queenofhawkinshigh | ripped up my prom dress running through rose thorns

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eddie munson

ripped up my prom dress running through rose thorns

Occasionally, Chrissy wonders if she should have tried to finish school the way Eddie did. It feels a little pathetic sometimes, having been two and a half months away from graduating and then just giving up. Every time the thought crosses her mind, though, she can't really bring herself to change her mind about it. Starting over so close to the end, even if she wouldn't be doing so for very long, just feels too daunting. There's an odd sort of comfort in the prospect of invisibility, in being no one for a change, having nothing to try to live up to, but there's terror in it, too. If people saw her for who she really is, she doesn't think they would like her at all. They certainly wouldn't think she's good enough.

Most people, anyway. Since that first day out in the woods back in Hawkins, Eddie has seemed different — different from what she expected, but also different from nearly everyone else she knows. She got the sense then that he actually saw her, and that's continued ever since. Strange as she may find it, he actually seems not to mind having her around, too. For her part, she knows there's no one here she's closer to. So while she couldn't bring herself to finish high school, she knows that it's a pretty big deal that he finally did. She can't just let an occasion like that pass without mention.

The idea has been in the back of her head for a while now, since just a little after he first told her that '86 was supposed to be his year. She's pretty sure it's stupid, and she figures the odds are about fifty-fifty that he'll wind up laughing at her, but she hasn't been able to think of anything else. In a small, plain gift box, she's put her gold 86 necklace. It may not technically be 1986 anymore here, but he still finished what he started then. And while it wound up very much not being her year after all, at least she'll have some use for this now.

She hasn't bothered with gift wrap, but she has tied a ribbon around the box, sitting now in the bottom of her purse as she waits to meet up with him. When she does spot him, she smiles, an instinct now that she chooses not to think too much about. "Hey," she says. "How does it feel, officially being a high school graduate?"

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"It's funny, 'cause there are CDs and vinyl and even some cassettes, which are old now, and people buy them, but it's just to have them," Eddie says. "Steve told me the music is all in a cloud now. Or the cloud. I dunno, it's like... he explained it and then another guy who works there explained it and I know it's a computer thing, but it's wild that this dumb thing can just get music."

He tosses his phone on the table as he speaks. Slowly, he's figuring out how to use it. Calling Jules had been really good incentive toward that, actually, so he has to thank her for that. And work stuff gets texted to a group chat a lot of the time, so he's worked that out, too.

But music in a cloud is still beyond him.

"Yeah, I have no idea what you just said," Chrissy says, shaking her head as she laughs. Her phone, she's started to get the hang of well enough, if only for making calls and sending texts, and maybe taking the occasional picture, but beyond that, the technology here is still pretty baffling to her. She has time, though, to figure it out, and a lot of it seems unnecessary anyway. As far as she's concerned, they all got along well enough without all of this. "I think I'll stick with records and cassettes, not... cloud music."

She gives a little shrug, setting down the menu she's been idly looking over. "But hey, at least I know where to go to get them."

"I'll even share my discount," Eddie tells her with a broad grin just as a waitress shows up at their table. Her name is Mina, she's older, even if he doesn't know how old. He's seen her before, talked with her a few times, she's always been nice to Eddie, the way he sort of feels like maybe a proper mother figure would have been.

Not that he'll ever say so or even really acknowledge it to himself.

"Hi, Eddie," she says with a smile. "And Eddie's friend."

"This is Chrissy," he tells her. "We knew each other back home."

"Welcome, Chrissy," Mina says, glossing right over the bit about back home. "Can I get you guys some drinks to start?"

"Thanks, Mina," Chrissy says with only a slight pause between the words as she reads the waitress's name tag, smiling up at her in return. If she's a little surprised that Eddie has been here often enough for staff members to know his name, she tries not to show it. There's no reason for it, really. He's been here longer than she has, for one, and if there's one thing she thinks can be said about Eddie Munson, it's that he makes an impression, even if he doesn't stand out here to the extent he did in Hawkins. Of course he's begun to settle in a way that feels completely out of reach to her. "Um, I'll have an iced tea, unsweetened, if you have it, with lemon?"

