Nancy Wheeler's Guide To Pissing Off Your Parents

Chapter 3

Trigger warning: childhood cancer. It's just a brief mention and doesn't go any further than that. I'm adding the warning just in case.

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Eddie had to kick Imelda under the lunch table so she could stop literally drooling over the arepas and fried plantains she was eating for lunch, while staring at Mike across the table from her talking to Dustin and Will.

His sister stared angrily at him before taking a bite of her arepa.

He didn't understand how he hadn't seen his sister's crush for Mike before. It was very obvious, now that he noticed. What he didn't understand even more was how, why, why the fuck him?

Now, Jane, on the other hand.

Not only did he approve his sister liking her, but he also wanted it to happen, unlike Imelda and Mike.

Mike looked like a frog, couldn't seem to keep his mouth closed for more than five seconds, thought he was the main character and had been plotting for Eddie's downfall ever since he and Nancy had kissed in front of him and the rest of the Hellfire Club last night.

Jane was sweet, she was kind, couldn't hurt a fly, she was smart and adorable and just a wonderful young lady. Which made everyone in town all that much confused when she chose Mike Wheeler to be her boyfriend, out of all people.

Eddie had been forced by his stepmom to chaperone the 2019 Snow Ball in exchange for not getting detention for something he didn't even remember anymore, just remembered how much he had hated being there and how annoyed he had been. He had spent most of the night scaring away any boys that tried to ask Imelda for a dance. And he remembered seeing three kids honest to God crying when Mike and Jane started dancing together and they even kissed.

Which had made him want to throw up over the dance floor. Middle schoolers kissing was just... gross.

He also remembered looking at Imelda and realizing how sad she suddenly looked, and she even asked him to take her home. Now he understood why.

Ever since then, Mike has worn Jane's favorite scrunchie on his wrist and they held hands everywhere they went together.

Eddie heard that Jane had been a heartbreaker middle school, with boys leaving notes in her locker and her desk being full of chocolates and love letters by the end of each Valentine's Day, even before middle school, boys would rip flowers from the ground and sheepishly try to give them to her at the playground, which always drove her father, the Chief, mad wanting to track down all of these boys and hunt them one by one, but ever since she had started high school, she had changed a little, and so did her appearance. From play dates between her and Imelda Eddie remembered her as this shy, tiny, tomboy-ish girl with short brown hair that loved eggo waffles and all her friends called "Eleven" or "El" for reasons he couldn't remember, just some dumb childhood nickname.

The girl that was now walking towards the "Freak Table" of the lunch room was confident, wore a cheerleading outfit, was tan, had a radiant smile, and long blonde hair that she had dyed before her first day as a freshman. And she was as much as a heartbreaker now as she had been in middle school. If anything, the love letters in her locker increased a significant number ever since she went blonde, became a cheerleader, and spent her weekends getting tan at the pool when she wasn't hanging out with her friends at Starcourt Mall. She was now significantly popular, specially by association since she started hanging out with the Cunningham Siblings, and despite sitting at the Freak Table and having such a loser as Mike as her boyfriend.