A/N: Hi, hello, how are we?
I just could not leave well enough alone and take a break, so here we are. Enjoy Stranger Things season 2 (feat: Mads and the Atomic Punks)!
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. As the author, I do not always agree with the actions the characters take. The MC has Haphephobia. The depiction of such in the story may not be entirely accurate and I do not claim it to be so. The depictions of anxiety and OCD are based on my own personal experience and do not apply to the illnesses as a whole. As always there is a violence and gore warning. There will be mentions of various sensitive topics which are updated in the tags, read at your own risk.
Summary: School's out for summer, but interdimentional shenanigans never pause for anyone. And new neighbors are ready to stir up trouble.
June 17, 1984
Soft, buttery sunshine filtered through the white gauzy curtains, glistening against the rose-pink walls littered with teenage decorations of pictures, band posters, and anything a teenager would find fun and interesting. A warm breeze fluttered against those curtains, rustling the pictures and posters in an imitation of rustling leaves. It brushed gently over the face of the girl lying on the large, white-painted, wicker-framed bed.
Seasons and a birthday came and went, but one constant thing remained – the voice of Mads' tormentor in her head. Even now – on this perfect summer day – 001 plagued her, sitting on the edge of her bed as she stared up at a photograph of the woman whom she never got to call mother.
Since she had trapped him in her mind, she thought she would have more control over him wreaking havoc, when all she did was give him unfettered access to plague her with his presence whenever he could. At least once a day he would ask her to release him, to join him. Each day it was getting harder to shut him up.
Her hand twitched for the small bottle of "special" pills she kept hidden between her box spring and mattress, but she stilled, staring at her mother's laughing face. She couldn't use those pills while her mother was watching... It would be disrespectful to her memory. Even if Mads desperately needed to disassociate.
Immortalized in film, Coral Booker was beautiful in every way, from the scrunch of her nose when she laughed to her blonde hair to her perfect body. Just looking at a single photograph, Mads saw everything of herself in Coral – except the perfect part. The scars on her neck plus the new ones on her shoulder and sternum from last November marred that image.
"Now, now," 001 crooned, pretending to brush a stray hair from Mads' face because he still could not physically touch her after all these months. "You are still perfect; scars do not detract from that."
Mads ignored him, as she always did. Of course, he would say something like that – he gave her the ones on her neck. Staring up at the picture of her mother with something akin to regret in her eyes, Mads sighed.
Why did she get to exist, but her mother didn't? Pam had said Coral had overdosed when she was told her baby had died, but Mads didn't believe that. Coral may have been a drug user, and maybe a little spoiled, but Mads didn't believe she would do that accidentally – let alone on purpose. From all the stories Jamie and Pam had told her about Coral, she never did any hard drugs until she met Dr. Brenner when she started experimenting with LSD.
It was no surprise Dr. Brenner had chosen her mother for his experiments. Pam had said Coral had a magnetism to her, that she could get whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, from whomever she wanted. Almost like magic. It was almost like magic... And was the first ability Mads ever had before 001 began to sculpt her into his little pet.
"Hey, Sweetheart," Pam called from the doorway to her bedroom, drawing Mads' attention away from the photograph in her hand and her morbid thoughts.
"Hey," she said back with a small smile.
Pam moved to sit on the very same edge of the bed 001's imaginary form sat, earning a look of disgust from him as he dissipated with another soft gust from the open window. Amusement tugged at the corners of Mads' mouth, but she refused to show it. It was getting harder to hide the fact that 001 was tormenting her – even with the pills – and the Wilsons didn't need another reason to worry about her.
"Aren't Eddie and Tris supposed to be coming over soon?" Pam asked even though she knew the answer, picking the photo of her sister out of Mads' hands and turning it over to look at it.
"Yeah..." Mads sighed.
"What's with the long face?"
"I don't want to wear that swimsuit."
The suit in question was a black two-piece that Tris had picked out for her when Mads had mentioned she didn't have a suit that fit. Her build was slightly different than Mandy's had been, so none of her late cousin's swimsuits fit her comfortably. Tris had helped Mads purchase one that fit... the issue was that it showed quite a lot of the raised scar tissue between her breasts. And Mads hated swimming. Something both Eddie and Tris surprisingly enjoyed.
They were coming over today to screw around in a kiddie pool Pam had bought Mads to practice getting over her fear of being submerged in water, and Mads was dreading it. Eddie and Tris had gotten even weirder with each other since Christmas, which was fine. They were all navigating around it and having fun still. But the swimsuit coupled with the water and their weirdness did something that made Mads' stomach turn violently.
