Don't think about Eddie Munson. Don't think about Eddie Munson. Don't think about Eddie Munson.
She felt like it was contradictory, thinking about the man in question in order to remind herself not to think about him at all. There was no real reason behind her sudden interest in him. She and Eddie had shared a brief moment in her trailer, and that was all. He was no different than any stranger she encountered daily. Eddie was a one-and-done memory. A cut-and-dry affair. About as impactful and alluring as a shooting star.
She had scoured her magazines, desperate to find the meaning of the phrase 'having a crush.' According to Playboy, the phrase was attributed to one Isabella Maud Rittenhouse who had used it to describe an infatuation. Tony wondered if she was infatuated, if it was normal to think of Eddie when she showered or when she stared distractedly at the flickering TV screen in the living room.
She had never been infatuated with anyone before. According to the marriage license that she had signed, she was supposed to be infatuated with Marshall. But she didn't think of Marshall the way that she thought of Eddie. Marshall didn't cause that heat in her belly or that pulse between her thighs. Eddie did. Sometimes, late at night, her guilty conscience made her wonder what life would be like with Eddie as a husband.
Not that she was infatuated, of course. She was simply curious.
The Home Economics teacher wandered past her desk and cast a haughty gaze at the sunken loaf of cake in front of her. Tony had tried her best to fit in, to become the small, gray pebble. She had ditched her usual attire for a pair of green sweats and a too-tight shirt stamped with the Hawkins logo. No one at Hawkins had attempted to befriend her, and the alienation from her peers bothered her. She tried to ignore them when they whispered in the halls or tossed spit-wadded paper at the back of her head. She smiled at the edges of their conversation, sat alone in the cafeteria, and kept her eyes level with her tray as they made wide berths around her. There existed a version of her past self who would have stolen the wallets from their book bags and put sugar in the gas tanks of their cars.
The door to the classroom thudded open. Tony kept her eyes on her depressing loaf of cake as she swept a frosting-covered spatula along the edges. Maybe, she thought to herself, maybe she could get into her peer's good graces by acing some extracurricular slice of high school pageantry.
"No way," a student to her left whispered. "Is that-?"
"He never shows up to this class-"
"Maybe he's lost-"
"Of course he is. He never knows where he is half of the time. What a freak."
Tony sighed. She knew the identity of the student in question long before he hopped up on the seat beside her and placed his bat-winged bookbag on the desk.
"Hey," he said in a rushed whisper. "Can we talk?"
Tony felt her lips stiffen. She swept the spatula along the top of the cake and then squeezed a bag of green buttercream into a Ziplock bag. She hummed to herself as she snipped the corner away from the Ziplock and leveled it against the cake. The plan was to create a wedding-style, single-layer cake with the head of a tiger iced onto the top. The green icing gushed from the bag and curled stiffly along her finger. Eddie snapped his fingers in her direction and leaned in closer.
"Okay, look," he said, clutching his bookbag as if it were a life vest and he was on the verge of sinking. She ground her teeth, swept the rogue icing away with her thumb. "I know I don't know you and all, and this is probably going to be really weird, but I was thinking, and once I get to thinking I can't stop thinking and-"
"Mr. Munson," the Home Ec teacher called out. "Did you come to my class to flirt with the new student or to learn how to bake a cake?"
"Actually, I chose the lesser of two evils, ma'am," Eddie called back, then hunched over as the teacher passed by with a scoff. "I was talking to Marshall," he added in a whisper.
Tony slammed the Ziplock bag against the desk and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "I told you to keep your distance from him."
"Oh, yeah, really. Y'think that's possible when we live in the same trailer park?" Eddie blew a strand of rogue hair from his face and quickly changed lanes. "I know about The Farm."
