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016. 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗺𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮
𝙨𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴.
“What has gotten into you?” Maureen Philbin said, at ten-thirty in the morning.
The woman was standing in the middle of the bedroom, her hands on her hips and her loafer-covered toes pointed towards the bed. The pearls around her neck were glinting in the sunlight that was spilling through the window – after she’d just ripped the curtains wide open. She stood at the edge of the bed, neck tilted down, frown on her perfectly lined lips, nostrils flared, glaring at the half-asleep teenager lying before her.
“I mean, seriously, what has gotten into you!” she scoffed, exclaiming.
Lori let out a grumble, her eyes peeling open. They were weighted down by a heavy tiredness, and she couldn’t bare to open them up. Mostly because she was tired, because she didn’t, really didn’t want to face her mother’s angry wrath at ten thirty in the morning— but also because when she was asleep, she felt alright. And now, even in the first few seconds of waking up, she was remembering everything that happened the night before, everything about Hawkins, and everything she’d seen.
“Lorraine Philbin.” Maureen said, sternly.
“No,” Lori winced, with a groggy voice. “No.”
With a groan and a tight expression, Lori kicked her blankets higher on her body and turned onto her other side. She let out a huff of air, and closed her eyes as she faced the wall.
“Lorraine!” Maureen exclaimed, her voice sounding fed up. She reached for the bed covers, grabbed them, and tossed them to the end of the bed. “Do you have any idea of what’s happened?”
“Not now,” Lori grumbled, digging her face into her pillow. Her eyes knit together with tension, as cold air trickled up her legs. “Please, not now.”
“We need to talk,” Maureen told her, crossing her arms over her chest.
Lori squeezed her eyes shut, as hard as she could. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to turn around and face her mom, she didn’t even want to get out of bed. She didn’t want to do anything in the moment.
“Tell me why I’ve just gotten a call,” Maureen said, starting off with a bitter tone of voice. “From your aunt— saying that my car, my car, is parked in her driveway.”
Lori didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. All she could do was think about last night.
“How did it get in Claudia’s driveway?” Maureen said, but sounded like she already knew the answer. “I know I didn’t drive it there,” she said, putting her hand out to the side. “Because when I woke up yesterday morning — it was gone.”
Lori hummed.
“And so were you.” she said, as the final punch. “Would you care to tell me why that is?”
“I can’t do this right now,” Lori said, her words muffled from her pillow.
“Too bad, we are doing it now.” Maureen tapped her foot on the wooden floor. “I’m not leaving this room without an explanation. An explanation for why my car disappeared in the middle of the night, why you were missing— missing!— all day long, and how it winded up sitting in your aunt’s driveway after several, several hours, and I didn’t even hear a word from you the entire time!”
Lori formed her lips into a tight line, pressing them together hard.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” Maureen said, more delicately now. “And the worst part— I had to help your aunt find her stupid cat all day because I didn’t have the guts to tell her you ran away on me again!”
Lori let out a sharp breath and turned around to face her mom, her heart skipping a beat at the mention of the cat. She didn’t open her eyes.
“You don’t have any idea what I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours.” Lori said, her voice monotone.
Maureen scoffed, truly appalled. “I truly cannot believe you, Lorraine!”
Lori sighed, quietly, knowing far too well what was coming.
“This is the third time you’ve taken the car in the night,” she said, outraged. “Third! Do you see anything wrong with that at all?” she exclaimed. “Where do you go? Where did you go last night?”
“I had to help someone.” Lori said, her voice low.
“And you couldn’t call and tell me that?” Maureen narrowed her eyebrows. “I would’ve said yes, Lori! If it meant you were meeting new people, or making friends, then be my guest— ”
“I wasn’t making friends,” she interrupted, sharply.
But when the words tumbled off her lips, she thought of Steve. And the lake, and the car ride, the Bowie singing, and the hug in his driveway. She felt a pang hit her chest, a feeling she couldn’t decipher— at the fact that she didn’t believe her own words. More at the fact that, she knew he wasn’t not a friend.
“Then what in the world were you doing?” Maureen crossed her arms. “Who were you with.”
“You’ve never asked me these questions before,” Lori commented, her eyes still shut. She was referring to the one-too-many times she’d snuck out in the night before, back in Michigan. Maureen had caught her only three times out of many, but she’d never once urged this conversation. Not once. “Why is this any different.”
“Because, Lori,” she let out a grand sigh, and let her hands fall. “Moving to a new town— we’re supposed to be starting fresh, starting over, all of that bullshit Claudia talks about! You know what she talks about!”
Lori rolled her eyes, even though they were closed.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Maureen said, with a clear of her throat. She sounded serious now.
