chapter three
the aftermath

💗

HAWKINS, 1981

Lily Wright's first week as a Freshman at Hawkins High was going well. She'd planned all of her outfits a week in advance, and she had been absolutely right in thinking they'd grab the attention of her peers, right away.

Her favourite lesson so far has been Art. Lily loves to paint, she's been doing it since she was very young, and it's needless to say she has a natural talent for it. She enjoys sketching out pictures of her friends or her dad, sometimes using her own photographs as a reference and bringing photo albums to life with a rough sketch and a paint brush. Her boyfriend, Steve, has been drawn, and painted more times than he can count, just so Lily can mark down the improvements and make it as realistic as possible.

Steve is her favourite face to draw. It's the one she knows off by heart, each crease and freckle memorised like the back of her hand. How could she not? She's known this boy for as long as she can remember, all the way back since she was four years old.

The only trouble is, she hasn't seen much of him, this week. She supposes it's because she's a freshman and he's a sophomore, so their schedules are slightly different. She's done her best to try and find him during lunch or whenever they both had a break, but he always seems to be busy.

It's all good, though — she's got the weekend to look forward to. On Saturday, she and Steve are going to rent out Grease and have a movie night in (Lily has only just found out he's never seen it — and that has to change)

It's when she's walking absentmindedly down the hallway, trying to figure out if she'd have enough money to order a pizza on Saturday or if she'd have to buy snacks first — does a familiar face catch her eye.

Lily's face breaks into a smile at the sight of her boyfriend, his two best friends at his side as they all lean against their lockers mid-conversation.

She attempts to catch his eye, slowly drawing nearer to the trio — but someone grabs her arm and pulls her away from the lockers and past Steve, over to the noticeboard.

"Tina," Lily whines at her new friend, starting to feel disappointed. "What is it?"

But Tina's excited expression is enough to spark Lily's interest, and she eagerly points to one of the sheets of paper pinned up on the wall.

HAWKINS HIGH CHEER TRYOUTS

SEPTEMBER 20TH
4PM — 5:30PM

DON'T BE LATE!

Cheerleading had been one of the first things Lily and Tina had bonded over, when they first became friends — both eager to tryout and join the team.

Tina's pleased to see Lily's face light up.

"We're gonna have to practice everyday, you know," she says.

"Maybe we should make a routine... oh, there's Vicki!" Tina says. "I gotta go and tell her — see you in Bio, yeah?"

Lily nods and smiles, watching Tina scurry off, before her eyes divert to the sophomore trio still standing at the lockers.

There's a moment where she's unsure of what to do. Lily doesn't know what to make of Steve's friends, just yet. They're loud, and obnoxious, and they sort of intimidate her at times. But if Steve was friends with them, they couldn't be that bad of people, right?

And Lily starts to think of how excited Steve will be for her when she tells him about the cheer tryouts — he's already on the basketball team. Their shared dream of dominating the Hawkins High sports was halfway complete — and the news of these tryouts was another step forward.

The brunette starts to edge her way forward. She feels a lot more awkward now, because Steve's back is facing her so it's not exactly like he can see her coming.

She moves forward further, until their conversation is in earshot.

"It must be weird, though? Like... she's a freshman, she doesn't know anything about this place yet. Don't you feel a little tied down?" Tommy (Lily thinks his name is) says.

"Yeah, I mean..." Steve's voice speaks. He sounds strange. Like he's being put on the spot in a courtroom, or something. "She's been following me around since we were little, so... I dunno, I guess I'm kind of used to it,"

Lily's heart drops.

"Used to it?" Tommy mocks, exchanging a snigger with the girl — is it Carol? Lily's pretty sure she's called Carol. "Come on, Steve, we're not little kids anymore, surely she must get on your nerves? You're too nice,"

"Yeah... sometimes she's kind of annoying... I dunno, I guess I'll just... see how it goes..."

"See how it goes? If you wanna dump her, then dump her,"

"Yeah... maybe..."

Lily's heard enough. She starts to walk forward again, but not over to the group like she was planning — she heads down the hallway to her own locker, where the group is out of earshot.

Steve doesn't even notice her walk down the hallway. Perhaps if he had, all those years of misunderstanding and heartbreak wouldn't have played out the way it did. But he missed her walking past them, having heard their conversation.

And that was where it all started to go wrong.

"But, it's Lils," Lily doesn't hear Steve continue to his friends. "She's cool. You'll see..."

Tommy and Carol aren't buying it, and then become distracted with someone else walking down the hall — someone else to make fun of...

