#patrick mckinney

You, Barb, and Nancy had been childhood friends, though as the three of you got older it became clear that Barb and Nancy were closer. It was difficult not to be envious of their friendship--often feeling like a piece of furniture in the room instead of one in a trio when you were all together. 

It made Barb’s disappearance more painful when you found out she went missing during a hangout you weren’t invited to. You wrestled with many feelings during her absence. Panic and despair at the fact she was nowhere to be found and the second missing person within a week or so, as well as anger and betrayal for being left out again.

But Barb always knew what to say to make things better, and would have sleepovers with just you and her, especially once Steve Harrington came into the picture. It made you feel like you were finally worthy of their attention, but once they started to push you to the outskirts again, it only hurt more.

You tried to remind yourself that the top priority was finding Barb safe and sound. However, at night when you were staring at the popcorn textured ceiling, it was impossible to keep your mind focused. What was wrong with you? Why would Nancy and Barb not invite you? Especially since Barb had voiced on many occasions her distrust for Harrington and how she did not like who Nancy was becoming to keep his attention. Were you not cool enough to go to Steve Harrington’s little backyard powwow? Did Nancy explicitly say that you weren’t allowed to come? As soon as you realized where the rabbit hole of self pity led, guilt for making Barb’s disappearance about yourself sat heavy on your mind. 

When it turned out she died, you were devastated. Absolutely distraught. Your friend since preschool was gone and never coming back. There would be no more trips to the lake with her, laughing and counting her new freckles from being under the summer sun. No more Rob Lowe movie nights at her house.  No pictures together for graduation. She wouldn’t be your roommate at University or be there to talk about the cute college boys. You wouldn’t be able to do her hair and makeup for her first date…

It took a few months to be able to think of your redhead friend without bursting into tears, but as the saying goes, time heals all wounds, and though it pained you, you eventually moved on. 

But every year on Valentine's Day, you were plagued by the absence of your best friend and a simmering resentment towards Nancy. Though you tried to bury it, a small part of you blamed her. She abandoned Barb to have sex with Steve. If she had been a better friend, Barb would still be here. 

When you shared this with Ms. Kelly, the school counselor, she said to remember Nancy lost her best friend too, and try not to judge or blame her. 

As your grief became less pronounced, so did your bitterness. The trio became a duo, but Nancy wasn’t who she used to be. She dropped Steve Harrington like a box of rocks and started dating the total freakazoid Johnathan Byers. You tried to be nice to him, talk to him and include him in things, but he made no effort to reciprocate those efforts--often giving one word answers or only shrugging when you attempted to engage with him. Eventually you just gave up trying to be his friend. Of course this led to seeing Nancy less. So instead, you tried to make an effort in becoming closer friends with your classmates. 

Being in Hawkins for so long, it wasn’t easy to suddenly try and become something more than just someone who shared a classroom with them. You’d talk to your desk neighbors and they would respond friendly enough, but when you approached them outside of the classroom, you were often meant with furrowed brows or awkward chuckles before they scurried away to the safety of their true friends. 

It didn’t take long to accept that it would only be a few years before you were headed to the other side of the country and could find kindred spirits of your own. Barb’s death, Nancy’s all consuming relationship with Johnathan, and the growing chasm between you and your parents only solidified that there really wasn’t anything worth staying in Hawkins for. Once school ended you would spread your wings and flee from the nest as far as the wind would take you. 

Watching Nancy happily caress the pink and peach petals of her carnation made the weight of guilt and loneliness heavy in your gut. In an attempt to hide your frown, you rested your chin upon your palm and stared at the state flags hanging from the cafeteria ceiling, until a loud voice rose above the rest of the rumble and caught your attention. 

“—asinine, man, and completely commercialized!” the voice exclaimed. 

“I bet more than half the people in here don’t even know who St. Valentine was.”

You frowned and rolled your eyes when you realized who the malcontent sitting at a table ahead of you was: Eddie Munson. 

