Apocalypse, Steve Harrington

Chapter Forty-Seven. Summetime Sadness

FORTY-SEVEN
— summertime sadness

       SHE WAS THE girl to tell scary stories at summer camp, beneath a thin sheet, with a flashlight below her face. She was the one to traumatize the others, to tell them the tale of a haunted scarecrow, or a cursed child, and watch as they backed away in fear. But, she was also the girl to cower at a creaking floorboard. To peak over the frame of the top-bunk, and down at the dark floor, with a hint of horror in her eyes. To wake up the next morning and profusely apologize for scaring them, because she was afraid the tales would come true. She had spent her summers like that. Clad in a wet bathing suit, a smile stamped on her lips, her body submerged in the waves of a lake or pool. She was carefree. She was happy.

    Now, she was a mess of red nail-polish, sloppy ponytails, and a layer of sweat on her lower-back. Those summers had ended. She couldn't remember the last time she went to camp, or the last time she had dived off a dock and into a lake. She was seventeen, and this, technically, was her last full summer at home. The last summer, where she knew it would end with her back at Hawkins High.

On June third, her grandmother called. The mother of Diane, who she hadn't seen in years, had retrieved her phone number and called. Apparently, in the mix of the past year, there had been a cancer diagnosis. Her grandmother was lonely and sick, up in New York. The elderly women called, and grew saddened at the sound of Lucy's adult-like voice. A simple question, that sounded more like a demand, slipped from her lips, and defined the beginning of her granddaughters summer: Visit me, would you?

She was to spend two weeks of June in the city. Her brother, apparently, had gotten into a disagreement with Diane, sometime after the divorce— he wouldn't go with her. She saw her mother, and her mothers new husband, and her mothers new daughter. A small, blonde girl, her platinum curls lay atop her head in loopy pigtails. Her blue-colored eyes shone. She looked like Sara. It made her feel sick.

Her grandmother passed on her sixth day in New York. The visit was cut short.

She returned home, with a heavy suitcase and a heavy heart. June twenty-eighth, now, and she was loosing time— she'd make the best of it. The rest of the month was ridden with tongues against ice cream cones, the neon colors of Starcourt, jazzercise, and bike rides down Sycamore. She stayed up past midnight watching Blockbusters with Eleven, went to the drive-in theater with Riley. Her summer bucket-list had one big X across it, though. Curtesy of Daniel, she had been dragged into working as a lifeguard— such a shame, she was a stunning swimmer. Again, she was clad in a wet swimsuit, but from the obnoxious splashes of Bobby Thornton and his middle-school crew. At Starcourt, she had a job pending, at the Orange Julius. She awoke every morning, with every finger and toe crossed, that they'd call her and tell her she had the job.

    She needed away from Hawkins Public Pool. Minimum wage, for a layer of chest sweat, Billy Hargrove, and the lingering eyes of a middle-aged man? She'd rather rip her skin off.

    Then, there was the nightmares. She was loosing her mind, she thought. Since November, they were increasingly worse. Which made sense, in hindsight, because of what had happened . . . but she wasn't dreaming of past events. In fact, she didn't know what she was dreaming of. It was tangled in bedsheets, a pool of sweat on her back, a knot in her stomach, and a fire in her mind. It was searching the mattress for comfort, and typically finding a void of emptiness. It was palm-fulls of sleeping pills, and anxiety medication, and tired eyes during the daytime. It was missing her safe-place, and it was missing him. She missed him. . . so much more than she'd admit.