Eddie & Chrissy: What Could Have Been

Chapter Seven: Back to Square One

The next morning, Eddie pulled into the Hawkins High parking lot, on time for once. He sat in his van looking out at the other kids fraternizing within their clicks and couldn't help but to roll his eyes. He saw Jason and his friends hanging out of his Jeep staring at him, he stared back. He was definitely uneasy thinking about how it will eventually play out when people find out about him and Chrissy. He wasn't scared of Jason, no, but he wasn't excited for the consequences that were inevitable. It was worth it though, Chrissy was worth it. He wasn't sure where it was all going, but he was ready and willing to take the chance. He couldn't deny that he had feelings for her and that he had never felt better.

    Eddie had other girlfriends, sure, but none that actually understood him. None that cared enough to really get to know who he was, and to be fair, he felt the same toward them. It never felt serious with any of them. It was just about the sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, and at the time, that's all he wanted. But when he actually sat down to get to know Chrissy that day in the woods, that mindset went out the window. He was attracted to her looks of course, but more so, who she was. She was kind, empathetic, and damaged and all Eddie wanted to do was to take care of her.

Chrissy, on the other hand, had only one serious boyfriend, Jason. They began dating sophomore year of high school. They hung out in the same click and ended up hitting it off. Captain of the cheer squad and captain of the basketball team, a match made in any perfect high school movie heaven, or so you would think.

Jason was Chrissy's first love. They shared many firsts together, which made them closer. As an outsider, you would think that they had plenty in common. But the reality of it was that the only thing they actually had in common was their friends. Chrissy loved the cold, Jason couldn't stand it. Rom-coms? Yeah right. Action flicks are what Jason would always convince Chrissy to watch whenever they had a movie night. Talking about your feelings and deepest thoughts? Jason would never! That just wasn't something he thought needed to be shared, or even said aloud. He loved Chrissy of course, but toward the end of their relationship, she thought that he was more so in love with the idea of her than with who she really was.

As of recently, Chrissy was having these horrible nightmares and visions. When she mentioned them to Jason, he brushed it off, told her that she wasn't getting enough sleep, and changed the subject. Her school counselor listened to her, but Chrissy felt like she was only giving her standard advice instead of actually helping. Chrissy had run out of options and didn't know what else to do. She was desperate, so she thought, "Maybe if I take some sort of drugs, it will all go away." That's when Eddie came into her life. Was she nervous about asking him? Of course! One: no one, and I mean no one could see her talking with Eddie or they could get the wrong idea. Two: if Jason saw her anywhere near Eddie, he would flip. And three: she always thought Eddie was quite intimidating and to be brutally honest, rude. She decided that her best bet was to leave a note in his locker.

Eddie's locker was directly across the hall from where her locker was. It was graffitied with band names and foul language. The bell rang for school to be let out and the halls were already flooded with kids. Chrissy hurried to her locker, pulled her coat out, and fought her way across the hall through the crowd. She sneakily slid a folded up piece of paper through the vent in Eddie's locker and scurried away towards the school's main entrance. "Well, that's odd..." Eddie happened to catch her doing this from down the hall and stopped in his tracks to analyze what he had just seen. He suspiciously walked up to his locker and looked around, the halls were clearing. When he opened his locker the note fell to his feet. "Eddie" the neatly folded piece of paper read on the front in purple ink. He looked around again, there were only a few kids left getting belongings from their lockers. He retrieved his "lunch box" and shut his locker. He put the note in his back pocket and made his way to the parking lot. Eddie wasn't sure if she was trying to play a joke on him or if Jason and his crew were up to something, so he was quite paranoid on that long walk across the parking lot. He sat in his driver's seat and shut the door. He sat there for a few minutes scanning the lot and bingo, there was Chrissy. Surely laughing at something stupid that Jason or one of his dumb friends had said.

He rolled his eyes, reached into his back pocket and opened the note.

"Eddie,

I know that this is strange coming from me but I really need your help, if you know what I mean. Could we meet somewhere after school where no one can see us?

-Chrissy C."

Eddie sat there baffled at the fact that Chrissy wanted to buy drugs from him. Chrissy, as far as he knew, was little miss perfect. She was captain of the cheer team and dating the biggest prick in school, Jason Carver. He couldn't remember if he actually ever had a conversation with her before, but they both grew up in Hawkins and went to the same school since they were kids. "Whatever," Eddie said under his breath and shook his head as he started the van. "Money is money," he thought to himself. He peeled out of the parking lot, which made heads turn.

"What a freak," Jason mumbled. Chrissy watched Eddie drive away and felt uneasy.

    The next day she opened her locker and found a torn corner of a notebook page that read, "Meet me in the woods behind the main building." She looked around, no one was looking at her and Eddie was nowhere to be found. She crumpled up the shred of paper, threw it in the nearest trash can, and headed to first period.

That day she had had the worst vision yet and she couldn't shake it. The bell finally rang to signal the end of the school day. Chrissy felt relieved and yet was as paranoid as ever. She grabbed her belongings from her locker and made her way toward the back of the main building. She looked around to see if anyone was looking in her direction. They weren't. Her fists were clenched and her whole body was tense. She just wanted to get this over with and be back to her normal self. Chrissy entered the woods and, at that exact moment, any hope that she had immediately drained from her body.

    Eddie, who was already in a bad mood from Dustin and Mike trying to postpone the D&D campaign that he had been planning for months, also wanted to get this over with. He was so curious as to why Chrissy Cunningham would want to buy drugs from him, that he forgot all about the potential for this to be a set up. He stopped before he entered the wooded area and saw Chrissy standing there in the distance with her back turned toward him. "Well, I guess it's the real deal," he thought to himself and continued to walk in her direction. What he wasn't prepared for was the snowball effect that this one meeting between the two of them would have on his life.