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The only person smart enough to realize that Eddie Munson doesn't understand how lowballing works is Max, which is how they ended up with five grams of weed for twenty bucks.
Max is immediately annoyed by how cool she feels, walking out of a drug deal with cash left over in her pocket and the entire Friday spread out before her and her friends. It’s so cliché.
The rest of the party is waiting in the parking lot of the high-school, empty except for Max’s truck, a terribly ugly hunk of metal covered in chipping blue paint. It’s a 1970 Chevy C-10, which she had been saving up for all year, working shifts at the local diner on weeknights and the arcade on the weekends, as well as some babysitting money from staying with Holly while the other Wheelers dropped Nancy at Emerson. It had belonged to a man named Benny Hammond, who El said she had met before, a long time ago before he was killed. It had been sitting in an impound lot ever since, and Max bought it for dirt cheap. Unfortunately, it broke down monthly, despite the efforts she and Steve Harrington had made to repair it. Nevertheless, it’s her pride and joy, the first thing that had ever been hers, and she named it Benny, affectionately.
“You got it?” Mike asks her. He’s the only one not in the truck and is instead pacing back and forth outside, arms crossed. Max waves the little baggie in front of her.
“Careful!” Mike yelps, leaping towards her and forcing her arm down. She holds the bag away from him and laughs as they tussle, playing keep away in the empty lot.
“Relax, Jesus. No one’s gonna see, school’s out for the summer and we’re the only ones here,” Max steps on his foot and shoves him away gently.
“Can you please get in so we can go? It’s so hot, I’m dying,” Lucas groans from the front seat. He drapes himself out of the window for dramatic effect.
Coming, princess,” Max teases, tossing the baggie to Mike and taking her keys from her pocket.
Mike hops into the cabin, pushing Lucas to the middle of the bench seat. Max’s stomach flips over when his muscular thigh squishes against her own.
In the bed of the truck, Dustin and Will are lying on either side of El, spread atop of an old quilt Max had put back there for rides like this.
Mike fiddles with the radio as Max turns out of the parking lot and heads South.
They had been planning this getaway since April. Steve’s family owns a lake house on Lake Patoka, about an hour south of town. He had offered to let them stay there for a weekend as an end of junior year present, and they had jumped at the opportunity, eager for a weekend away from town and from their parents. It had been nearly three years since they had destroyed the Mind Flayer, but Hawkins was still haunted to them, in a way.
Mike continues to mess with the radio before abruptly stopping on an ABBA song.
“Yes!” he punches the roof of the truck as everyone else groans.
“Doooon’t gooooo wasting your emooottiiooonnnn-“
Max reaches over Lucas to swat the back of his head, which only makes him sing louder.
The radio frequency shifts, changing the station to country.
“Hey!” Mike turns to look out the back window, “El, not funny!”
Max can hear El cackling wildly and imagines her wiping the small stream of blood from her nose.
“Jesus Christ,” Mike turns back around and crosses his arms, “I hate that she’s getting her powers back sometimes.”
“Oh, boo hoo!” Lucas teases.
Mike grumbles until the station goes to commercial, and then he tries his luck again. Max braces herself for another God-awful Mike Wheeler Pop Cover, but it doesn’t come.
Instead, the opening guitar chords of Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way blare out of the shoddy speakers. Max whoops and reaches out to turn up the volume as loud as it’ll go without blowing the whole system. Her friends cheer with her and then they’re all singing together.
“Loving you, isn’t the right thing to do,” they warble, each with varying degrees of talent and sincerity, “How can I ever change things that I feel?”
Max wouldn’t think to put it on her top five list should anyone ask, but right now, in this moment, it’s the best song ever.
There’s a soda pop feeling in her stomach, her heart has leapt past the rest of her body, teetering on the edge of something her mind hasn’t caught up to yet. It’s so simple, to be happy about being alive, but she is.
“You can go your own way,” they sing, “You can call it another lonely day!”
Max is laughing so hard she can’t remember the words. Mike is performing what looks to be air guitar, while Lucas is whacking the dashboard pretending it’s a drum. In the rearview mirror, she sees Dustin stand, holding onto the cabin of the car. El has a hold of one leg, and Will the other. He throws his arms into the air and yells, the most joyful sound Max has ever heard.
