𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐈𝐒𝐇// 𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐗𝐎𝐂

𝐥𝐢𝐢. ✭ 𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒

APRIL 17, 1983; EDDIE
2:00-2:01 p.m.

Background Music
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-Rosalie by Thin Lizzy-
⇆ㅤ ||◁ㅤ❚❚ㅤ▷||ㅤ ↻

"Rosalie, wanna go out with me?" That was the question that started it all. A stupid question. One that only a lonely, scruffy, teenage boy could conjure up. What surprised me most about the whole predicament was the girl's answer.

After looking over her shoulder to her friends in the distance, she blankly said. "Uh...sure." Rosalie slumped off to them without another word, holding her schoolbooks close to her chest, and leaving me with an exhilarated thrill no boy should be able to have.

I had a girlfriend. I had a girlfriend and I thought she was the coolest, like ever. I'm not kidding. Just like when Chance struck me with her arrow, I babbled on and on about Rosalie. To my friends, to my uncle, and even to strangers. I was a complete pest, a loudmouth, and a nuisance.

Rosalie listened to The Bangles, The Kinks, and Joan Jett. A promising list of artists that I could infiltrate with the metal I loved. She even liked Thin Lizzy. I saw the faintest trace of a smile warm her face when she heard the song that had her namesake.

That's how we met really. She was sitting on a bench at Heath park, binoculars pressed up to her eyes. Her face was tilted to the sky, angled upward. A large bag of salted sunflower seeds, the sort of kind you'd spit out at baseball games, hugged her side. Rosalie had a diary of some sort lounging across her lap.

I was skateboarding, trying to master a kickflip on the smooth cement walkway. My walkman was blasting Rosalie through my headphones but even through the heavy rock, my attention had been captured by this girl. This stranger with frumpy clothes and heavy eyelids. She looked perpetually exhausted, even while enjoying her favorite hobby.

"So are you like a peeping Tom or something?" The first sentence I greeted her with was a teasing question. If anything, I had been the peeping Tom, watching her from afar while I fell off of my skateboard over and over again.

She lowered her binoculars, revealing her dark green eyes. They were the color of a forest in full bloom. When the lushness of Hawkins trees overwhelmed the townspeople. Her lips were a pale pink, chapped.

"Or something," Rosalie murmured, digging a hand into her bag of seeds. She trickled a few into her mouth before offering some to me, her palm open. "Want some?"

"Sure," I replied, scooping some of the seeds out of her hand. The weather was nice and pleasant on that spring day. It was the perfect day for her to be out when the sky was clear and blue. "Name?"

"Rosalie. Yours?"

"You're shitting me." Gaping at her, I scrambled for the headphones of my walkman. What a coincidence! My own music matched the name of the mystery girl in front of me. If that wasn't a sign, I didn't know what was.

"Well, nice to meet you, You'reshittingme." Smart-assing me dryly, she lifted her binoculars back to their original spot. "Wanna take a seat? You can if you want to, or don't. I don't really care."

"No, no, I'm Eddie." My tongue felt all swollen around her, she made me swallow a lot. Being around Rosalie was a guarantee that I would be a complete idiot or say something undeniably plebian. She cursed me like that. "I'm just saying that it's crazy that's your name 'cus..." Untangling, my headphones from my ears, I offered them out to her and rewound the Thin Lizzy cassette.