Beth ushers her to the mirror and Max swallows, keenly aware of the tip of the hunting knife poking into her back. The other girl lazily draws it up the knobs of her spine, glossy sable lips playfully quirked as she rests her chin on Max’s shoulder. The knife comes to rest under Max’s throat, slipping beneath the white rubber of the screaming ghost mask, separated from her skin by the thin fabric of the black costume.

“You can feel it, can’t you? The power in that mask.”

Max blinks behind black mesh and wonders why she didn’t notice something was wrong sooner. Fighting the creatures that crawled free from The Upside Down and surviving in the Hargrove household have left her with a strong sense of caution, a vigilance of her surroundings. But somehow, Beth managed to slip under her radar. Maybe it’s because Beth doesn’t look like the kinds of danger Max has known before. Or maybe it’s because Beth reminded her of Billy at first glance, leather jacket and bored eyes, that rebel’s saunter and cigarette smoke scent. Despite everything, Max misses Billy and maybe she latched onto the first person that cast a similar shadow without question.

“I killed my first real crush in that mask,” Beth huffs, tongue flicking between her lips. “You can kill whoever you want to prove you’re in this with me, but someone you care about is best. Kill someone you care about, Max, and you’ll feel it just like I did. You’ll know you can kill anybody. And that feeling? Even more powerful than the mask, God, it’s fucking intoxicating.”

The other girl closes her eyes, head tipping back in exhilaration. Max feels the hand shift as Beth’s grip tightens on the knife, feels the steel press to her windpipe hard enough to be uncomfortable. This is insane.

She’s wearing a Halloween costume that’s supposed to be powerful and this girl wants to craft her into a real life slasher, and it’s batshit fucking insane. Maybe The Upside Down and The Mind-Flayer should’ve prepared her for this kind of insanity but Max still can’t quite wrap her mind around it. The knife at her throat, however, is  unmistakably real. The scars and the obituaries Beth showed her were also very real.

“I’m close with my stepdad,” she breathes out eventually, plan forming in her mind. “Neil’s the best, more like my real dad than my stepdad. If I can kill Neil, I can kill anybody.”