Time After Time {Steve Harrington x OC}

5

Sadie Mealey woke up with a terrible case of cotton mouth. Groaning, she reached for her water bottle on the nightstand and took a few large gulps. 

It was Sunday after homecoming and she, along with every other Hawkins teen, was having a bit of a rough morning. Though, Sadie hadn't gone to the dance with the rest of them. It just so happened that Reefer Rick's party that Gareth was playing at was on the same night. 

So while every other girl had the normal high school experience of getting dressed up with her friends and taking pictures with her date, Sadie was dressing for a bonfire and making sure she had cash. While every girl was admiring the setup of the drab gym and dancing with the people she'd known her whole life. Sadie was biking the underestimated 10 miles to Lover's Lake to some drug dealer's cabin where she would interact with absolutely nobody she knew previously and watch a boy she'd spoken to once perform songs she'd never heard before. 

And she had fun, a lot of fun. It turned out that Rick and Eddie sold the exact thing Sadie was looking for, so her bike home had been a little more fun than the previous one.  

Sitting around the bonfire with an eclectic group of old timers, stoners, felons, and freaks, Sadie had felt so at peace. And so welcome, too. A middle-aged hippy, Myrtle, told Sadie all about her adventures hitchhiking around the country when she was Sadie's age while giving her a bunch of minute braids that were layered in her hair. 

Another man, Davis, was regaling the group about his time in the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. He still wore his leather jacket and beret with pride. 

Everyone enjoyed the band's performance. Gareth played the drums, which Sadie didn't mind watching, but he hadn't talked to her much. She assumed he was intimidated by Rick's friends. 

It had been really nice to see that people like Myrtle and Davis existed in Hawkins, and that they hadn't grown out of everything and morphed into the same cookie-cutter suburban parents like every other adult in the area seemed to. Sadie felt so...seen. 

Saturday night was a stark contrast from Friday when she'd gone to the Homecoming game, surrounded by cheering, drunk high schoolers instead of stoned boomers. She'd had fun at the game too though, despite Hawkins' mortifying loss. Caroline had managed to extricate herself from Carol and her gang, since they all wanted to be in front where they could see the players (or rather where the players could see them), so she and Sadie had sat at the top of the bleachers with a group of people that all happened to be in their Stats class, throwing popcorn from the concession stand at people's heads and trying not to look guilty when anyone looked up. 

As Sadie stretched and stared out at the morning sun she realized that this weekend had been the first time she'd felt whole since the summer had ended. The fall gloom seemed to have taken over her in the past two months, and she'd let Hawkins High take her prisoner. 

It was time to review the steps and really stick to them. That had to be why she'd been so miserable. 

Sadie pulled her journal out of the shoebox under her bed and sat down at her desk. 

1. Focus on school and getting out of there--So far she was doing well on that one, her grades were high and she'd pretty much finished up her personal statement essay for College Applications. Chemistry was kicking her ass but she was doing fine so far. Well enough to be practically tutoring steve Harrington every class. 

2. Go to school events--only under the conditions that you know somebody there. She'd been doing that too. Well, not homecoming, but she'd gone to every football game. 

3. Get a job, join a club or sport, save up--this she needed to work on. Helping organize the labyrinth of a closet for the theatre department didn't really count as a club.