In looking at the menu, she didn't actually get as far as seeing what drinks they listed, but it seems a safe enough bet, something she can typically get most places. She's proven right within moments, something that comes as a relief. She still has picking a meal to worry about, after all, and the little box for Eddie in the bottom of her purse, too.

"You got it," Mina says, then looks at Eddie. "Let me guess. A bottle of that local IPA you seem to like so much."

Eddie grins broadly and says, "You know me so well."

Once she's gone, he turns his attention back to Chrissy, elbows on the table, chin against his hands. "I swear I don't drink that much. It's just that beer has gotten so much better since 1986 and it's not confusing like most of the rest of the changes are."

Beer is just beer. It tastes good and occasionally it gets him drunk. Even food is complicated now, organic and gluten-free and dairy-free and also made without being genetically modified, which Eddie thinks is actually kind of impossible, since corn and all that.

"Hey, no judgment here," Chrissy replies, laughing as she shakes her head a little. "Haven't tried it, but I'll take your word for it." The only person whose meal choices she tends to judge is herself, and it is admittedly pretty nice to be able just to legally order a drink in a restaurant now. Anyway, they are technically celebrating. Thinking about it that way, plus his mention of the year they came from, reminds her of what's sitting in her bag, and she decides she might as well just go ahead before she talks herself out of it. She's definitely about to make a fool of herself, but hopefully he won't make fun of her too much.

"Actually, that reminds me, uh—" she says, reaching around in her purse so she can rummage around in it, placing the ribbon-topped box on the table a moment later. "I kinda have something for you? A graduation gift. It's really stupid, and you're probably going to laugh at me, but, you know, finally graduating, that's a pretty big deal."

"What? Seriously?" Eddie asks, lighting up in a grin. "You didn't have to get me something for a thing I should've done two years ago."

Ever since he failed to graduate the first time, his pride a little wounded, Eddie has treated it like a joke. Like something not really worth doing, because if it was, he would have done it in the first place, no problem. But he had always kind of cared. He had wanted to graduate, even if he knew it would never get him out of Hawkins.

And hadn't that turned out to be true?

"That's really cool of you," he says, more sincere. He takes the box and then looks at Chrissy. "Can I open it?"

"No, I just brought it for you to look at the ribbon," Chrissy says, pointedly teasing, her nose crinkling as she does. Her cheeks feel a little warm, a slight flush from being flustered that she hopes isn't too noticeable, and she's pretty sure this was actually a terrible idea. There's no turning back now, though. If anything, she can reassure herself with the thought that she would look much, much more stupid if she tried to. It's not like she had to go out of her way or even spend any money, aside from the bow; the box, she just took from work. If he hates it, thinks it's as ridiculous as she currently does, however good an idea it seemed at the time, he can throw it out as soon as he leaves and there will be no harm done.

It isn't as if she even expects him to wear it, or anything. She's noticed the guitar pick he tends to wear as a necklace, but this isn't meant to be a fashion statement, just a small, quiet acknowledgment of a big achievement.

"Yes, you can open it," she adds, wincing playfully, half-shielding her eyes. "But really, I'm telling you, it's so dumb."

"I doubt it," he answers, looking up to give her a grin before he turns the box one way and then another, oohing and aahing over the ribbon, as if she was sincere about that bit.

"Excellent ribbon choice," he assures Chrissy before he pulls the bow to undo it. The ribbon falls away and he levers the lid off the box and stares down at what's inside.

For a second, he doesn't understand what he's seeing. Or he does, but he doesn't understand why and then, with a lurch of his stomach, he does. Eighty-six. It was his year, but it should have been hers, too. This delicate gold necklace with the shining numbers had sat in the hollow of Chrissy's throat all year, not that he'd noticed, of course, and definitely hadn't caught himself staring at it more than once.

