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002. 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱, 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁?
𝐀 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐃𝐒, as she stood in the middle of the empty driveway. Her neck was craned back and her face was against the few sun rays that poked through the clouds, a bleak, yellow gleam painting over her face. Her hands were latched onto the handle of Aunt Claudia’s old beige bicycle, her chunky rings clinking on the metal bars when she tapped them to an untethered melody, while standing with her shoes glued on the pavement.
The golden umbrage behind her eyes felt like a dream, as if she wasn’t really there at all. But she was, she was there standing in her empty driveway with her face towards the sun, on her second day in Hawkins— also the day before Halloween.
The night before, she’d slept on a mattress in her empty room. The moving truck wasn’t going to be coming for a few more days, neither was their car. Lori sort of felt like she was cursed— her parents divorce, moving to this shit-hole, and now having to bike to school in the middle of a semester— she was definitely cursed in some way. For what? Who knows, maybe the gods just hated girls who hated them.
So, there she was, standing in her driveway, debating whether she should hop on the bike or not and whether she was cursed or just hilariously unlucky in life. She figured the line between the two of those things was very thin, to begin with.
The sun only lasted for a few more moments anyways. Lori opened her eyes to see the outline of it hiding underneath the thick, grey cloud overhead.
The front door latched open. “Lorraine! What the hell are you doing!” Maureen scoffed, eyes pinning on her daughter standing in her new laneway— wasting the time she had before school.
Lori closed her eyes again, this time in a tight blink, a small hum emitting from the back of her throat.
“Claudia didn’t just give you that bike for nothing,” Maureen commented. She was a governed woman, who lost her temper at the simple things rather than the big.
“This is a perfect town for Halloween, huh,” The teenage girl said, more to herself.
“You’re going to be late!” Her mother scolded.
Lori swung one leg over the bike, and hopped on.
Maureen sighed, and Lori could just tell that she was rubbing her forehead. The woman was stressed— maybe it was hard to tell because she was in her pyjamas, with curlers in her hair, standing on the front steps of her rich home, with her coffee in hand and the newspaper under her arm.
“At least try to have a good day?” The woman was saying, as her daughter began to pedal. “I’ve put everything in your bag! Do you have the binders!”
Lori turned her head as she made it to the end of the driveway, “No!” She called back, and then a smile of amusement slid onto her lips when Maureen’s face twisted into a panic, and when she waved the newspaper frantically.
“Turn left, Lori! Turn left!” Maureen was shouting— and the neighbours probably thought they were on one by now— but it was no use.
Lori was pedalling away from the house. The wheels of the bicycle were rusty and dangerously close to flat, and the chain was painfully slow. So she pushed harder and cussed under her breath at the speed she was forced to drive at. Soon, she was rolling away from her new house, Maureen fading in the distance of their front porch with her curlers in her hair. She didn’t really have a plan of action, although it would’ve been a good idea.
Lori hated the first day of school. She’d always hated it, especially back in Michigan. Mostly because attendance was her prime time to shine every year, when every new teacher would recognize her as the girl with those stupid fat thumbtacks. She hated school, hated the first day of it, hated everything about said-it. But now she was a transfer student. Transferring from a new school had its ups— nobody knew her name, nobody would even want to know her name in a town like Hawkins. It was senior year anyways, so her plans of cruising through High School were at good possibility.
But transferring schools also had its major downs— for starters, it was the end of October. Nobody transfers to a new school in the dead middle of a semester. Except for Lori Philbin. She wasn’t afraid though; Lori Philbin was never afraid of anything.
As she biked out of her residence completely, she passed the tall shrub that separated her house and the grey panelled mansion. Her eyes lingered as the mansion came into view, staring at her side to get a good glimpse for the first time. When a flourish of her hair passed over her eyes from the wind, her vision was blinded for a moment— and in that moment, she didn’t even see the burgundy BMW pulling out of the driveway right next to her.
With a loud, ear-wrenching honk, she stopped pedalling immediately, and nearly flew right over the handles of her bike. The bumper was right next to her hip.
“What the hell was that!” She yelled, anger scorching from her voice, her heart beating faster at the almost-contact. She moved to stand on one foot, her eyebrows sharply narrowed and her mouth open— expecting to see a rich man stick his head out his window and tell her off for not paying attention.
But instead, she saw a flush of hair rise from inside the car, and then an arm draped out, and then a head. It was a boy her age. He was wearing a blue jacket, and when he turned his head in her direction, she caught sight of his face— and his hair, his hair that was too high and too prepped for his own good.
