PAROXYSM- Lucas Sinclair ³

FROM HAWKINS, WITH LOVE

February 14TH, 1986

Dear Will,

It's Valentine's Day today. I often wonder what we would've done for it if you'd stayed in Hawkins. I know we couldn't have gotten the Couple's Special at Courtney's Cuisine, nor could we have kissed in the Valentine's Day photo booth like all of the other pairs do. I mean, I don't know if half-priced hamburgers and sparkling pink photosets are really our thing—what is our thing? Surviving near-death experiences? Bonding over our shared trauma? Pondering how the world's really gonna end?—but maybe we would've done it anyway if we'd actually had the opportunity.

Or maybe we would've climbed up to the Cerebro and fallen asleep under the stars. Maybe we would've had a snowball fight. Maybe we would've jumped into my pool, even though it's about twenty degrees too cold and we'd probably come close to getting hypothermia.

I know that whatever we'd end up choosing, it would be just the two of us. We'd make some excuse to the others and spend the whole day together, trying to figure out what couples do.

Will, are we still a couple? I'd like to think we are, but who knows what kind of cute boys they have in California? They're probably a lot different from the boys here. All of them seem so terrified to be feminine that they don't even let themselves hug their friends. I don't know what the problem is with femininity, but then again, I don't know a lot of things.

And I've veered off-track, as per usual. You can probably tell that before I started writing to you, I'd never done it before. I didn't exactly have friends back in Chicago to write to, and before you moved away, everyone here lived too close to necessitate such a strenuous process (and here I'm starting to sound like Alina. It's not her, though, it's my grandparents—they've read something about how you should just talk to a child normally, and now they're talking like they're reading one of Shakespeare's soliloquies whenever they're around Nicole). Anyway, I hope we're still a couple, Will. Even separated by thousands of miles.

I hope you know that I'm thinking about you on this Valentine's Day. And I hope you know that I made you a Valentine's Day card anyway.

Yours,

Gabe