Lori fluttered her eyes open. As soon as the familiar shape of her room filtered in her senses, she remembered that she was still in Hawkins. Maybe if she closed her eyes again, fell asleep, she could forget about all the stories and all the monsters…
“Who were you with,” Maureen asked again, this time cocking an eyebrow.
“Doesn’t matter.” Lori shrugged. She shuffled her feet around to reach the blankets, pulling them up by her legs.
“Everything seems to not matter with you,” Maureen scoffed. “When will things ever start to matter? Hm?“
Lori rolled her eyes as she covered herself with the blankets, letting her shoulders sink further into the bed. Maureen tapped her foot on the floor impatiently, wanting an answer. She wasn’t going to leave until she did, and Lori knew that. In a way— that was where they were similar, always pushing for answers.
And then, with a hefty sigh falling past her lips, Lori shifted her eyes to the window. She tilted her chin in its direction— admitting that what was outside, was the answer.
Maureen turned on her heel, and quickly walked over to the window in all her punctual aura. She stopped when she got there, looked outside for a moment— probably searching for the answer in Lori’s arcane response —before she let out a hum.
“The Harringtons?” she said, with a sort of skeptical tone of voice. “That teenage boy?”
“You didn’t have to say it out loud.” Lori winced.
Winced at the thought of Steve, them in his driveway, and his role in everything.
“What the hell were you doing with the boy next door,” Maureen was walking away from the window now. “In the middle of the night, with my car.” she said, bitterly.
“You make it sound so fucking cliche,” Lori grumbled.
“Language!” she stopped where she was before, her arms crossed and loafers pointing towards the bed. “What in the world were you two doing in the middle of the night?”
Lori rolled her eyes, not wanting to say the entire truth. “Just helping him with something. He was in a bind.”
“Well then, I hope he finds out that his bind just cost’you two weeks worth of grounding.” Maureen concluded. “Shall I let him know for you?”
At this, Lori sat right up in her bed. “You can’t do that!”
“I can,” Maureen stated, matter of fact-ly. “And I mean it.”
Lori didn’t know what to say. It’s not like she had places to go every week night— it was more the realization that Maureen was taking her parenting seriously now. No more letting things slide. She was becoming a real single mom.
“The only exception I’ll allow,” Maureen put her finger out, looking deep into her daughter’s eyes. “The only exception— is family. And only family. Maybe you can come out later and look for Claudia’s cat — that’s what I mean by family. Is that clear?”
Lori was about to protest, but then a thought occurred to her. If she was grounded, that technically meant she wasn’t allowed to help Dustin and Steve with the next phase of the plan. But at the same time, she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or if it was a bad thing. And then she remembered that Dustin was family.
“That includes Dustin, right?” Lori narrowed her eyebrows.
“What other family do we have in Hawkins,” Maureen lowered her eyelids, with sarcasm.
“Shit,” she said, under her breath.
“No parties, no sneaking out, no taking the car,” Maureen stated, strongly. “Two weeks, Lori, that’s fourteen days.”
“I’m not a dunce,” Lori let out a groan, wanting to get this entire thing over with, and flopped back on her bed. “My god.”
“Now, I have a meeting in town in half an hour, and after I’m heading to your aunt’s to keep looking for the damned cat,” she said, flattening her shirt. She composed herself now, as she always did. “If I come home and you’re not in this house,”
“My ass will be grass,” Lori said, as she stared up at the ceiling.
“I mean this, Lori,” she continued. “If you’re gone when I come home, the consequences will be far, far worse.”
The undertone in her voice admitted that she wasn’t just going to up the grounding, maybe take away Lori’s car privileges— she was going to be really, really upset. And not the angry kind.
Lori didn’t say anything, and her mother’s presence lingered for a few more moments. Maureen stared down at her daughter, her face tense and her mind conflicted with many things, before she let out a long, tired sigh.
“I’ll be home later,” she concluded, her voice lower, and finally turned away.
Lori listened to the steps as she walked to the door, stopping there to glance back, before they trailed down the hall and down the staircase. When she couldn’t hear the steps anymore, Lori let out a breath, feeling her chest loosen. There was something about their argument that left her feeling odd. Left her feeling different, as she stared up at the popcorn ceiling and lost herself in the tiny dots of it.
It was half-past two, in the afternoon, when Lori heard a clack on her window pane.
Maureen had left hours ago, picked up by a cab that Lori didn’t even know existed in Hawkins. Lori stood at her window, watching until the cab was gone.
She’d looked down at the window then, and wondered if she should sneak out. She’d only thought about it for a moment, before shutting the idea down— because Maureen was serious. And it’s not like Lori ever listened anyways, but this time just felt different. She couldn’t shake the feeling off her shoulders from their argument. And really, if Lori snuck out, that would mean she was willingly going along with Steve and Dustin. And that scared her— willingly letting herself into a possible death trap.
