The Long Game, Lucas Sinclair

035. the one where i'm not me

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.
4x01: The Hellfire Club

It took a lot to shut Samantha Hughes up. Anyone you asked, they would tell you that Sam was bright and extroverted, a lively girl full of jokes and laughter. She was surrounded by seven friends she was loyal to at all times. She wore bright colors and had a girly fashion sense. She befriended everyone around her, despite how willing that person may be for Sam's friendship. She talked about music, and science, and love, and comics, and so many random things that you couldn't keep count of what she liked. She had twinkling, green eyes that lit up brighter when she grew passionate. She always had something positive to say when her friends were down, and she lifted everyone around her up with her radiance.

When Sam got to high school, all of that changed.

It didn't take very much to dull Sam anymore.

Sam didn't know how everything turned downhill so quickly, but suddenly she was losing friends left and right. Max was trying to pull away from her, Lucas joined basketball, and Mike and Dustin in Hellfire weren't too happy about it. Sam was always their glue, and she tried holding them together—she really fucking did—but it just made everything worse. They got mad at each other, and they got mad at Sam, and it all went to shit.

The party was the only reason Sam had remained so happy throughout the years, despite everything she'd been through.

And now the friend group was shattered to pieces.

Now Sam had nothing.

She stared at herself in her full-length mirror as she got ready for school. She had dark circles underneath her eyes from the sleep lost to nightmares. Underneath her clothes, she still had that stupid skin graft making up for the skin she lost in her torso. She wore the gold necklace with the B pendant gifted to her by Joyce and belonging to Bob Newby. She was tired, and she looked tired, and the fact she didn't care enough to hide she was tired spoke volumes. She wasn't the same Sam Hughes she used to be.

There was maybe one thing that remained the same, and it was the fact Sam remained in the AV Club—contrary to everyone else in her broken friend group. At first, her friends thought it was weird of her to join AV when all the rest of them were dropping it, but she was glad she didn't. It was all she had left going for her anymore.

There were only two people in the AV Club: Sam, and a senior named August Santos. Sam liked Auggie. He was cool... kind of.

Okay, honestly, cool wasn't really how Sam would describe him. In reality Auggie was really awkward, he was a loner, and his only friend was technically Sam. But he was coolish.