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Chrissy has always known certain facts about her life.
One of those facts is that she’ll never be good enough for her mom. Sometimes she likes to think she has come to terms with it. Even though she knows that could never happen.
But as time wears on, she’s learned to be adapted. She just has to smile. Be pretty. Be perfect. She’s the queen of Hawkins High. She goes out with Jason, captain of the basketball team. Everything is going perfectly as she wants it to be. Okay. Maybe it isn’t what she wants, but it’s what her mom wants, and all little Chrissy ever wanted is to make mom happy.
“Ew! Are you okay?” A voice snaps.
Chrissy looks up from the toilet seat at her club mate, her eyes are crimson, and there’s split in the corner of her mouth. Do I look okay to you? She thinks, but she doesn’t say it out loud.
“I’m okay. I just had a really bad food poisoning. Can you please not tell Jason, or anyone, as I don’t wanna make them worry? I’ll just go home early today to rest.”
“I’ll inform the team for you. Don’t worry! I’ll go first then.” The other girl doesn’t try to hide her disgust when Chrissy wipes her mouth close to the school’s toilet seat. In the end, she simply refuses to look anymore.
“Thanks.”
***
“Chrissy sweetie, I heard that you skipped practice today?” Ms. Cunningham says with a smile, “those extra pounds won’t burn by themselves, you know that right? I don’t think you should have dinner tonight…”
Chrissy bursts into angry tears as soon as she gets into her room.
***
This is everything she’s worked so hard for, she tells herself.
Ha.
She’s sick of it.
Don’t, Chrissy reminds herself again as she digs her fingers deep into her palm. Do not start this. She has no reason to be upset at this time. Fun has never been the reason she joined cheerleading, anyway. She doesn’t do cheers to have fun. She’s the queen of Hawkins and there are things she has to do.
But then she remembers seeing Eddie Munson during a break, having the time of his life with his group of weirdos.
Eddie’s joy with whatever he’s doing makes her think about her life.
The prom queen is jealous of the school’s freak? People would laugh and think she’s gone crazy if she told them that.
Maybe she has.
***
She doesn’t exactly know how to be a good girlfriend.
Chrissy tries to remember when was the last time they had a proper conversation. Was it a week ago? Two weeks?
Their days are usually spent training, Jason with his basketball games and her with cheerleading club—and trying to have a drug deal with Eddie Munson. Jason doesn’t need to know about that.
She remembers they haven’t had a date, or even spend time alone, in over a month when she’s in the pharmacy to buy more sleeping pills.
She doesn’t mind taking the initiative this time—Jason has always been the one inviting her to places first. That much a girlfriend should do, she thinks, her fork stabbing the disgusting salad absentmindedly. But every time she tries to say something affectionate to him, the words disappear one after another as she just swallows them back into her throat. She has to be the perfect prom queen, but she shouldn’t lie either.
***
This may come off as a surprise to most people, but the queen of Hawkins High doesn’t have any close friends of her own. She has—acquaintances, sure, and those that you would call casual friends. She doesn’t know if it’s the right word. But she’s used to her reality: She is unlikely to ever genuinely bond with those around her, as they will undoubtedly be competitors, admirers, or a combination of both.
Now, though… Eddie Munson is an entirely different story.
If Chrissy thinks about it, he’s neither her competitor, nor admirer. She didn’t know what group she should put him into—Eddie is a category of his own. He’s the guy who sold her pot a few weeks ago, and he never once questioned why the perfect prom queen did that. She appreciates that he didn’t. But he soon became much more than just her drug dealer.
It had been difficult at first, given all that they had to overcome. The queen of Hawkins and Eddie “The Freak” Munson? Laugh all you want but, she’s just a freak too, according to him, and she likes it. She likes it a lot.
Chrissy still finds herself thinking about words Eddie said to her, and realizing that she now imagines what Eddie would look like saying them.
She knows how he looks when he is frustrated, and how he looks when he is laughing out loud. She's seen him passionately playing his electric guitar, seen him happy, and has caused him to do stupid things—again and again—just to make her smile. She's seen Eddie's face scrunches up when he laughs, and heard how tickling his voice becomes when he's joking about her.
Things have progressed so quickly before Chrissy could even notice.
She sometimes wonders if this is what true friendships feel like, or is it something else, then quickly dismisses the thought because it doesn't make a difference. What matters is how Eddie effortlessly tolerates her; how easily she aligns against his side; and how easily Eddie can make her feel better.
***
Jason is a nice person. And she is going to hurt him. Chrissy repeatedly tried to make it work. So hard. She tried desperately, but she couldn’t. She is just—tired—she can’t bear managing another task that she has to consistently try her hardest at.
The doorbell chimes.
Her stomach clenches, and when she opens the door, there he is.
“Hey, Jason,” Chrissy says. She blinks quickly to try to conceal her feelings, and when she smiles, he gives her flowers.
He's there, charming and smiling at her, and all she can feel is guilt in her stomach. He appears to understand it as well as she does, because while she is still trying to find the right words, he speaks out first.
“I thought I could still fix this,” his hands are in his pockets now, “it’s over, right?”
Chrissy nervously runs her fingernail across her palm. “I’m sorry” is all she can manage to say.
“Could we—I have done anything differently?” Jason inquires.
She bites the bottom of her lips, urgently trying to swallow back the word No that immediately comes to her mind as soon as he finishes his question. After a few seconds of stillness, she attempts to breathe out, once again.
“I’m sorry.”
She is, for so many reasons. Jason was overly preppy and self-centered at times, but he wasn’t a horrible person at heart. He was loyal to, and protective of anything his, be it friends, or girlfriends, and he did make her feel included whenever she was around him. He doesn’t deserve any of this.
***
Every once in a while, Chrissy wonders how he does that.
She tries to dig deep behind that appearance of him, and finds nothing. No facades, no motifs, no secrets—Eddie’s heart is on his sleeve whenever he’s with her.
He smiles at her, teases her, is kind to her like it is his second nature. Like his body was made for it. Effortlessly. Even now, when they’ve been so much closer than before, Chrissy can still feel it—his careful consideration towards her. How does he do it so unwaveringly? She has spent all her life building these walls and putting on these locks around herself, only for him to jump over the wall and introduce his presence.
“You know, sometimes I still can’t believe I’m like, hanging out and friends with the Chrissy Cunningham,” a grin across his face as he looks at her, putting away his electric guitar after he’s done cleaning it.
“I’m sorry?” Chrissy snorts.
“Eddie Munson, the long-hair freak, and Chrissy Cunningham, the perfect prom queen? Still sounds fucking hilarious every time,” his grin widens, eyes creating crescents.
She shakes her head, and stares around his trailer, “I don’t think we’re friends.”
“What are we, then?”
Chrissy stops her movements and turns to look at him.
Right, what are they? She thinks she knows what he wants from her, but what does she want from him? Pots? The joints he’d roll for her every time she asked and she’s still too much of a chicken to actually do it? His company?
Maybe it's his fearlessness, the way he crashes into her world. Unmanageable, unavoidable, and unstoppable. Sometimes Chrissy wishes she could live like that.
His pure sincerity, his trust, how his heart opens without hesitation, how he gives it to her with his bare hands.
She still hasn’t moved her gaze from him. The rays of sunlight beam around the room. Some of them are dancing on the curls of his dark hair.
“What do you say we stay together,” Chrissy finally speaks up, “and find out?”
Eddie pauses whatever he’s doing, trying to fix the strings, to look at her. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just say yes, idiot,” she sighs, rolling her eyes.
“Yes.”