Bright Orange Gloves

Chapter 1

June 3rd, 1985

Alice's Restaurant Massacree has got to be one of the longest songs that she's ever heard before in her life. That's not including classical music since that can be divided up into acts and sometimes have codas or repeat signs. The entire song is a protest song of the Vietnam war draft, which she found interesting but didn't require it to be almost twenty minutes in Fronnies opinion.

Fronnie turned off the air conditioning in the truck to roll down her windows for all the cold stuffy air to waft out of her moms 1972 Chevrolet Blazer Feathers. She wanted to be comfortable on the car ride by wearing a pair of bright green athletic shorts and white tank top. But her mom is freezing her out with how high she was keeping the air conditioning.

Her four-year-old ragamuffin cat named Faye jumped from the backseat onto Fronnies lap with her head sticking out the window. Fronnie stuck out her head a little bit for her curly gray hair to blow in the wind. They drove past the town sign as it read Welcome to Hawkins with the word Hell spray painted over Hawkins in red.

Ten years?

Eleven years?

Fronnie thought what could've happened in a span of a decade. She was seven when her family moved to Ohio and now, she was eighteen years old and just got done finishing her junior year of high school and just got here in time for the summer. There was a part of Fronnie that believed she would never see this place again, considering that both her mother and father were very firm that Hawkins was the past, and somehow the corn fields in Ohio were the future. Yet here we she was again, back in Hawkins with only her mom this time.

And the small brown sign they just drove by made her genuinely curious.

Due to circumstances they had to move back to Hawkins to move in with her mom's sister. They were in the richer part of Hawkins since her aunt owned the local hardware store. She couldn't remember exactly what her uncle did, but it apparently made them a whole lot of money. Something in Microsoft? Whatever it was he was always travelling to Redmond Washington according to Auntie Nannie. Even had his own apartment there in case he needed to stay for long periods.

The radio announcer dimmed the song to then announce the next song. Moms got a bit of a soft spot for folk artist and Pete Seeger just happened to be next. Little Boxes began playing in the background. Not Fronnie's first choice for the radio, but she enjoyed the lighthearted banjo as Pete Seeger sang about the development of suburbia, and conformist middle-class attitude that took shape post World War Two. And here was Fronnie about to live in an upper middle class with her aunt when her previous which was an old farmhouse with no air conditioning.

She couldn't remember if they had a dance studio in Hawkins. She remembered doing ballet with her best friend Cypress before she moved. Fronnie had been doing ballet and some contemporary dance on the side. But ballet was her absolute favorite hobby and part of her hopes that she could go further with her ballet and get into the American Ballet Theatre. Big hopes. Fronnie wanted nothing more to professional dance to Don Quixote, The Firebird, or L'Oiseau de feu. Truth be told anything but Swan Lake or The Nutcracker. While she enjoyed those two as they're timeless classics, it's always fun to do something a little different.

"How are you feeling Fronnie? Excited to be back in Hawkins?" Mom asked for Fronnie to shrug and sit up in the seat.