She speeds up a little as the guitar solo kicks in, far enough away from town to get away with it. The Midwest roads kick up dust as Benny’s tires roll over them. They shoot past corn fields, narrow woods, abandoned barns. Fleetwood Mac keeps playing, her friends keep yelling, and the soda pop feelings never ceases, thrumming through her, through everyone.
Max wonders if there will ever be a time when this feeling is impossible; if one day it will go away and she’ll never be able to get it back. It’s the sort of melancholy injection she hates herself for, but it’s there all the same, creeping into the back of her mind.
Nothing lasts forever, it says.
She gives Benny a little more gas, goes a little faster, outruns the needling voice trying to ruin her day, and sings louder, borderline screaming the lyrics.
She’s seventeen, it’s summer, she’s with her friends, and she’s happy.
They speed further away from Hawkins, kicking up dust in their wake.
The Harrington’s lake house is exceedingly more modest than their regular house. It’s essentially a cabin situated on the northern shore of Lake Patoka, nestled in the woods. The inside is covered with memorabilia from Steve’s childhood, pictures of him and his cousins playing in the water, one of him sitting on his grandfather’s lap steering the boat, and some family photos. There was nothing more recent than his middle school years, which makes Max profoundly sad for some reason.
The décor is cozy in a way that feels curated, overstuffed couches adorning the living room, situated around a wood burning fireplace. A small kitchen boasts an electric stove and a dishwasher. It’s deceptively humble, like it had been staged to look that way.
The cabin only has two bedrooms, a master bed that Max and El had called dibs on immediately, and Steve’s room, which has two bunk beds. The boys were childishly thrilled by this and immediately began bickering over who would get top bunk and the logistics of using the beds to build a giant blanket fort.
“Hurry and put your shit away, we have to do a grocery run!” Max calls into the boy’s room.
Will pokes his head out.
“Do we all have to go?” Will asked.
“I guess not. Get everyone out here and we’ll discuss.”
The first suggestion is that Max and El should go, to which they immediately cited misogyny.
“Max, you have to go. You drove!” Mike argues.
“So?”
“So? You want me driving Benny? Or Dustin? He failed his driver’s test twice!”
“I succeed the third time, Michael,” Dustin retorts.
“Fine. I’ll go. But don’t make El go, she wants to swim!”
“Swim,” El agrees, “In the lake.”
“I can go,” Will offers, “I don’t mind.”
Max points at him, “Angel. Angel boy. Yes. Let’s go. Dustin, go find a piece of paper and everyone write down what you want from the store. But not too much stuff, we leave Sunday.”
Max and Will drive the fifteen minutes into town in companionable silence. Will is probably the most mysterious of her friends, in Max’s opinion. When she had met him, he had been at his absolute worst. She worried for a long time that he resented her for entering his life at such a time. It did feel voyeuristic to see a boy she barely knew being possessed in the field across from their middle school a few days after meeting him. They’d grown closer since then, bonding over their taste in comic books (Wonder Woman) and movies (both of them secret Debbie Reynolds fans).
“Are you gonna try out for the musical this year?” Max asks as they wander the aisles of the small grocery store, Max pushing the cart while Will tries to decipher Mike’s abhorrent handwriting.
“Not sure. I have no idea what part I’d go out for.”
“You’d be a good Albert,” Max answers, grabbing two six packs of Coke from the shelf.
“Not Conrad Birdie?” Will asks sarcastically.
“Ha! You know Dustin wants that part,” Max laughs. The three of them along with Mike have been in the school musicals since freshman year. For their senior production, Mrs. Yardley is putting on Bye Bye Birdie, a movie Max and Will have watched together countless times.
“I think you’d be a good Kim,” Will says.
“No way. Jennifer Hayes will be Kim. It’s, like, perfect casting. I want to play Ursula.”
In the car, Max asks another question.
“So, what’s up with you and Wheeler these days?”
Will immediately turns red, “Max, come on.”