Lily doesn't know what to do with herself. She doesn't run to the bathroom with tears streaming down her face, she doesn't go up to the group and start yelling at Steve. She's so confused, and shocked, she feels like she's in a dream. One of those horrible, disoriented dreams like the ones where you're trying to sprint away but your legs aren't working properly. Or the ones where you're desperately trying to talk and your voice just won't cooperate.

But Lily's disoriented dream is her Steve, acting like an entirely different person. Betraying her. And it's not a dream at all — that's the part she can't fathom. It's real.

Lily's like a ghost, for the rest of the day. She sits next to Tina in biology, pale faced and silent, feeling as though she might throw up any second. She doesn't want to talk about it, not whilst it's so fresh. She's not sure whether she's actually acknowledged it herself, yet. Luckily she can blame her weird state on the fact that their teacher is dissecting the heart of some kind of animal, and Tina thoroughly agrees that the lesson is nauseating.

Even when Lily arrives home, she doesn't know how to act. She's a girl that doesn't know who she is or what she's doing.

It's only when she heads up to her room and sees a picture of her and Steve from the previous summer on her bedside table, does everything start to catch up with her.

And the disasters that set the next couple of years for Lily and Steve soon start to follow...

💗

HALLOWEEN '84 WAS THE WORST halloween of Lily Wright's life.

After being dropped off by Steve, she heads straight to bed, and the second wave of sobs begin to follow.  It's not silent, delicate tears trickling down her pretty little face. It's gasping for air, a running nose, and thick streams that smother her entire face and soak her hair and pillow. It's an ugly cry. A real cry.

And it lasts all night, and part of the morning when she gets up with the worst hangxiety she's ever experienced, and a sickening hangover that results in her drooping over the toilet bowl for a good half an hour, before heading to the shower, to get rid of the remainder of all the fake blood she's covered in.

It's when Lily gets out of the shower with puffy, sore eyes does she finally decide she needs to get a grip. And so, she grabs the mixtape. Her saviour mixtape. The one that has written on the front, 'Emergency!' and contains the ultimate mix of girl power songs exactly for moments like these.

It's made of magic.

And it's never failed her before — it won't fail her again.

She picks out one of her favourite outfits whilst 'Call Me' by Blondie is playing, and she brushes her hair. Clothes are important to Lily, of course, but today they're especially important. Because this is her comeback outfit.

Lily always dresses for revenge when someone does her wrong, and it's always been a necessity for her healing process.

Her friends know that when somebody does something bad to Lily she'll rock up the next day looking like she's just finished a shoot for Vogue — not that she doesn't look like that, anyway. And it's not even fancy, designer type clothes, either — just the way Lily puts outfits together the confidence she uses to accessorise them with. They admire her for it, honestly.

She chooses a pair of sunglasses from her very large collection. She needs them especially, today — to cover her puffy, red eyes, just for the morning until they're back to normal. Nobody will find it strange — in fact, sunglasses have, over time, become Lily's signature accessory. She's not sure why she loves them so much, or why they work so well with her outfits. But nobody's going to suspect anything of her when she turns up at school wearing sunglasses in October, because that's the norm.

(And, it can still get quite sunny, despite the cold, so...)

She grabs her magic mixtape, hops on the bus, as usual and ignores any small glances from those who witnessed what happened at Tina's last night.

The talk of the events at Tina's party was well and in motion, as expected, when Lily arrives at school. Tina and Vicki are immediately at her side when she gets off the bus, bombarding her with support and immediately throwing all kinds of insults at Reed.

"I made him leave as soon as I could. He kept asking where you'd gone, but I just told him to get out. Nicole went with him, stupid girl,"

"She can have him," Lily says.

"But where did you go?" Vicki asks. "We looked for you for ages — we thought you were hiding in the bathroom, or something, but we couldn't find you — and then someone said that you'd left!"

"How did you get home?!" Tina frowns.

"Oh, um... I don't remember," Lily lies. It's a believable lie — she was off her face.

Tina sighs. "Well... at least you got home okay. We were worried sick,"

"I'm sorry I kinda ruined your party," Lily says to Tina, a surge of guilt rising in her stomach as she recollects the scene she'd created when she'd found Reed cheating on her — and the fact that she'd left without saying anything.

Drunk Lily had not thought about how worried her friends would've been.

"Girl, you didn't ruin it, Reed did," Tina says. "And it wasn't really ruined anyway — there's always drama at a party, that's just how it is. I really enjoyed my night... well, except for when you were upset, obviously..."

"Yeah, did you hear Nancy Wheeler dumped Steve Harrington?" Vicki says. "Nobody really knows why, but apparently she broke up with him in the bathroom,"

"Can't say I blame her," Lily says, bluntly.

Tina glances sideways at her, but says nothing.

