The radio is turned onto whatever his uncle's been listening to.
It's not his station, Eddie immediately knows.
His uncle fancies himself a cowboy, of all the ridiculous things.
His uncle has never ridden a horse, never been outside of Hawkins, and certainly doesn't look cool in cowboy boots.
And his music association is…only so-so. It's not what Eddie would call 'cowboy music', but well, his uncle is free to like whatever he pleases. As long as he remembers to turn the damn station back to Eddie's Van Halen.
His fingers go to turn off 'Money for Nothing'. Eddie doesn't hate this song, it does fall somewhat under the Venn Diagram of music he likes, but he is jumpy beyond belief, all due to the blonde in his passenger seat.
And he'd feel a lot better if he was listening to something he knew well.
But before he can, he notices that Chrissy's fingers are strumming the beat of it on his dashboard and mouthing the words to it.
"You…you know Dire Straits?" The disbelief is out of his lips before he can stop himself.
Chrissy pauses, nose screwing up, and he's sure she's going to scoff at him and lie straight to his face. It's what any other prissy cheerleader would do.
But he needs to remember…apparently, Chrissy is not just any cheerleader.
"Yeah, that so hard to believe?" She raises an eyebrow at him, "It's a good song."
His fingers flick to his channel before he can think too much about this, but apparently, his mind is still whirling at the news.
"I would have believed your favorite would have been Like a Virgin or some bullshit."
"Never said it was my favorite, just like it. And no, Madonna's too…" She clearly has opinions about it but ends up just shaking her head, "No. No."
Eddie is dying to ask what her favorite is, but that seems too invasive. This is already a bit out of his usual professional-client bounds, taking someone back to his house, but he seems weak and stupid and entirely foolish around her.
He turns the music up to almost ear-shattering decibels so that he doesn't put his foot in his mouth and say something really, really dumb to her.
When they arrive, the mosquitos dance around the dingy light of the streetlamp.
He jumps out and turns, seeing Chrissy cautiously approach.
"This is, uh, my castle."
Wow, apparently he needs his music on at all times because that was incredibly cheesy and the definition of a dumb thing you don't say to girls that are cool like Chrissy.
But she laughs. She smiles and looks up and steps toward him, not away.
He opens the door, letting her in first. The smell of her perfume, something not overly floral and almost woodsy, wafts over him as she passes, the scent swinging from her ponytail.
He could get drunk on that smell, he thinks in a haze as she passes him.
It's not much in here. He knows it's not much. He knows she lives in a big, nice house. He's never seen it, but anyone not living in the trailer park, but logic, live in a big nice house.
He knows that he and his uncle don't clean up the best they could, but all of a sudden he is incredibly embarrassed by how it looks- everything scattered about, the wrappers on the table, the magazines spread around of anything from fishing monthly to pornos that he doesn't think are his.
"Sorry for the mess," He says, forcing himself to sound okay with it all as he hastily swipes a few things away, "The maid took the week off." He adds and is pleased to see his joke lands right, and he giggles again.
Like she's…charmed by him.
No girl has ever giggled at his jokes. Usually, they just roll their eyes or swear at him.
But Chrissy…she's the outlier. She's an outsider.
Maybe like him.
"You, uh, you live here alone?" Chrissy turns in a full circle, taking it in.
She isn't looking at it in disgust like he would imagine. Just curiosity, as though she's trying to memorize it, etch a mental image of the entire place in her mind.
He knows what that question would mean between the lines, usually. He's asked him himself of other girls. But he knows Chrissy isn't thinking like that. She's just asking because she wants to know.
"With my Uncle. But he works nights at the plant," Eddie replies, which will give them enough time to do this drug deal. He doesn't have a big plan for how to do it. Honestly, he doesn't deal much, just with a few friends. Usually, he's too lazy or too busy and will just send people to Reefer Rick (when he's not locked up, granted), but when he does sell to the occasional goody-two-shoes just wanting to try something new, he wants them gone as soon as possible.
But he's sorta wondering, well, maybe he should be around while Chrissy takes this? Just to be safe, of course. Nothing else. Just friendly professionalism.