Now, she was sitting on her floor in the middle of the room, cross-legged in front of her old Polaroid camera with a bowl of pasta on her lap.
She looked up at the window, as a clack sound vibrated through her quiet room.
Only a moment and a half later, as she stared at the glass, a small object came into view— spiraling through the air. A rock, was it? It hit her window, emitting another clack against the glass.
Her fingers let go of the fork, letting it clatter on the side of her bowl. Her eyebrows narrowed sharply, and her chest tightened in the smallest bit, as she placed the bowl on the floor beside her. Quickly, she pushed herself up to stand, her mind suddenly turning with curiosity.
As she walked to the window, another rock flung through the air, just missing the glass and hitting the sill instead, before tumbling back down to the ground below. Lori pushed her hair behind her ears, and rushed to the edge of her window, tilting her neck down.
“Son of a bitch,” She let out a long breath of air, when she landed eyes on none other than Steve and her cousin, Dustin standing there at the side of her house.
As she reached for the handle to open the window, she was looking down at them— Steve appeared to be pissed off at Dustin, and was going through the motions of how to “properly” throw a rock at a window, before he looked up and noticed her.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Lori called, her voice monotone as she pushed the window open.
Steve craned his neck back, squinting an eye closed as a wide side-smile took over his lips. Dustin smiled brightly, his teeth showing when he noticed her.
“Hey, Philbs,” Steve tilted his chin in her direction. She couldn’t make out his tone of voice, or rather, what it meant.
“Hi, Lori,” Dustin smiled.
“Who’s idea was it to throw rocks at my window?” She narrowed her eyebrows, and placed her elbows on the windowsill. “What ever happened to ringing a doorbell?”
“This was more romantic,” Dustin smirked, nudging Steve’s shoulder.
“Would you stop,” Steve scolded him in a whisper, and slapped his arm. He turned to face Lori, tilting his neck back with the same side-smile. “We figured this would get your attention better. Clearly it has,”
She rolled her eyes. “So, what’s the problem,” she said, asking why they showed up. She already knew why— she just didn’t want to say it out loud.
Dustin looked at Steve, and they shared the same expression for a moment, before he cleared his throat. “Uh— well, we’re heading out in a few minutes, and came to pick you up… if you, um, y’know,” he stammered. “Cause’ well, uh,”
“If you want to,” Steve finished, his voice calm and honest. He caught her eye, from all the way down on the ground.
She held his gaze for a moment, and looked away when she realized they were staring at each other. An image of him slipped into her head at that— an image of him extending his arms and wrapping them right around her body, his hand on the back of her head. She shuddered at the thought.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I can’t,” she said, the word coming out slightly forced.
Steve nodded, but Dustin’s face twisted in a confused way.
“Why not?” Dustin said, shrugging.
Steve slapped the side of his arm again, scoldingly. “Remember what we talked about?” he said, blamefully. “At the first no, we leave.”
Dustin’s face sort of fell a little bit, and his shoulders lowered. “All right, then,” he said, looking back up to Lori.
A gust of wind blew past, and she pushed her hair behind her ears. “It’s not that I don’t want to— even though I don’t want to,” she said, shivering from the cold air. “I’m grounded.”
She shifted her eyes to Steve. And even from their distance, he could tell the look in her eyes, and immediately his eyes softened. He suddenly looked guilty. He looked down.
“And this time it’s serious,” Lori said, looking down at her hands on the window sill. Then her voice lowered, as if she really didn’t want to say this next part, but she did anyways. “I guess I have to listen. So you’ll just have to go on without me.”
In all honesty, she didn’t feel bad at all about sitting out— she knew with her whole body that she never wanted to see one of those monsters again. But then there was her curiosity, racking on her brain, telling her to figure out all of this messed up shit for herself.
“Ah, shit.” Dustin pressed his lips together. Then he perked up with an idea, “Well, maybe, I can talk to my mom, cause’ y’know— and she could talk to your mom, and,”
“Yeah, that’s enough, pipsqueak,” Steve ran a hand through his hair, and placed that hand on Dustin’s shoulder.
Lori observed this. It seemed as though Steve already knew she didn’t want to go, and that he respected her decision immediately.
“Let’s get a move on,” Steve turned Dustin towards their exit— which was around the hedge, to Steve’s. “C’mon,” he said, quietly, motioning with his hand.
Dustin let out a sigh. “I’ll call you if anything happens, alright, Lor?” he said, as Steve pushed him away slowly with his hand on his back. “We’ll be at the junkyard if you need us,”
Steve stopped, and spoke lowly now. “Wait in the car, I’ll be a minute,” he said, to Dustin, and motioned him off.
