don’t ya, steve?

blaize ilysm

senior year steve for your viewing pleasure

He never told anyone, but school had gotten a lot harder since November of ‘83. And it wasn’t just the headaches, or migraines, or whatever— it was little things. Like all of the times he’d have to say huh? to the teacher and the rest of the class would laugh. He wasn’t trying to be funny, he just couldn’t hear.

He’s get detention for being disrespectful, and he’d go like he actually deserved it. Tommy and Carol were in there a lot, writing sentences the same way he was. I will listen in class. I will listen in class. I will listen in class. Three pages, front and back.

It was letters and numbers swimming in textbooks, and the way words got fuzzy across the room on the chalkboard. When he tried to read Of Mice and Men for a book report, his brain ached as he read the same paragraph four times over before giving up and calling Nancy.

Hey, Nance, you’ve read this book, right? I just can’t get through it.

And in Anatomy, there you were. Well, you, Carol, and Tina. They’d usually talk to him, but when you were around it was like he didn’t exist, because apparently acknowledging his existence was a grave offense. “Sorry, you know how she is,” Carol would say. “When she gets stuck on something, she stays stuck.”

It was getting towards the end of the year, and things just felt wrong. He hadn’t even bothered to run for Prom King, even though it had felt like the most important thing in the world just a little over a year prior. His mailbox was filled with rejections— colleges, scholarships, jobs. What kind of schmuck couldn’t even get a job at Bradley’s?

Tommy and Carol were staying, but they had their own thing going. Carol was going to cosmetology school, Tommy would work at his dad’s dealership. They’d probably get married soon, and they’d forget all about their sad, loser friend.

He wanted to know where it all went wrong. He picked at his cuticles while Stacey Cooper presented about the nervous system with one of her cheer friends. Tearing at raw skin in a way that he hadn’t done since he was a kid.

Yesterday he’d fumbled his way through a presentation on the cardiovascular system. He’d actually worked really hard on it, but you couldn’t tell from his clunky poster board or the way he had to squint at his own handwriting. When he mispronounced words or read things wrong from his notebook paper and an asshole from the wrestling team laughed, you slapped the guy’s arm and told him to shut the fuck up.

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Maybe he’d been an asshole. Well, there wasn’t a maybe about it. He had been an asshole, he knew that. He’d been jealous, and possessive and a total narcissistic dickhead. He knew you were into him, and he just couldn’t be content with it. He let you follow him like a sad little puppy begging for scraps, and went through girls like that meant nothing. He tossed you aside like you meant nothing.

You deserved to hate him, he knew that. And still you’d defended him so he wouldn’t get laughed at in front of the entire class.

When Stacey Cooper sat down to scattered, bored applause, you stood up and carried a pink poster board to the front of the class.

“So, I’m going to be presenting about the endocrine system, which basically sends hormones to different organs in our bodies,” you began, with a little tap of your finger on the bubble letters you’d drawn on the board. “And I’m going to be saying testes and ovaries and there are anatomical diagrams on the poster board, so grow up.”

He laughed under his breath and you looked at him for the briefest second. It felt like things just locked into place when your eyes fell on his. You swallowed, pushed your hair back behind your ear, and went onto talking about the obituary gland, or something. It all just turned to cotton candy.

It had been over a year, of course he missed you. But it had never hit him all at once before. He missed your laugh, he missed your music taste, he missed the nights where you’d sneak in through his basement and crawl into bed beside him. He missed clumsily crawling the trellis to your bedroom to do the same.

It was always so comforting, to just lay next to someone without any expectations for more. There was your silent yearning, but you were both more than happy to just share his bed and whisper random thoughts into the night.

You were so frustratingly smart, and stubborn, and beautiful. He’d always loved you, or else he wouldn’t have been so jealous. So why hadn’t he just done something about it? Why had he pushed and pushed until you had no choice but to give up on him?

He wanted things to be different. He wanted to go back in time to Junior year, grab himself by the shoulders, and shake. He wanted to fix things, to undo the years of hurt he’d made you endure. To unspool every sour thought in your brain and replace it with something kinder, something true.

Truth: Steve Harrington was a scared boy. Steve Harrington is a scared boy. Steve Harrington is scared of things that are worth being scared of. The government. Monsters. The bright flash of colors behind his eyes when the plate hit his skull, the days where he feels like his brain might implode.

Truth: You’re standing in the front of the class and you’re smiling as you talk about adrenaline. You’re wearing a yellow shirt and white keds that you drew flowers on. Your hair keeps falling into your face and he wants to reach into the bottom of his backpack and grab the ponytail holder that’s been crushed beneath his textbooks since Sophomore year, just for you. You’re the most beautiful girl he thinks he’s ever seen, ever will see.