THE KIDS AREN'T ALRIGHT ｡ STRANGER THINGS

31 - ALL ABOUT THE BOYS

Marigold Lonsdale was still fuming with pint up energy from her unpleasant conversation with her sister, that her mind had been elsewhere during her afternoon classes. Her eyes had been glued to the sky outside; cloudless and bright blue. Even though there was a bitter chill in the air, she almost wished she was standing in the dry glass from summertime than cooped up in her American History class, which felt like it would last ten years. While her teacher droned on, her teeth had bitten into the tip of her pencil as her thoughts ran away from her.

She could not believe Daisy had thrown the running away to Memphis thing in her face like that, almost like it hadn't been hard enough to flee town and risk her life to find Duncan. Marigold knew her tale of adventure and living on the road for so long seemed just like that; a teenager's dream of escape. But her time away from Hawkins had been anything but a dream. Her entire year had been full of looking over her shoulder, hiding in plain sight and trying her hardest to wrap her head around the idea that her cousin wasn't dead and he had powers. Her life had been uprooted from everything she had known all because of the strangeness that circled around one dead baby boy many years ago. As much as Marigold wanted to fit back into the normal life she had once found too boring, she was not sure she could. And she was not about to let her darling little sister make her feel like total rubbish for leaving Hawkins to save their own blood and flesh.

With her mind reeling like a terrible whirlpool, when the final bell for the day echoed through the halls of Hawkins High, she barely noticed that she had chewed her pencil so badly blood had dotted her bottom lip from her teeth marks. Students around her packed up all their belongings and beelined towards the crowded corridors to find friends. Marigold, lonely and fuelled with bottled up anger and resentment, wandered through the corridors like a ghost. She knew her peers were watching her, they always were, but nobody made an attempted to speak with her. Marigold Lonsdale; the most popular girl in school without any friends whatsoever.

Attempting to keep her face blank, her facade in tack, Marigold found herself at her locker, piling away her textbooks and dying a little inside from everything around her. She hated this stupid town. She hated how the world here felt like a cage. She hated how her life had become some horror novel that she could not escape from. Most of all, she hated that she had wanted to return to Hawkins.

"You're bleeding, Baby."

Ass coated in tight jeans, eyes dripping with an overwhelming sex appeal and smoke lingering on his body, Billy Hargrove pulled Marigold from the depths of her mind with his musky voice. She barely had time to open her mouth, let alone think of a response, before the new boy in town was reaching forward and rubbing his thumb against her bottom lip. Marigold, who was always in control, almost forgot how to breathe.

Billy Hargrove let his lips curve up into a smirk, slowly and deliberately letting his touch linger for a second too long, before pulling away his thumb and showing Marigold the blood stained to his skin now. He watched the blonde blink wordlessly, something hidden in her light eyes. He almost enjoyed watching her fluster for a moment, before realising he liked her much better when she ruled their little world.

"Do you make it a habit to touch girls without permission, Bobby?" Marigold asked with a hint of a smirk, her facade snapping back in place so quickly. Marigold ran a finger across her lips, smudging the blood further. She however, did not back away from him but matched his intense gaze with her own.

He continued to smile down at her. "You know my name. Why not use it?"

Marigold tilted her head. "You didn't answer my question."

"You didn't answer mine."

While students circled around them, they both stood there frozen at Marigold's locker. The world outside kept on spinning and spinning, everyone moving on, but the pair stayed put. Billy Hargrove; brooding and beaten. Marigold Lonsdale; lonely and scared. Quite a pair of broken teenagers.