𝙽𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚎𝚕𝚝 𝚊 𝚏𝚎𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚏 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚝.

𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝙸'𝚟𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐.

𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚢 𝚘𝚠𝚗.

𝙸'𝚖 𝚜𝚘 𝚞𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐.

𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚎...

𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝙸'𝚖 𝚊𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎.

Once Tina started warning Lennon about Eddie and his criminal behaviors, some of the other cheerleaders wanted to put their two cents into the mix. Words were thrown out into the air like confetti by then: freak, weirdo, jerk, idiot, monster...

They said things similar to what her brother said. Actually, they were all saying the same things just in different words.

Eddie was useless and he would be kicked out before he ever graduated.

Eddie was a satanic monster who sacrificed people down by Lover's Lake.

Eddie was a delusional freak with authority problems.

Eddie was a drug addict.

Eddie was a drug dealer.

Eddie was a walking disease.

The list went on for so long that Lennon had to excuse herself to the bathroom.

She had thrown out her food and sat in an empty stall until the bell rang.

She couldn't wrap her head around it.

That guy that gave her a ride home when her brother ditched her didn't seem like the same guy all these people were telling her about.

He seemed strange but he didn't seem like the kind of person they described. She joked with him but she never actually felt like he would hurt her.

And it was scary to be the new girl, accepting a ride from an older, male classmate she didn't know. But even then, even after joking about Ted Bundy and prostitution, she still felt safe with him.

She never really thought about him like this before. But it was hard to believe someone so humorous and easy to talk to could do such terrible acts.

Bloodletting... sacrifices, which no one seemed to know the origin of... satanic rituals... drugs... and possibly even murder...

Students... his parents... his siblings...

None of it sounded convincing but so many people believed it.

The man who smiled at her from across the cafeteria as he stood up for himself didn't seem like that guy. He seemed... almost sweet.

She was completely captivated by him now. He was beguiling and she couldn't get enough of uncovering the truth about him.

What were lies and what was the truth?

Maybe if these accusations were less severe, maybe if these rumors were just your average jibbing of depressed and insecure teenagers, then maybe she wouldn't have thought about him as often as she did; which was more than she'd ever admit to.

Maybe she wouldn't feel as guilty or sympathetic if she hadn't met him at all. Maybe if he hadn't been so kind, maybe if she hadn't been so accepting of his kindness, then maybe she would just believe them all when they said he was a freak... a monster...

But she couldn't.

The anger that built inside her as she stood in the bathroom was surprising considering she didn't know Eddie at all.

Brontë, Tina, Florence, Hailey, Charlotte, Heather, Rebecca, Kaitlyn, Chrissy... they all knew Eddie. Lennon didn't. And yet she felt like she knew him better than all of them.

Surely she wasn't being misconstrued...Surely she wasn't naive when she trusted him... Surely he wasn't playing tricks on her...She would've seen it if he were... Right?

But who was she to say all these people were wrong? Who was she, the new girl in Hawkins, to say that Eddie was just misunderstood?

What if she was wrong?

What if Eddie really did manipulate her? What if he really did want something from her? What if she had fallen into his trap? What if she was making up excuses for a man who didn't deserve a place in her thoughts?

The idea made her uncomfortable.

But every time she thought about his ill-intent, she couldn't stop thinking about those eyes... that smile... Those dimples...

Why didn't she feel the same way when Billy smiled at her? Why wasn't she as concerned about him as she was with Eddie?

She felt like she was going insane before the bell rang and knocked her from her thoughts.

She tried not to think about it too much after her anger subsided. She couldn't understand why those words ailed her. She was so angry with how easily those cheerleaders were able to label him a freak.

Even if he was weird and strange, he was funny and charming too. The things they used to describe him couldn't convince her to call him such foul things.

He was just Eddie.

Eddie without a last name as it appeared.

He wasn't a freak to her.

He was just Eddie.

During study hall, she met with one of the freshmen she was tutoring in English Lit named Jane which took her mind off of Eddie.

She was a quiet girl with light brown hair and caring eyes. She was a transfer from Russia when the local sheriff adopted her a few years ago. It was an interesting story Jane told her before their session. It was short and a little broken up, but very comprehensive. The girl was obviously smart and friendly so the hour went by quicker than Lennon predicted.

After that, she had a free period.

She was going to take to her journal outside and do some creative reflecting while the sun still shined in the chilly air of mid-November. But as she was putting her textbooks and notebooks into her locker, the bell rang and the few students left wandering the halls had disappeared.

She pulled out her leather-bound journal and shoved her bag inside, then shut it with a loud clank.

She winced and closed her eyes to calm herself down. There was something terrifying about sudden loud noises. It didn't make sense because she was used to walking the halls which were full of bustle and loud conversation. But as soon as someone slammed a door, she was on the verge of tears.