Malcontent was certainly right. Eddie Munson was a well known annoyance. A notorious loudmouth always bitching and fretting over something, always using the cafeteria table as his soapbox and the student body as his unwilling audience. Most of the time you and everyone else had just ignored him—much like the ever present hum of the lightning from the fluorescent bulbs overhead—but sometimes the shrill of his voice would pierce through the armor you’d built against him--like now. 

You actually did know the origins of Valentine’s Day and the significance of the titular saint, but you wouldn’t ever try to encourage him. Munson was insane and instantly made a spectacle of anyone who dared to engage whether they agreed with him or not. And that wasn’t just in the cafeteria. In the class you shared he was just as feisty. Thankfully he knew well enough to isolate himself towards the back far away from everyone else, but that didn’t stop him from clashing with Mr. Albrecht on a near daily basis. 

You, like everyone else outside of his weird cult following, stayed away from him. He was combative. Rude. A snarling beast with no manners and always itching for someone to say something to him so he could snap at them. So you limited your interactions with him to almost none at all—at least indirectly if you could help it. 

Unfortunately for you, it seemed your sneering judgment alerted him to your gaze. 

Quick as a whip, Eddie paused his furious monologue about his personal vendetta against the entire Hallmark cooperation and the founding family to challenge your stare. 

“What?” he snarled. 

You startled at suddenly being on the receiving end of his scowl, but only gave a half shrug in response. You weren't afraid of him like some of the other people in school, but you could do without being on his radar like Jason Carver. He couldn’t possibly turn a mute gesture into a shouting match in the middle of lunch, could he? 

No, he spared you the personal attack he would have certainly given Jason. Instead he flipped his eyelids inside out and stuck his tongue out at you, forcing you to look away in total disgust at the unnatural sight.

Nancy turned at your exclamation of “Eugh!” and huffed at the howls of laughter from the Munson minions behind her. “Ignore him,” she advised. “You won’t want to encourage him before class anyway.”

Considering the very next class after lunch was your Contemporary Living course, no, you did not want to sit through an hour long class with him in an even more irate state than he already was. 

With another roll of your eyes, you forced yourself to tune out the screech ramblings of the village lunatic and tried not to focus on the gleeful girls with carnations from their boyfriends in their grasp for the remainder of the lunch period. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded—stifling down the longing to have a physical token of someone’s affections for all to see. Your eyes found the side profile of the jock you hooked up with a few times last year during spring break, but Patrick McKinney didn’t spare you even a sideways glance once school resumed the following week, nor for a single second since. 

Choosing somewhere else to set your sightless stare, more than once you found yourself nodding along to the echoing sound of Munson’s sentiment that Valentine’s Day really did suck. 

——

You walked absentmindedly besides Nancy and Johnathan towards Mr. Albrecht’s classroom and were a little confused to see the teacher standing outside the door instead of his usual spot behind the desk. He was of average height, a little stocky, with short dark hair, and numerous deep scars on his face that many assumed were from his own struggle with stubborn acne back in the day. As always he looked bored and annoyed, but stood guard at the door and instructed the approaching students to line up against the lockers instead of shuffling into unofficial assigned seats you all picked yourselves at the beginning of the year. 

You did as he said, silently scooting up in line with a wrinkled nose as you realized he was assigning seats now in the middle of the year for whatever reason. You hoped he kept you close to Nancy but separated Johnathan from you, that would feel a lot better to have your friend back without her boyfriend around for one class period. A small grin tugged at the corner of your lips at the thought. 

Mr. Albrecht glanced at you and muttered your last name before sighing deeply. “You’ll get ten extra credit points for your efforts. Deal?”

“Huh?” you questioned dumbly. 

Patience much thinner than the rest of him, Albrecht scoffed. “Sit down and if you don't react poorly, you’ll get your points. Column One, Row Five.”