"Bringing home the big bucks," Eddie snorts to himself as he starts rifling through some tins. It's a joke. His uncle hardly makes a passable wage. Eddie gets paid enough from his gigs to not worry his uncle about spending cash, and he helps pay for food.
It is working. It works. It will work, somehow, after he graduates because well, he's not shitting himself. He's not going to college.
"How long does it take?"
Eddie looks up, feeling like he missed a step in their conversation, "Sorry?"
Chrissy, swamped in her sweater, pulling in on herself, seems to force the words out, "The Special K. How long to kick in."
He's not judging anyone's demons. He knows he's got enough for a full Haunted House. And usually, he wouldn't give a shit about what someone wants their drugs for.
But like the moment in the woods…he's worried. Worried for her. Which isn't as odd as it seems. He knows he acts tough, but he does care about others. His friends, those three freshmen he saw looking like sad-kicked puppies on their first day of school, and so it's not wild that somehow Chrissy has become one. It's just weird how fast.
But she didn't ask for a protector. Or someone to coddle her. She just wants drugs.
"Oh, uh, well, depends if you snort it or not."
If he can't eke out a reply to what has her so desperate, to come out to the Munson trailer for the hard shit (yeah, he knows how people see him), the best he can be is informative.
"Uh, if you do," He continues, "Then, uh, yeah."
Way to go, Eddie. Super informative. Like a textbook.
Okay, so he's not great at the school stuff? But he's trying, for her sake, even if he sorta missed the mark on explaining that one.
"It'll, uh, kick in pretty quick," He adds, in case that totally scholastic 'yeah' didn't get the answer across. He wouldn't know what it meant if he was a newbie to this either, so it felt necessary to add.
He looks down at the tin, grinning about his own sense of cloudiness, and in his thoughts, he realizes that this tin is empty.
"Awe, shit."
Chrissy hops from foot to foot, "You sure you have it?"
The idea of Chrissy realizing that, fuck, yeah, maybe he used the rest of it with his band while they were practicing KISS because none of them were matching up and they figured a bit of good ole rock and roll muse drugs would work, and that he doesn't have it and that she'd leave is something he can't have.
It didn't work, by the way.
Hard Luck Woman still eludes him and his crew.
He has to have some more somewhere. He never uses all of his stash on his friends. Gotta leave some for him.
"No, no, I got it," He hurries to say, and thinks he might remember where that last little bit is.
Crap, he thinks he knows he took that Special K and put it…
"Uhm, somewhere."
It's not exactly the voice of total confidence. He realizes this.
He looks around. Nope, wouldn't be the kitchen. The bathroom? Naw.
Gotta be his bedroom.
He leaves Chrissy, feeling like she won't go because who else will she get it from?
As he enters his bedroom, he sees his prized guitar on the wall. He scraped and pinched and saved two years for this beauty. It's the only good thing he owns. He treats that thing like it's pure gold.
"Sorry I'm late sweetheart," He says, tongue in cheek, and kisses the wood body of it. He idly wonders if Chrissy would find it funny or weird he has a girlfriend-ish pet name for his guitar?
"You're beautiful," He says with a wink, and he would probably lavish compliments on his guitar further if he didn't have an actual living-breathing-equally-as-beautiful girl in his living room right now.
Eddie starts to dig through his cabinets, tossing away things he hasn't seen in practically forever, making him think it's not in here. An advert for the Star Wars movies, his freshman year Spanish term paper he got a D on (he was proud of that grade), an old popcorn tub…no, probably not anywhere here.
He really needs to clean up a bit.
It's beginning to be clear to him that not knowing where your illegal drugs are in your bedroom is a problem.
His fingers graze his records and they come spilling down on his bedroom floor.
Fuck; not what he needs right now.
As he's setting them back, the Dire Straights album pauses in his hand.
He gives a little laugh.
He was sort of an ass to turn off a song that Chrissy had just told him she liked. But he wasn't thinking. She still seems so…on edge. Maybe this will make her calm down? The first time he'd tried Special K, it had been to the dulcet and sweet, sweet voice of Aerosmith. It had helped things if he did say so himself. Who is to say that this couldn't be equally as calming?