"Oh, honey..." Pam said, her face filled with compassion. "I'll get you one of Jamie's t-shirts you can wear over it, you don't have to be embarrassed."
A hot flash of anger arose in Mads' chest for a fraction of a second before she melted. She wasn't used to people babying her, but she was starting to like it. She just had to get over her need to be independent and fix her own problems. She needed to get over herself .
"Thanks," Mads said finally around a lump in her throat.
Pam smiled and patted her head before getting up and heading toward the doorway. Once she was halfway out of the room, she paused and looked at the photograph in her hand for a moment. Then she turned back to Mads with a quizzical look on her face.
"I still can't get over how much you look like Coral," Pam said.
Panic flared up in Mads, remembering another resemblance she had with Coral. She was not ready to have that conversation with Pam yet.
A nervous laugh escaped her and she blurted, "I know, it's weird right? Mandy and Coral both kinda look like me."
Pam looked at her knowingly, and Mads knew with a sinking feeling that they would be revisiting this discussion at a later date once she dealt with the mortifying ordeal of the swimsuit and kiddie pool. They had been planning it for months now, and she didn't want to let anyone down. Months of getting used to having a family, having friends... having as normal of a life as a superpowered freak could. For now, the look would remain a knowing look and a tabled discussion, and for that, Mads was grateful. The Wilsons pushed her, but never too hard.
Even when they knew she was lying. Typically, she was a very good liar, but every liar had a tell, and since she never used her abilities on Jamie and Pam it was becoming easier for them to see her tells. Even if they had grown up apart, she and her late cousin Mandy were also very alike in that regard.
"I'll be back with that shirt in a minute," Pam said with amusement in her tone and left, closing the door behind her.
Mads sighed and slid off her bed to grab the swimsuit out of her dresser. Two Barbie dolls sat atop it next to her cassette player, unopened from Christmas. The boxes were free from dust, just waiting to be opened and played with. But Mads couldn't bring herself to do so, not until she could see El safely without 001 in her head.
Mads pulled the swimsuit out of the drawer and stared at it in disgust. It was exactly like some of Mandy's, and the sort of thing Tris herself would wear. It covered more than she had seen Carol and some of the other Hawkins resident it-girls wearing, but it showed far too much skin for her liking. Mads still jumped when someone unfamiliar brushed too close to her and showing this much of her flesh was just as scary.
Dark laughter filled her mind and she screwed her eyes shut, though she knew she would see 001's beautiful face thrown back in glee. As much as he claimed to love her, he really took pleasure in her discomfort. Irritated, she opened her eyes and pulled her bell-sleeved blouse over her head, pausing at the sight of the scars on her sternum and shoulder.
Whatever. She thought and replaced her bra with the bikini top, then shed her long skirt for the bottoms.
The marks from the cuts she had inflicted upon herself were long healed and faded, but she still felt them as though they were fresh, and her faded 009 tattoo stood out sharply against her pale skin. The flesh on her neck prickled with the ghost of 001's fingers across her scars there, and the claw marks left by the Demogorgon itched in the exposed air.
Ugly ... She thought as 001 whispered, "Perfect," in her ears.
Pam's knock sounded on the other side of the door before anything further could unfold and Mads rushed to open the door, hiding her body behind it.
"Here," Pam said, holding out a black t-shirt to her. "This should make you feel a little more comfortable."
"Thanks," Mads said, closing the door in Pam's face.
"Eddie and Tris are here," Pam called with laughter in her voice.
Pam and Jamie never got mad at her when she was unintentionally rude, they were always patient and never crossed her boundaries. In fact, they found her funny. Mads thought they were just happy to have a teenager around again, but appreciated that they cared about her enough to not just yell at her like Tris' parents.
"They're 'helping' Jamie with the snacks," Pam said, her voice growing farther away as though she were heading down the hallway.
"Fuck," Mads whispered, rubbing a hand over her face.
Thankfully she had forgone any makeup that morning otherwise, it would have been smudged all over her face. Steeling herself as if going into battle, she slipped Jamie's t-shirt over her head and made her way down the stairs to meet her fate, 001's cruel laughter following her all the way.
"C'mooooon, Mads! The water's nice!" Eddie whined, the bright summer sun glinting off his black sunglasses as he lounged in the shallow blue pool. Despite basking in the summer sun as much as possible since school let out, he was still pale, causing the ink of his tattoos and black swim trunks to stand out against his skin. He wore his long, curly hair up in a bun to keep it from getting wet and donned none of his regular jewelry, save a silver chain with a single black guitar pick hanging from it. The only pick Mads had seen him use in band practice since Christmas.
