𝐖𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐍. ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳⁱⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ ¹

006

006. 𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲
𝗮 𝗳𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻' 𝗹𝘂𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐉𝐄𝐓 𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐁𝐌𝐖 crushed a crumpled Reese's Pieces candy wrapper as it rolled up in the empty driveway. The night was dark, and there were no stars peaking through the eerie, ghostly assemble of clouds in the sky, only rays of moonlight on certain parts of the street. There was a full moon somewhere beneath those sinister clouds, almost as if it was waiting to come out at the right time and at the right place.

At one in the morning, there were no more kids roaming the streets for candy. But there were remnants of candy wrappers on the road, and some of the Halloween decorations had fallen away and were swept onto the street. Red and orange leaves lay everywhere, causing the branches of the trees to straggle in the soft wind.

Lori pulled the key out of ignition when the car stopped in front of the garage door.

Biting down hard on her bottom lip, she stared forward at the black garage door, with her fists still clenched. She didn't know how fast she'd driven home, but she suspected that it was fast enough to get her a ticket if the cops actually did their job. There was still a certain anger coursing through her veins, at a rapid pace.

    With a long breath leaving through her nose, she rose her fingers up to her neck, tore off the headphones and let them fall into the passenger seat with the Walkman from her pocket, and wrapped her fingers around the bandanna. Roughly, she ripped it right off, and let it fall somewhere in the car. Her pink blazer lay on the backseats. So much for Joan Jett.

Angry, she pushed open the car door.

Her dagget boots landed hard on the pavement, similar to when she'd arrived at the party earlier, but last time she wasn't so utterly indignant. She slammed the door, hard, not caring if her neighbors would wake up from the noise. Her boots pounded on the ground, and she was walking fast down the driveway, her bare arms prickled by the cold October wind. Her hair blew behind her.

She had this sort of madwoman ambiance to her, as she stepped hard in her black boots with a straight face, and her eyes pinned forward at the dark road, not moving an inch. There really was no way to explain the type of anger pounding in her chest. It could be explained as the simple fact that, unhappily, someone had taken her favorite cassette tape — that was a reasonable reason to be pissed off. But it was Steve Harrington.

And so, with that deeper meaning behind her great pervasive hatred towards Steve Harrington and his miserable King of Adolescence aura, she pounded her feet on the slick pavement of the street around the tall shrub separating their two homes. Within moments of arriving home from Tina's rager, she found herself facing the grey paneled house. And the burgundy car parked in the driveway.

What Lori didn't know, was that Steve had thrown the unknown— and practically useless —cassette tape that someone had passed to him earlier, in the glove compartment of his car. He didn't care about it, it was barely a thought in his mind. Once he stepped out of his vehicle in the driveway of his home, only ten minutes prior to now, he'd had no reconnaissance of the damn tape whatsoever— and so it sat in his glove compartment, completely un-thought about. He was too mentally preoccupied with other things to even think about anything else at all, since only minutes before, Nancy Wheeler had drunkenly admitted that she was not in love with him anymore. Putting things simply would be saying Steve was heartbroken, angry and preoccupied, all because of it.

But Lori knew none of this. And quite frankly, she wouldn't care until her favorite cassette tape was back in her own possession. Most of that was true.