Lori crossed her arms on the windowsill, as another gust of wind brushed past. She watched, as Dustin glanced to her, and turned away to walk off towards Steve’s. She shifted her eyes as Steve turned around, still below her window, his eyes traveling up to meet her own. Suddenly, it was different, without her cousin.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Can I, uh,” he said, sort of quietly, “Can I come in? For a minute,”
Lori didn’t know what else to do for a moment but think too long about his question. She nodded after that moment, and her fingers suddenly felt cold against her arms.
“The door’s open,” she said, her voice low.
He kept her eye contact for a moment more, before nodding and lowering his head— as he started for her front entrance. When he was out of sight below the window, she removed herself from the rectangular slot, grabbed the handle, and shut it.
She heard the front door creak open from the first floor, because her bedroom door was wide open and the house was eerily silent. She stood at the window, leaning her back against the sill, trying not to think too much about the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.
She was staring down at her bowl of pasta on the floor when his shoes came into view, standing behind the threshold of her bedroom. She adverted his eyes up to him, her hands gripping the window sill absentmindedly, at him standing in her doorway. He had a look on his face, a sort of guilty look, but otherwise calm and honest.
“Yeah?” Lori said, as if he’d wanted to ask a question but wasn’t asking it. Her voice was soft against the painful silence.
He cleared his throat a little bit, and took a step in the room. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, sort of humorously, and his eyes trailed around the posters on her walls.
She followed his eyes, and realized he’d never been in her room before when it was light outside. She also realized then, that she’d never even let a boy in her room before, ever.
“Thanks,” she said, sort of quietly. “I guess.”
She watched his feet as they stopped in the middle of the room, beside the bowl, a few feet away from her.
There was a moment where neither of them spoke. They stood in the presence of one another, like the night before in the driveway— and then she thought of the driveway. How less than a day ago, she was crying in his arms. All day she’d been trying not to think about it, and she didn’t really think about it all night, except for right now. Right now, as he stood across from her in her bedroom, looking at her in the consuming silence.
And she didn’t want to think about this either— but things felt different. Maybe it was in the slightest way, or a big way, she didn’t know. And she didn’t want to know. But all she could think about was that things were different— whether they were different in a minimal manner or a drastic one. It just felt really fucking different.
“I just wanted to come and apologize,” he said then, his voice honest.
“For what,” she said, her voice thin, looking at his eyes.
He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s my fault you’re grounded, at least I think so, and it just didn’t feel right to not say I’m sorry.”
Lori was slightly taken aback by this. “Oh,” she said, her voice coming out quiet. “Well, I mean, it’s not that big a deal, I’ve snuck out before and gotten caught,”
“And it’s not just about the necklace thing,” he said, sort of cutting her off. He put his hand out. His voice lowered. “I’m sorry for dragging you into all this bullshit. Last night I realized that,”
He shoulders twitched at the mention of last night. “It wasn’t your fault, Steve,” she said, her voice softer now.
“I know, I just— ” he cut himself off, running another hand through his hair. “You don’t deserve this crap, no one does you know, and I’m sorry you had to find out like that. Hell, that you had to find out at all.”
Lori felt like her tongue was dry, at those words. And just like when he’d looked at her yesterday, with those concerned eyes after she’d woken up, she knew there was care in his voice. She could hear it now.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, and suddenly felt like his gaze was important, so she looked down at her feet.
“I’m not gonna stand here and beg for you to come with us. That’s a big ask.” he said, his voice always soft and honest. “I just wanted to apologize and make sure you were doin’ alright.”
“You don’t have to do that, Harrington,” she let out a light laugh. “Check if I’m okay.”
“I know that,” he said. And by the tone of his voice, she could tell he really did know that. “I know.”
She kept her hold on his eyes for a moment, trying to read them, but looked away when she realized she was doing that. She cleared her throat a little bit.
Many silent moments passed before Steve cleared his own throat, shifting on his feet.
“Well, that’s all I needed to say.” he said, his lips in a line. “So I’ll be on my way now, then,”
He stood for a moment, looking at her as the thought to herself. She stared at her hands, feeling curiosity burn at her chest. She knew that Maureen would be devastated if she snuck out again, but Dustin was family. She also knew that she could die if she went along.
And with all these conflicting thoughts inside her head, she swallowed hard. She didn’t like to sit in the dark, and wonder about important things without having a say. She didn’t like to be confused. She didn’t like to think about the “what if’s”.
As Steve turned around, she spoke. Her voice was rough, as if the other half of her was trying to keep the words in her throat — but she said them anyways.
“I’ll come,” she swallowed. “But on one condition.” she said, strongly. “I need to know everything— the full story. And I mean all of it.”
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