The news of Reed cheating on Lily seems to be a lot bigger than the Steve and Nancy fiasco as the day progresses — Lily supposes it was because their breakup was more of a big scene than the other couple's. A screaming dispute is a lot more entertaining than the story of a girl dumping a boy in a bathroom — especially since the details of Lily's breakup are much more clear.

Lily's not sure how she feels about her dramatic breakup being the subject of all conversation at the moment. She supposes she likes the part where it makes Reed look bad, but she's slightly uncomfortable receiving small glances in the hallways and having people asking her constantly if she's okay.

Lily likes to ignore problems until they go away — but it's especially hard to ignore this one when it's jumping out at you wherever you go.

She can't be mad at her fellow peers for it, either. If it was anyone else, she'd be especially interested in the gossip — it's just unlucky that she has to be the subject, this time, and can't partake in it.

Reed has tried to approach her a few times throughout the day, but she's told him to fuck off enough for him to get the hint.

Unlike somebody else, who seems to keep cropping up again.

Normally Lily doesn't really see him — she's usually got a strategised plan where she's remembered whereabouts he normally lingers and then does her best to focus her attention on anything except that place.

But Steve Harrington seems to want to see her — she's noticed him glance at her uneasily when crossing paths in the hall, or after cheer practice, when the basketball team arrive to start their session just as the cheerleaders are leaving. He was even amongst the players that had turned up slightly earlier — and Lily'd had to put up with the feeling of his eyes on her as she finished the routine for the last song of the session.

Lily wishes he'd just piss off. She doesn't need him following her around on top of everything else. She's chosen to forget about the night before, he should, too.

But he doesn't.

It's after cheer practice the next day, when the basketball players turn up for their session, does he manage to catch her outside of the locker rooms, much to her dismay.

"Lily... Lily!"

Lily's ignoring him, continuing to walk.

"Lily... Lils..."

Her insides churn.

"Lils... Lily!"

"What?!" she snaps, turning around so quickly it makes the boy jump.

"You dropped your... hair thing..." Steve says, handing her a green scrunchie. She glances at it.

"That's not mine,"

"Oh... well... I thought I saw you drop it, I dunno..."

"What do you want, Steve?" Lily asks with a scowl, folding her arms. His scrunchie excuse is fooling nobody.

"Uh..." Steve runs a hand through his hair.

It's almost as though he's been trying so hard to get her attention, he's almost forgotten what he'd been planning to say.

"How — how are the pumpkins?"

"Still dead,"

Lily goes to turn away, but Steve starts to talk again.

"Are the lab running tests on them, yet?"

"Why, what's the lab got to do with you?"

Steve hesitates, still waiting for an answer to his question. Lily doesn't give him one.

The lab is running tests on her dad's pumpkin patch, but she doesn't like Steve snooping all of a sudden, and so refuses to give him any answers. She finds it weird. He hasn't spoken to her for years, and now he's all interested in some dead pumpkins? Too strange. Unless—

"Did you poison my dad's pumpkins?" Lily asks, the thought only just dawning on her.

It would make sense as to why he was so concerned about the lab. He'd get into real trouble if they'd ran all these professional tests, and somehow his DNA shows up, proving that he'd tampered with them.

Lily can't believe she didn't think of this before.

"What?!" Steve asks, in disbelief. "No! Why would I do that?!"

"Hmph," is all Lily responds with, avoiding eye contact.

She can see out of the corner of her eye Billy Hargrove walking past, glancing between the two with curiosity. She looks back at Steve to see him glaring after the boy.

"...OK," she says, frowning, about to leave the conversation unfinished, but Steve pipes up again.

"I'm just... concerned about the pumpkins!" he says, in the most unconvincing tone possible.

"Okay, well, I don't care. Leave me alone, Steve," Lily responds, and starts to walk off.

Steve does not leave her alone, however.

"Lils, you just need to listen to me—"

"What part of me not giving a flying fuck do you not understand?!" Lily snaps once more. "And stop calling me that!"

And the boy is left standing defeated, once again.

He really doesn't know how to get any information out of someone that hates his guts — so he lets her go.

But, he's becoming desperate, now. He needs to know what's going on, just in case it could be to do with what happened last year...

Just in case it is something dangerous. For his sake, for Nancy's sake...

...and for Lily's.

💗

AUTHORS NOTE

💗 hiiiii!! finally another update, i'm sorry it's taken so long but I'm hoping to update more frequently now!

💗 i'm hoping the backstory makes a little more sense, now? I thought this chapter would fit it in quite nicely? but anyways lily hates steve and he's gonna need to grovel his asssss offfffff

💗 I know this has started quite slowly but I think from now shits going to start to move a lot quicker, so bare with!

💗 anyways, I hope you enjoyed! let me know what you thought <3