"Hey, Nance," Glen said, casually as casual can be. As if he wasn't a dead man, six feet under. As if it hadn't been four years since they last crossed paths. As if he could really, truly, be alive.
"Glen?" Nancy's voice cracked like shattered glass, almost dying in her throat.
Tina was there alongside him and returned Nancy's wide-eyed stare. Rod had his arm around her, and looked more amused than concerned about an obviously panicky Nancy.
As a compulsion, no thought required, Nancy hurled herself over to Tina, who just about had the strength to catch her before they both toppled over.
"Jeez, Nancy. What's gotten into you?"
"You don't know," Nancy blinked through swollen, reddening eyes, "how happy I am to see you. All of you."
"We're glad you changed your mind." Glen's voice; Nancy could tell aurally, but had her head buried in Tina's shoulder. Nancy tensed at the sound. She figured it would not hurt to stay like this, at least for a little while. Just for a little bit.
"Changed my mind?" Nancy asked, muffled. "About what?"
"Thought you had homework," Tina explained, gently pulling Nancy away. If she wanted to hug someone for long periods of time, she would have asked Rod.
To Nancy, this was Tina. Her Tina. Looking at her after so long was like staring into the face of an angel, though crowned with blonde hair as opposed to a halo.
Perhaps it had been good that Tina ended the hug prematurely; she might have caused her to flutter away otherwise.
"No homework for me tonight." Then Nancy addressed the rest of the group, significantly raising her voice:
"This study rat is ready to party!"
Tina and Rod cheered on this new carefree attitude, the latter pumping a fist in the air before hooking it around his belle. Tina waved goodbye to Nancy and then that was it, the two of them were off. Heading further into the party.
Once the pair were out of earshot, Glen turned towards Nancy, arms coyly hidden behind his back.
"Miss Thompson. May I have this dance?"
Of course, Nancy said yes, but it is important to explain why, and why for all of ten seconds Nancy contemplated making a decision that would normally be a done deal.
Mostly it came down to two factors. The first was that this grand gesture, this call to dance, might just have been the death blow. Freddy knew Glen, and knew she most likely would be too enthralled to resist Glen – and so had used a facsimile as bait. If so, she had already fallen for the trap. Fairly smart.
The second, and the one that had some weight on her soul, was the fact she already had a man who she had grown to love.
That story began at the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital. Nancy had only been there for "academic purposes" but it still came as a shock to her to find Freddy preying on the young and vulnerable once again. There she met Neil Gordon, who after a point would not have argued that he filled a less important position, despite being the one getting paid. Over the course of about a week they bonded, and then some time after they fell in what Nancy would unashamedly called love.
It had been at Neil's house, after a night of Chinese takeout and watching Body Double on a sleazy after-hours network. They were inspired.
Nancy wanted to do it on her side. Neil had no trouble with that, but after they had both stripped and Neil was inside her she found she could not handle sex at all. She hated the feeling of him being inside her. She hated his hands on her, warm and a little moist, unable to shake the idea they were Freddy's glove raking across her back, dripping in heat from the boiler room.
Nancy was in tears when she asked Neil to stop. Frustrated, but understanding, he respected that boundary, and Nancy found simple affection morphing into something stronger. More complicated.
So, to say that Glen – real or not – presented a bit of a conundrum was putting things lightly.
Nancy, overwhelmed with feelings in both directions, took his hand anyway. Because damnit, by God did he feel real, his skin, his touch, and her own feelings…well, she couldn't very well deny those, only strengthened by how dormant they had been.
He whisked her closer, and Nancy felt how weightless gravity could make a person.
"Now Glenny," Rod chimed in, imitating a maternal presence as he swayed past with Tina, "don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"What wouldn't you do, Rod?" Glen asked.
Rod only smirked, before disappearing with Tina, breaking off into the larger crowd.
Nancy had no doubt what Tina and Rod would be doing…or, would have been doing…later tonight. She herself didn't care one way or the other but Tina had a bit of a reputation around Springwood for being promiscuous. Which, hypothetically, was a trait she adopted from her mother. Nancy knew these were unfounded rumours from fellas she wouldn't give the time of day to. Far as she knew, there was only Rod, and one forgettable guy before that. All the same she wished her friend hadn't been so eager to jump into bed with Rod Lane.
Maybe then things would be different.
Maybe…
"Nance?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm the one doing all the moves here. Something bothering you?"
