teenage nightmare [ stranger things ] discontinued.

chapter one.

TEENAGE NIGHTMARE
CHAPTER ONE — PART ONE.
THE ONE WHERE DUSTIN LOSES TO MADMAX.

          After the events of the past year, Franny Walker had ultimately decided that it was just easier to try and pretend like it never happened. When she was over at the Byers' house to get tutored by Will, he never brought it up. Jonathan never brought it up on the brief occasions she actually had the chance to speak to him before he ran away. Mike, Lucas, and Dustin never brought it up. JP didn't experience enough of it to speak about it. But Charlie was different. She was sure all the boys had nightmares about it, maybe some more than others, but Charlie would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, sweat dripping down his forehead in a freezing cold bedroom. One of the elder Walkers, usually Franny (shared trauma), would have to sit with him for at least an hour before he could even attempt to fall asleep again. Something about the whole situation— Eleven, Will disappearing, the Upside Down —it terrified Charlie to no ends. Franny presumed he was afraid that what happened to Will, or, maybe worse, to Barb, would happen to him.

             So, when Charlie smiled, Franny didn't take it for granted. Even if he was trying to bum a few cents off of her.

            " Ple–ase. " Charlie whined, looking between his two older siblings with a desperate look as he held up two nickels. " This is all I could find in my room. "

            " Maybe you shouldn't have spent all your birthday money on that Walkman. " JP reminded him, and Franny instantly shot him a dirty look, but Charlie beat her to it.

            " That was for Franny's birthday! " He declared, throwing his hands into the air before letting them fall back against his thighs; his shorts were an unbearably odd length, and they looked like they'd been cut by the young boy himself, making Franny cringe as she looked to the brightly striped shirt he paired with them.

            " Oh. " JP said, raising an eyebrow and shrugging; he lazily dragged his coffee colored eyes over to his sister, pointing a ring-clad finger towards her. " So, sounds like you owe him money, not me. "

            " I'm supposed to pay him back for a birthday gift? " Franny questioned rhetorically, shoving JP's arm as he shrugged again; with a huff, she dug into the back pocket of her cuffed shorts, pulling out two crinkled dollars that she had managed to salvage to use for the vending machine at school. She held them in front of Charlie, but reactively pulled them away with a questionable look when he tried to snatch them. " You're only going to the arcade, right? "

             He hummed in agreement, bright blue-green eyes shooting to her own as he insisted, " Too broke to go anywhere else. "