flutter. Her gaze drifted over her shoulder to Steve—still perched on the foot of her bed with hesitation and confusion evident on his face.

She offered him a sly smile. "Plus… I wanted to have a little fun."