He puts it in his record player and turns it up loud. Thank god that his Uncle works nights, or else this thing would have been confiscated a long time ago.
Eddie finds himself humming along as he continues his search. He glances back to the open door, half hoping that Chrissy will appear, tilting her head and acknowledging what he just put on for her. It's not to 'Money for Nothing', that's the second song on the album, but she probably knows more than just that one.
He wants her in his bedroom. Not in that way, well, maybe a little, but for some ungodly reason he wants her in his persona space.
The music pushes him forward, and at about the 9th tin he opens (should he maybe be labeling this in some way?) he finds it.
"Gotcha. Found it! Peaceful bliss, just moments awa…"
The drugs drop from his fingers.
"Chrissy?"
She's just…standing there.
It's sort of creepy.
Her eyes are blazed out, and he wonders if she found some other drugs first. But that doesn't seem like her…to just take random shit in someone else's house?
"Hey…hello!" He snaps his fingers in front of her, and now things are getting scary. The sort of scary that he won't admit to anyone, but the scary he felt seeing The Exorcist that scared him silly out of sleep for a week straight and he still gets chills just thinking about it.
The lights flicker in and out and Eddie is freaked with a capital F.
It's not fun anymore.
This doesn't feel like a regular power surge, like when he plugs everything into one outlet and the whole place just goes dark. It's flickering like someone is standing at the switch and seeing how fast they can change it up and down.
It feels unnatural, though he doesn't even know how to describe why it doesn't feel real, he just knows it doesn't.
It reminds him of how he felt about all the other weird stuff that's been happening in Hawkins, things that up until now he's proudly been able to avoid.
Mall going kablooie? Good, he's not a fan of the mall.
The middle school kid disappearing? He doesn't associate with middle schoolers.
The Hawkins Lab going boom? He failed Chemistry. Like; hard.
All things that he has reasonably stayed away from. Until now.
Awe hell no. He's not going to be part of it.
"Chrissy! Time to wake up. Hello, you hear me?" He starts clapping in her face. He's never hit a girl, but maybe she just needs a good punch to the face. No, no, that's a terrible idea. Jason will come for his jaw if he does that.
"I don't like this Chrissy, wake up!"
He shakes her shoulders until like someone pulling the strings, a puppet doll, she shoots up to the ceiling.
He has to be dreaming. This is worse than his worse nightmare.
He knows those aren't real.
He's not sure on this one and this puts a fear in him that he has never felt before.
The lights are still going haywire, the fixtures swinging, the bulbs near the kitchen nearly fritzing out, the lamp side table illuminating more glow than he thought it possible to. Other electronics are going off; the timer on the microwave, in the depths of his ability to listen, starts beeping, and the TV screeches and spits out static.
One of Chrissy's arms snaps at an unnatural angle.
The record player in his bedroom is at max volume, the last tick that he's never even been brave enough to try, sure it would break his eardrums and send the cops on him.
If he thinks back to this moment, he'll realize they've switched to 'Money For Nothing'.
Eddie screams, falling back and shuffling back frantically, but just like it started, it ends.
Chrissy drops to the ground, and all the electronics in his house stop at the same time like someone pulled the plug on everything all at once.
Chrissy looks up, her face green and tears rolling down her cheeks.
Then, she looks at her arm, entirely pointing the wrong way and he sees the curtain roll over her eyes as she lolls on the ground.
He sits for god knows how long, trying to corral his heart back to where it is supposed to be because he's pretty sure it sank all the way to his stomach and tried to tear itself out of his own body.
When he feels ready, though he doesn't think he'll ever sleep again, he reaches and touches a light touch to Chrissy's neck.
Still alive. Just passed out.
He remembers watching the bone move and vomits, shakily standing.
He's halfway to the door before he stops himself.
Chrissy doesn't deserve him fleeing into the night, hoping she'll wake up and drag herself to get help. He knows that everyone will think he gave her something or he broke her arm, but he's not just going to leave her lying there.
Then the 9-1-1 line picks up, for a second, he's not even sure he has any strength to voice what just happened. And he's not sure what just happened.
So he says what he can, "Chrissy's really hurt. I'm not sure how it happened. She passed out. Please, please, come send someone."