"But," he says, lifting his gaze to look at her. "This is yours."

"Not anymore," Chrissy replies, giving him a tiny, self-conscious smile as she shrugs. The first day she got here, as she changed in his bathroom, she'd almost yanked the necklace right off by the chain. She's glad now that she didn't. Even if he does wind up laughing at her, this is better than letting it completely go to waste.

And he's not laughing, anyway, at least not yet. He actually looks more serious than she expected, making her both hopeful and nervous; she's not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but there is some relief in having maybe not embarrassed herself too thoroughly after all.

"I'm not expecting you to, like, wear it or anything," she explains, trying not to trip over her words too much. "Just... that was supposed to be your year, right? And it wound up really, really not being mine. But even if that's not when we are now, that is the school year you just finished, so I think it can still be yours."

Even as Chrissy says she's not expecting him to wear it, Eddie has set the box down and is reaching behind his neck to unhook the ball chain he wears with the guitar pick on it. It slithers onto the table in front of him and he picks the necklace out of the box, then slips the gold 86 from the chain.

"Hey," he says, looking up at her and giving a smile. It isn't his usual charming grin, the one he uses when he wants to distract people, it's a real smile, gentle and kind of shy. "Of course I'm gonna wear it."

He picks up the ball chain again and for a second he worries it might not fit, but then it slips through the circle at the top of the pendant and it slides down to settle against the guitar pick. Still smiling, Eddie reaches around and hooks the chain back in place, the pick and the 86 settled against his t-shirt.

As far as Chrissy is concerned, there's no of course about it. It's nice to hear, though, all the more so for how much he sounds like he means it. She isn't about to pretend that she knows him incredibly well or anything, but the way he sounds and smiles strikes her as genuine, not the kind of posturing she's seen before or an attempt to placate her. Even if it is just that, she doesn't mind. At least he's not laughing at or making fun of her for such a sentimental gift. Eddie hasn't given her any reason to expect that he would, but enough other people have that it's hard to shake the thought.

"I like it," she says as he fastens his chain again, giving him a smile in turn, still soft and self-conscious, but pleased. "Happy graduation. Is that a thing?" Wrinkling her nose, she shrugs again. "I guess it is now."

"Thank you," he says and he genuinely means it. Back in Hawkins, it's really just his Uncle Wayne who would have given a shit that he finally graduated, and that would have been enough. Here, he doesn't have Wayne, but it's really nice to have a friend who actually cares.

Just then, their drinks arrive, which saves Eddie from stumbling through something sentimental. He's really touched by Chrissy's gift and he moves the box off the table as his beer and her iced tea are both set down, then touches the number resting against his guitar pick without even realizing it.

"Have you two decided what you'd like to eat?" Mina asks and Eddie looks to Chrissy to see if she's ready.

It means more than Chrissy would have expected, that he actually seems to like what she's given him. Really, it's just a silly little necklace, one that came to seem even more so after she showed up here, having pinned her hopes on a year that she didn't even make it three months into. By passing it on, though, it can mean something again. She doesn't really know how to say that, beyond what she's said already — how to convey that it's not so much about the necklace itself as what it signifies — but she hopes that he gets it anyway.

The arrival of their drinks is a welcome distraction, preventing her from overthinking this or second-guessing herself too much. She smiles, just a little, when she sees his fingers brush the gold charm she wore for so long, then looks up at Mina without missing a beat.

"Yeah, I'll have the garden salad?" she answers. "With blue cheese dressing, please."

"Can I get the club sandwich?" Eddie asks with another smile. "And a side of fries."

"You got it," Mina says, smiling back as she collects the menus from their table and leaves them again.