She took a deep breath, sighed, then began walking down the hall towards the courtyard which was rarely used now that the weather was threatening snow.

The cheer and basketball team never wanted to practice outside. So, Lennon took it as an opportunity to find some peace and quiet to turn her manic thoughts into fictional prompts.

Writing and running were her releases. Once her legs or hand took off, there was no stopping her until the stress and anxiety were alleviated entirely.

When the chilly air hit her face, she was forced to suck in a sharp breath of air. She moved to pull her jacket closer to her body, stimulating more heat as she turned to make sure the door didn't close too loudly.

There was a soft click and Lennon had turned back towards the courtyard.

"Hey there stranger," a voice called out resoundingly, causing her to instinctually gasp and jump back in fear.

She had dropped her journal and her pen, sending them clattering to the ground before her hand was pressed over her heart for comfort. She could feel the rapid beating from beneath her skin while her other hand bawled into a fistful of denim.

"Oh shit," the tall brunet chuckled. "I wanted to scare you, not make you shit your pants," Eddie laughed, widening his eyes sarcastically before he got to his knee and plucked her pen and papers up from the ground.

Shockingly, Lennon was more worried about the contents of that journal being seen than she was about having a heart attack. So, she was quick to follow his lead and practically snatched her leather secrets from his grasp with considerable force.

"Whoa. Calm down," Eddie suggested, slowly getting to his feet when Lennon was quick to protectively press the book to her chest. "I was only tryna get your attention there, Clever One," he leaned back on his heels and extended the pen in his hand towards her like a half-hearted proposal.

"Well," she grabbed the pen and wrapped her arms around her chest. "Consider it got."

She turned away from him and started walking towards the benched tables by the asphalt.

"Hey, whoa," Eddie called out, quick to follow her on her short journey towards the open field. "Have I offended you in some way?" he retorted with narrowed eyes, watching as she irritably took her seat at the bench closest to the building.

"No," she shook her head, hesitant to open the pages of her journal in the presence of the supposed Satan worshiper. "What would give you that impression?"

She couldn't be mean to him.

She was just scared.

She was confused.

She felt betrayed, which, in a silly way, felt impossible since she didn't think she could be betrayed by people she hardly knew. It wasn't like some kind of loyalty had been broken. She didn't know anybody there. She barely even knew the brother she was living with.

But despite the accusations, as violent and shocking as they were, she still couldn't treat Eddie like her peers treated him.

She couldn't trust anybody yet, but she could trust what her own eyes perceived; there was no warping that; not after what she went through last year.

"Uhmmm..." Eddie drew out amusingly. "Just the other day you were all 'Thank you, Eddie. I don't know what I would've done without you! You're my hero'," he tried to mimic a damsel in distress.

Lennon had looked up from her shaking hands and opened her mouth to protest but Eddie continued as he slid into the seat across from her.

"And now you're all 'Go away... I'm too cool to be seen with you. Leave me alone'," he dramatized her unspoken angst and leered at her like one of those cringey gothic romance movies you could get at the video store.

"I never said that, first of all," she scoffed in disbelief. "And secondly, I don't think I'm cool enough to be seen with anybody if you must know," she raised her nose into the air and felt safe enough to lower her other hand from her chest. "I just don't see a reason why you would want to talk to me unless you changed your mind about killing me."

Lennon was hoping to match his slightly joking tone but he didn't smile. He looked almost... disappointed.

"Oh, I see..." he tilted her head and set his mouth into a straight line to show his discontent. "Your new friends have convinced you I'm a freak," he looked down into his lap and avoided her gaze now. He began to nod his head in acceptance which caused Lennon to shoot him a curious brow.

"Do you think you're a freak?" she asked him nonchalantly, carefully laying her journal down on the edge of the table.

She wasn't willing to open it and spill her thoughts into the parchment while Eddie was sitting across from her, and at a distance that made it quite easy to read her handwriting. But she didn't think he would try to either.

Her question must have surprised him because he looked up from his lap with furrowed brows.

They sat in silence as he stared at her with an unusual glint in his eye. It was a contemplating stare. It was quizzical and surprising and almost pleasant to look at.

"Not in the ways they make me out to be..." he drew out suspiciously. "We're all a little freaky when no one's watching," he said dauntingly.

Lennon stared at him with a strange mixture of worry and interest. She felt like a thanatology addict. There was an unspoken love for the macabre that people always tried to explain but some things weren't meant to be understood in a spoken and comprehensible way. That's what Eddie was to her: macabre; and she couldn't stop wanting more.

"That's quite an opinionated accusation then. Wouldn't you agree?" she pondered, slowly moving to place her pen down on top of her journal before pulling her sleeves down over her knuckles. "Why would people say such things if they aren't true?"

Eddie was staring back at her with a hesitant look of interest like that was the complete opposite of what he expected her to say.

