CHAPTER ONE
RUNAWAY

        If you think about it, questions are infuriatingly complex no matter how simply you word them.  Alex had pondered this as she tried to figure out the best way to answer the simple question that Will Byers presented her with as they spun the combination locks on their respective lockers early Friday morning: 'What are you doing this weekend?' It was such a simple question, and yet it was complex in its own way.  It was an open-ended question, allowing for creativity and intricately woven lies. Just like a combination lock, there were thousands of possible answers that Alex could give him.  She could lie and tell him that it was family game night, or that she was planning to finish that book like she said she would when Will had lent it to her, but instead, she settled for a simple:

"I don't know."

"Oh," Will had answered as he shrugged his backpack onto his shoulders. "Well . . . my friends, we-we're having a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign this weekend if you want to join us, maybe. I'm sure they won't mind having an extra member."

Alex had let out a small laugh and given the boy a rare genuine smile. "That's sweet, really, Locker Buddy, but I don't think your friends like me all that much. And besides, I don't know a thing about Dungeons and Dragons."

"I have a name, you know," Will reminded Alex. "And I mean, you don't have to play, then. But there'll be pizza and ice cream."

"It's okay, really.  Trust me, I'll be okay. Besides, I still have to finish that book you lent me."

"If you say so."

And just like the question, there were thousands of different probabilities that could have sprouted if Alex had answered the question differently. She had always been captivated by the notion that the universe was like a giant spider web.  At the epicenter, there's an incident—the beginning, if you will—and each long, shining thread is a different outcome, splitting off and intertwining, wrapping around one another as more and more universes are born.  They fold out endlessly; a web full of possibilities, of could-have-been and what-ifs.  

Alex thought about how somewhere on the delicate spider web of the universe, she was sitting in a warm stuffy basement accompanied by four sweaty boys as they crowded around an old rickety card table rather than furiously peddling her bike in the black of night with nothing but a backpack filled with the money she had stashed away in her sock drawer a fresh change of clothes and canned food.  She was wrapped in a dark coat on her way out of the godforsaken town she had grown to hate, her only source of light came from the thin sliver of the moon above her.  Her flashlight had flickered off a few moments before, though she had thought nothing of it. 

The brisk November air that filled her lungs pumped Alex with an energizing exhilaration as she peddled furiously along the darkened, bumpy road.  This wasn't the first time that spontaneity had taken total control of all of her impulses and clouded her mind until all she should think about was the short climb from her window to the ground below.  Even without the guiding light of her flashlight, she knew which streets merged and lead out of the town if you followed them long enough.  She knew the citizens of the sleepy town would be tucked away in the warmth and stability of their homes.  She knew that the sheriff was probably passed out by now, surrounded by his empty bottles of beer.  She knew Hawkins like the back of her battered and bruised hand now after a childhood of rambunctious freedom, coasting her bike along the infinite roads.

Each street had some sort of memory associated with it; not all of them good, but they were forever a part of her—there Maple Street, the one where she had collided head-first into the white-picket-fence; there was Mulberry, the first road she had taken the first time she had tried to twist from the tight grasp of Hawkins; and Cornwallis, the street that their perfect two-story house sat—these streets were where Alex had grown up, but she knew that Hawkins was better off without the temperamental burden that she was.

The first time she rode her bike, she had sailed straight through a red traffic light. With dismay and fear, she had watched as the wobbling wheels gave way from underneath her and she went tumbling, head over heels, across the intersection. She had scraped her palms, elbows, and knees, tears had stung her eyes as she tried to pick herself up from the ground. Steve had come running to help her up from the ground, he had dressed her wounds and consoled her.

It had always been Steve, who had always taken care of her with unconditional love, even if the small cracks of a chasm had started to form in between them as Alex and her fury continued to grow and change. It was Steve, who had patched up her bruised and split knuckles. It was Steve, who consoled her after a particularly nasty shouting match with her parents. Steve was the person who had taught her about the world—the good, the bad, and everything in between—and without him, she wouldn't know how to travel it—and yet here she was, halfway out of Hawkins without saying goodbye to the one person who had truly cared for her.

Up until that singular moment when the headlights of the car hit her when she turned to look over her shoulder, freezing in the middle of the road, a deer in headlights, her escape had been silent.  Even the crickets and owls with their ominous hoots had seemed to take the night off from their activities.   There was something about that night, the silence was crushing.  It caused her skin to prickle and her eyes and ears alert, waiting for some shout of you shouldn't be out here, little girl, go home to pierce the veil of the night, but no sound came. Not until the headlights. And along with headlights accompanies the low hum of a car engine, disrupting the silent still night, and tarnishing the gleaming gold opportunity of escape because she already knew that the driver had their eyes on her, and only her. And already, Alex could feel the tight grasp of Hawkins clamping its cold hands around her once more with a jeering snarl of better luck next time, Alex.