Eddie picks up his beer and takes a sip, then drags his fingers through the condensation on the glass as he sets it back down. "It's kinda funny," he says. "Uncle Wayne always sort of figured I'd go to work with him if I ever graduated and I kind of figured the same. But now I'm here, so I have to figure out a whole new plan."

"I know what you mean, sort of, I think," Chrissy says, her expression softening to one a little more thoughtful as she leans one cheek in her hand, elbow on the table. "I was gonna go to college and cheer. That was just it, you know? Nothing else was ever really in the picture." She shrugs, reaching for her glass with her free hand so she can squeeze the lemon wedge into it and take a sip. "Now I'm here, without having graduated, not going to college, working in a tourist trap in a place that doesn't have any tourists. And I have no idea what I'm doing."

She speaks lightly, but there's still an earnest truth in the words. It's not something she's told anyone else; there's no one else she would tell. "You'll figure something out, though. I'm sure you will."

Chrissy can do anything, Eddie is sure of that. Maybe she hadn't really focused much on school, but he hadn't either, and he knows neither of them are stupid, it's just... school. No matter what the teachers always said, it wasn't really about education. It was about regurgitating the right information in the right order, saying what they wanted you to say and acting the way they wanted you to act.

Eddie has a lot of ideas about the world, but no one at Hawkins High ever wanted to hear them, least of all the teachers.

The more he gets to know Chrissy, the more he realizes she's more like him than either of them ever would have thought. She was doing what she was told, not because she wanted to, but because she felt like she had to. They both knew it wasn't real, high school and all its associated shit, they just went different ways with it. So he knows Chrissy is smart. He doesn't judge her for doing what she needed just to get through these years.

"So will you," he says sincerely. "I mean, without all the high school bullshit, without having to, y'know, conform to those rigid ideals of what the cheerleader and the freak are meant to be, there's a whole world out there now. I mean... a whole city, but you get it."

No one has ever said anything like that to her before. No one has ever encouraged that line of thought, never mind thought that she would actually be capable of anything else. Of course, she never tried to step outside of that box, but there wasn't really any way to when it already felt like she was just barely getting by, a thinly-veiled disappointment in every aspect of her life. No matter how much she balked against the rigidity of those expectations, Chrissy never honestly thought she would get away from them, or that it would be worth trying. Looking over at Eddie now, she's not sure she shares his confidence, but it's nice — moving, really — that he seems to believe what he's saying.

"I think... high school bullshit would have carried into college bullshit would have become general Hawkins bullshit," she admits, pulling a face as she does. There was no getting away from it, not for her. Maybe not for him, either, with the way people there saw him. "Does it ever feel daunting to you? Having all this... space?"

It's not quite a confession, not quite the same as saying that it feels like that to her. It's pretty close, though, and she has a feeling that he'll see it anyway.

"Yeah," Eddie says. "I kinda think it would've been the same for me."

Just because he'd been on the outskirts of it all didn't mean he hadn't still been well aware of the path his life was taking. If he'd kept up with the dealing, which he probably would have, he'd likely have ended up getting himself arrested, spending some time in prison, just like his old man, and that's the last person Eddie ever wanted to be like.

At Chrissy's question, he's quiet for a moment, considering. He does that a lot around her, he finds. Really pays attention to her words, to how she's saying them. He wants to give her real answers.

"Sometimes," he says. "It's like... the world had a plan for me, no matter what I wanted to do, right? So being here, that plan suddenly turns on its head... yeah, it's a lot."

"Right," Chrissy agrees with perhaps a touch more enthusiasm than the subject should call for, tempered though it is by obvious relief. For that matter, it's more than she should be saying at all, but it's hard to help it. There's something easy about talking to Eddie that she's never had with anyone else before, and besides, it's much less frightening to be honest when he's saying what she's so long since felt.

The world had a plan for her, too, after all. She never chose it for herself; she also never questioned it, even when it felt suffocating, even when she found herself wishing that she could just stop existing. In those moments, it seemed preferable never to have been born in the first place than to be born into one that was already laid out for her. Even so, now, the lack of that is overwhelming.

