𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐌𝐘, ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳᶦⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ

𝚂𝚈𝙽𝙾𝙿𝚂𝙸𝚂

       VALENTINA VARNER AND STEVE HARRINGTON were many things. Neighbors, best friends, partners-in-crime, and inseparable. Anything they did, they did together.

Valentina, or Vee according to her best friend who complained that her full name was too long, was a stereotypical second grader. Her curly blonde hair had grown incredibly long over the recent years, reaching just a few inches above her lower back. Despite her hair matching the color of her pale skin, her eyebrows were dark and sleek.

Sparse freckles adorned her rosy cheeks, plump lips drawing out the pink flush of her face whenever she smiled, which was quite often.

Named after the first woman to ever travel into space, Valentina dreamed of leaving the planet someday. She'd spend all day reading about the galaxy and the universe intertwined, blabbering about the solar system to anyone she could convince to listen.

Her mom was her best friend, before the boy on the other side of the the cul-de-sac entered her life. She never knew her father, he left the day she was born, forcing her mom to succumb to the voice of a stranger on the TV instead of her loving husband's comfort.

However, that stranger grew to be Val's greatest idol, and she couldn't be more glad that her father left that day and was replaced by the female astronaut.

Steve Harrington was in the third grade when his mother forced him to return the cardboard airplane found in their front yard to the family across the street. When a little blonde girl with pigtails opened the door that evening, an unbreakable bond was formed.

Steve was a year older than Valentina, but they fought to see each other in school nevertheless. When the boy moved to middle school two years later and left Vee all alone at the elementary school, she feared that their friendship would suffer, but they only grew stronger as the boy promised he would come see her everyday after school.

They were the perfect pair, balancing each other out like the sun and the moon. Steve was immature and loud, while Valentina was smart and kept to herself.

Despite being practically polar opposites, they were perfect for each other.

Until high school.

Being a year older, Steve entered his freshman year alone. He had hit a growth spurt the previous Summer, making him appear much older with his grown out hair and fully developed features.

Valentina had matured as well, her face finally filled in and removed the excess chubbiness from her cheeks. Her curly hair was grown down to her waist, stretching the coils into loose waves. With the help of other growing features, unfortunately all but her height, she was beginning to look like a woman.

Steve promised that things would be just like four years ago, when he left her behind for middle school and their friendship not just survived, but thrived.

Only this time, things were much different. Students had grown fond of his new look, and the boy became popular within days.

Vee teased him relentlessly over the fact that he was suddenly irresistible, coming home each day with a new story of how some girl practically threw herself at him, yet she couldn't help but agree with the compliments that Steve heard from his school, secretly of course. Eventually, though, the popularity got to his head.

Steve grew tired of Valentina's consistent nagging and teasing, so he cut her off. He didn't meet with her after school like they had for almost seven years prior, he didn't call her mom asking if she could come over on the weekends, he didn't knock on her door whenever he felt like because they lived so close. Steve was done with her, so Valentina was done with him.

Joining the high school the next year completely alone, Valentina was mortified to see how students would treat her. Her only friend growing up was Steve, and she had spent her last year of middle school completely alone, surrounded solely by the comfort of her astronomy textbooks.

Surprisingly, high school had a similar reaction to the girl's glow up as they did Steve's, resulting in her forming a trio with two of the most popular girls in the grade, Tina Winslow and Carol Perkins.

High school was nothing like Valentina's childhood. She'd never cared what people thought of her because Steve's opinion was the only one that mattered, and he loved her even when the rest of the world saw her as a 'nerdy loser.'

She couldn't go back to that feeling of loneliness when she was without Steve, so she did everything in her power to make sure that people would like her, including throwing away everything that made her Vee Varner, 'future-astronaut,' and simply became Valentina, 'Hawkins's Hottie.'

Valentina left behind her childhood, filled with memories of the boy across the street, and replaced it with her new life, filled with parties and friends.

She didn't need textbooks, she didn't need glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, and she certainly didn't need Steve Harrington.