Mads eyed him skeptically, arms crossed over her chest in discomfort as rock music played softly in the background punctuated by cicada calls and, occasionally, Jamie and Pam's laughter as they sunned themselves several feet away. They had set up the snack table not too far behind them, laden with all sorts of summer treats.
The pool was barely even a foot of water, and smaller than the one they had used for the sensory deprivation bath last year, but Mads was shaking at the thought of stepping a toe in there. Tris, who was sitting across the pool from Eddie – a virgin piña colada in her hand – waved her in.
Mads eyed her friend skeptically, observing her altered appearance. Her hair was still cut in its typical shag but bleached a shocking shade of white blonde and pulled back from her face in a low ponytail. She also sported a new tattoo on her left arm – an ouroboros wrapped around her bicep, fangs clamped around its tail in a gruesome display of fate and inevitability. Another unfinished one was situated in between her shoulder blades depicting a tree, but she hadn't shared the meaning of that one with Mads yet. The freshest one on the inside of her right forearm was of a skull with a nuclear explosion shooting from the top of its cranium. That tattoo was just another show of rebellion to piss off her mother.
"It's okay, we'll be in here with you," Tris said soothingly, holding her free hand out to Mads.
With a shaking breath in, Mads gripped Tris' fingers and allowed herself to be pulled into the water. She stood there for a moment, trembling as the water flowed around her shins, and then she allowed Eddie and Tris to tug her gently down into a seated position.
The sensation was disgusting, vile, nauseating. Any negative adjective she could have used to describe the feeling fit. The t-shirt was rapidly soaking up water and clinging to her wet skin, like those vines across the Vale. Bile rose in the back of her throat, but before she could launch herself from the pool to expel it, a cool object was pressed to her cheek.
Mads jumped, looking up to see Pam's smiling face. Her surrogate mother held out a drink identical to Tris' in a lurid translucent-pink plastic cup, and Mads took it, holding it in both hands as she trembled, causing ripples in the shallow water.
"Drink it, honey. The sugar will make you feel better," Pam said, smoothing Mads' frizzed ponytail before returning to her lawn chair next to Jamie who waved encouragingly.
Mads grimaced but tipped the frozen drink into her mouth and took a large gulp. It was sweet, and the cold sensation was soothing to her fears. 001 was blessedly silent, and missing from the rather idyllic picture. It was harder for him to make an appearance in direct sunlight – the lack of shadows made it difficult for him to take shape – and for that, Mads was grateful.
"I'm almost not sad this doesn't have any alcohol in it, it's so good," Tris joked, taking a swig of her rapidly melting drink, condensation dripping down her long, thin fingers and into the pool.
Mads tried not to watch in fascination as Eddie tried hard not to stare at their friend's bikini-clad form from behind the dark shades of his sunglasses.
Ever since Christmas, and that blink of a kiss, the two of them had been dancing around something Mads could only watch with the fascination of a child. Other than some of Kali's crew members engaging in drunken hookups or characters in movies, she had never seen two people navigate attraction to each other. To see it up close was as titillating as it was frustrating. They were both too bullheaded to say anything outright, but Mads suspected they were secretly hooking up behind her back. Or at least close to it.
That hurt. El had said it best, friends didn't lie. Mads could care less if they harbored feelings, but she wished they'd at least tell her the truth. Although... she was one to talk, she was keeping a far more dangerous secret.
"See," Eddie said – pulling her from her thoughts – and squeezed her hand. "This ain't so bad."
"Ain't?" Mads smirked weakly, taking another gulp of her melting drink.
"Shut it," he laughed, flicking water at her. "I live in Forest Hills, I can say ain't."
"I'm from the streets and you don't hear me saying ain't," Mads retorted playfully.
"How classist of you, Mads," Tris teased. "Bullying Eddie for his vernacular."
Mads shrugged with a forced smile, knowing they were distracting her from the nauseating feeling of the water soaking her skin and the metallic-tinged smell of the hose that was used to fill the pool. Getting out as soon as possible was at the forefront of her mind, but thanks to them, it wasn't the only thing. Despite their weirdness around each other now, Eddie and Tris were always comforting presences to her.
"He's fine, he's a big boy," Mads joked, finishing off her drink and setting the cup down in the grass outside the pool.
