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Several hours earlier
SHAELYNN HATED FUNERALS.
She'd been to far too many throughout her life. From her paternal grandmother's death from asthma simply because she could only afford to live in a neighborhood with a higher pollution rate, to her cousin bleeding out after a police officer shot him after he grabbed something from his pocket he could've sworn was a gun (it was a sandwich), to her father's demise at the hands of the Mind Flayer, she could hardly stand to listen to priest after priest drone about how God had a plan for all of this. Because families that looked like hers kept losing their own from redlining or racism or lack of finances. It wasn't fair.
For Chrissy's funeral Shaelynn wore a black dress Nancy kindly let her borrow, although it was slightly tight around her hips and thighs due to Nancy having a more sylphlike figure than her. She had considered taking her braids out but decided against it, instead opting to fasten them into a ponytail. Robin had suggested that she carry a walkie-talkie should she need to communicate with them but she had declined, not wanting to risk Jason or anyone else hellbent on hunting Eddie to catch wind of their whereabouts. Still, it pained her to leave these people she never thought she'd consider friends.
The service was agonizingly long. From her seat in the front pew, Shaelynn had to stop herself from screaming that nobody in the audience truly knew Chrissy. Knew that she loved Jason but dreaded living out her life as nothing more than his trophy wife, that she wanted to be a writer, that if she had kids she wished to prove that borderline personality disorders weren't hereditary. Shaelynn and Chrissy would dance to ABBA until they collapsed on the floor from dizziness, staring at the ceiling and fantasizing about escaping Hawkins one day. Except Chrissy would never have that chance, all because her mother had ruined her and Vecna had dealt the final blow.
"Everyone who knew my Chrissy loved her," Laura Cunningham concluded her speech, weeping as her husband, Phillip, remained silent. In retrospect, it mirrored their roles in Chrissy's life; the controlling mother and the complacent father. The reverse of Shaelynn's. "Especially Shailene, her best friend who kindly helped organize today's service. I now invite her up here to say a few words."
Biting back the impulse to inform Laura that she had gotten her name wrong, Shaelynn – not Shailene – rose from her seat, offering the woman as warm of a smile as she could muster. She grappled for the rough skeleton of a eulogy she'd managed to write with encouragement from Robin, re-positioning the microphone and wincing at the feedback that whined as a result. Clenching her jaw, Shaelynn gazed at the sea of faces in the audience and let herself believe that at least some of them cared about her best friend.
"Hey, everyone," she spoke timidly. Chrissy had always been the more popular and charismatic out of the two of them, always the one to uplift the cheerleading team when all hope was lost. Now the responsibility had shifted to her. "I know the last time most of you saw me was when I said goodbye to my dad. And here I am now, saying goodbye to my best friend... "