“I’m serious!” and she totally is. Will’s out to Max and El only, biding his time before telling the boys. Secretly, Lucas has told Max that he knows and doesn’t mind, but Max has loyally never confirmed or denied anything.
“I have no idea what you’re even talking about,” Will deadpans.
Max snorts, and lets him change the subject to college applications, which he’s been stressed about since junior year ended. All of the members of the Party are applying to Indiana University so they have the option of going to school together, but individually they’re applying other places as well. Will is applying to Rhode Island School of Design, which Nancy Wheeler took him to visit over spring break when he and Mike went to visit her and Jonathan in Boston. Max is applying to UCLA, mostly because she’s sick and tired of Indiana winters.
“I just wish you guys were like, my pet fish or something. So that I could just take you with me and you’d be fine with it,” Will says, exasperated. They’re all nervous about leaving each other.
“That’s like, horrifying. But also, sweet,” Max tells him as they pull into the drive.
Lucas and Mike come down to help them unload the groceries, both in their swim trunks.
“Dustin and El are already swimming,” Lucas says.
Sure enough, Max can see them from the window, splashing each other and laughing.
As soon as the groceries are put away, Max hurries to change into her swimsuit.
She gave herself permission to graduate from her usual striped one piece bathing suit to a yellow bikini, which she had gotten at the mall on sale with El a week prior. She examines herself in the bathroom mirror. She’s pale, ever the religious sunscreen applier, and her red hair sort of makes the entire ensemble look like a ketchup and mustard combo. Why on Earth had she gotten yellow? Max groans.
Suck it up, Mayfield. You wanted a big girl bikini? Act like a big girl.
She trots out to the lake, towel over her shoulder and a bottle of SPF 80 in her hand.
“Did everyone put on sunscreen?” she asks.
“Yes, mom,” Dustin rolls his eyes.
“You didn’t,” Will pokes Mike in his side, “You need it. Remember last summer? The beach?”
“Shut it,” Mike splashes at Will but dutifully marches out of the water to Max, who waves the sunscreen tauntingly. They take turns lathering up each other’s shoulders and backs, chatting idly about how pretty the lake is and how they would have to give Steve flowers or something upon their return to Hawkins.
The Party spends the rest of the afternoon in the lake. About thirty yards from the shoreline is a floating dock that is perfect for taking turns cannonballing off of and giving each other scores out of ten.
“Ten!” Max shouts at Lucas every time.
He looks so handsome, water beading across his wide shoulders, smiling big at her when he comes up for air. She wonders if he still thinks that she’s pretty. They’ve been dating on and off since middle school, and had grown a lot closer since freshman year, when Max had begun to open up to him about her depression over what happened at the mall the summer before high school. But over the past few months, something has shifted between them again. Max’s heart feels like it’s doing the can-can every time she thinks of him, which was pretty much always. She’s always assumed that one day they would mature and grow apart, because who ever ended up with their childhood sweetheart? Mike and El certainly didn’t, as evidenced by the current argument they were having over the proper way to skip rocks. But with her and Lucas… instead of growing apart, they’d grown together. It wasn’t just childish puppy love anymore, it was… real love. They’d gone to junior prom together, and Max had realized it then, like a John Hughes movie, slow dancing with Lucas in the gym. It was like the Snowball all over again, some force inside of Max pushing her to impulsively lean in for a kiss, but this time her gut was telling her something new, something terrifying.
Tell him you love him.
She hadn’t given in that night, just rested her head on his shoulder and let him guide them around the dance floor. But Max had thought about it every day since, with every smile he threw her way. Maybe, this weekend, she’d finally tell him.
El jolts her out of her thoughts with a telekinetic tidal wave. Max resurfaces, spitting out half of Lake Patoka.
“Hey!” she sputters.
“Hey,” El laughs, “Chicken fight.”
“You’re on.”
“Erica would have kicked our asses at that if she were here. Remember Steve’s pool party last summer?” Dustin says as the six of them make their way back up the path to the cabin, wrapped in towels. The sun is setting, and the Party is hungry and exhausted.
“She almost drowned Jonathan. He talks about it all the time!” Will laughs, shaking the water from his hair.
“When does she get back from camp, Lucas?” Dustin asks.