More confused than ever, you slowly took in the new order of the desks—columns paired by twos—and made your way towards your destination and sat at the desk Winny Cartwright usually occupied. Nancy and Johnathan followed in and settled a few rows over and ahead of you sitting side by side in their new seats, blissfully unaware that you were not within easy note passing length of them. Your hopeful grin fell into a frown. Of course they wouldn’t notice you weren’t amongst them. They were, as usual, happily paired. You tried not to look at them by redirecting your efforts to digging out your career portfolio for class. 

You were glad for this unit to be over soon. Mr. Albrecht had somehow turned Contemporary Living into a nightmare. He said part of it was to instill good researching habits in preparation for the journey to college while also giving you an idea as to what you wanted to study, but it felt like a hell of a lot of busy work to keep you and the other students out of his thinning hair for the hour. If it weren’t a required course for graduation, you wouldn’t have put so much effort into it. 

The project, in theory, was simple. Pick a career, research the education requirements, and the entry level salary. Then, pick a college, research the total amount of money or student loans one would accrue from start to finish with the necessary degree for the chosen field of study. However, it wasn’t all bad. It gave you something to fantasize about as you laid in bed at night and drifted off to sleep—Where would you live? What kind of dwelling would it be? A house, an apartment, a loft? Would you have roommates, a boyfriend, or even a spouse? It sucked starting a new life in debt, but you’d do just about anything to get away from Haunted Hawkins, and this project let you see a lucrative way to do so—plan a life only a few years down the road, well within your reach.

A howling, menacing cackle pulled you from your thoughts, and in no time the small frown etched upon your lips melted into a full blown grimace as none other than the cursed loudmouth himself came sauntering down the next column. The chains dangling from various bits of his clothing noisily clanging as he came closer towards you. You hoped he would pass. That he’d walk right by you and keep going all the way to the back like he usually did but again, no such luck. Eddie Munson shook his head to beat back the wild mane of frizz and unkempt curls as he slid into the desk right next to you.

Now you understood Albrecht’s bribe. For ten extra credit points you could pretend that being separated from your only remaining friend in to school and instead sentenced to sit next to Eddie Munson’s wasn’t some kind of sick punishment. You propped your head against your palm and kept your head turned to avoid him. The last thing you wanted was to get caught staring at him again. 

Given the new seating arrangement, you were likely expected to fill in the person in the row next to you about the contents within your portfolio and pretend to care about theirs. You weren’t sure what the hell Eddie Munson ended up picking since he and Albrecht started the unit fighting over whether his career choice could be a rockstar this time (his third), but Mr. Albrecht’s joke about the Munson boy’s only hit song being a rendition of Jailhouse Rock for other Indiana State Prison inmates resulted in a very frightening shouting match between both males that ended up with Munson suspended for a few days. 

You couldn’t care less what his future job ended up being so long as his eyelids stayed flipped the right way and he kept any comments about your made up life to himself. However lame it may seem, you did put some elements of your true desires in there and weren’t keen on having anyone make fun of them. 

You hoped that with the completed research for your preferred college, the course load, the kind of debt you would be in after graduation, your chosen career path, average annual salary for the state of Indiana, and a new seat yards away from your original desk, the unit would be done after today and that you would move on to something else that required far less investigating. Maybe something more useful like resume building. 

You should have learned by now that wishful thinking did you no favors. 

Albrecht entered the room with the door slamming shut behind him, demanding the class cease their chatter and get their stuff out if they hadn’t already. You spared Munson a peak over your shoulder and found he made no movement to reach for his things. 

“Do you even have a backpack?” you blurted. 

Munson blinked, shocked that you’d addressed him at all much less like that, before scowling. “Don’t get excited. You won’t care in a minute.”

You didn’t care much now. At least you didn’t have to pretend to be impressed with whatever stupid job he picked. Brow furrowed and frowning, you resettled your attention on moodily picking the fraying plastic of your binder until Albrecht spoke again. 

“Listen up!” he barked. “There’s no whining and there will be no switching or reassigning partners so don’t bother asking. Capisce?”

