Strawberries and Cigarettes // Max Mayfield x girl OC

Season Four Prologue

High school.

Those two words were enough to make Chris feel sick to her stomach. 

She would give anything in the world to be able to go back to middle school. Middle school was familiar. Middle school was safe. Well, as safe as it can get when you've had three consecutive years of dealing with monsters from an alternate dimension. Even so, sometimes Chris liked to joke that she'd rather take on the mindflayer again than deal with high school.

I mean, sure, that was an exaggeration, but Chris hated change, and with the start of a new school came loads and loads of change. 

Chris' two best friends, Will and El, were in California, Max had been distancing herself, and Lucas made the basketball team which somehow meant that he was too cool to do all of the things the party used to do. Luckily, Chris still had Mike and Dustin. 

The three of them were a part of the Hellfire Club, which was a Dungeons and Dragons club that was started by a senior named Eddie Munson. Lucas was technically part of the club, too, but he rarely attended their meetings, and he almost never wore the club shirt.

Chris and Max were still together, but with the added stress of high school, Max started closing herself off even more than she was before. Nevertheless, Chris swore she would keep trying to get Max to open up. After all, Max had done the same for Chris the previous summer. Sometimes Chris felt bad for complaining about her troubles because she knew that Max was going through way more.

After Billy died, things kind of started to spiral in Max's life. Billy's father separated from Max's mom and walked out, leaving Max and Susan with hardly anything. They moved into a trailer park across town. Max's mom turned to drinking and found it hard to maintain a solid job, which meant that Max tried to stay away from home as much as she could. Most nights she found herself staying over at the Wheeler house. 

Even though she was more than welcome to stay, Karen made her sleep in the basement. She knew that the two girls were dating, and she didn't want to risk, as she would put it, any "funny business" which made no sense to Chris. I mean, even though Chris and Mike had gotten rid of their bunk beds, she still shared a room with her brother for christ's sake, so "funny business" wouldn't be possible, even if she wanted to. 

Yet, somehow, through all of the troubles the new school year brought, Chris had made it through and was slowly nearing a break. Hawkins High gave the students a week off for spring break, and Chris couldn't be more excited. Well, she technically could be more excited, but things hadn't worked out the way she wanted them to.

The original plan for spring break was for both Mike and Chris to fly out to California to see the Byers. They were told by Karen and Ted that in order for them to visit, they'd have to find a way to earn the money for a plane ticket by themselves. At first, Chris believed she'd be able to save money easily, but it proved to be quite the difficult task.

There were no businesses in Hawkins that wanted to hire an inexperienced fourteen-year-old, so Chris was stuck shoveling snow in the winter and mowing lawns once the snow melted. She begged Steve and Robin to let her help out at Family Video, but technically Keith was the boss, and he wasn't very fond of the Wheeler twins. Chris wasn't exactly sure what Mike was doing to earn money, but it seemed like he wasn't having a lot of luck with it, either. 

By the time they had to buy their tickets, they only had enough money saved up for one. After a very long and heated debate, the two of them decided that Mike would be the one to go. After all, Mike was the one who had a girlfriend out in California, and Chris figured she'd be able to go out and visit in a couple of months for summer anyway. On the bright side, Chris was more than happy to have a week away from her brother. Plus, she was still pretty certain that Will had a crush on Mike, and she was definitely an enabler of that.

So, finally, the last day of school before break rolled around. It was supposed to be like any other day, but little did Chris know, it'd be the last normal day she'd have for a while.

A/N: hello :) the time has finally come for me to release the beginning of season four. i am trying to get the chapters done as quickly as i can, but it's still taking me a while, so i really appreciate your patience with this. if you're reading this, i wanna say thanks for sticking around with this fic, it really means a lot to me :) also, as a side note, i've decided that all the short little oneshot chapters i've uploaded are not really canon and are more like AU since they don't really fit the storyline i have planned.