|Rule The World| Steve Harrington

Chapter eight

Melissa sat on the kitchen counter. She watched as Dustin threw all of Joyce's food out of the fridge, and Steve kneeled on the ground and struggled to roll a Demo-dog up in a towel. Once the Harrington boy was finished with his task, he picked up the dead Demo-dog in a bridal style as Dustin turned around at him, throwing the pack of butter to the floor. "All right. It should fit now."

"Is this really necessary?" Steve sighed at the whole situation. Not everyday you found yourself surrounded by a bunch of kids, fighting monsters from another dimension, and then putting dead monsters into a random lady's fridge. Steve just wanted to apologize to Nancy, and now he was being bossed around by a 13-year-old Dustin Henderson.

"Yes, it is, okay? This is a ground-breaking scientific discovery. We can't just bury it like some common mammal, okay? It's not a dog." Dustin angrily explained to the older boy, not understanding how he could be so stupid, and Melissa giggled at the interaction.

"All right, all right, all right! But you're explaining this to Mrs. Byers." Steve sighed, signaling that he was giving in to Dustin's crazy plan, and walked up to the fridge, trying to put the dead monster inside. The dead monster's head kept hitting the fridge's frame, making it harder for Steve to put it inside, so he called Dustin over to help. The two boys finally closed the door to the fridge while helping each other and sighed. Steve turned around with furrowed eyebrows as he heard Melissa quietly laughing behind him. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, it's nothing. It's just, look who's friends with a 13-year-old now." Melissa said between the little giggles, referencing to last Christmas when Steve laughed at the girl for being friends with Mike. However, Steve didn't reply to the girl because he was too mesmerized by her cute laugh.

Melissa didn't seem to notice Steve's sudden silence as she inspected his appearance from head to toe. "Ew, Steve, you are all covered in that monster's slime." Melissa said as she jumped down from the counter, walked up to the boy, and patted down his clothes to remove the slime.

Once Melissa was satisfied with Steve's slime-free clothes, she looked up at his face. The girl noticed a dirty spot on his cheek and brought her hand up to clean it. She gently brushed her fingers over his cheek while Steve's eyes never left hers. The boy looked down at her lips, and Melissa subconsciously did the same.

"Demo-dogs!" Steve and Melissa jumped away from each other at the sound of Dustin's voice, who was shouting at the other kids. The two awkwardly glanced at each other and went into the living room.

"Listen, dude, a coach calls a play in a game, bottom line, you execute it. All right?" Steve explained to Mike, and Melissa looked at him with her eyebrows furrowed, not understanding what he was talking about and how did he know what the kids were talking about since he was a little preoccupied in the kitchen.

"Okay, first of all, this isn't some stupid sports game. And second, we're not even in the game. We're on the bench." Mike replied to him.

Steve looked at Melissa for help. "So my point is..." The boy's head was empty. "Right, yeah, we're on the bench, so, uh, there's nothing we can do."

Dustin looked at Steve. "That's not entirely true."

"What do you have in mind?" Melissa asked the younger boy.

"I mean, these Demo-dogs, they have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus, they were called away."

"So, if we get their attention..."

"Maybe we can draw them from the lab."

"And clear a path to the gate."

"Yeah, and then we all die!" Steve exclaimed while throwing his hands up in the air for the dramatic effect.