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Joyce had always been a little bit different. In Karen’s eyes, she just thought it was about how the world got a little bit brighter when her best friend was around, or how her laugh was equivalent to that of a bird’s song. According to dipshits, yeah, dipshits, like Lonnie Byers, it was about how easy she was to throw around, as literal as that sentence could be.
Karen always had an icky feeling about Lonnie, well, about most of the men Joyce dated, but, especially Lonnie. The amount of times Joyce danced around the topic of him, even tensing up at the mention of his name, made Karen not like him. She knew what that meant. I mean, it wasn’t like he was trying to hide it from anyone anyways. He walked through the hallways like he was God’s blessing to Hawkins. Although, low and behold, here Joyce was, sitting at Karen’s porch, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Oh, honey,” Karen said, her voice filled with pity as her thumbs wiped up Joyce’s cheeks, so delicately you could’ve been led to think Joyce was made of class. “It’s all gonna be okay, you hear me?” She asked, moving from where she was sitting next to Joyce on the step, to the step below that one, right in front of her, Joyce’s legs dangling around her body. “Lonnie is just a stupid boy, yeah? He means nothing. Nothing!” Joyce sniffled and nodded slowly as Karen spoke, her heartbeat becoming louder and louder in her ears as Karen got closer, for some reason. “We’ll get past this. We’ll be okay.” Karen repeated, her voice softer, pulling Joyce into a hug.
Karen didn’t know why, but, whenever she did that, her stomach started to flutter a little bit. Maybe she was just worried for Joyce. Maybe not. Either way, Joyce was a girl. People… like that, people who thought that was okay, were rare. Joyce was one of the most popular girls in school, along with Karen, she would never think that way. And Karen shouldn’t have, either, at least, she thought so. She had a perfect life, with a perfect boyfriend, and a perfect social status, ruining all of that for probably something that wasn’t even actual real feelings was silly!! Right? Right…? Right.