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TODAY'S THE DAY. The day all kids wait for. The day you can buy lottery tickets, cigarettes, or get a tattoo. You can enter a casino, not that there were any in Hawkins, Indiana. You can vote, which was unfortunate because the mayoral election race ended last November, but it was still an ounce of independence and responsibility that came when you turn eighteen
It was the day Valentina left behind her childhood, and began adulthood. Ew.
If you'd asked the girl a year-or-so ago what she thought about that, she'd have jumped for joy. She would have described how excited she was to move on with her life, how this turning-of-age was just one step closer to her departure from Hawkins and all things wicked and grim inside.
Now, Valentina wasn't so sure.
All the things she had tacked onto her big lifelong plan had fallen apart. Her family was broke, and she was working two jobs just to keep living in the house she'd grown up in. At least that hadn't left her. But, being broke meant she couldn't afford any space camp or university that would get her on the moon. She didn't even know if she'd be able to leave town. With her turn of events, Valentina would probably end up taking classes at the Hawkins Community College. It wasn't a bad thing—everyone seeking higher education should be proud of themself, no matter where from—but it certainly wasn't MIT.
There was another part of Valentina's lifelong plan that had fallen apart, but this one sort of came back together—maybe? Its name was Steve Harrington, and it was a royal pain in the ass.
When Valentina first dreamt up how her life would go at eight years old, her next door neighbor, Stevie, was right there beside her. She pictured herself walking across the moon in a spacesuit and a radio in her ear, and Steve would be talking to her somehow. She figured he'd snag a job as a janitor at NASA just so he could keep in touch. He never argued.
Then, the split happened. Six years of friendship tossed down the drain, and neither of them knew why. They had their reasons, they had their thoughts, but they'd never actually discussed it. Both of them blamed the other, neither of them accepted that.
Somehow, though, they were able to move past it. Their friendship continued like those three years apart never happened. Steve Harrington and Valentina Varner were best friends again, and nothing would ever make them less than such again as long as they worked for it.
They didn't talk about the split, they didn't argue about it. Mentioning it might make it real, and it was easier to pretend their connection was flawless, indestructible, sacrosanct. They were stronger now than they were before. It was unspoken but understood that nothing could break them apart again, no matter what it was that had done it the first time.
What worried Valentina though, because Steve had been torn out of her plan a few years ago and now was thrown back in, was not that they would become less than friends. It's that they might become more.