“End of the month. Why?”
“I’m trying to figure out the logistics of our next campaign. Figured she’d want to join, since she can officially join Hellfire as of this year.”
Max falls into step towards the back of the pack with Mike, who is doing some sort of awkward walk-dance in an attempt to get the water out of his ear.
“Hi,” she says.
“I have water in my ear,” he responds. Max rolls her eyes.
“I got hotdogs and hamburger patties for tonight. Help me grill them?”
“Sure.”
“Cool. I’ll see if I can find some rubbing alcohol in the cabin, it’ll dry the water out.”
“You’re the best. Ever,” Mike says, halting his jig.
Max and Mike cook up an impressive meal, and the Party enjoys it on the deck, watching the sun sink beneath the lake, refracting orange light across the sky.
“I will admit,” Max says between bites of hamburger, “There is nothing like a Midwest sunset.”
Everyone hums in agreement. The portable radio is tuned to country music again, which normally Max doesn’t really jive with, but it fits the mood of the evening. Everyone is exhausted from swimming, their energy sucked up by the summer sun, but it’s a good kind of tired, one that promises a thorough sleep. Lucas and Will volunteer to do the dishes while everyone showers and puts on pajamas. When Max exits the master bedroom haphazardly towel drying her hair, she finds Dustin fiddling with the TV.
“No way will we get signal here,” she says.
“Then why do they have it?” Dustin groans, frustrated. His wet curls make him look like he’s twelve again, and Max reaches out to shake the water from them, chuckling as he tries to duck away.
“Maybe they have movies. There’s a VCR, see?” she says.
She and Dustin search the bookshelf in the living room and find only one movie, Grease.
“Yes,” Max says, “Absolutely, yes.”
They put it in and hit pause, waiting for the rest of their friends to file out of their rooms.
“How’s Suzie?” Max asks.
“Eh,” Dustin says.
“Come on,” Max pokes him in the side with her toe.
Dustin groans, “You come on.”
“I know you want to talk about it.”
He meets her eyes, thinks for a moment. She puts on her most kind and understanding face.
“I think I’m going to break up with her,” he finally says. Max really isn’t terribly surprised since she’s noticed he talks about her less and less these days, but she puts a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“It’s just that… long distance is hard. And she was supposed to come visit this summer, but last week she told me she wasn’t coming anymore, something about her parents changing their minds but… she didn’t even seem upset about it. I guess we’ve just… grown apart.”
Grown apart. Max’s stomach flips, thinking of Lucas, of how every time he holds her hand, she just wants to grip it tightly, mold it to her own, never let it go. It scares her, how she can’t relate to what Dustin is saying, and what that means.
“I’m sorry, Dustin. I think…” she bites her lip, “I think you’re right. And it’s really mature of you to realize it.”
Dustin gives her a half-smile, “I just have no idea how to break up with someone.”
“I do!” Max jumps, grabbing onto his arm, “I’ve done it like a million times, I can totally help you!”
Dustin laughs, “I guess I’ll let you live vicariously through me, just in case you never get to do it again.”
Max blushes, and is ready to retort back, but then Lucas and El are walking out into the living room, chatting amongst themselves, and then Mike and Will are too.
They cuddle up on one couch, Dustin and Will on either end. Max and Lucas are squished in the middle, Mike to Max’s left and El to Lucas’ right. It’s a tight fit, and Max drapes her legs over Lucas’ lap, heart fluttering when he rests his hands on them, one on her knee and the other on her thigh. She leans back into Mike who grumbles but doesn’t shove her away. Dustin hits play and Max relishes the chorus of groans that ring out when everyone else sees what movie they picked. She meets Dustin’s eyes over Lucas and El’s heads, and they grin at each other.
“I know she’s objectively hotter at the end of the movie, but really, it’s just such a terrible message. She changed everything about herself for some boy?” Will says as the credits roll.
“Stupid,” El says, munching on some popcorn Dustin had made halfway through the movie.
“I think maybe Sandy wanted to be different, though,” Lucas says, “I think she wanted to rebel, and she just didn’t know how.”
