Time After Time {Steve Harrington x OC}

Prologue

Sadie Mealey thought she had it all figured out. After seven different schools in the last seven years, she was a pro at the whole "new girl" thing. In fact, she was such a pro that nobody even knew she was new anymore. 

It was all due to the steps. The steps had evolved as she moved, and they were specific to each place. They helped her to get through each fresh hell that the millions of schools she attended presented. DC had had no steps, and that was a shit show. Fresno had 2 and it had ended miserably, but Sadie mostly chalked that up to the fact that she was in Fresno. Omaha had 4 and went alright, Jacksonville had been fine with 5 but Tulsa had gone terribly. When Sadie had brought the steps up to ten in Eugene and Spokane she found she was on way too tight a leash. So she was down to 8 when she and her mother moved for the last time to Hawkins, Indiana. 

Sadie Mealey's 8 Steps to Survive Hawkins High (and not commit some sort of murder-suicide before graduation) (and also have a semi-alright time):

1. Focus on school and getting out of there

2. Go to school events--only under the conditions that you know somebody there

3. Get a job, join a club or sport, save up

4. avoid douchebags

5. avoid "end of the world as we know it" type scenarios

6. stay under the radar

7. do not get involved in any of this shit surrounding the Byers kid, sounds miserable

8. do not fall in love (flings allowed--see Sadie's 5-steps to not catching feelings)

Growing up, Sadie wasn't exactly sure what it was her mother did that had dragged her across the country her entire life. She'd asked over and over again and always got the same answer; "Our government contracts me out to fix its problems. It's as simple as that."

Kim Mealey's answer was always paired with a sigh and an air of finality, and at some point, Sadie just didn't care to press further. If she did all she would get was, "what does it matter what  I do when it means we're well off and you get to see the world?"

"The world" was morbidly hyperbolic in Sadie's opinion. The most exotic place they'd lived was Florida. And not even Miami or anything. 

And it was easy to say they were "well off" when all of their housing costs were taken care of by the government, including the house itself, which always came fully furnished and just added to the mystery. 

Their new home in Hawkins blew the rest out of the water. It was a modern mansion on a street lined with buildings that were just as expensive and impressive looking, generously spaced out by lush lawns and a dense forest that provided some privacy--which was just as well since each house seemed to be about 50% window. 

Sadie had unpacked her room within 24 hours, after doing this enough times she'd gotten the hang of it. Her band posters were tacked to the wall in the same order they always were, her stereo and cassette collection found their home on the chest of drawers that came with the house, her photographs were stuck onto the mirror, and her same lavender sheets and patterned comforter adorned the government issued queen-sized bed. 

Sadie had the exact right formula for making an unused room look like it had been lived in for the last seventeen years, the only tell being the plain off-white walls that she was forbidden from painting and the ugly, outdated wood of the provided furniture.

It was the summer of 1984 and Sadie was going into her senior year. She had absolutely no plans except for surviving the monotony of a small town high school for one year. Little did she know, what Sadie Mealey would survive in Hawkins was much less mundane.