When Albrecht’s cold grey eyes landed on your grimace, you gave a surly nod. Ten extra points didn’t seem to be enough. Perhaps you could swing  fifteen. The guy didn’t even have a backpack for god’s sake! What did he expect you to work with here!

“Column one, look at the person next to you in column two,” he said, casually strolling at the front of the room. “Column four, look at the person next to you in column three.”

Reluctantly, you looked at Munson, who merely sat in the desk with his arms folded crossed his chest looking incredibly sour. This did nothing to improve your mood. What did he have to be so pissy about? You were a great partner! 

“Boys and girls, what you’re looking at is your new spouse for the remainder of the semester!” Albrecht announced loudly with a laugh and a thunderous clap of his hand. 

The room rang out in cacophony. Gasps, shrieks, laughter, protests. Jeering, hollers, and demands for clarification. 

“You heard me right!” Albrecht shouted over the crowd. “Your desk mate is now your spouse!” He held up a stack of papers before passing out a stack for each column to pass back. “Here is your rubric. You and your new spouse are to build a life by putting your two careers together! You’re gonna build a budget. Balance a checkbook. Hell, I doubt any of you know how to write a check! We’re gonna learn that, too. In this unit you’re going to learn how to buy a car. Buy a house. File taxes. Oh, yes!” he exclaimed over the cries of misery from his students. “You are going to learn personal finance, people! And you’re going to do it with a partner to prepare you for what it’s like when you’ve got someone else’s hand in the honeypot.”

The class had a lot to say about this. Some seemed excited while others were downright distraught by the prospect of having so much work to do alongside someone they didn’t like or know. More than once you heard someone say that their boyfriend or girlfriend was not going to like this, to which Albrecht said they could take it up with him and he’d tell them to get over themselves.  

You didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything with how heavy your tongue suddenly felt in your mouth. The sight of the course load as you scanned the rubric was almost heinous! And the idea of having to spend the amount of time it would take to do these kinds of things in the way that would meet your own expectations in one class was a little ridiculous. Did Albrecht think this was the only class you had? Did he forget about math, science, English, and the other core classes needed to graduate? The nerve of that beady eyed bastard to assign this kind of work right at the end of the final freaking year!

Not to mention the thought of having to spend any amount of this time with Eddie Munson, much less speak to him about these things. Filing taxes together? Balancing the family checkbook? Good Grief. You eyed him skeptically as he stewed in his seat, no portfolio to show for the last six weeks of work assigned. 

“Well?” you prompted rudely. “Don’t you have your stuff with you?”

Munson stared at you incredulously. “What, you’re not gonna go crying to Albrecht for a new partner?”

“You heard him. We can’t,” you replied sharply. 

Munson snorted, and mumbled something under his breath that sounded something like “wouldn’t be the first time”, but he refused to clarify when you asked him to say it again. 

You huffed and looked over the outline again, making a mental note of how much time each assignment would take outside of class to complete. The chapter reading, the discussion, agreeing on the execution, and eventually putting it together nicely for your binder to turn in. Would you use yours? His? Well of course not his seeing as he didn’t even have one!  Would you need one for your “married” life together now that would probably end up just being your responsibility to take care of anyway?

Albrecht demanded the class settle down and began to teach. “Building a budget,” he narrated as he wrote the words on the blackboard in chalk. “To do that you will need to determine both your monthly input and output. In other words, the money that comes into the bank, and the money that comes out of it. Someone gives me an example of what money input might be. Dixon?”

Andy Dixon, the mullet wearing jock a few rows ahead simply shrugged. You rolled your eyes and tried not to join in when Munson snorted loudly beside you at the meathead’s apparent idiocy.

His partner raised her hand, to which Albrecht agreed to let her answer. “Money from our jobs.”

“That’s exactly right,” Albrecht nodded. “The money coming into your bank account will be the number from the salary of the career you picked.”

“But you said that was money we make in a year!” Andy exclaimed.

