the runaway

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

Hawkins, Indiana was a small town, and everyone in a small town knew each other. The women were friends, meeting up at PTA meetings or their children's soccer games, staring at the hot referee and gossiping about whether or not he was in a relationship. The men met up in bars for a quick drink, went fishing or played golf together on Fridays after work. Everyone knew each other in Hawkins, and if you were born there, you were unlikely to leave, unless you were lucky (and rich) enough to afford college in other cities. Other than those unlikely cases, however, the people who lived in Hawkins, Indiana were trapped.

And because all the adults knew each other, the children all did too. There were only three schools in Hawkins: Hawkins Elementary, Hawkins Middle, and Hawkins High, so the kids grew up with each other, morphing from chubby four-year-olds to sarcastic high schoolers that smoked and didn't do their homework. But although the children knew each other, they didn't respect each other. Friendships were formed from a young age, tightly knit groups so exclusive that those in them barely talked to anyone else, and if you didn't get into one of those exclusive groups, you were shunted off to the side, stamped with the label freak and never spoken to.

Alina Fairgrieves was one such outcast. Hawkins was a predominately white town, and being African American doomed her from the start. She had tightly coiled black hair, deep brown skin, and dark brown eyes, all features that apparently made someone a freak in Hawkins, Indiana. Alina was the only black girl at her school, something she'd noticed from a very young age.

"Daddy?" a seven-year-old Alina had asked her father one day. Brandon Fairgrieves was a tall man with broad shoulders and a receding hairline, and he was one of the only people Alina could talk to. "Daddy," she repeated, "why don't I look like everyone else?"

"What do you mean, sweetie?" Brandon had responded, stroking his daughter's cheek.

"My skin. It's so much darker than everyone else's."

"Your skin is what makes you unique," said Brandon, "as well as that pretty hair of yours. We have a culture that the others don't, a history none of the others could imagine. And you don't want to look like everyone else, do you?"

Alina had wrinkled her nose. "I guess not."

And that was that.

There were really only two people who had spoken to her at her school. Will Byers, who was a couple months younger than Alina but had played in the sandbox with her when they were younger, and always tried to say hi to her in the halls. Will was a sweet boy, and although Alina was grateful for someone acknowledging her existence, sometimes she wished he wouldn't bother.

The other person who occasionally spoke with Alina was Lucas Sinclair, who, like Alina, was black. They'd met through Lucas's younger sister, Erica, who had seen Alina at the park one time and asked to be friends with her.

Even though Lucas was black, he had managed to make it into a friend group, one that didn't care about his race. It consisted of him and three other boys: Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, and, coincidentally, Will Byers. Although he sometimes said hello and even biked home with her at times, Lucas Sinclair never asked Alina to join his friend group. Which was fine. Alina didn't want to be in it anyway.

As Hawkins, Indiana was a small town, it meant that every piece of drama spread like wildfire, sometimes distorting the details. It was so that everyone had a slightly different story about what had happened on July 31st, 1980, yet everyone who told the story knew it had ended with a girl in a hospital room and a runaway woman. And it all happened in the rain.

Alina Fairgrieves was nine years old, and had outgrown her princess phase of childhood. As a self-proclaimed tomboy now, Alina could often be found wearing ripped jeans and nerdy t-shirts with obscure slogans on them.

As she was a loner, she had tried to spend her summer biking alone outside, sitting on the swings in the playground, playing soccer with her dad and reading comics in the old ice-cream shop, where the shop owner would give her free ice creams and showed her pictures of Hawkins from older times. Unfortunately, there had been an obstacle that appeared when Alina tried to do any of these things, and that had been her mother, Linda Fairgrieves.

Unlike Alina's kind father, Linda was a nightmare. She'd grown up with a twisted idea in her mind of what a woman should be, and when Alina popped out the exact opposite, it didn't take long for her to get angry. She would belittle Alina's interests, forcing her to go shopping and making her do so many chores that, if she started at eight in the morning, she wouldn't finish until eleven at night. At eight years old, Linda had tried to force Alina to begin working at the laundromat, where she was currently employed, and got mad when her daughter had no idea what she was doing.

"You are a disgrace," Linda would often say, if she saw Alina playing with her stuffed animals or watching movies instead of practicing piano. "A disgrace! You give me migraines, Alina. I'm confined to bed because of you, worrying about your future husband, and here you are, disregarding my help!"

And, if Linda was especially mad, she'd bring out the switch, hitting the backs of Alina's legs or her stomach, places nobody really noticed unless they were looking.

On this night in particular, Alina had fled her home after a screaming match had broken out during dinner. That wasn't uncommon, as Brandon and Linda often fought, their screaming matches sometimes turning into throwing plates or hurling lamps at each other. This was exactly why Alina had fled tonight. She didn't want to get in the middle of this.

It was raining tonight, and hard, pounding on Alina's head. She'd left the house so quickly she'd forgotten a jacket, and she shivered, curling into a ball as the rain drenched her. The screaming from inside was so loud that she could hear every single word her parents were saying, and this fight in particular involved her.

Whenever Linda complained about Alina's inadequacies, Brandon usually jumped to defend her. Instead of believing Alina should grow up to do laundry and be a doting, smiling wife, he wanted her to work with him, at the Hawkins National Laboratory. On days where Alina didn't feel like going to school, Brandon would instead take her to the Lab, where she would have a very restricted tour of the halls, learning how much good they were doing for the people.