“Yeah,” Max nods, “I think if they had added in some stuff about Sandy actually wanting to rebel, it would have made more sense. It does seem weird that Danny Zuko gets to forfeit his letterman sweater but Sandy has to wear tight leather pants at an outdoor fair in like… May.”
“Why did the car fly?” El asks.
“No idea. Artistic choice, maybe?” Lucas answers.
“I liked the Rizzo song,” El says.
“That’s my favorite, too,” Lucas smiles.
“Mine is Grease Lighting,” Dustin says, getting up to stretch and take the VHS out.
“Mine is Summer Nights,” Max says, “What about you guys?”
She turns to look at Mike and Will, but they’ve both fallen asleep, Will’s head on Mike’s shoulder and Mike’s head on top of Will’s. Between them, the backs of their hands are pressed together. It makes Max ache inside a little bit, because… because she wishes she had always been here, wishes she had known them when they were small. It’s such a funny thing to think of, but it’s where her brain goes, towards two little boys and what they might have looked like and talked about when they were young.
She shakes Mike awake lightly.
“Is it over?” he asks blearily.
“Yes. Time for bed,” Max whispers. She points to Will. Mike looks down at Will sleeping and laughs.
Lucas promises he’ll shut off the lights and double check the doors are locked. Max kisses him softly. Everyone traipses off to bed.
“We’re so lucky we got the big bed,” Max whispers to El when they’re both tucked in and turned towards each other, ready to fall asleep talking.
“Yeah,” El says, shuffling her legs around, “King sized.”
They both giggle.
“How come you do not sleep with Lucas?” El asks innocently.
Max blushes, “B-because, um…”
El starts giggling again.
The truth was, Max had totally thought about asking Lucas to share the master room with her. But that would also involve sending El off to sleep in the bunk room with the other boys, a punishment Max would not wish on anyone, least of all her best friend. And if they did share a room, a bed… it meant everyone would know. The house was small, it wasn’t like it would be discreet.
“Not the right time,” Max answers.
El nods, “I understand.”
They’re quiet for awhile longer, listening to the hum of the cabin in the night time, the lake lapping the shore outside, the chirping of crickets.
“Max?” El whispers when Max had nearly fallen asleep.
“Hmm?”
“You’re my best friend. And I’m… I’m so glad.”
Max reaches through the darkness, fumbling around for El’s hand. She squeezes it tight when she finds it.
“You’re my best friend, too. Seriously. I don’t know what I would do without you. I was always so terrible at getting along with other girls until I met you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It was hard for me, as a kid. I guess I sort of… hated the way everyone thinks about girls. So I resented being one, tried to-to prove that I could be better than a girl. But it isn’t a punishment, being a girl. It’s a prize.”
“I understand that, I think. I was terrified of girls. But you’re not scary.”
“I’m not?” Max teases.
“No,” El smiles, “Not scary.”
El drifts off, leaving Max awake to think. She knows that she isn’t as feminine as El. El is a cheerleader, she smiles at everyone in the halls and wears skirts to school. Max is a tomboy, spending her free time skating around town and at the arcade. But she had come to realize recently that being a girl didn’t have to be so limiting. It wasn’t a one-size-fits all type of thing.
Max falls asleep shortly after El does, the two of them turned towards each other like flowers facing the sun
Max is not a morning person by any means. The only other person she shares this trait with was Mike, another annoying similarity between the two.
They exit their rooms at the same time, blinking sleepily at each other and grumbling good mornings.
They find two paper plates piled with bacon and eggs sitting on the kitchen counter, as well as a note that says “Swimming!” and features a sketch of some people in a lake, drawn by Will. Mike smiles fondly when he sees it, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. Max stifles a groan.
Through the bay window next to the kitchen table, they watch as Lucas and Dustin jump off of the floating dock over and over, Will and El cheering them on. The sun is hitting the water just right, bright spots swallowing up the four party members floating in the lake.
“Is today the day?” Mike asks through a mouthful of scrambled eggs.
“Huh?” Max says, drawing her eyes away from the scene at the lake.
“You know-“ he puts his two fingers to his lips, imitating smoking a joint.
Max snorts, “Eager, are we?”