Eddie held a hand to his chest, pretending to be wounded, but Mads ignored him. She wished El were here, that would make things a little easier in her mind. Someone who knew just how horrible it was to be forced into the Bath. But El was still missing as far as she knew. Looking for her sister was just too dangerous, and El hadn't called out to her either.
One thing Mads was certain of concerning El was that she wasn't in the Vale. With all those vines and monsters under his control, there was no way 001 wouldn't have found her by now, and he certainly wouldn't have kept silent if he had. He would use El to lure Mads to him, then kill her while Mads watched. He wanted Mads in a pretty little cage, and El dead for trapping him. There was no way he wouldn't use her to his advantage if he had found her.
It was hard for the first few months after El's disappearance. Mike Wheeler and his friends had come in to see Mads at work every so often, discreetly imploring her to search for El and to ask if she had found any leads. She avoided them as much as possible now, especially since Mike was becoming petulant at her lack of results, but it was becoming harder since she had gotten a second part-time job at the Palace Arcade in the evenings with Tris. The kids were nerds and she could hardly avoid them at the nerdiest public hangout in town.
That was one of the other reasons she had asked Reefer Rick for that little bottle of pills she hid in her room one night while they were getting their stash from him to sell. Rick was in his late twenties, a pharmacology school dropout, tall and lanky with stringy unkempt hair and beard, but he was never mean to the Punks. And he was fair with their cut when they got their earnings to him. He just wanted to "broaden people's horizons" as he put it. But it came as a surprise when he listed off all the side effects of the drug she was asking for and begged her to keep him updated if she experienced any negative reactions to it.
"Madison!" Jamie called from the back porch.
Mads jerked her head in his direction, surprised to see that he had moved so quickly from his lawn chair while she was lost in her own mind. He was holding an empty blender pitcher and an armful of empty cups. There were more piña coladas to be made, apparently.
"Yeah?" she called back.
"You can take a break now," he said with a perceptive look on his craggy face. "Why don't you walk down and go get the mail? You've been in there for a while."
Mads didn't need to be told twice, she leaped from the pool uncaring of the freshly cut grass sticking to the tops and bottoms of her feet as Tris and Eddie chuckled at her. She flipped them off and wrung the water out of the t-shirt she wore. Then she headed off toward the front of the house to get the mail.
The Wilsons had a large property that used to be farmland back in the day, and they still had a substantial garden in the back yard that Pam tended to – now with Mads' help – but nothing like their neighbors still maintained. Mads walked alongside the driveway in the grass so she wouldn't step on the gravel, having foregone shoes. It was nice, living on property with so much privacy. She was used to everyone being on top of each other in Chicago, all this open air had been refreshing. Especially when she went to take her motorcycle out to clear her head for whatever reason.
She had even been enjoying school, something she never ever thought she would say. It was fun learning things, so long as Tommy and Carol's little cliques left her and her band of freaks alone. Band practice with Corroded Coffin – with whom she now filled in on drums while Gareth was grounded for the summer – and D&D with Hellfire took up most of her time. And work was cool too. All this normalcy was strangely wonderful, a dream for someone who had spent a good portion of her life on the run.
001 bothering her as often as he could notwithstanding.
Being around people helped keep him at bay unless he was feeling particularly peevish. That's when the pills really helped. She just had to make sure she didn't use them too often. As with anything, they would stop having an effect if she overused them.
Once Mads had made it to the mailbox at the end of the long driveway she paused, allowing herself to take a deep, deep breath, filling her lungs until they began to hurt from the pressure. Then she exhaled and grabbed the mail from the box. There was never anything for her, but she liked to sort through the mail, separating the junk from the important stuff – Pam had taught her which was which.
As she did that, a lone blue car came ambling down the road. This was not unusual, as it was a residential street, but Mads had never seen this blue car before. Unless one of her neighbors had recently bought a late seventies model Camaro, the person driving down the road was a stranger. Which was fine, Mads didn't know everyone in town, though she knew quite a bit of people from working at Melvald's, the Arcade, and going to school. It was quite a small town, and it was easier to pick out the people you didn't know from the ones you did.
Staring hard through the windshield in the glaring sunlight, Mads found that she didn't recognize the person in the driver's seat either, and when she reached out with her mind to test his, she found it... Angry, volatile. Much like her own more than half the time.
Thankfully, he wasn't focused on her. He wasn't thinking about much of anything other than the fact that he was lost, so Mads quickly pulled out of his brain and slammed the mailbox shut when the Camaro rolled to a stop right in front of it.
