Play// Stranger Things

001

Valerie Archer wasn't sure where her hatred for small towns had came from. Maybe it was from living in the city for so long, or maybe it was simply how all New Yorkers were genetically designed to hate everywhere but Manhattan.

Whatever the case was, there was one thing the girl knew for sure. She hated Hawkins, Indiana from the moment she and her mother drove into the cursed town in their baby blue jeep.

Rachel Archer shot her daughter a look as they drove past Hawkins lab, the girl instantly tensing at the sight of the large lifeless building. "We shouldn't have came back." Valerie spoke quietly to her mother, a hand roughly picking at the irritated bed of her nails.

"Val, hun. we talked about this. We both agreed coming home was best." Rachel Archer reminded the girl. "I know, but this town smells like cow piss!" The teen barked as she brushed her thick brown curls off her shoulder.

Rachel laughed. As if her kid knew what cow piss smelt like, she thought to herself. Valerie let her head fall onto the cool metal of the car door, a small sigh leaving her lips. She had a bad feeling about this.

A very bad feeling.

"So, you think you can handle starting school tomorrow?" The question caused Valerie to let out yet another dramatized sigh as her eyes involuntary rolled.

"Any particular reason it can't wait a day or two, you know, until my closet is actually in a closet instead of a box in the middle of our living room." She questioned as they drove through the town of Hawkins.

"Well, I called the cheer coach and talked you a spot on the team. Now it's nothing like your old team, with the whole misogynistic spiel of a sports program that it is, but it's something, right?" Rachel tried to brighten her daughter's mood.

Valerie fought the need to scream at her mom and the world as she swallowed down a million possible snide remarks. She knew her mom hated being home even more than she did, so she simply settled for a small smile and a hum. "Thanks mom, tomorrow's perfect."

home.

This place had never been Valerie's home. She had been only a few days old when her mother had packed the girl up and made a run for it, the two making a full circle around the united states before settling in the bustling and crowded town of upstate manhattan.

Manhattan was Valerie's home, not Hawkins. Yet, there she was, pulling up to a medium sized light green house in the one wealthy neighborhood of Hawkins. It was a cute house, a three bed two bath with a wrap-around porch.

It wasn't Manhattan.

It wasn't anything like the skyscraper of an apartment building the two used to live in, but it was homely and fit Rachel well. Valerie would also have most of the upstairs and her very own bathroom to herself which was a pleasant change.

"Mom, where's the rest of the trash bags?" Valerie shouted from the floor of her new room, a pile of torn boxes in front of her. "I don't think we have anymore, Sweetie." Her mother's voice called out absently. 

Valerie couldn't just leave a mess of newspaper and cardboard in the middle of her room after spending almost three hours setting up her stuff. She liked finishing what she started, she was the only one that would. So she stood, throwing a mid-thigh length coat over the navy blue top she wore with a faux-leather skirt.