“A little,” Mike admits, “I’ve only ever gotten high with Nancy and Jonathan. It was fun, but-“
“-but it’ll be more run with everyone. I get it.”
Max knows that Mike is sentimental like that about things. She’s watched him treasure the precious little moments for years. The first time they all got drunk was together, in his basement. There was no special occasion, he just organized it on a weekend last summer when his parents were out of town and Nancy was in charge of him and Holly. He just wanted them to be together, laugh together, hold each other’s hair back when one of them inevitably bent over the toilet bowl. Mike had spent years watching his friends being dragged away from him, watching as they were ripped out of their own lives, out of his life, screaming his name as they went. It’s why Mike was so hesitant to let Max into his circle. To him, she was just another person who would rely on him, another person he would fail.
“Come on,” Max says when they finish eating, “Let’s get our swimsuits on, and then we can smoke by the lake.”
It’s exactly what they do. Max rolls a couple of joints, none of them perfect. She learned from Eddie and Steve, who always let her roll and never let her smoke.
The first one, a long, skinny joint they all have to hold between the tiniest pinch of their fingers, is enough to get them all a little fuzzy. Max, Lucas, and Mike split the second one between just the three of them, the others already pleasantly high enough to last the afternoon.
“I wish we had a boat,” Dustin laments.
They’re all lying on the floating dock on their backs, wet skin on splintery wood, the sun beaming down on them like a smile. The swim over had felt treacherous, and Will had sworn up and down he was going to drown.
“You would crash a boat,” Lucas says.
Max hears the smack of skin, and knows Dustin had reached over Mike to slap Lucas on his bare stomach.
“Ah!” Lucas groans, curling in and leaning towards Max.
She wants to kiss him, so badly. She thinks maybe while high it would be better, that it would be slow and slick, that she could tell him she loves him just by pressing their lips together over and over.
“Do I like this? I can’t tell if I like this,” says Will from behind her. Max lifts herself up, a feat, and leans on her elbow, looking over at Will and El.
El has created a circle of water droplets, orbiting above her. It looks like… like a-
“Baby mobile,” Max says out loud.
“Are my feet in the water?” Will asks.
Mike looks over to check, “No, man. They’re on the dock.”
Will looks over at Mike, “Will you please come sit by me?”
Mike moves, and Max watches as he helps Will sit up and they both put their feet in the water. Mike speaks to him softly.
El continues to be fascinated by the water droplets, adding more, spinning multiple rings of them in different directions.
“Hey,” Lucas says. Max looks down at him. He’s gazing up at her, squinting. Max positions herself over him, her curtain of red hair falling around his face and shielding him from the sun.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.
Max smiles, lets it take up her whole face.
“It does look like a baby mobile,” Will is lying back down now, his head resting next to El’s, and Mike on her other side. All three are staring at the water mobile.
“I wish I could have held you guys as babies,” Mike says, “All of you. Just- just look down at your little baby faces.”
He’s getting kind of emotional, and the way his voice wobbles forms a lump in Max’s throat.
“I bet Dustin would cry most,” she says, diverting the tension.
She meets Mike’s eye, across the dock. He nods at her.
They spend the rest of the afternoon by the shore, swimming and lying out. The water feels impossible, wonderfully cool and crisp. Max swims through it for what feels like hours, letting her body become as weightless as her brain.
“You look like the Little Mermaid,” El calls to her from the shore.
Their high wears off around four. Will has been asleep inside for the past two hours and he wanders out onto the deck as the rest of the party ambles up the path.
“What are we doing for dinner?” he calls down.
“I was thinking we could go into town,” Lucas says, “To that restaurant Steve recommended. The Patoka Grill or whatever the hell.”
“The Lake Patoka Bar and Grill,” Max corrects, “And I agree.”
They give themselves an hour to get ready before piling into Benny and heading to town.
Max puts on a pair of bell bottom jeans that belonged to her mother and debates for a few moments between a white blouse and one of her old striped t-shirts.
“The white one,” El says as she passes through from the bathroom towards her suitcase, hair wrapped in a towel.
Max goes with the white one.
