Strange as IT Seems

Chapter 11: Copy That

"You're going to go out to the field just to talk to Suzie?" Will asks in disbelief.

The usual group of friends are hanging out on Mike's lawn after Mrs. Wheeler insists, they go outside and enjoy the nice weather while it was still there. The woman had then taken Holly to run errands and locked the house, preventing them from getting back in. Will had wanted to play D and D, but everyone else just wanted to sit around and do nothing, considering how long the school week had dragged, it felt like too much mental strain to perform the strategy board game.

Max had come over to the house after spending some time at the arcade. She laid a blanket out and seemed to be trying to tan, even though she was more likely to gain freckles than anything else. She also had a portable radio playing as she lay stretched out in her sunglasses. Eleven also sits on a nearby blanket, mindlessly looking through some of the magazines Max had brought. She wasn't paying attention to what was in them and was watching her boyfriend. Mike had his bike parked on the edge of the grass and was attempting to fix a leaky tire and repair his bike chain that seemed to always become tangled, even after he had straightened it. He could sense that El was messing with it because she seemed to be hiding a smile and her bleeding nose behind a copy of Vogue. Will had brought a book with him, at his mother's insistence that he broaden his horizons a bit, even though he was looking through the pile of comics that Lucas had brought. The curly-haired boy of the group is packing his backpack to help strengthen the signal of his radio tower, Cerebro.

"Saturdays are the only days she has off. Sundays are sacred in Mormon culture," Dustin insists.

"Is that even true?" Max asks, doubting that Dustin had any type of grasp on the religion his girlfriend's family followed.

"I don't really know, but it doesn't matter, I've waited all week to talk to her and I'm not going to waste another minute if you guys aren't actually going to do anything."

"You going to tell her that you purred at another girl?" Will asks, deciding to start teasing him.

"I only do that when I find a girl attractive, it doesn't mean I'm in love with her!" Dustin snaps.

"Yeah, well she didn't find it attractive, so stick with Suzie," Max says, turning over onto her stomach on the blanket.

"You going to sing to her again?" Lucas smirks, following Will's lead about teasing their friend.

Immediately, Dustin starts swearing at them.

"F* you!" he says angrily, finally zipping up his backpack, wanting to escape before this escalated any further.

Lucas and Max smirk before bursting into the theme song from The Never Ending Story, the tune they'd all heard over the walkie-talkies in the summer when the group was attempting to stop the Russians under Starcourt Mall and they needed Planck's Constant from the girl Dustin now called his girlfriend. He had serenaded the song to her, much to the delight of his friends.

"Rhymes that keep their secrets

Will unfold behind the clouds

And there upon a rainbow..." Max continues in a rather harmonious voice, trying not to laugh the entire time.

"I regret doing that in front of any of you," Dustin hisses, angrily, flashing the bird at his friends in deep annoyance.

"It's not like you had much of a choice at the time," Mike says, being sympathetic to Dustin's plight of humiliation, considering he himself had sung to El/Jane several times since they'd started dating and they weren't always his proudest moments, despite trying to be romantic.

"It's a nice song... and movie," Eleven says quietly, pleased that her boyfriend had shown her the film during the summer.

However, the teasing continues: