PARANORMAL | ❝Nothing is stranger than believing.❞
Cath knows a thing or two about Will Byers. Daphne, on the other hand, knows virtually nothing about Tonya McCarthy. Still, none of that changes the fact that both of them have up and vanished with...
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SATURDAY 12th NOVEMBER, 1983
SPRAY-PAINT is the bane of Daphne's existence, she has decided, after ten minutes of vigorously scrubbing the marquee. So far, she is almost the end of the 'H' of 'THE' — this stuff stains more than she thought. The pungent, sharp chemical smell catches at the back of her throat, and she is at least thankful there is a light chilly breeze to cover it. Her palms are slowly starting to become tinted in a pale shade of crimson, too.
Daphne starts working on the upper half of the 'E', her knuckles freezing cold after being dunked into the bucket of water multiple times. She's vaguely aware of the shuffling of footsteps behind her, and senses a presence before the voice speaks up.
"Need a little help up there?"
Her hand drops to her side, soapy suds trickling onto the pavement below. Turning carefully on the step ladder, she peers over her shoulder down at Steve Harrington. She hadn't expected to see him crawling back here — most to the point, not with a face covered in wounds. One particularly nasty-looking gash runs inches close to his left eye, a sheen of fresh blood still glistening in the open cut. He squints up at her, hands dangling limply at his sides, and there is something about him from this angle which suddenly makes him look so... small. Not the King Steve everyone knows at school.
"I'm fine, thank you," she says bitterly, returning back to the area she has been scrubbing for ages.
Silence. Maybe he's finally gone. But just when she thinks he has, he adds, "I think you missed a spot there."
Daphne whirls around with more force this time, almost toppling off the ladder; Steve shoots a hand out to stabilise the bottom. Her heart somersaults after the brief panic of almost falling, but then she regains her composure. If you can call it composure, that is. She could almost tear into him one right now, thinking of the shattered look on Nancy's face...
"You've got a lot of nerve showing up here, you know that?"
"I know..."
"What is it with you people? Thinking that doing shitty things makes you — I don't know — cool, or something? Because it's not cool. At all. And you could have taken so many other options, but nope! You had to—"
"Okay, okay, I get it and I'm sorry!" Steve exclaims, cutting her off. Then he sighs, his gaze wandering over the remaining graffiti again with a wounded look. "I just... I wanna help."