The Lake Patoka Bar and Grill is just the right kind of crowded for a Saturday night. The whole place, three expansive rooms full of mismatched chairs and tables, is wallpapered in dollar bills, all of them scribbled on in sharpie.
“Isn’t that like… a federal crime?” Will asks. Mike and Lucas keep having to duck down to dodge the spare change hanging from the ceiling.
“Eh,” Lucas says, “Who cares?”
They’re seated at a round table near the bar and dance floor, where miscellaneous couples are twirling to country songs.
“I bet we could get away with it,” Mike says to Lucas.
“No way. What do we say if she asks for our ID’s?”
“Dude, it’s a bar in a tiny ass lake town. She’s not gonna ask!”
“And if she does?”
“We say we left our ID’s at home!”
“Both of us?”
“It’s not like we’ll get in trouble!”
“Maybe you won’t, white boy!”
Mike shuts up about the matter after that.
Max leans back in her chair, where Lucas’s arm is around her, content to just listen to her friends bicker about pizza toppings and what movie they should go see the following weekend.
“The Great Outdoors! Come on, it’s got John Candy and Dan Aykroyd,” Dustin says.
“Your two celebrity crushes,” Will teases, laughing as Dustin spits ice at him through his straw.
Dustin seems in good spirits, and Max wonders if he’s thinking about Suzie and their inevitable break up.
“For the thousandth time, El, I’m not ordering a pizza with pineapple on it, are you insane?”
“Try before you deny, Michael.”
“Hush it, Jane-“
“Hey!”
They do end up ordering a pineapple pizza, everyone laughing as Mike picks off the fruit while swearing.
After they’ve eaten, Max notices the dance floor has picked up some. Dustin ambles over to add some Top 40 to the endless stream of country coming from the jukebox. Mike gets up to join him, arguing about which ABBA song is worth a precious quarter, while Will turns El around the bar, both giggling.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Lucas asks.
“How about a dollar?”
Max asks the waitress for a sharpie and she and Lucas stare down at the crisp dollar he presented her with, debating what to write.
“Our initials?” Lucas asks.
Max wrinkles her nose, “Nah, it has to be for everyone.”
Lucas takes the sharpie from her hand and prints in neat lettering:
The Party, Summer 88’
Lucas, Max, Dustin, El, Mike, and Will.
“Perfect,” Max smiles.
And then, the opening notes of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time blare through the bar. Max’s heart catches on fire, and she knows before she even looks at him that Lucas is already holding his hand out, asking her to dance.
Max walks to the dance floor with him in a daze, because even though they’re not in a middle school gymnasium, it feel like nothing’s changed. She loops her arms around his neck and feels her stomach turn when he grips her hips. Dustin and Will are standing near the jukebox smiling, watching as Lucas and Max sway back and forth. Out of the corner of her eye, Max sees Mike and El dancing, giving her another bout of deja vu. She looks back to Will, who looks slightly pained. Don’t you know? Max wants to ask him. Can’t you tell?
“I always think of you when I hear this song,” Lucas says.
“Yeah?” Max smiles at him.
“Yeah. I mean… we danced at the Snow Ball to this, obviously, but… I used to listen to it a lot freshman year, after- after everything. The lyrics fit, I guess.”
If you’re lost, you can look, and you will find me.
Max feels a surge of guilt.
“I’m-I’m sorry about all that, you know. I wasn’t… ready. For this.”
“Hey, don’t be sorry. I understand. I just… I want you to know now, that I… cared. For you.”
“I know you did,” Max whispers.
“And I want you to know that if-“ Lucas draws in a big breath, “-if you ever feel like your life is a hurricane, if you ever feel like you are a hurricane, that’s okay. I don’t care if you’re being a hurricane, you go ahead and be a hurricane, suck all the air out of the room, pour rain from the ceiling, rip the nails from the floorboards, but let me sit by you, let me hold your hand. I have been scared of so many things, but I’m not afraid of you.”
Max is really, truly in love. It’s scary, it’s so scary, because now she’s been given something that she could loose, but even still, she wants to try to keep it safe.
