Apocalypse, Steve Harrington

Chapter Seventy. Lucy In The Sky With Diamomds

SEVENTY
— lucy in the sky with diamonds

      SHE'S SITTING IN STEVE'S KITCHEN WITH HER LEGS PRESSED TO HER CHEST.

She's in her underwear, a tee-shirt too large for her body, and a pair of tube-socks that cover the scar running up her shin. Her hair is braided into two, each pig-tail falling down her chest and tied at the end with a black hair-band. Her fingernails are covered in chipped red nail-polish and the two necklaces at her collarbones are extremely contrasting and extremely tangled. There's a dainty metal-spoon balanced between her middle-finger and pointer-finger, and leaned against the pad of her thumb. Every few seconds, and ever so gently, she dips the head of the spoon into the glass-bowl and lets it flood with milk. And the milk is tainted pink, an off-colored pink from the Fruity Pebbles that were once in the dish and now in her stomach.

It's quiet. The house is really dark, except for the singular above-head light. It radiates a warm-yellow and consumes the whole counter, the counter that her bowl of cereal is sat on. The light buzzes a little, and it's one of the only sounds she can hear. That and the whirring AC, and the sound of the coffee machine dripping. She can kind of hear the record player from Steve's room upstairs, too, but muffled and through the walls. Lucy shifts a little, so she doesn't fall off the chair and accidentally crack her head on the marble counter-top. Her legs are still pressed to her chest, though, to maintain any kind of warmth she can grasp at. Her feet are pointed and her tube-socks, white with blue-and-red stripes, are soft against the bottoms of her thighs.

There's a subtle sunburn dancing across the bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks. It darkens her freckles and brings out color in the rest of her face — her lips are bright-pink, and the green in her eyes is lighter and a lot more visible. Two strands of soft, wavy hair are pulled out of her braids, and they hang low by her cheekbones when she tilts her head down. And the shirt she wears, the only real article of clothing, is Steve's. It's black and has a red Corvette smack in the center and it smells like a mix of their bodies. But the house is pretty cold, and she regrets not putting any pants on. Her legs are covered in goosebumps.

It's been two weeks. She's been living with Steve for two weeks.

He won't let her stay at the cabin. Well, it's not that he won't let her, because he can't and won't stop her from doing anything — he's just been really insistent on her staying at his place. It's more so because the idea of her sleeping all alone in the dark, cold woods, makes him want to die. They spent two nights there together, cleaned up and slept in Lucy's room, but it felt . . . off. It was nice to stay in her own bed, she felt, but being there was sickening and a little ghostly. Like, every time she went into the kitchen for a glass of water, she was overwhelmed with guilt and a certain type of sadness that can't quite be put into words. The heavy type that feels like it's chaining you to the ground. She asked Steve if they could go back to his house on the third day.

His parents have visited once, since then. They sent Lucy their condolences, got her a nice card and even some flowers. They weren't evil, the Harrington's, they were just cold. But in a time of death, everyone sort-of becomes warmer. It's a natural response to comfort the weak, she thinks. Steve's parents became a little more compassionate when they noticed she was a whole lot quieter since they last saw her in May. More timid. Weak, even. They hitched a flight to Florida, though, for a week-or-two away at Palm Beach. Steve told them keep his plane ticket.