Love Grows: Steve Harrington's Girl Next Door

1986: Bad Moon Rising

"Rosie?!"

Steve's panicked call echoes through empty house, drowned out by the eerie silence within, punctuated only by distant sirens, the honking of horns outside.

"Rosie!" He shouts again, voice tinged with desperation. And again, nothing.

"Maybe she skipped town like the rest of them?" Dustin offers. "I mean, I would, too, if I thought the world was ending."

Steve just shakes his head with his jaw wound tight.

He mutters contemplatively, more to himself than anyone else, "No, no. She's gotta be here. I've gotta make sure she's safe."

But Robin insists, "Dude, the world's split into pieces and there's now a rift the size of the Grand Canyon running through Hawkins; of course she's bolted." She wafts her hands through the falling ash that drifts in ones and twos through the open window - unwelcome snow, peppering their hair and marring the seemingly serene setting of Rosemary's family home. She sighs. "Come on, if we hurry, we can finish volunteering early and make visiting hours for Max."

"The front door was unlocked," Steve stresses. "And I haven't seen her in days, not since we got back. Not here. Not by the high school or town hall like everybody else. Nowhere. Don't you think that's a little weird?"

"They clearly left in a hurry." Dustin shrugs.

"No," Steve refuses. "Something's off."

Determination pumps through Steve's veins as he's deaf to reason. It doesn't matter he hasn't spoken to Rosemary since she slammed the door in his face, since he tore himself in two between her and Nancy

It doesn't even matter that this entire week he's tortured himself over making a choice - rekindling old flames with his ex or risking something new, with her, his neighbour who's been haunting his dreams since their lips first met.

Because when it came down to it, there was only one thing that racked his brains, when the world cracked open to hatch a new dawn, where monsters crawled out the shadows and ash fell from the sky. One question occupied Steve's thoughts just as the dust began to settle...

Is Rosemary okay?

The open window and the smashed vase on the nearby table says otherwise, a tell-tale sign that there is in fact something very, very off. It sends a chill crawling up his neck like a spider.

"Come on," Dustin urges. "I told Eddie's uncle Wayne I'd meet him at the high school, to help with the missing posters."

"Fat lot of good that's gonna do," Robin mindlessly mumbles.

"Oh yeah? You wanna tell him what really happened, Rob?"

The Buckley girl meets Dustin's angered gaze. She falters.

Then, she concedes. "Sorry. That was a stupid thing for me to say."

Dustin softens with a nod. "S'okay. I guess we're all a little on edge," he says before peeling his attention to Steve. "Which is why we need to leave, Steve. No one's here and this house is giving me the heebie-jeebies."

A sudden sound skitters in another room, making them all jump out their skin. Knees bent. A collected gasp. It's followed by a high-pitched shriek.

Robin breathes, "Is it me or did that sound like a...?"

"Demo-bat? Yeah." Dustin swallows. He of all people knows what a swarm of those things can do to a person.

Steve takes one steadying breath, eyes darting this way and that for some type of weapon, his resolve resting on a candlestick in the middle of a table. He grabs it. He raises it high, knuckles white.