Blood rushed in her ears and ice water filled her veins as the driver's side door swung open and a booted foot stepped out of the car, followed by a denim-clad leg. Once he was fully out of the car, Mads blinked in surprise. He was young, about her age, which she hadn't expected. She knew just about everyone her age in town, and if she didn't know them personally, she knew of them. This boy didn't look like anyone from Hawkins at all.
His long blond hair hung in glossy ringlets around his ears and neck, a silver earring dangled from his left ear, and his face was... prettier than most of the other boys in town. Sculpted, as Tris would have described it, and his skin was sun-kissed as though he spent a lot of time out of doors. The white t-shirt and jeans he wore appeared as if they were painted onto his muscular frame.
And his eyes...
They were the most striking shade of blue she had seen in person since 001 had attempted to choke the life out of her.
What a morbid thing to think. She thought deliriously as the boy stared her up and down.
It was more curious than predatory, though there was a hungry light hidden behind that curiosity. Her mouth grew dry and hot as he continued to stare at her, leaning against the open door of his car, a smooth, easy smile spreading over soft lips.
After a beat, her short-circuiting brain began to function properly and she steeled her spine to confront the stranger when he spoke.
"D'you happen to know how to get to Cherry Lane from here?" he asked softly, his voice projecting an open sort of warmth and friendliness that belied the angry storm in his mind Mads knew without a doubt she had seen.
"I just moved into town a few days ago from California and I seem to have gotten myself lost," he continued when she said nothing.
People always lied about their feelings, it was human nature, but to carry such potent rage inside and mask it with a smile? Mads was certain only she knew how to do that. It seemed she was wrong.
"You're a bit far from Cherry Lane," she replied softly, fiddling with the mail in her hands. "It's a fair bit north from here..."
His smile grew wider when she spoke, flashing near-perfect white teeth.
"She speaks," he nearly purred, eyes crinkling at the corners.
Mads stood corrected. He was much better at masking his anger than she was. She didn't know how to feel about the tone of his voice or the way he was looking at her. They were strangers for chrissake!
"We're on Cornwallis right now," she continued, ignoring the flirtatious tone in his voice. "You wanna keep on this road until you get to town where it'll be called Main St., but it's the same road. Then keep straight until you get to where Cherry Oak meets Cornwallis and turn left. That's Cherry Lane."
"Got something I can write that down on, Princess?" the boy asked roguishly.
Heat rose in a scarlet red blush, turning Mads' cheeks, neck, and ears bright red. She had only ever been called "princess" during D&D campaigns, for her human princess-turned-paladin character, Asta the Righteous. Never, ever had any Hawkins boy dared to call her any such thing. The only name that came close was "Little Spider" and that one made her stomach turn.
Gingerly, Mads pulled open a piece of junk mail advertising a credit card and pulled out the pre-paid return envelope, then held it out to the boy as if she were afraid he would burn her. He took it from her slowly, as if he noticed her discomfort and relished in it, then turned to grab a pencil from his car. When he straightened up, he quirked a brow at her, imploring her to repeat the directions.
She repeated them without tripping over her words, praying silently that this pretty-boy stranger would leave and stop embarrassing her. It was enough that she was dressed in her uncle's t-shirt with a bikini underneath, she didn't need or want strange boys giving her pet names and ogling her. She was the town witch, and many of Hawkins' young adult residents had taken to calling her, affectionately or otherwise. Witches are to be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
"Thanks for your help, Princess," he said with that same easy smile, still so shockingly calm that Mads once again reached out to feel that hot, bubbling rage in his mind again, just to make sure she hadn't imagined it.
"Don't mention it," she replied harsher than she intended. "And I don't like it when strangers call me names."
"Well, you haven't offered me your name," he flirted, eyes smoldering. "I don't have anything else to call you. If we introduced ourselves, then we wouldn't be strangers."
Unable to help herself, Mads rolled her eyes. He certainly was a persistent bastard, just like another blond man she knew.
"I'm Billy," he went on, holding out a hand in greeting. "Billy Hargrove."
Mads stared at his hand as though he had handed her a dead fish. Touching was fine with strangers, but that didn't mean she enjoyed it. She avoided it as much as she possibly could now, even with people she knew – some of whom she cared about, such as Joyce, Jake, or even Nancy Wheeler and the Hellfire boys. Pam and Jamie also kept their touches to a minimum, stroking her hair or squeezing her hands. Only on special occasions did they attempt to hug or kiss her cheek. Eddie and Tris were the only ones she allowed to touch her unrestrained, and they even kept their hands to themselves a lot of the time unless she instigated the action herself.