No, Tony thought to herself, no, no, no. There was no way in hell that Marshall would have told Eddie about The Farm. But questioning Eddie's his knowledge on the matter would only prove that he was on the right track. She picked up the icing tube again and took a slow, deep breath.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said tersely. The damn buttercream was too thick. It kept curling along the opening of the Ziplock back. She stabbed a spatula into the bag and ground her teeth, wishing that Eddie would just go the fuck away and leave her to her stupid fucking ugly cake.
"The Beacons of Righteousness," Eddie said, a question lingering in his tone. "Andrea Vulpe? Listen, Marianne, I - I know Andrea. Personally. That woman is insane. She's not right in the head! I mean, look, I know people think that I'm not right in the head and all but-"
"If you truly knew Andrea, then you would know that she's a good person," Tony said from between clenched teeth. Fuck it, there was no use in lying now. And yet, Tony could not help but feel as if she was reciting some sort of script. "Andrea's a philanthropist. She's helped many people. She helped me!"
"Yeah, she 'helped' me too, back when I was down on my luck and pissed at my dad." Eddie bounced his fist against the table and looked away. "And what did I get in return? A whole lotta nothin', sweetheart! If Andrea's such a saint, then why've I been stuck at this fucking school, living in a trailer park, of all places-"
"Stop projecting-"
Eddie's eyes narrowed to a squint. "Stop talking to me like you're my shrink."
"Then don't talk to me like you know me." Tony pointed the spatula at his chin, wishing that it were some sort of weapon that would cut that damn, blasphemous tongue from his mouth. She was beginning to feel as if the walls were caving in around her. Her head pulsed with pain, and it was with tremendous effort that she kept the memories of her life with Andrea at bay. "I don't know how you know Andrea, or why you think any of this applies to me. Sure, maybe Marsh might have said some weird shit when he was drunk - but that's Marsh! He doesn't know what he's talking about half of the time!"
"He's your husband, huh?" Eddie leaned forward and whispered. There was a sparkle in his eye as if he were thinking I gotcha. "He's the creep that you were forced to marry when you were sixteen."
The vanilla frosting on the cake was uneven. It rose in lumps and hills along the sinking loaf of cake. Tony had stuck a fork in the center of the loaf a few minutes earlier. The fork had come back covered in doughy goop. She had hoped that the center would firm up about an hour ago. But the loaf was still hot, the center was sunken, and the white frosting was beginning to dribble from its edges in glossy rivulets. The green buttercream wasn't sticking to the surface like she had hoped. And Eddie was still talking. He just wouldn't shut up. The cake was ugly, the room was too muggy, and Eddie was talking, talking, talking. Her knuckles tensed as she gripped the spatula and counted to ten.
"Nobody forced me to do anything," she hissed. "Marshall is a good man. I'm lucky to have him in my life."
"Right, right. Is that what Andrea told you when she arranged the marriage between you two?" Eddie reached into his bookbag and pulled out several well-worn, hard-cover books. Her gaze slid across their titles: Deconstructing Centuries of Cults, People's Temple: Jim Jones and the Unspoken Massacre, Beacons of Righteousness: A Brief History. "The Farm, the one that Andrea built? It's a cult, Marianne! I know! I was there-"
It's a cult. It's a cult. It's a cult.
Don't be stupid, Antoinette.
Don't be stupid.
Become the small, gray pebble.
Tony reared out of her seat. The entire class gasped and turned to look at her as she lifted the loaf of cake and slammed it back onto the desk. Eddie stumbled out of his seat as she crushed the loaf in her fists and flung it at the ground. She took the Ziplock bag, tore it in half, screamed, and stomped it beneath her sneakers. Heavy hands fell onto her shoulders, attempting to stop her as she grabbed the baking pan and bent its cheap surface until it snapped in half.
And then there was Eddie. Somehow he had ended up on his ass on the ground, the innards of his bookbag splayed next to him. She considered grabbing those stupid cult books and throwing them back at him, plucking a clod of frosting and smashing it in his face. But none of it was his fault, she knew that. There was no way that he could have known that his words would create a crumpling cage around her, the bars of which sunk into her skin and filled her with claustrophobia. It wasn't a cult, Tony wanted to scream. I would never fall for something like that!
