Opposite Ends

Y/N | November 1985

Eddie Munson had singularly, completely thwarted my carefully prepared plan to survive senior year.

Well, he'd disrupted it enough to throw off my whole routine anyway. I hadn't intended to be spending my free Friday nights huddled in the shadows in Hawkins Highs drama room, tuning out the screams of delight and exclaims of surprise emitting from the table in the centre of the room as I skimmed through class textbooks, quickly losing interest and flipping back to which ever fantasy novel I had stowed away in my bag. But true to my word, I had escorted Dustin and his friends to each Hellfire meeting, stubbornly standing by my distrusting opinion of Eddie. No one argued against my presence, well not to my face anyway. All of the members collectively agreeing that my place was on the sidelines due to my absismal performance playing DnD, I had held no argument to that decision, more than happy to oblige and blend into the dusty props that adorned the sides of the room, almost becoming one myself.

Whenever the dungeon master's gruff voice broke through the bubble of absorption in my own little corner, I would look up to watch him. Wondering how I ever only saw anger and hatred in this boy before. He was so full of life and light and happiness, a stark contrast to the dark vulgarity of my corrupted soul. We were each other's opposites, both of us branded with complete contradictory reputations that neither of us earned or deserved.

A few weeks into following our usual agenda, it had dawned on me. As I fiddled with the charm on my necklace, running it up and down the chain, that I had seriously misjudged Edward Munson. He was rough around the edges sure, as most of us were –well we weren't all drug dealers, but we definitely had our own demons. But he was good. Pure.

Hellfire meetings hadn't become the only place I paid attention Eddie. I had watched in the cafeteria during lunch as he valiantly ran to the defence of some loner freshman to shield him from Jason and his cronies, putting himself in the firing line instead. Or when some stuck-up Cheerleader bumped into him in the hallway, sending her books flying. He had bent down automatically to gather her belongings and hand them back to her, a tentative smile on his face despite that fact that she had joined in on the mocking of Eddie 'the freak' more times than I could count. I had watched from the other side of the corridor as his fingers brushed hers, slamming my locker shut and storming off.

I began to see who Eddie really was when he thought no one was watching. He was too kind for his own good, and every time I watched some air headed jock slam into his shoulders as they crossed paths, or heard the word freak muttered around me, my anger grew.

But he wasn't my friend, and I wasn't his. The defending words that built in up in my throat begging to spring forth, never spurned from my lips when I was a witness to his torture.

At the end of the school year, I would be going off to college and Eddie would be -wherever he planned on ending up. Only if he managed to army crawl his way from a D in Mrs O'Donnell's class though. The thought of offering to help tutor Eddie had briefly flashed in my mind, now having my own personal stake in the success of his graduation. If he didn't leave this town when I did, he would be spending another year of school with my unaccompanied brother and his friends, the presence of Dustin's overbearing sister no longer around to protect them. I wasn't quite sure what I was shielding them from anymore, since the worry of Eddie exposing me had long since passed with time. But the deeply ingrained urge to keep them safe was still there, a lot of it probably caused from the events of Starcourt.

But tutoring Eddie meant I would be spending even more time with him. Alone time. My breathing had sped up as I pictured us huddled in the dark library, sitting close as he scooted closer to pay attention, his buoyant curls bouncing as he pretended to understand what I would be trying to teach him. An unfamiliar heat had spread through my body as I imagined what it would be like to be unaccompanied with him, the distractions of Hellfire and Jason and Mr Mundy miles away from us. We would finally be able to talk about what had passed between us in my bedroom and at Family video. I could force him to offer up an explanation for both, but with a bundle of nerves turning over in my stomach – I realised he could ask the same of me. With the offer of helping him pass senior year positively squished, the dangers of being too close to him running rampant in my mind, I did the next best thing I could think off. In Calculus, the only class we shared, I would slide my paper to the edge of my desk to show him the answers and Eddie would flash me a dazzling smile in return to say thank you, creating swirling butterflies in my stomach.