“What d’you think you’re doing!” He said, his tone equally as angry, “Watch where you’re going— Jesus Christ!” He huffed our quickly, and ran a hand through his tall hair.
So, it wasn’t an angry rich man that was going to tell her off for not paying attention, but rather, it was a rich teenage boy that was going to tell her off for not paying attention. Same thing.
She took one last look at his face, and turned away. “Yeah, whatever,” Lori grabbed her bike handles and sat up straight.
Maybe she really was cursed.
He ran another hand through his hair, and then stuck his head even farther out the window, looking apologetic, “Look— I’m sorry—hey!” He called, his words quick. He was going to apologize, but Lori Philbin had a habit of leaving whenever it suited her best.
She was already pedalling away.
“Hey!” He called again, this time louder, and with a tone of voice that implied he was waiting for an answer.
But instead of an answer, Lori lifted a hand off the handles. She stuck out her middle finger, threw her arm back for him to see, and flipped him off as her ring glinted in the sunlight.
Hawkins High wasn’t any better of a building than the next. It’s bland, washed brick didn’t make it stand out, neither did the cars parked in the parking lot, neither did the students that crowded the entrance and the sidewalks. It was two days before Halloween, and now the sky portrayed the perfect spooky atmosphere for such a spooky holiday. Really— all of Hawkins portrayed that spooky feeling. It was almost as if it were Halloween every day.
Lori had biked to school on her first day. Underneath the looming cloud of incessant grey, she pedalled and drifted by the rotting pumpkin patch for a moment, just to see it one more time. Though, she didn’t stay long, because of the putrid aroma of it. But she had lingered long enough to see the Chief, Hopper— the man who grew more tired of his job every day, according to Claudia— walking with an older man in the middle of the field. It was peculiar, to say the least.
Then she followed a group of teenagers who’d also been biking. It wasn’t like she didn’t know the way, because Aunt Claudia had spent hours the day before showing them around every inch of town, and the high school wasn’t all that hard to miss with its swarm of hormone-raging teenagers crowding every entrance. But she’d made it to school in time, a bit earlier than expected, really, and kept her mind to herself and her empty backpack, filled with nothing but a pencil case and one binder of papers.
You could see it on her face that she wasn’t excited for this new opportunity. It also didnt help that she had to lock her bike on the rack, which was unfortunately placed farther from the school for no apparent reason, next to a pack of smokers who stared at her until she glared at them to stop. The second-hand smoke was painful— she’d never liked the smell of smoke after her father used to do it in the house all the time.
Now, she gripped the straps of her backpack and stepped onto the pavement of the parking lot, trying to ignore the shouts from car to car and booming laughter. Hawkins was dull— but somehow the teenagers seemed to think it was the best place on earth right then. Lori walked past cars that occupied people in the front seats, her eyes pinned forward at the high school’s fading red brick exterior. She was at the very top of the inclined parking lot, her converse stepping hard on the stone-carved walkway.
She was looking forward at a group of three girls twirling their hair and chewing gum, when a roar of a car stereo boomed in her ears. She flicked her eyes towards a speeding blue Camaro swerving into the parking lot, smoke coming out of the back of it. The driver, with a hand draped out of his window and a cigarette between his two fingers, sped towards a parking spot down the line from where Lori was. She looked around. Everyone was staring as a short red head stepped out of the passenger seat and rolled away on her skateboard.
With a roll of her eyes, Lori walked faster down the decline, straight past the blue Camaro and down the grass. By the time she made it to the front entrance, the stereo music was blurred, and she pushed on the door. Inside it was not more appealing than the exterior. White tiles lined the floors, the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the walls were decorated with pin boards and flyers and posters of all kinds. She gazed at the flyers for upcoming school dances, Halloween bake sales, and after school clubs.
“I swear, Mr. Harvey— I was not smoking in the bathroom!” A short girl with black hair was standing inside the main office, her arms crossed hard over her chest. “And if I was, I’d hide it much better than this.”
Lori paused at the entrance of the office— having found it by looking at the overhead sign down the hall. Her face rested unamused with her shoulder leaning on the wooden frame of the tall door. The man in front of the small girl shook his head.
“Worth a try,” The black-haired girl twisted on her foot, grabbed the end straps of her backpack and started for the door. She turned her head around only slightly. “And yes, I know what time detention is. See you this afternoon, Walter,” she smiled sardonically, and breezed past Lori in the entrance.
“Room two-oh-six,” Lori spoke to the man, not bothering to portray a smile.
With a new direction, the girl spun around slowly, sighed, and made her way out into the hall. She glanced down at her locker number, written on her wrist that morning, and searched around the wide corridor for the digits. She dipped her chin up and down repeatedly— to keep the number current in her mind.
