𝐙𝐄𝐑𝐎 ✯ steve harrington¹

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄 : welcome to hawkins

WORD COUNT : 1.9k

Fields of Indiana farmland had begun to blend together over the hours that Owen Webb had spent in the car. They had certainly retired the concrete jungle landscape that all of them were used to back in Detroit. The girl's forehead pressed against the glass of her window, creating an oddly shaped smudge from how long she had been leaning there. The ride likely wouldn't have been too bad had it not been filled with her younger brother's attempts at jokes, mindless ramblings, and fantastical predictions about what life was going to be like once they arrived in their new home. The youngest Webb child, Lawrence – or Law to anyone who knew him – was physically incapable of sitting in silence for longer than it would take for him to catch his breath and continue his next thought. The rest of the Webb family members had learned to tune him out over the years – a survival tactic in their household.

Deep within the hidden, naively hopeful part of Owen's mind, she hoped that Law would be right about all of their lives changing for the better once they arrived in their new hometown. Their mother's death years prior had permanently shaken the foundation of their family. Her death was untimely and surprising, the result of a robbery attempt after she had left work late at night. Their mother's death was just another story for the people of Detroit. Such things happened to women out by themselves in the city at night. But, her death was extremely hard to process for all of those she had left behind. It was just such an unexpected and brutal way for such a sweet woman to meet her end. Not to mention, all of the kids were still so young when she passed, with Gordon only being freshly thirteen.

Owen's guilt during that time was suffocating. Her grieving didn't look or feel like the grief that was consuming her father and brothers. The young girl had only come to live with the Webb family permanently a few years prior to their mother's passing. Owen obviously cared for her adoptive mother, but that couldn't compare to the emotions being felt by those who had known her and loved her so much longer. As everyone mourned deeply around her, all Owen knew to do was keep her head down and let them feel anything they deemed necessary. For the kids' father, processing that grief was done through empty liquor bottles and "secretly" popping pills into his mouth after dinner every night. He thought that if he hid his vices well enough, the children wouldn't notice. But he hadn't raised fools. Each of the Webb kids knew exactly what their father was up to and where most of his now-singular income was being directed towards.

As their father sank himself deeper and deeper into an addiction he wouldn't be able to find his way out of, the three kids took care of one another. They had to. Owen was getting Gordon's hand-me-downs as he steadily grew, Law made sure all the doors in the house were locked every night before they fell asleep, and Owen figured out how to make all sorts of boxed meal recipes. Life continued for them, despite their father's benders that were almost always followed by him dragging himself off of the couch and into work the next morning.

Years of this routine passed, all four of them growing accustomed to their respective roles within the home. However, the kids' father always had this sort of humiliation surrounding him becoming a deadbeat father. The three kids never held it against him, knowing that this struggle just showed how painful life without his wife was for him. But, after seeing a Help Wanted ad in the paper for a company in need of a sales rep in some random town in Indiana, their father decided that perhaps a change of pace is exactly what their family needed. Ultimately, the risk had its rewards, as could be seen in an offer being extended to him not long after he called and inquired about the job listing. Both hesitant, but hopeful about the idea of no longer living in the shadow of his wife's passing, Mr. Webb quickly accepted and began making plans to get he and his family out of the city.

Their father's news regarding his new job in Indiana was met with gritted teeth and fake smiles from his three kids. After all, Gordon had just started his senior year of high school. Owen wasn't too far behind him, just weeks into her junior year. Law was probably the quickest to warm up to the idea, more than willing to restart ninth grade elsewhere and hopefully escape the taunting of four grades worth of bullies. (Gordon and Owen knew better than he did that teenagers were still teenagers – regardless of where they were from.) No matter how the children felt about the matter, their house sold quickly to some schmuck probably coming to work at some broken down factory in the city. Their shit was thrown into boxes before being puzzle pieced into the back of a moving truck headed straight to Indiana.