If there is anything she has learned from this boy, it’s that bad things happen, they happen, and you can still choose to love, every time. Max could lie down on concrete, on sheetrock, on mountains, and none of those things would ever feel as sturdy and strong as Lucas’ arms do now, wrapped around her as they sway to the tune of a song that sounds just as sweet as any childhood memory, unsullied by grief.
“I love you,” Max says, and it was the truest thing that had ever come from her lips.
Lucas kisses her, stopping their dancing completely, rooting them into the floor of a dusty old bar.
“I love you, too,” Lucas answers.
The song fades out and Max looks over Lucas’s shoulder to see El poking her head out from behind Mike, eyes shining.
After that, the bar regains its peppiness, because it turns out the ABBA song worth a quarter is Dancing Queen. The entire place is jumping, mobbing the dance floor in a drunken stampede. Max watches a little girl being spun in circles by her burly father while her mother watches, laughing. An old woman is lead around in a tango by a boy who must be her grandson.
And Max’s friends pull her into their own circle, arms locked around each other. She has Lucas to her left and Mike to her right, and she feels drunk off of how much she loves this moment, these people.
The bar patrons chant the lyrics off key.
They stay until close, never leaving the dance floor. Before they are ushered out, Max watches as Lucas staples their dollar to the wall. Before he does, he shows her a quick flash of the other side where he has written, “M.M. + L.S.” inside of a crudely drawn heart. He staples that side facing the wall, like it’s a secret they’re keeping with the bar. Max just smiles and smiles and smiles.
They all take a brief walk down to the moonlit lake when they get back to the cabin.
“I wish we were staying longer,” El laments.
“Me too,” Dustin says, skipping a rock across the glowing water.
Max sighs, leaning her head into Lucas’s shoulder. She wishes they could stay, too, just the six of them and the lake, away from school and the decisions they’ll have to make this year.
“This has been really… special,” Mike says, clearing his throat a bit. “You all mean a lot to me. The most, actually. So, yeah.”
“We love you, too, Mike,” Lucas says.
They stay down by the shore until the early hours of the morning, taking about nothing in particular.
The next morning, Max wakes up early. She isn’t mad about it for once, just pleasantly content to be rising with the sun.
She leaves El in bed and slips out to the kitchen, where Lucas is leaning against the counter, shirtless with a coffee mug in his hand. Max would wake up early every day of her life if she knew that sight would be waiting to greet her.
“Hey,” he whispers, folding her up into his arms.
They both gaze out the kitchen window, and Max sees two silhouettes sitting on the shore, close together.
“They’ve been out there all night,” Lucas says.
“Yeah?” Max asks, though she isn’t really surprised.
“Yeah.”
Max watches the smaller figure, Will, turn his face up towards the rising sun and imagines Mike smiling at the sight.
They come back inside shortly after, and the four of them eat cereal and chit chat, waiting for Dustin and El to wake up.
“Good morning enchanted princess,” Max when El finally emerges, the last one awake.
El yawns and Max scoots over so they can share her chair.
They spend the morning leisurely packing up and tidying the cabin. Lucas and Mike get into a brief argument about which one of them should have to drink the rest of the milk so it doesn’t go to waste, but it is abruptly ended when Will pours it down the sink.
They hit the road at noon. Lucas and El ride in the cabin with Max, while Dustin sits in the bed of the truck annoying Mike and Will, who are both exhausted from pulling an all-nighter.
The radio won’t find a steady frequency so Max switches it off, content to enjoy the sound of Benny’s wheels on the gravel road.
“Do you want to see a movie tomorrow?” Lucas asks her.
“Yes. But not The Great Outdoors,” she answers.
“Alright. I’ll check listings when I get home,” Lucas says.
“Sounds good.”
Max thinks of their dollar hanging in the bar. She vows to go back and look for it again someday, to touch it with her fingers and be brought back to this weekend, when everything was perfect. She knows that there will be hard things to weather in the year to come, college applications, separation. She promises herself to think of that dollar every time, because it’s not just a dollar, it’s a tangible reminder that they were here, they were happy, and they were young.
As they pull into Hawkins, Max hears Mike and Will wake up.
“She’s the best for driving us,” Will says.
“She’s the best, period,” Mike responds.
Max smiles.