𝐀𝐏𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐒𝐄 | Lorelei Keller is having a hard time coping. First her parents divorced and her mother left, and now her father is forcing her to move to a little town in Indiana. She doesn't want to be bitter about it, but there is no way to...
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"ARE YOU OKAY?"
Lorelei was sitting by the water fountain, her eyes cast downward as she mulled over the events that had priorly occurred in her head. She could hear the faint voice of someone calling out to her, just as she could feel Robin and Estelle looking over at her.
"Lorelei-" The voice called out again, forcing Lorelei to finally break free from her thoughts and look up to see Max staring down at her.
"Max," she acknowledged, opening up space so the red-haired girl could sit beside her. "I'm okay, why? Do I not look it?"
"You look..." Max seemed to think over her words for a moment. "You look like there's a lot on your mind."
"Hm," Lorelei mumbled. "I should probably be the one asking you if you're okay."
Lorelei had, of course, heard the confirmation that Billy was part of the Mind Flayers army - or the flayed, as Mike, Lucas, and Will liked to call them - and she could not imagine what Max was going through.
"With Billy, I mean." Max nodded at Lorelei's words, her messy braids dangling over her shoulders and swaying with the movement of her head.
"I haven't really processed it," Max shrugged. "But I'm worried - and at the same time, even though he was nothing but crappy towards me, I feel guilty. Like maybe- maybe I could have stopped it. Stopped him from being put in this situation."
"I get it," Lorelei nodded. "But it's not your fault. And we're going to try to save him, Max."
Max looked down at the ground, her teeth biting down on her bottom lip hard enough to make the skin around it look white. "I know," she replied. "I just wish there was something I could have done."
"Yeah," Lorelei agreed in a whisper.
Both girls looked down at the ground, sitting in each other's company while going back to their own inner turmoils. Their feet were planted on the ground, dirty sneakers against the clean floor of Starcourt, and Lorelei wiggled her own feet slightly, entranced in the movement of her legs against the side of the water fountain she was sitting on.
She couldn't even recognize herself at that moment. The girl who had walked into Hawkins for the first time with a scowl on her face and a cage around her heart. Lorelei knew she had not been the easiest person to deal with back then, but she considered that she had been getting better.