Nancy couldn't think of a sensible answer to that. So she just smiled like a dope, swaying with Glen as they moved to the rhythm of a track she recognised as Cyndi Lauper's Time after Time.
As one with Glen, wanting to believe their hearts were linked through their hands, she floated across the floor, once again meeting Tina and Rod. Glen rolled his eyes at Rod's gesture of reaching out for a high five, something Nancy very much appreciated and laughed at along with Tina.
The laughter dulled a little when Nancy thought about what she was indulging in, a farce, and what she was leaving behind, a perfectly healthy and happy relationship, but it did not die. Not at all.
Still the rhythm continued to move those in the thrall of it. Under the disco lights Nancy's blue dress was green, yellow, purple, red, then blue again, and then the whole rainbow.
"C'mon, Nance. I'm outdancing you. I don't even like dancing."
"What, did you really think that was me trying?" She retorted, a rare, mischievous smirk on her neon face.
What Nancy did in reality was far tamer than that brief moment of spunk suggested. Across the dance floor she led her slow charge, dancing in a manner not unfamiliar to a Victorian ballroom (if those stiff upper-class Brits were small-town American teenagers). Nancy never acclimated to the fast-paced, hip-thrusting school of dance.
Glen, for his part, followed along well and learned fast. That was the beauty of Glen; he could be jealous and eager in the worst ways, sure, but he was also flexible. If Nancy had an idea, he tried to run alongside her madness. She supposed that was one of the things that made Glen different from Neil; Neil knew better.
At first he could only match her footsteps. Then he was reading her cues. When it came time for a sidestep he did the move without being asked, without being looked at.
"Not bad," Nancy conceded, as if it pained her to say. He smiled. Such a Glen smile. So bright, but she knew that was because he meant it.
In reality Nancy continued to go steady and slow, but her mind conjured up more fantastic scenarios. Supposedly objective. Dreaming within the dream, she imagined herself a spinning top, her only tether being Glen holding her arm. She'd feel the thrill of raw exhilaration, far more than could be found on any rollercoaster. Someone had tossed her in the air. And then she would come down, down back to earth in a big way as Glen wound her back.
And after that, with her staring into his eyes, gleaming despite the abundance of light everywhere else, he would say-
"Hello, Nancy. Earth to Nancy."
When Nancy snapped out of it, or snapped back into it, Glen did have her in the soft security of his arms. Unlike the dashing debonair she imagined, though, he did not wrap around her back, her standing against him. Instead, he'd opted for the full-body hug, head on the shoulder again.
Nancy stopped. Glen – not really Glen, of course, but also exactly Glen – came to a stop with her. She felt her grasp on him becoming loose, and the more she imagined this, the more true it became. 'Til Nancy looked down, to find her hand had slipped through his completely. Glen only looked vaguely confused, a bit like a curious puppy. Nancy, knowing that that innocence would hold her in place, forced herself to move, backed away slowly. The urgency wasn't there. The intent was.
"Nancy? Where are you going?"
"I…I just need to go to the bathroom. I'll be back."
She would not, or at least, did not plan to. The longer she stayed, the longer she risked Freddy wreaking havoc on the other parts of Subcon. And he was probably doing that anyway, as she made her way out of the gym and passed Harper Campbell and Rudy Goldman making out on the sidelines
No one stopped Nancy on her passage from the gym to the hallway – no demon, or the man with the great big claws himself, disguised as a hall monitor. Therefore she assumed the best. The ordeal had been Glen, and she had, regretfully, passed with flying colours.
Only when Nancy looked down the hallway, her eyes burning with tears, did she notice anything off. Before her the floor and the lockers on either side stretched for miles. There may have been a beginning, but the end zoomed out of sight and moved further away the more she tried to imagine an escape.
Then Glen appeared behind her, and somehow Nancy sensed it was him. This stopped her from turning chalk-white at the knowledge that Freddy would have her trapped anyway; dance or no dance.
"You can't leave now, Nancy."
Nancy turned around in a sharp jerking motion, hiding her discomfort with a smile that ate up half her face.
"Yeah." Tina stood beside him. She briefly quirked her brow at Nancy before settling into comfortability. "They're announcing prom king and queen."
Nancy went along with them back into the gym. She took one last look down the barrel of a hallway, finding it no longer elongated and perfectly normal.
"You're sure you don't need to go?" Glen asked, genuinely concerned.
"Nothing. Didn't know what I was thinking, I guess." Nancy smacked her head in a ditzy kind of way, and Glen's scoffing as he shook his head suggested he bought the gesture.
