Dark Night

Confession

Over the weekend, my temperature stayed normal, so I was over the infections. I drove Grandpa to the airport--he was eager to move down and I was eager for him to be nearby too--visited the park to hang out with my friends a little, and started season two of Stranger Things. While I loved the quality and dense plotting of the story, it was frustrating that there weren't more episodes. My friends and I talked about what I'd seen so far, and it was funny how agitated they got in their efforts to avoid spoilers, which I appreciated.

"Poor Will," I sighed. "Those mental returns to the Upside Down suck. He must have a raging case of PTSD." See, I was learning stuff in psychology already. "You gotta wonder why Joyce takes him back to that lab, though. Hello, vortex of all that is bad."

"Maybe it's the only place that has the facilities to deal with it," Maya suggested.

"Or maybe they're doing it for free," Zayna said. "I can't remember if cost is brought up. But they do owe Will." We  nodded over that.

"I like Max," Cass said enthusiastically. "I like how she beats the video game scores and doesn't apologize." We all liked Max. I hoped she would keep up her butt-kicking ways.

"The Halloween thing killed me," Keshondra said, laughing. "Dressing up when nobody else did? And they did a coordinated group costume. They were all so proud." We laughed. Middle school wasn't so far behind us that we couldn't feel the sting of the faux pas.

"I'm glad Eleven is ok," I said. "I'm worried about her, though. And I like Bob. But OMG, Dustin! You live in Hawkins! You know that lizard critter is up to no good!"I empathized with Dustin's desire to find something unique and important and stand out, though.  The girls laughed and Carol zipped her lips.

"Spoilers! You better finish the episodes fast so we can talk about it," she said, and we all laughed. We talked longer about other things--they all went to the other high school, so our classes didn't intersect, but we were taking some of the same classes and our teachers did things differently. It wasn't the jock school I'd originally thought, but mine was still a little tougher.

"So what's going on with you?" Zayna asked me. "You seem frazzled, and not just because of the tonsillitis and whatnot."

"Strep and a sinus infection," I sighed. The girls winced. "Do you really want to know?"

"We're your friends, Delia," Keshondra said sternly. "We do, and unless you're breaking the law, we can keep it to ourselves. If you have a problem being law-abiding, I'm going to the cops because my folks will kill me if I hang out with a criminal." We all laughed, then I had a silent debate with myself.

"So my older brother is 'Starry' Knight," I said, making the quote marks around his name obvious.

"I wondered," Carol said, and I nodded.

"He started training when he was six or seven. And ever since then, as a result, there has been a change in my parents. They gradually got focused on the skater until they barely noticed me. And the money for training an elite skater is mind-boggling, and it really jumped when we moved here so he could train at the rink." I decided on impulse to spill the whole thing. "It was tolerable until I found that my mom had taken some of the college fund that my grandma left me to pay for the skater's plasma treatments that weren't covered by insurance. Then I blew a gasket. And got sick. And my grandpa came down, uncovered the extent of the problem, and now he's moving here, there will be changes, like the skater has to cut back on all the extras he loves so much, Mom and Dad won't have to work so much... and I'm just so over it. I am so angry and resentful that I can't even. And I have no idea what to do with it all." The girls digested this all in silence. "Oh, and if I hear the word 'sacrifice,' I'm not going to be responsible for my reaction, unless it's in the context of human sacrifice rituals."