But she had. And, if what Eddie said was true, he had once fallen for Andrea's spell too.
Tony swiped her bag from the ground and stormed out of the room, tears streaming from her eyes as she made for the door.
X
Marshall
"Yep, she's doing alright - better'n I thought. Might just make it to the end of the school year."
Marshall tossed a tennis ball at the ceiling of the trailer and caught it in his left hand. Andrea's voice softened and then grew louder in turns on the other end of the phone line. That was the thing about Andrea: she was the sort of person who talked just to hear her own voice. She required neither response nor engagement from her audience. Nowadays, Marshall found it hilarious that he had once been madly in love with her - but, then again, everyone had once been in love with Andrea. Hell, even the baristas at the coffee shops had dropped their jaws and their paper cups when she walked into the room.
"What did you say, honey?" Her voice clarified as she returned to the phone. Marshall heard raucous laughter and glasses clinking in the background. He wondered what poor, unfortunate soul had convinced themselves that they could woo her with a date. Marshall sighed, threw the ball higher, and failed to catch it. He watched it roll between two cardboard boxes and promptly disappear into the realm of dust bunnies.
"I said, 'Tony's' got her eye on someone.' She won't admit it, of course, but I've seen the way she looks at him whenever he rolls into my shop. You know his type: rock 'n roll fucker, shaggy hair, ain't seen the sunlight in a few years. Tattoos, pants too tight for her his own britches-"
"And how does that make you feel?"
"Chaffing's a real bitch! I feel bad for the kid-"
"You know what I mean."
Of course, he did. He balanced the phone on his knee and bent over to light a cigarette. Navigating a conversation with Andrea was always awkward. Everything that she said was an attempt to gauge and provoke a reaction. She had been a psychology major in college, with a focus on criminology. It showed in the way that she addressed others, like she was subtly and swiftly conducting an interrogation. God, he was tired of it. He picked up the phone and thrust it between his shoulder and his cheek.
"She's her own woman," he growled, cigarette smoke pouring from his nostrils. "Just 'cause she's married doesn't mean her eye is goin' to stop wandering from time to time."
"Said like a true, ball-busted pacifist," Andrea said, then sighed. "Who is this superstar that's caught her attention, anyway? A dealer, I'm assuming, or perhaps a drop-out janitor-"
Marshall leaned forward to peer from behind the curtains. Someone was walking up the path leading to the trailer park. "His name's Eddie," he said distractedly. "Eddie…Munster? No, Mcafee? No, h-hold on, I think it was Eddie-"
"Munson," Andrea said softly, slowly. "Edward Munson? Marshall-"
"Gotta go," Marshall said suddenly. "I'll call you later, Andrea."
"Mar-shall!"
Marshall slammed the phone on the receiver and wandered out onto the porch. He had been able to spot Tony despite the darkness of the evening. He flicked a switch as she approached, and the fairy lights that he had strung around the trailer fluttered to life. Tony stopped and peered around suspiciously, her tarp-taut cheeks bathed in the flickering gold light.
"What is this," she asked as she dropped her bag onto the porch steps leading into their trailer. "Did somebody die or something?"
"Oh, come on, now! No need to be so morbid, T! We're celebrating tonight."
Marshall pulled out a chair before the patio table draped in a gold-colored plastic sheet. He had spent the better part of the day buying cheap party favors from the nearby dollar store. It wasn't the presentation that counted so much as the intention. He placed a purple party cone on her head and kissed her shoulder. He could tell by the dimple in her cheeks that his cheap, Ocean Wave-scented cologne was still working its magic after all those years. She sat with her hands wedged between her thighs as he popped open a bottle of sparkling water and filled a plastic cup to its brim.
"Starting your life all over takes balls," he informed her as he handed her the cup. "And I know it ain't easy, 'specially after all that you've been through."
