"Come on, Stevey. When are you going to open your eyes and see that she doesn't want you?"
"I wasn't talking about Nancy," Steve says lightly. "I was talking about you, Sage."
"Steve,"
...
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SAGE WATCHES four young boys run into her place of work. She didn't know they'd be coming to the arcade so late, if she had known, she could have set aside a few extra quarters for them or used her employee discount for them.
Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, Lucus Sinclair, and Will Byers all run up to the prize counter of the arcade that night.
Will speaks up first, "Do you mind giving me a ride home tonight? My mom dropped me off."
Sage rolls her eyes, "Sure, but you'll have to wait until I get off at ten. I'll give the rest of you a ride too. It's dangerous out here at night."
"Yeah, it's only dangerous because you have your license," Dustin snickers.
Sage lowers her headphones and makes direct eye contact with Dustin from behind the counter. "I'll rip the curls right off your head, Curly-Sue."
"And I'll shove my foot so far up your ass that you'll be speaking backwards for the rest of your life," Dustin chuckles.
Sage smirks. "I'll shove my fist so far down your throat, you'll only remember the cold feeling of my rings."
Dustin and Sage are stepsiblings. Her father started dating Dustin's mother a few months ago. She had already been babysitting the group of boys at this time, with this, her father got a chance to get close to the parents she had been working for. That's when he met Dustin's mother, Claudia Henderson.
Sage and Dustin had already had this banter going for years, but it wasn't until she started getting invited to family cookouts with Dustin and his mother and celebrating Christmas with the Hendersons that it got worse.
"If you guys leave me alone for the rest of my shift, I'll put your bikes in the back of my truck and I'll give you a ride home. Call your parents and tell them you'll be home later, okay? We don't want Joyce worrying about you, Will." Sage gestures towards the phone beside her hanging on the wall then looking at the other phone of the counter behind her.