Even the head of the lab, Dr. Brenner, said he saw great potential in Alina, and that he would be delighted if she worked there in the future.

Alina shivered even more as the buckets of cold water emptied on her and listened to the screaming inside the house. "You don't know how much I've done for her!" Linda was shouting, her voice practically rattling the windows. "While you are taking her to that... Lab—and don't pretend otherwise, I know you take her! —I'm worrying about her actual future, and how she's going to get a husband if she keeps acting up!"

"She's nine years old!" Brandon shouted back. "She doesn't need you nitpicking her every move! You don't need to be worrying about her future husband! Just let her be a kid, Linda!"

Alina sniffed, tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. She hated it when they fought.

"You don't understand what I've done for her!" Linda shouted. "I saved her! When I realized I was pregnant, I dropped those—those tests! She's normal because of me!"

There was something that sounded like something breaking, and Alina stood up quickly, her tears abruptly stopping. She knocked on the door. "Mom? Dad? Is everyone okay?"

Then the screaming started again, and Alina dissolved into tears again. She sat back down on the porch, backside muddy, and wept as dishes and curse words—that Alina wasn't allowed to say or even think of—alike were thrown. She was still crying when it started, a feeling deep in her palms.

It started as an itch. Almost absent-mindedly, Alina scratched it, but the itch didn't stop. No matter how many times Alina scratched at the palms of her hands, the itch wouldn't stop, and it was a couple of minutes before she realized she'd scratched so much she'd drawn blood. The itch didn't stop, though, and grew, and it began to get unbearable. It was if there was something deep inside her palms, fighting to claw its way out.

As the itch grew, Alina reached out her bleeding hands and let the rain drip on them, but although it soothed the numb pain from the tears in her skin, the rain didn't stop the ever-growing itch.

Soon, the itch was so bad that Alina fell on her back, breathing heavily and scraping her hands against the concrete porch to try to get rid of it. She shredded even more skin, her palms becoming a kaleidoscope of blood and gravel bits, but her heart was pounding so hard she was numb to the pain. She was not, however, numb to the itch.

The itch grew into a burning, fiery pain, and Alina began to shriek. Not even the cool rain splashing onto her palms helped, and as the pain grew even further, Alina could feel herself beginning to lose consciousness.

The pain spread up her arms, up her neck, and Alina screamed and screamed, praying her parents would hear her and save her from this agony. But it would have been a miracle if Brandon or Linda heard her over their own yelling and the rattling of the rain on the windows, so Alina was left alone outside, screaming her head off.

Dimly, she was aware her nose was bleeding, and she'd bitten her tongue in her pain, the warm, metallic taste flooding her mouth. The agonizing sensation that had begun at her palms now rattled across her entire body, as well as another peculiar feeling, a feeling of something wanting to be let out. She didn't know exactly what wanted out, but as her eyes began to close, Alina took a deep breath and let whatever it was out.

At that moment, her eyes closed, so she was unaware of what exactly had happened, but the moment Alina had let whatever it was go, red light had filled her lawn, and a blast of pure, red energy had escaped her body, flinging itself into the trees and burning holes right through them.

After letting go, Alina finally got the release of unconsciousness she was waiting for and lay there in the rain, the puddle around her slowly turning red from the blood from her ripped palms. She was in this state when nine-year-old Lucas Sinclair, who was biking home from Dustin's house, was heading by. He'd turned his head, almost as if something was calling to him, and almost crashed his bike when he noticed the slumped figure on the ground, her blood flowing into the storm sewer.

Lucas dismounted his bike, sprinting over to the figure, lifting Alina with some difficulty, his skinny arms straining. He knocked frantically on the door to her house, but his knocks were lost in the fierce wind. So, panicked, Lucas carried Alina to the house next door, begging the lady who opened it to call an ambulance.

That was how Alina Fairgrieves woke the next day in a white hospital gown under paper-thin sheets, and it was how it was here she learned that last night Linda Fairgrieves had run away.

She'd been planning this, Brandon told her miserably that day. She had a packed duffel bag filled with stolen cash and some of her prized possessions. And although Linda Fairgrieves had been aware that her daughter was in the hospital with stitches in her hands, it didn't stop her from running that night, uncaring of whether Alina lived or died.

And that was how Alina realized she hated her mom, as, after Linda's disappearance, Alina's life drastically improved. Brandon was in a much better mood after Linda's fleeing, taking her more often to the Lab, or even the movies or out on road trips. Alina no longer had to be self-conscious about the stripes on her stomach made from Linda's switch, no longer had to feel like she was walking on eggshells whenever she came home from school.

If only it had stayed like that forever. But when Alina was twelve, something happened that changed her life more than Linda's disappearance ever could. And it all started with Hawkins Lab. Specifically, another little girl inside of it.

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

a/n: y'all seriously don't know how hyped but nervous i am to be posting this. i've been working on this fic since february/march, and decided to rewrite it after finishing it back then. so, what you are reading right now is a second draft! 

i hope you enjoyed the prologue! i wanted to add a little backstory on alina's past, and i left some clues as to what's to come for alina in the future, as well as introduced alina and lucas's extensive relationship! 

also, a vote or comment takes like 5 seconds would honestly make my day! i hope you all have a wonderful day/night! 'till next time!