"It doesn't really matter whether you wanted that plan, or liked it, or anything," she continues, finding it more comfortable to speak in a general sense than specifically about herself. "It was always there, so then when it's not..."

"When it's not, you're like, oh shit, now what?" he says, finishing the thought for her, even though he doesn't think Chrissy would phrase it quite like that. The feelings are the same, though, regardless of the words they choose and Eddie never feels like he has to pretend to be some highly educated, well spoken college guy around Chrissy.

She knows what he's like and not only is she still hanging out with him, she's giving him really thoughtful gifts, too.

"It's scary, but it's kind of exciting, too," he says. "Now what can be anything. I mean, I guess we can't become explorers when there's only so much Darrow to explore, but other than that... no one here gives a shit what we do. No one has to tell us where we need to go next."

"I used to wonder what it would be like," Chrissy admits, her smile lopsided, wistful. "To get out. To not have anyone care anymore." Just saying so makes her feel a little guilty. In so many ways, she was lucky. Her family had money, she lived in a nice house, she was popular. She's not really sure, though, that being popular is the same thing as being liked, and there was a dark side to it, too. There was always the sense that it might not last, always the high expectations to live up to that she constantly felt like she was falling short of.

In fact, she would be willing to bet her whole last paycheck that Eddie is the only person in her life who's never looked at her that. He might have had particular ideas about her before they started talking, but not in the way of standards for her to try to meet, and whatever interest he has in hanging out with her doesn't seem to have anything to do with the popularity she left behind back in Hawkins. She's not sure what it is, but it's not that, at least not as far as she can tell.

As much as she would have liked to be free of the weight of all that, though, she never actually thought that she would be. Where Eddie sounds optimistic, she mostly just feels lost, even as she knows he's right. "Turns out it's... really overwhelming."

"Luckily no one is expecting either of us to figure it out tomorrow," Eddie answers. "Or next week. Or next year. We can take as long as we want."

And he thinks he's going to need that time. The job at the record store is great, he's enjoying it, it's pretty cool, working with Steve, being surrounded by music, even having control of what gets played some of the time, but it's completely different than anything he would have expected to do back in Hawkins.

Beyond that, he's pretty clueless. A regular future was never really in the cards for Eddie Munson, freak, dealer, son of dead alcoholics, trailer trash, and apparent Satanic worshipper. None of that followed him here, except maybe the freak bit, but he likes that part.

As ever, in keeping with what seems to have become a pattern, he takes what she's been agonizing over and makes it sound so simple, even optimistic. It may not do anything to change how terrifying Chrissy finds it, all this vast, empty space in front of her, the possibility of making different choices for herself but knowing that, to do so, she would be implicitly acknowledging, at least to herself, how stifled and unhappy she was before. For that alone, she would find herself overwhelmed. She spent a lifetime trying to be the person everyone thought she was and wanted her to be, but she doesn't know who might be underneath all that, or even how to figure it out.

Scary or not, though, there's reassurance just in hearing him say so. She smiles a little again, shy but warm, as she reaches for her glass to have another sip of iced tea.

"I wish we'd started hanging out sooner," she admits, self-deprecating even as she does. "Is that weird?" Weird or not, she does know that it would have been social suicide, never mind what she would have had to deal with at home. The more time she spends with him, though, the more she thinks it would have been worth it. "That's probably weird."

"Oh, it's totally weird," Eddie agrees. "But we've already established, you're a freak, Chrissy Cunningham. A full blown weirdo."

He says it all with a smile, genuine and warm, and the words that might sound like an insult coming from someone else are nothing but a compliment from him. Chrissy is a bit weird. More than Eddie would have ever expected from what he had known of her before.

"It would have killed your social standing," he says. "But I would've benefited from a really cool new friend."

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