Trying to keep her lip from curling in disgust, Mads shifted all the mail to one hand, took the boy's hand in hers, and quickly shook it. He noticed with a curious gleam in his eye the way she retracted her hand as quickly as possible. He didn't question it, just kept his lips pressed in that easy smile.
"Madison," she snapped. "Madison Johnson."
"Mailbox says Wilson," he shot back, grinning.
"I'm adopted," she lied smoothly.
"I like 'Princess' better still," he complained good-naturedly.
"Sucks to be you, then."
"Ooh, she's feisty too."
"She sure is, and she has the claws to back it up," a deep voice punctuated by the crunching of gravel said from behind her.
Before Mads could turn, a long tattooed arm slung around her shoulder and pulled her in close, while another, slenderer tattooed arm wrapped around her waist. Both Tris and Eddie oozed possessiveness, sporting identical glares that she could see now that Eddie had forgone his sunglasses.
Billy observed her friends with interest, but far less openness than he had with her. While Eddie was no powerhouse, he had gotten significantly more toned since November, which only added to the threatening aura he imposed. Though Tris' tall, lithe figure would be the envy of any runway model she still gave off an air of danger. The fierce look in her honey-brown eyes warned of the very same punishment she doled out to the Demogorgon last year. This wouldn't be the first time Mads felt like the ugly duckling of their friend group.
Eddie took a long drag from his cigarette, then exhaled the smoke in a ring, his dark eyes never leaving the newcomer. Tris swirled a beer around in its can; she must have swiped it from the cooler before coming to find Mads. Jamie and Pam didn't care, but the Punks were always sneaky anyway.
"When were you planning on coming back?" Eddie asked in the same voice he used as the frontman for their band, no-nonsense and authoritative.
"Right now," she whispered, grateful for their presence.
This Billy Hargrove wasn't scary, not in the way most people would be. Mads was not most people. However, the ease with which he hid that anger when it should be leaking out of him from every orifice was troubling. It was troubling because it reminded her of herself.
Just what had he endured to make him so angry?
"Good," Eddie said, flicking the ash from his cigarette.
"Who's your friend, Mads?" Tris asked, sounding not at all friendly.
"His name is Billy Hargrove," Billy answered for her.
Tris hummed in response, took a final swig from her beer, and flicked her sunglasses back down over her eyes. She was clearly unimpressed and made no show to hide it. Mads was positive she could cut the tension in the air with a knife.
"If you follow my directions, you should find yourself back on Cherry Lane soon," she said, allowing Eddie to turn her away as Tris' mouth tightened in a grim line.
"Much appreciated, Madison," Billy said and reentered his Camaro.
Peaking over her shoulder as her friends led her away, Mads watched as the open expression dropped from Billy's face, morphing it into something cold and detached. It was instantaneous, the difference it made. He was still pretty, but he certainly didn't appear charming anymore.
A chill ran up her spine, but not from fear. Mads knew just how easy it would be for her to return to that state. How easy it would be to do the things she did while running with Kali and her crew. So, so easy.
"God dammit!" Tris exclaimed, kicking up gravel as she walked in the drive next to the grass.
"What?" Eddie asked, the mirth and cheerfulness returning to his voice.
"That guy is my new neighbor," she groaned. "I saw a moving truck the other day, just up the road. Fuckin' A, man."
"Shit," Mads breathed, exchanging a look with Eddie.
They all turned to catch the tail end of the Camaro as it disappeared around a curve. It was easy to see that Billy Hargrove was trouble, even if Mads' heart did go out to him a little bit. They never hung out at Tris' place because her parents didn't like Mads and Eddie, but that didn't make it any less troubling that her new neighbor was a pretty boy with anger issues. One that Mads recognized something so dark in, something resembling the monstrousness inside her own soul. This summer was about to get a lot more interesting, that was for sure.
A/N: Yo, don't forget to drop me a comment. Ik some of y'all were confused about where things were going and I am once again sorry about that, but I hope you continue to read and enjoy.
Chapter title taken from "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks on her 1981 studio album "Bella Donna".
Thank you for the comments, encouragement, follows, and favorites! They mean the world to me. Please don't forget to comment your thoughts!
This is the "mixtape" I created for this fic. It's not entirely period accurate, but I feel like these songs fit the theme of the show and characters.
playlist/2w0Fg6UPmVvj5L3EIMRYfw?si=d8e38810c96f4875
Please don't forget to check out my book ( /d/5cifBW6)!