Rod started to mumble something about letting Nancy leave because there was no chance of her taking the crown, but Tina jabbed him with her elbow halfway through, effectively cutting him off.
In the time it took for the gang to fetch Nancy, everyone else had gotten with the programme. The dance floor, save for Principal White, was empty, the crowd gathered on the sidelines. The whole room was drowned in a singular blue hue. Tina pulled Nancy into a spot not quite at the front, a few row's back, but close enough to get a clear view.
"I'd just like to, err, remind everyone that you are still at school, and so there is no drinking or smoking allowed on the premises…"
As Principal White grumbled over the prom rules once again, Glen turned to Nancy. It was much easier to look at him this way, when he was a coloured blob, featureless save for the vaguest contours of his face. She knew what he was going to ask. He was going to ask, all thrilled, if they would be prom king and queen, but then she had never cared for that sort of thing and neither had Glen. The real one, anyway.
"I don't know," Nancy said dismissively. "Doesn't matter."
Glen blinked in puzzlement, then said: "So you don't want to go to the diner after this?"
"No thanks," Nancy said, and doubted they would be allowed to go that far.
Nancy did not know how far the illusion stretched for, but she did know that the Crave Inn was about a twenty-minute drive away, and in 1984 had been a frequent haunt for Springwood Students. Some, Nancy included among that number, went for a milkshake and a spot to get homework done with better food than the library. Others disregarded its educational value entirely and just shot the breeze. In recent times, when Nancy had taken the odd visit back to Springwood, the next generation of youngsters started getting their first jobs there and serving customers as opposed to being the customers served.
With Principal White finished with the rules and regulations, none of which, Nancy noticed, Harper Campbell and Rudy Goldman were around to hear, he got up on a podium, and tapped a microphone. Nancy cringed, her face scrunching up, to the screech of the reverb.
"Sorry about that." Principal White did not look sorry at all. He did not look much like anything. "Anyway. Without further ado, in fourth place for the joint award is…"
Principal White kept on talking, based on the moving of his mouth, but the actual content of his words, Nancy could not hear that. It was sort of like having your ears filled underwater. There was a pressure, and impression of sound. Strangely enough, the murmurs of the crowd were much stronger to Nancy, to the point where it sounded like a hundred people shouting all at once. With her eyes slightly wild, Nancy turned to Glen, only to find he was cheering for the girl who had come in third place and thus won the bronze-plastic crown; Lindsay Bowers.
The same thing happened when the second place winner came up, except it was worse. The clapping boomed and thundered against her eardrums, and Nancy gave a shallow yelp. Fortunately the sound dissipated in the large array of other voices, far stronger than hers. She knew it was him, it had to be him – but when Nancy looked around, there were none of Freddy's usual calling cards, no red and green stripes hiding in plain sight. But again, it had to be him, or else Glen wouldn't have ignored her when she shouted her confusion about the principal's voice to him.
"And in first place, we have…"
A spotlight from above hovered around the crowd, to the tune of collective awe from all present. Almost all, save for Nancy. She tried getting Glen's attention again, tapping him on the shoulder. He smiled, crossed two fingers and signalled for Nancy to do the same.
Grief and guilt, she had those in spades, but this was the first time since the doors supernaturally locked on Luigi that she felt any real modicum of fear.
"...Nancy Thompson and Glen Lantz!"
The room did not break into raucous applause, but Nancy had never felt as recognised in life as she did at this moment. A path was cleared for her, classmates separated like Moses parting the red sea. Tina and Glen were as effusive as all get out, and Rod did join them in clapping, albeit with great reluctance.
So absorbed in the ritual of it all was Nancy that she forgot she had to proceed it, and stood in place for a second, perplexed by her own importance. This was not like back in Westin Hills where she played the role of a tragic maternal figure, helping all the best she could, secretly acknowledging that some of them might not make it. This was Christmas, and she was the star atop the tree, the gymnasium her temporary spotlight.
Glen smiled, his bright, shiny teeth gleaming.
"Shall we?"
Nancy smiled back.
"Thought you'd never ask," she said, and linked her arm around his. Principal White waved and beckoned for them to come forward.
So they did, and, for the most part, Nancy became an eighteen-year-old with a little to prove but not a lot again, mostly swallowing down that nagging feeling that any moment the rug was going to be pulled out from under her and everything would return to what it should have been.
But she was also just a girl in a dress, walking hand in hand with a boy to get her crown.