But truth be told, Alex felt her tensed muscles relax with relief when the car stopped beside her frozen form and the passenger's window rolled down to reveal Steve sitting behind the wheel. His teeth are clamped tightly around the end of a cigarette, smoke billowed around his face, and escaped through the window. She coughed and waved the smoke away with her hand, her heart turning to lead in her chest. Steve only raised the stick of chemicals to his lips when he was in need of the nicotine to relieve the weight of the stress that had been placed down upon his shoulders—usually, it was school, the thought of his work piling up and the test next Tuesday, occasionally their parents with their ridiculously high expectations of someone so young—but this time it was her.  She had been the one to load her brother with poison.  He was unsmiling, his jaw was clenched tightly, his fists almost stark white against the steering wheel.

"Those'll kill you, you know," Alex greeted in a half-hearted effort to erase the tension between the two siblings that had formed the minute the headlights had landed on her.

Steve did not look amused. "Get in."

Alex didn't protest.

She sat in the back of Steve's car. If it were under any other circumstance, Alex would have claimed the seat beside him, but the tension between them was thick as a rope. Each of them had a knife in their hand, both of them capable of snapping the rope, but neither of them making a move to sever the tension between them. The silence that had lapsed the minute she slammed the car door closed behind her was starting to drive Steve insane — she could tell. He had long since snuffed the cigarette and tossed it out of the window, but the smell of the smoke still lingered in the air.

Finally, Steve broke the silence and glanced up at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Alex's eyes darted away and to the darkened landscape just beyond the glass of the window. "Lex, I know you're doing this because mom and dad wouldn't give a shit unless you ran off, but you know that if you run off on my watch, I'm dead meat. Where were you even going to go? It's not like people aren't going to find a kid like you with nothing but a backpack looking for a place to stay a little suspicious."

Alex shrugged, continuing to avoid Steve's burning gaze. "I dunno, out. Away. Away from this stupid town, with its stupid perfect houses and its stupid perfect people." The girl let out a sigh. "Okay, I admit, not a lot of planning went into this —"

"Yeah, no shit!" Steve exploded. There was a passionate fire burning in his eyes, just as powerful and dangerous as the sudden rage that had filled his voice, Alex flinched violently at the gusto at which Steve had yelled at her. "It was reckless, and—and it was stupid, and—Alex, something could've happened to you. Something could've happened to you and I wouldn't have known. And what am I supposed to tell mom and dad when they get home?"

Alex didn't answer for a moment. "Then why don't we run off together? I know you've thought about it too."

"Because, Alex, we do have people here, people who do care whether or not we ran off," Steve responded. Alex could detect the slightest bit of annoyance in his voice but chose to ignore it.

"You mean you have people," Alex grumbled.

Steve's brows furrowed slightly at this. "What do you mean? You have people too."

"Oh really?" Alex countered. "Try to name three people besides yourself."

"Um, well there's . . ." Steve faltered for a moment, the fire of rage dying down into a small spark. "There's, uh, that one kid that let you borrow his book."

"See? You don't even know his name," Alex responded. "And Will doesn't count. Kyra-the-Counselor asked me to hang out with me because she thinks that making friends would help me, or something. You know this."

The silence returned for a few moments. And then a sigh escaped from Alex's lips. "Look, Steve, I'm sorry, okay? What I did was idiotic, I shouldn't have tried to run off, I shouldn't have worried you like that. You do so much for me, and I took it for granted tonight ... it's just ... sometimes, it all gets to be too much and I just want to run away from it all and start over. I don't want people to feel like they have to be afraid of me, I don't want to be treated like some sort of fragile vase. I just want to be able to be seen as normal."

Steve didn't answer, and Alex didn't need him to. Sometimes, silence spoke more than words ever could. She knew even without the confirmation that he understood why she had tried to run off.  It didn't mean that he forgave her.  It certainly didn't mean that he trusted her, but Alex had learned that understanding could run just as deep as trust could. Alex watched through the back window as they drove away from the border that was desperately calling for Alex to come back.  But, she knew, deep down inside that she wouldn't be back for a long time, because as long as Alex Harrington was breathing, she would always be in Hawkins' grasp.

author's note: hi, hi, welcome, welcome.  like i said, there's lots of fancy-schmancy purple prose, but i don't particularly care because i felt good about it.  alex and steve make me very soft, because they love each other sm and they're definitely one of my favorite sibling duos that i've written, and be on the lookout for winchester bros parallels.  also, will and alex are going to be the best mlm/wlw solidarity