Chapter Text
It goes like this:
Chrissy Cunningham graduates on time but modestly—no honors, no frills, no fuss—just like everyone expected her to. (Insisted, demanded, she was born and raised to be seen, not heard, and she took it all with a smile that almost never ever cracked.)
Eddie Munson graduates. No one quite expected that, but third time’s the charm, right?
She wears a pretty dress, pale yellow and stitched with little pink rosebuds, that’s a little too tight, because her mom took the seams in just enough to make her uncomfortable. (You have to learn somehow, Chrissy.)
He wears his ripped jeans and his Dio vest and nobody tells him to suck in and sit up straight.
She and Jason had broken up before prom. They’d still gone together, they were still friends, because Jason’s a good enough guy, and they take pretty pictures that she’ll be able to look back on fondly and say that was her high school sweetheart, what a nice boy he’d been.
(It’s easier now that she doesn’t have to kiss him. He’s going to college in the fall and she never really trusted that he wouldn’t run around on her and then come home like nothing had happened. Boys will be boys, and they’ll make the girls that love them look stupid for ever falling in the first place.
(It’s nice that she can admit that now, even if it is just to herself.)
Eddie goofs off with his friends and doesn’t have any plans for the future except to keep doing just that.
Chrissy doesn’t have any plans, either.
She’s not getting married like her parents did (Just as well that Jason didn’t ask, you wouldn’t have fit in my wedding dress, anyway, and wouldn’t it be nice if you wore your mother’s dress?), and she’s not going to college or getting a job or heading out to see the world.
She’s just. Standing still and unsure and so heavy with all the things she could be, should be, doesn't know if she wants to be.
And when she looks at Eddie…
They don’t know each other well, they ran in different circles. And even though Chrissy tried, she always tried to extend her circle a little wider to let someone else come in, Eddie Munson never would have been someone else. Jason wouldn’t have let him. But you don’t go to Hawkins High and not know who he is; he and Jason had always had that in common, though Chrissy knew better than to ever point that out.
See, she always does the right thing, says the right thing, lets herself be shaped and molded and tuned like a radio to the exact right thing.
And for Eddie, there is no right thing, there’s only his thing—thrashing music and fantasy games, metal and weed and chili cheese fries (God, the not-so-nice-girl things she would do for a chili cheese fry). He’s loud and funny and shameless, unapologetic, and Chrissy says sorry more than she ever says anything else, sorry is the worst anyone wants to hear because sorry means she messed up and she’s not supposed to mess up.
Eddie messes up all the time. She’s seen his homework, coffee-stained and every other answer was always wrong (sometimes, when she could, Chrissy would mutter the right answers to him before it was due to hand in, and he’d bite back a laugh and chicken-scratch them all down). She’s seen the scratched-out scribbles, too, in the well-loved raggedy notebooks he uses to write music and notes for his D&D campaigns. He changes his mind and then makes things better until they’re just the way he wants them.
Maybe he’s standing still, too, without any plans, but at least he’s right where he wants to be. At least he got to decide that’s what he wants in the first place.
Chrissy doesn’t know how he does that. She wants to know, she wants that for herself, she wants and she wants and she wants—
Chrissy, don’t eat that.
Chrissy, don’t wear that.
Chrissy, hold your chin up.
Suck in your stomach.
Count your calories.
Try this concealer.
Put on this shapewear.
Look at this tummy bloat, Chrissy, tell me what you’ve eaten today.
—what she wants, really, is to scream.
The music that thrums through Eddie’s battered old van is loud, shouting and strumming and zig-zagging lightning bolts of sound, and it sets Chrissy’s teeth on edge but not in a bad way, because really she just has to grind her teeth to keep from screaming right along with it.
His tires squeal around a corner, even when he’s not going that fast—and he’s never going that fast, not in the subdivisions, though she’s passed him speeding down the dirt backroads a few times, music blaring, windows down, weed smoke curling out and getting snatched on the wind. But he takes it easy through the suburbs, minding his turn signals and stop signs and SLOW: Children At Play, and the van disappears from view, Metallica and Black Sabbath and Def Leppard fading until all that’s left are the chirping birds in the HOA-approved flowering treetops.
And every time Chrissy wishes she was in the passenger seat, headed off to who-knows-where but at least it’s somewhere other than this tight trapped feeling in her chest.
Eddie always waves when he sees her—and he never seems to miss her, even when she’s sure she can look at him without being caught—a little two-finger salute and a grin.
He has such a sharp smile, she thinks he could cut her open and let all of that want spill out across the pristine white sidewalk that lines her cul-de-sac, stain it in bright colors and sugar crystals, empty calories and fast loud music that makes her feel like she can let loose and scream as loud as she needs just to get all of this out.
Chrissy always waves back.
Don’t encourage him, Chrissy, you don’t want anything to do with a boy like that.
But what if she does?