"Yeah, can we talk about that," she asked. Marshall shook his head. Her brand new school uniform was crusted over in green flecks and swatches of dried, white crust.
"We can talk about anything that you want after dinner."
She glanced over at the cooler standing open on the porch. The ice within had melted into small, pathetic chunks floating in sluggish water. The light tan edge of the Coors cans were just barely visible along the surface of the lukewarm water.
"It's been a tough day," she said. She bit her lip, squeezed the plastic cup in her hands and then roughly shook her head. Sobriety was a beast that scared Marshall more than the Devil himself. He was proud of Tony for resisting temptation during such a tumultuous time. She took a sip from her cup and then sighed. "I smashed a cake during Home Ec," she admitted. "Then I sort of freaked out and threw frosting everywhere."
"You ain't lived life if you ain't smashed a cake once or twice. Sit tight, T."
Marshall went into the kitchen and retrieved a pan of baked salmon dotted with lemon wedges. They nibbled around the burnt grains of rice and spit withered bits of Brussels sprout onto the ground.
The color gradually returned to Tony's cheeks and she began to chat about nothing in particular as she ate. She was still rattled from her day at school, Marshall observed. But she had grown up starving under Andrea's watch. Being presented with a full meal had eased some of the pressure on Tony's mind.
He sipped at his beer and dragged from his carton of cigarettes as the hours passed and the moon rose high in the sky. The flames of the candles died away to a pitiful glow as she swaddled slivers of salmon in napkins and then arranged them into neat piles at the edge of the table. The food would end up at the back of the freezer, never to be touched. Food hoarding and stashing: it was a habit that everyone on the Farm had picked up.
"It just drives me crazy," Tony said as she scooted her chair next to him and rested her chin on her knuckles. The curtain in the Munson trailer twitched. They both noticed it but felt no need to speak on it. "This whole school shit is just so fucking wack-o, you know? It's like, 'Hey, sit in the small, cramped room for hours on end and memorize dates until you feel waterboarded.' What am I even learning? People are rushing to those front lines, you know, making history while I sit in Home Ec putting frosting on cinnamon rolls."
"Everybody started somewhere," Marshall said with a yawn, then draped his arm around her shoulder. He loved it when she did that: got comfortable and started talking in metaphors. "The point is to build yourself up from the bottom, brick by brick. Today: cinnamon rolls, tomorrow: the world!"
She chuckled and punched his shoulder. "I'm just saying that the process is mind-numbing. It moves too slow for me."
"So what are you going to do, T? Drop out?"
"I'm sure it's what you and Andrea anticipated. But, no. I deserve an education. Doesn't mean I can't bitch about it when it gets boring."
Marshall laughed and leaned back in his chair. He remembered the days of his dreadful academia: mind-numbing shit, but at least he could say that he tried. He filled Tony's plastic cup again and then glanced mournfully at the emptied beer can. Instead of taking a sip, she rocked sparkling water around the cup and bit her bottom lip.
"What is it," he asked. He could tell by the faraway look in her eye that something was wrong. She shook her head as if to rouse herself, and then pulled several books from her bag. Marshall squinted his eyes as he read the titles: Deconstructing Centuries of Cults, People's Temple: Jim Jones and the Unspoken Massacre, Beacons of Righteousness: A Brief History.
Christ, he thought to himself as he swiped a hand over his sweaty face. It was finally time for That Conversation.
"Marsh, be honest with me. Did you ever wonder if The Farm was just a-" She hesitated, but he could still sense the word hanging between them: cult. She wanted to know if The Farm was a cult. "Did you ever wonder if The Farm was, like, a gimmick? You know, more than what it was hyped up to be?"
Marshall felt no need to respond immediately. He flipped open one of the books and read the name written in uneven squiggles across a blank page: property of Eddie Munson. Of-fucking-course.
"Is that what Eddie told you," he asked in a low voice, a snicker riding the edge of his words. Though he sensed her staring at him, he refused to meet her eyes. "He did his research, huh? Poor ol' 'Marianne' was inducted into a cult. And now she needs to be saved-"
"It's not like that," she said quickly, then flipped open another book. "I would have figured it out myself. Look, Marsh, it's all here - the criteria for cults, right? A charismatic leader, totalitarian politics, even the way that we were forced to dress and speak."
"These 'criteria' could apply to damn near every consumerist-gullet-fed organization in the world. You know that, T."
"It doesn't make a difference," she cried over him. "Besides! Eddie knew Andrea - like, personally 'n shit! He's not some random, stupid kid taking shots in the dark. The way that he was talking about her - he knows that she's not right in the head."
Marshall bounced his finger in her direction. "You need a lesson in humility, compadre. Andrea is the reason why you were able to attend Hawkins High in the first place-"
"Andrea is the reason why I had to use fake documents to get in! Or did you forget, Marsh? She has my birth certificate and my ID card. She'll never give them back to me. Because if I had those documents, I'd be free to do whatever the fuck I wanted! She didn't send me to Hawkins because she wanted me to get an education - she wanted to see me fail, just so she could prove that I needed her. She took all the fucking money that my mom left me! She stole my identity! She fucking cut my hair and made me marry you!"
Tony was screaming, the veins in her neck bulging and her cheeks darkened with rage. The inhabitants of the trailer park wandered onto their porches, their robes pressed to their chests and eyes blurry with fatigue. From the corner of his eye, Marshall saw Eddie peering through his window with a cigarette in his hand. Tony was panting, her fists balled by her sides and eyes glossy with tears. She was right - right about every damn thing, he knew that. But he couldn't admit it. Andrea had bailed him out of jail, cleaned up his act, and thus saved him from the cold and unforgiving pavement of San Francisco. His loyalty to Andrea was like a shackle around his ankle.
Of course, Marshall had never wanted to marry Tony. But Andrea had been obsessed with arranging marriages between her followers - the more scandalous, the better. It was another way that she exerted a subtle sense of control that was hard to identify and even harder to refute. First, she had convinced Ton's mother of the idea then she had 'convinced' Marshall. It was ironic, he often thought, how Andrea liked to threaten him with the very same jobs that she paid him to do.
Still, Marshall couldn't deny that he loved Tony to pieces.
"Hey, come 'ere," he said to Tony. He held his hand out to Tony and pulled her close. She folded into the crook of his shoulder and wrapped her arms around her legs. She was such a small and skeletal thing. Her years spent upon The Farm had sapped the very light out of her. "I know this ain't easy. It's ain't been easy for you and that's not fair. But it is what it is. The circumstances that lead you here were FUBAR, I get that, but at least you are here, T. Get that education, get that diploma, and get the fuck out of dodge."
"And what about us, huh?"
"What about us? I love you, Antoinette - more than that, I know you."
For some odd reason, they were both compelled to glance at the Munson trailer at the same time. Eddie stood on the porch in a halo of dim lamplight, his posture slightly slouched and hair a tousled mess. Marshall could see Eddie as if through Tony's eyes: the tight black jeans, the slightly sunken cheeks common to rockstars, all those cheap tattoos and shiny pocket chains. Marshall was relatively straight - it was hard to remember the liaisons of his cocaine-filed youth - but he could see the appeal. He realized that he'd have to do better if he wanted to keep Tony by his side.
"Where're you going?" Tony asked as Marshall reared from his chair. He slipped a cigarette between his lips and fished around in his pocket for his keys.
"That salon on thirty fifth is still open, right?" He asked gruffly. Tony shrugged helplessly. "Yeah, well. I'm gonna go get me a few boxes of black hair dye. Gettin' tired of these ol' silver streaks and whatnot."
"You," Tony said incredulously. "You're going to dye your hair yourself?"
"Come, now, T." Marshall grinned and spun his keys around hsi finger. "Dyeing can't be that hard, right?"