MadMax

Action!

Steve is shaking my shoulders.
"Red wake up, everyone is waiting on you!" He says in his best mom voice.

"Oh my god, I'm coming" I wail.

I get up from the bed without thinking and Steve looks at my bare legs all bandaged.

"Oh my god! what happened??? Are you okay?" He asks, concerned.

I quickly cover up with my blanket and look for my sweatpants.

"Yeah, it's nothing. I just fell." I lie.

"Okay.." He says, not buying it. "Well, get dressed, everyone is waiting for you in the car."

He walks out of the room giving me privacy. I change into my sweatpants and throw on my sweatshirt. I run out the door and crawl into the car.

"Well look who decided to join us." Mike says.

I just roll my eyes. I think I do that a lot. Steve pulls out of the driveway and we are on the way to Steve's house to grab some weapons.

He pulls up to his ginormous house 10 minutes later. I just now realized most of us have never been here.

"My parents are at work but we still have to hurry. Let's go." Steve demands.

We all pile out of the car and follow Steve in. Nancy leads the way along with Steve. She has been here plenty of times. We head to the garage where we find a ton of weapons from all the previous times we've fought insane monsters. I can't even believe this is my life now. I'm about to fight some army guys with a bunch of teenagers.
I go to grab a shotgun and Steve stops me.

"Uh uh, no way. You are not touching a gun." Steve sasses.

"Oh, c'mon?! What am I gonna do, throw a waffle at them?" I argue.

"Nope, you're gonna use this." He hands me a pocket knife.

"What is this supposed to do?!

"Well, I'm not going to let them get close to you kids. but just in case." He protests.

I roll my eyes and join the others. They have a pocket knife too.

"Dude look what I can do." Dustin says swinging it around.

"Y'all are gonna stab yourselves." I say walking by.

Mike gives me a dirty look but they go on playing with them like they are toys. I go and sit on the couch with El while we wait for the cue to leave. She is watching SpongeBob on the tv.

"Why are you watching SpongeBob?" I ask, giggling.

"SpongeBob?" She asks, confused.

"Yeah, that's what this is." I say, pointing to the tv.

"Oh, it's funny. It popped up when I turned on the tv. I've never seen it before" She replies.

"You have never seen SpongeBob?!!!" I practically shout, completely surprised.

She shakes her head.

"Oh my god, SpongeBob used to be my favorite. Everyone has seen SpongeBob!" I go on.

"I didn't even know what a tv was until like a year ago!" She argues.

"Oh yeah, I forgot. Sorry." I instantly feel bad. Sometimes I forget that she didn't have a normal childhood.

"It's okay."

We watch it together in silence until Steve announces that we're ready to go.

Everyone gathers back in Steve's car.

"What exactly is our plan here?" Will questions.

"Well, we need to find a way to bring Sullivan and his guys to us. So we were thinking that we could go to the junkyard where nobody is and call the sheriff of the police department saying that there is some little girl with powers at the junkyard. The military will hear it on their radar and will come running. All we got to do is lure Sullivan here and kill him. Once he's gone, his little minions won't have their leader, we will run and they will drop the whole act." Steve responds.

"And how are you sure that they will leave us alone after? Wouldn't they want us after we like, kill their leader?!" Robin says unsure of the plan.

"Listen, I've never told anyone this but my uncle is part of some big mafia groups just like these people that we are going after. Once the leader is gone, they move on. Just trust me on this. They couldn't give two shits about us, they are just following their boss's orders." Steve confesses.

Everyone states ahead without saying a word until Nancy breaks the silence. "Okay Steve, we trust you. Let's kill this bastard."

We all nod and say a few yeahs in agreement.

We pull up to an abandoned parking lot that leads to the junkyard. We have to walk the rest of the way because it's all woods. This was the place where I found out about all of this crazy stuff. I didn't believe Lucas until he took me here and I saw the demi dogs. It's crazy everything we have been through since then.

We finally make it to the junkyard, Dustin is whining cause his legs are tired. We all roll our eyes at him and I let out a little giggle, which takes me by shock. The place is exactly how we left it. The whole walk up here Steve was clearing a path to be able to pull his car up. He is on the way back now to get his car. Will is quietly sitting in the corner messing around with sheets of metal. Dustin and Lucas are practicing sword fighting with some contraption they made out of old pipes. Dustin has gotten closer with the boys since Eddie died, he hasn't really said anything about what happened but he has changed.

Me and El are sitting on the bus and she is fiddling with her hands.

"Hey, what's wrong? I mean besides everything." I ask.

She stays silent for a moment and then she turns to look at me all serious, "What if this doesn't work?"

"It will, I promise." I re-assure her.

"But you weren't there. You don't understand, they are scary. They killed lots of people at the new lab that they were keeping me at." She says with tears starting to form in her eyes.

I lean in and hug her. "Look, all of us are here and we are not going to let anything happen. Last time you were alone but now you have us. I swear on my life that everything is going to be okay."

She wipes her eyes and sits up straight.
"Thank you Max." She says forcing a smile.

I grab her hand and we go out to the others. Steve is back and he has his car pulled up ready to go, he's our getaway guy. Mike comes over to us and takes El to talk with her. Even after all this time, he still treats me as an outcast. I mean I'm a part of the group now but he still doesn't like me that much. He has been mad at me since I "pressured" El to break up with him. I just brush it off and go over to Nancy and Robin. They are talking about the plan when they see me.

"Hey kiddo, how are you feeling?" Nancy asks me.

I just shrug and sit on the ground against an old pickup truck. I take the pocket knife out of my pocket and carve it against a stone I found by the bus. Nancy and Robin continue talking while I sit by myself waiting for the plan to go into action.