Apocalypse, Steve Harrington

Chapter Seventy-Seven. Head Over Heels

SEVENTY-SEVEN
— head over heels

THE FIRST TIME STEVE SAW LUCY, HE WAS THIRTEEN-YEARS-OLD.

Her hair was long and untamed and she had beauty-marks flecking her cheeks. Steve remembers she wore a pair of old overalls, with a yellow long-sleeve shirt under it, and the shoelaces of her brand new, bright-red sneakers were untied. It was the first day of eighth-grade, for him, anyway, and she and her brother were new to town — they had never stepped foot in Hawkins Middle, before. She stood across the courtyard with her blue Jansport backpack slung over both shoulders, her purple-polish painted fingers fumbling with the lock on her rusty old bike, the one that she really couldn't seem to get working — not like anyone would here would steal it, but he assumed things were different, where she moved from. Her brother — tall, skinny, with his shoelaces tied — took control and strapped her navy-blue bike to the bicycle rack. Not that younger-Steve was really paying any attention to that, though. He was just watching her fiddle with the straps of her backpack.

      Lucy had a pretty smile and always put her lunch in a brown paper bag. Her brother would constantly forget, and she'd sigh, hand him a peanut-butter sandwich all wrapped-up and pre-prepared for him, like she knew he wasn't going to have food — it happened basically everyday. She came to school with her hair either a fucking rats-nest, or pulled up into little braids with cute red-bows on the ends — there was really no in-between. Lucy made the soccer team in the seventh-grade. She helped bring the Junior Lady Tigers to victory, that season. Lucy could be a little mean. She'd spit harsh sentences when he was being annoying, she'd call him a dick and a pea-brained ass-face at the ripe age of thirteen. She rolled her eyes at him, and hit his chest when he smacked the books from her hands, and she'd step on his toes and ruin his Nike's if he said something in his pre-pubescent teenage boy lingo. And, most of all, she was so incredibly contrasting to Nancy Wheeler. Steve thinks the only thing that had in common was the fact that they both liked putting bows in their hair, but he was pretty sure that was just a universal girl thing — but they still managed to stay best-friends. Steve noticed all these things.

      In seventy-nine, he shoved her into a leaf-pile after the last bell rang. Looking back, he was definitely old enough to know better — she really got on his nerves, though, with the name-calling and the mocking and the long-stares and the eye-rolls. He was upset because she didn't like him. Not like Lucy cared, honestly — she stood up, kicked him in the balls, and dragged her brother by the goddamn ear so they could go home. She brushed the orange-and-yellow leafs off her back like nothing happened at all. Good for her.

He's honestly been in awe since the first time he saw her at Hawkins Middle, wearing the overalls while she couldn't get her stupid bike lock working. It's been what, five years? She smiled at him from across the courtyard, and his heart has been going crazy since. That's the Lucy-effect.

She stands in Nancy Wheeler's doorway with her hands shoved in her pockets and a nervous look on her face. She has her hair down, the soft brown-waves rippling over her chest and fraying by her ribcage. Her jeans cinch perfectly at the waist, and the white tee-shirt is kind-of folded over, and she's wearing a big, bulky jacket he's seen in her closet, before. It's navy-blue with two cream-colored stripes across the center, and he can tell it's the only thing keeping her from shivering in the still-chilled March air. Her shoelaces are tied, actually, in perfect little bunny-knots that actually look double-laced, for once. Delicate freckles still fleck her soft-face, and her lips are red and rosy with the tint of her own teeth sinking into the plush skin. And, fuck, she's making that face — the narrowed brow with the wide-and-worried eyes. A soon to be twitching bottom-lip, and soon to be tear-filled waterline, he knows it. She is going to be the death of him.