Risky Business ｡ Stranger Things

24 : The Last American Virgin

Sleep was a stranger that night as Prue Owens tossed and turned in her pastel pink floral bed sheets. Dread had threaded around her heart like a strangling vine, slowly killing her. And the memory of that afternoon played over and over in her mind like the films she loved so dearly. She had been caught hooking up with Billy freaking Hargrove by the two nastiest people at Hawkins High. Prue knew what tomorrow would bring: devastation and shame. Her perfect school facade of a good-and-wholesome-cheerleader-with-steady-grades would be shattered. Selena and Ronnie couldn't even offer some comfort when she had called them that night informing them that Carol and Tommy H. knew about her complicated entanglement with the blond asshole. Prue knew it was really bad when she didn't even get a quippy remark about being right from Selena. But it wasn't Carol or Tommy H. knowing that upset Prue the most, but the fact that it would reach Patrick Turner with the speed of light. Hell, he might even already know. She didn't even know how to explain everything to Patrick and shame flooded into her stomach, drowning her. When Prue's alarm buzzed the following morning she wondered if her mother would believe she was sick but seeing as Caroline Owens was a nurse, it was very doubtful. Prue was in front of the round mirror in her bedroom applying bright eyeshadow when she came to the conclusion that she would face this dilemma head-on with her chin high and shoulders straight. She removed the bright eyeshadow and let her brown curls hang freely and wildly. 

She expected eyes boring into like she had a target on her back but there was nothing as she walked through the hallway that morning. She had expected sniggers and whispers from her fellow classmates but there was nothing as she sat through her morning classes. She quietly asked Selena about it in during biology class.

Selena shrugged her shoulders while she played with her dangling earrings. "I don't control the gossip, just keep a finger on the pulse. But you should consider yourself lucky nothing has come to bite you in the ass yet, babe." Prue sighed, sitting back in the plastic chair. Was she lucky or was something even worse coming for her? Prue didn't have to wait long to find out. She was sitting alone in the cafeteria during lunch while waiting for Selena and Ronnie. She was pushing food around on her tray when Steve Harrington plopped down beside her.

"Hey, Steve," she piped up, happy to see a friendly face in the cafeteria that had never felt so lonely and exposed before. But Steve wasn't smiling.

"Remember Sunday night when Hargrove showed up at the Byers's house and insinuated that you two—you know—got together?" Prue's face flushed with heat.

"You caught that, huh?" she whispered back, the redness crawling down her pale throat now.

"Kinda hard to miss." Prue pressed her forehead to her open palm, groaning. Steve leaned in closer. "I'm not here to judge you, just here to let you know I overhead Tommy H. chatting with Patrick in the locker room after basketball practice. And your name came up. So did Billy's." Prue's heart fell into her stomach, and her splotchy redness was creeping down her chest now.

"We've got an incoming problem, Prue." Selena and Ronnie rushed to the table, both breathing hard like they had been running. Ronnie was clutching her textbooks like a shield and Selena was smiling broadly at Steve, tossing her dark locks over her shoulder.

"Patrick, oh god!" Prue muttered while she turned to see Patrick Turner stalking through the cafeteria, his freckled face etched in anger. Shame and guilt bled into her system. Carol and Tommy H. were flocking his sides, both smirking. The cafeteria collapsed into an eerie and intense silence as students forgot about their lunches and their mundane chatter to tune into the drama. With a racing heart and a dry mouth, Prue stood on shaking knees to face Patrick Turner, her sort-of-boyfriend.

"What the hell, Prue?" he said through his clenched teeth.

"Can we please not do this here?" she asked, her voice low, eyes jerking to the students listening in around them.