See Your Beauty

│This Is How It Starts│

My dad needed a job. Hawkins had a job. Simple as that. We packed our bags and left everything else that we (mainly I) had.

The house was small. And in the middle of nowhere. Woods behind the house. Woods to the right and woods to the left. A long gravel drive led up to the house.

Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an open space that was both the living area and the kitchen.

The town was boring. The school was boring. The kids were boring. Hawkins was boring.

I was enrolled into Hawkins high school. With my bag packed for school, I shut the front door quietly and started walking down the drive. Once I reached the street I was on my skateboard trying to remember the way to get to there.

I walked into the front office to get my schedule and any other B.S. they had to tell me. I stepped out into the hallway reciting the receptionist's directions in my head. First right, second door on the left: Homeroom. Announcements and other crap I never listened to. Then it was onto Mathematics and after that English, Physics, History, and Biology. Lunch was in the middle of the day, not that it mattered- I was too preoccupied smoking behind the bleachers.

Once I was home my dad was waiting for me- big surprise. It was the typical routine. He was drunk and angry about this or that. There was the typical tears, then screaming, then violence. Slamming doors, black & blue bruises, and stained t-shirts.

I finished my homework out of pure boredom and then went to bed for a lack of anything better to do.

The next day followed practically in the footsteps of the day before, but the third day. The third is when things changed.

I wasn't paying attention, I was actually changing the cassette in my Walkman when I heard yelling.

"Hey! What the hell is your problem?" It was the other new kid, Billy Hargrove. Word traveled fast, apparently, he was one of those bad boy types, but getting angry at some middle schooler was beyond ridiculous.

"What the fuck is your problem? Picking on someone half your size? Is that all you can handle?" I shouldn't have opened my big mouth, but the words came out and there was no taking them back.

"The fuck did you just say to me?"

"I asked if picking on some middle schooler was really the best you could do?" In the blink of an eye, I was slammed back against the lockers, pinned at my shoulders. My instincts kicked in. I balled up my fists and immediately began slowing my breathing- a defense mechanism I had picked up over the years.

"And who the fuck are you?" His face was inches from mine. "You think you can fucking tell me what to do? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Someone who stands up for others." His fist pulled back and I tensed up, preparing for him to hit me. The next thing I knew he was halfway down the hall, a cigarette already in between his lips.