The students of Hawkins High were more lively than the state of the town. It seemed as though, outside the walls of that high school, everything was washed with a dirty paintbrush— or, the water that you use to clean dirty paintbrushes was spilled all over the place. But inside it was different. Not much different, but Lori suspected that it was only contrasting because the teenagers just liked to make it seem that way. They shouted in the halls, and talked over her head when she was at her locker, called from one side of the corridor to the opposite, and threw crumpled paper balls whoever they could. Someone was even leaning on her locker door.
All of this flickered under the fluorescent lights. Lori tried to keep her business to herself, but the fat boy who was leaning on her locker door smelled like cigarettes and awfully distasteful body odour, so when she was done, she closed the door so fast that he stumbled on his feet and fell into it with a loud thud.
By third period, no one had talked to Lori or introduced her. Until third period.
“Hey, this is kinda my desk.” Was the first time anybody had spoken to her that whole day.
So, yeah, until third period.
The boy, with the fluffy brown hair and the large brown eyes, stood over the desk she’d chosen that math class. His hands were on the corners of the table, and he was talking low as if he didn’t want anybody to hear. She knew who it was right away, because she recognized the voice from that morning.
“Hello,” he said, to catch her attention.
Lori looked up from searching through her bag, pinning her eyes on this boy in front of her. “What,” she said, strongly. She glanced to the glasses hanging on his jacket.
“Look— I’ve been sitting in this seat since sophomore year,” he said, and then when they caught eyes, his expression changed a bit, “Hey, you’re the hothead that flipped me off this morning, huh?”
“Your ass must hurt real bad,” Lori narrowed her eyebrows, referring to his first comment.
“You flipped me off this morning, that was you, right?” he said again, still leaning over her desk. He ignored her chuckling.
“I don’t believe that was me,” she shrugged, and then returned to searching in her bag.
“Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure it was. What’s your name?” He claimed. She wondered why he was so into the conversation— if anything, he should be pissed.
“I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lori looked at him with a monotone expression.
He became a tad bit flustered, “You were riding your bike down my street? And I, like, almost—”
“Ran me over?” She said.
He widened his eyes, pointing to the obvious. “So you do know what I’m talking about.”
She wasn’t grinning, “Obviously. There’s just nothing more amusing than watching a teenage boy confuse himself.”
She then smiled, but it was a a tight-lined sarcastic grin, emitting that she no longer wanted to be in conversation with him.
Before anything else could happen, they heard the click-clack of high heels entering the room. People began to make their way to desks.
“Harrington,” There was a lady at the front of the room, tall and thin with beady eyes and rounded glasses. “Seats, please.”
Harrington tapped her desk, glanced at Lori who simply stared back at him expressionless, and then he walked to the only empty desk near the windows.
Lori looked down at the desk in front of her as a bright sheet of orange paper slid onto the surface of it, given from the person next to her. The whole class was passing around these flyers. She grabbed the edge with the tip of her finger. “Come and get sheet-faced.” She mumbled to herself.
Just when she’d thought the period couldn’t get any worse, and that maybe this curse was over, the teacher at the front was looking directly at her. And then it finally came.
“We’ve got a new student today, class,” the lady smiled, but it was forced, as if she felt obligated to present her. But she wasn’t obligated— none of the other teachers had done so. “I’d like to introduce Lorraine Philbin,”
Lori suddenly felt prickled and preyed on when all heads turned to her. Harrington was looking at her with his head perched on his hand. Lori’s eyes travelled around the rom, she did not smile, nor even lifted her hand to wave.
“Not Lorraine,” she said over the pin-dropping silence in the room. Her voice sounded booming in the quietness, all attention on her. “Just Lori.”
“Where are you from, Philbin,” The teacher asked, her voice tired and dreary.
It took everything in her to not roll her eyes. “Michigan.” She simply said. The students looked at her with bored eyes, but they still looked, which was a burden in its own.
“How wonderful,” the woman seemed like she was over with the questioning, she turned to her own desk.
Soon enough, the students turned back around in their seats, all except for one. Harrington, whatever his first name was, kept his eyes on her for a moment, squinting.
Lori squinted back. She wasn’t going to look away first— so, like that morning, she rose her hand, extended her middle finger and flipped him off with a tiny grin on her lips. He rolled his eyes to the back of his head and turned away.
She grabbed the neon orange paper, and as the click-clack of the teacher’s heels sounded from the front of the room, she crumpled the parchment and threw it into her open backpack.
𝙅𝙐𝙇𝙄 !
ludicrous vibes ngl
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