The Long Game━ (l. sinclair)

...you're my best friend

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Stephanie Jean Hughes knew a ton about secrets.

She kept Gina Flores's secret when Gina broke her moms vase after an insane smoke session between their friend group. She kept Josephine Foster's secret when Jo stole some money out of her dad's cash register to buy weed from Eddie Munson. She kept Warren Aquino's secret when Warren ran into his neighbor's parked car in his first few months of driving.

Stephanie was good at keeping secrets, because she was a walking secret herself. She was a lesbian in a 1986 Hawkins, Indiana. She was in love with Robin Buckley and had been since the seventh grade when they were all required to take music class and she accidentally stabbed Robin in the hand with a violin bow. She stole the artificial hair dye she used to dye her hair pink every two months. She thought Nancy Wheeler was hot once when freshman were taking too long to walk in the hall and Nancy snapped for them to get a move on.

See — there were many secrets Stephanie harbored. For the most part, they were fairly innocent, but only a few knew. That small group included her friend group, her cousin Corey, and her little sister Sam.

Stephanie knew Sam was hiding a lot from her.

She was pretty sure that Corey was, too.

Stephanie knew secrets, so she knew Sam had enough of her own to write an entire novel. It all started when Will got lost in the woods, and ever since then, she was more closed off than she'd been when their parents died.

Or, she closed off to Stephanie, at least.

Sam was good at hiding the fact she even had secrets, though. She used to act totally normal around Stephanie, like there was nothing for Stephanie to be out the loop of. But Stephanie knew her little sister better than anyone on this planet, so she noted the change of octaves in her voice or the little crease in her eyebrows. She heard her sister screaming at night yelling things that made absolutely no sense unless you were people like Corey who knew all of Sam's secrets. The next morning, the duo would come out of their respective rooms like nothing happened as if they'd trained themselves to recover from things like that. Sam would put on her radiant smile and make horrible jokes that even had Aunt Kat groaning.

Until Sam stopped forcing that radiant smile on. That's when Stephanie really knew Sam had more secrets than she could handle.

Stephanie had a feeling she knew what one of them was, now, though:

High school changed Stephanie for the better, but it was changing Sam for the worse.

It was honestly all Stephanie could think about right now as she walked down the hallways towards the cafeteria for lunch — she wasn't thinking about Robin or about the fact Jo and Gina were traitors who left school early due to a horrible case of senioritis. She was thinking about that look on Sam's face during the pep rally or that forced cheeriness in her voice during morning announcements on the PA. She thought about—

"Stephanie Hughes?"

Stephanie paused, a little in fear, and turned around. The voice who stopped her was a dark-skinned older woman with gentle eyes and an adorable fashion sense. Stephanie wondered if she was supposed to know her, so began wracking her brain for a memory.

"Hi, ma'am," greeted Stephanie while she thought. "That's me."

The teacher smiled. "Yes, I'm Mrs. Rowley. Your sister's in my AP Chemistry class."

"Oh," Stephanie's eyes widened in surprise. This was weird. She hadn't had to talk to one of Sam's teachers since Sam was in middle school and their aunt and uncle kept flaking out of Sam's teacher conferences so Stephanie had to go as her guardian. "Um — is Sam doing all right?"