Albrecht huffed and began writing the equation to calculate the monthly sum one would get from the annual salary if they did the math correctly. A flurry of pencils began scratching across paper and before Mr. Albrecht turned back around, hands shot up in the air. 

“No, you may not switch careers,” he said without facing the class. “You will stick with what you have.”

All the hands dropped as a chorus of disgruntled sighs rang out. 

“Now, someone tell me what output would be,” he said, continuing to draw a chart on the board.

“Costs,” Nancy answered simply.  “Any payments that may take place.”

“Correct,” he said. “Now, your parents might be tight lipped about what it takes to keep the lights on, but in my day, the kids worked just as much to chip in for the bills. So, here’s what we’re going to do for this unit--”

For the remainder of the class period Mr. Albrecht went over general bills each ‘household’ would have to account for and stated that every Monday each group would receive mail from him with due balances. Checks, which he also went over how to write and passed out a handful of fake (“So don’t try to use them at Melvald’s or anywhere else because you’ll end up in jail!”) sets of to each group, would need to be turned into him along with a transaction sheet showing what was left in the bank along with how much accrued debt in student loans was still owed. 

And that was only part one of this semester-long fiasco. 

“You will need to spend time on this outside of class,” Mr. Albrecht warned seriously. “Exchange numbers. Find the time to make the effort, people, or you’ll see me again next year, or god forbid the year after that.”

The dig wasn’t very subtle, and quite a few heads turned to peek over their shoulder at Munson, who simply sneered at the onlookers.

Too engrossed in taking notes and hanging on to Albrecht’s every word, you hadn’t paid much attention to Munson, but looking at him now he still hadn’t bothered to move a muscle. He didn’t take notes. Didn’t do anything but lean back in his seat with his arms crossed over her chest and look miserably bored. You supposed with this being his second? Third? Time taking this class, he wouldn’t need to take notes, but his lack of effort was still quite irritating. 

“So,” you began uneasily. “How do you want to continue? I have time tomorrow afternoon.” You had more than enough time with no plans besides a couple of other assignements, but you didn’t want to seem like a loser with absolutely nothing to do besides homework, no matter how true it was. 

Munson’s brow furrowed. “You’re serious?”

You looked to Albrecht for assistance with your less than compliant partner, but he was walking around the class individually answering questions on the assignment. 

Face heating with annoyance, you snapped at him. “I’m not doing this project by myself so yes, I’m serious.”

Munson’s brow shot up, a small smirk starting to form on the corner of his lips. “Well excuse me. No one has ever wanted to work with me on this project before.”

“You may want to stay in Hawkins forever, but I don’t. If working with you is how I get out, then fine,” you said sharply, scribbling your phone number and address on a sheet of paper with your name, not entirely sure if he knew it, and slapped it atop his desk. “Call me when you have a time in mind.”

Munsons scowled, balling the paper up and shoving it in his jacket pocket. “You think you know everything, huh?”

“Is that supposed to mean something?” you questioned, shoving your binder into your backpack. 

“Yeah. It means you don’t know shit about me, so don’t pretend that you do,” he barked. 

The sharp command in his voice made you look at him. While you never interacted with him directly before now, you finally understood why some considered him frightful. Lips pressed in a flat line, brow furrowed over angry brown eyes glowering directly at you, red dusting the apple of his cheeks--Eddie Munson did look like a force to be reckoned with. 

While he did make you feel a twinge of shame for your judgement, the attempt at intimidation only made you want to remain firm. He may push everyone else around with fear tactics, but you refused to be one of them.

“And you wonder why no one wants to work with you?” you challenged. 

The bell rang, signifying the end of class. Instead of answering you, Munson forcibly pushed himself out of his desk and charged out of the room without a word to anyone. Tension in your shoulders that you hadn’t realized you were holding released in an instant and you fell limp against the back of your chair. This was going to be a long few months and not at all worth only a measly ten extra points. 

————————————————————

Part Two

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