He knew it was bound to happen; for her to hate him. He just wanted his fun while she was new and untainted. He wanted to see how long he could have just one person not think he was a useless monstrosity.

But it was clear to him now that she was well aware of the rumors.

And yet she didn't run.

Lennon watched as a soft smile started to tug at the corners of Eddie's lips and she felt her cheeks rise with an encouraging one of her own.

"Well what do you?" he countered skeptically. "You can put two and two together."

"What?" she drew out playfully. "You mean to tell me there's a good reason a nineteen year old such as yourself sells drugs and sacrifices teenagers to Satan?" she giggled as she pulled her knee up to her chest and held it tightly as she sought more warmth.

Eddie chuckled. "Is there a good reason you're hanging out with the freak of Hawkins High then?" he quirked an eyebrow up and smirked.

"Because the drug dealing, Satanic cult leader likes to invite himself places and followed me out here," she replied cheekily.

Eddie hummed amusingly and rested his chin on his knuckles as he got comfortable. "And yet you haven't run away," he drew out darkly, staring back at her and seeing how her smile slowly fell from her lips.

"Is there a reason I should run?" she asked calmly, playing with the hint of roguery in her voice as she played innocent.

Eddie glared suspiciously and smiled perplexingly. "You're odd," he said, ignoring her question and flipping his hair over his shoulder.

He proceeded to rest both his elbows on the edge of the table, showing Lennon that he had no intentions of leaving any time soon.

"Excuse me?" Lennon giggled, pulling her faint smile down into a frown which made her mouth all sorts of lopsided and innocently unstable.

"I mean look at you," his tone turned sweet as he lifted his hands to display the source of his subject. "The kicking new cheerleader hanging with Eddie the freak," he tilted his head in thought, examining Lennon's delicate features, noticing the gentle shivering of her thin fingers peeking out from her jacket as they were wrapped around her knee. "Doesn't quite fit the niche."

He was trying to figure her out but he was more confused the longer he looked back at her. She was hesitant and mysterious which made it hard to decipher what was a raw reaction and what was a forced facade.

Her dark green gaze constantly leaped from his eyes to the wooden table between them as they conversed which implied self-conscious tendencies but she walked like she knew what she was there for. It was like she was incapable of being idle or walking into any room blindly. She acted so confident and sure. But now, Eddie couldn't tell if she had secrets or if Eddie was that intimidating.

But if he was intimidating, why was she being so nice? Wouldn't she ask him to leave or make her way inside if she was uncomfortable?

"Not everything needs to fit inside a labeled box," she spoke softly, offering him a nervous smile as she picked at a loose thread on her jeans.

She was learning to accept the small parts of herself that would be laughed upon because she was proving it to herself every day that it didn't matter that she wasn't perfect.

Brontë was able to be one of the coolest, most down-to-earth, and genuinely funny people in town, and yet he resonated with the jerks on the basketball team in 82'. He still kept toxic people in his inner circle and yet he wasn't a low-life himself.

Nancy was able to be one of the prettiest girls in the school, dating one of the most sought-after jocks, all while still doing the things she loved like working for the school paper and hanging out with the band geeks.

Max and Jane were quiet and relevantly new beyond being freshmen, but they were smart and modest and mature. They were immediately forced into the lowest level of the social food chain but they didn't let that keep them down. They stuck to their roots, stood out from the crowd, and still managed to navigate high school just as well, if not better than Lennon.

Eddie was a geek in leather. He was a fashionable, grungy metalhead but he made friends with the socially-unacceptable people of the school. He wasn't quite cool enough to be accepted into the quirky clique, not that he would ever want to be, but he also didn't quite fit in with the goths or the emos or the stoners... He was just Eddie.

People at Hawkins might have still had their prejudices about conformity, but other people were starting to persuade her to let loose.

Not many students would know that she was Brontë's sister except a few kids in the senior class but she still felt obligated to live up to the example he set forth. She had to be easygoing and confident, likable, socially active, participatory, agreeable, kind, and cool.

But all she wanted to do was strip off her clothes and walk into Hawkins wearing an old band t-shirt and some loose pants with her favorite hightops on her feet. She wanted to be free of having to be so alert and afraid. She wanted to be able to sink into her seat and lose herself in the music instead of constantly being involved in the conversation.

She didn't want praise.

She wanted acceptance.

And she didn't even care if she got encouraging acceptance. She just wanted acceptance that she was who she was and that people, including herself, shouldn't try to change that.

But she was still scared. She could fight for that acceptance if she couldn't accept it herself...

"If you really believe that, then why do you try and pretend not to like me among your beloved jocks?" Eddie leered suspiciously, smirking with satisfaction as he earned her stare again.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied amusingly, quickly looking away from those steady brown eyes that never failed to make her feel seen even when she didn't want to be.

Instead, she looked down at her journal as she tried not to smile. But she couldn't help it when the image of Eddie on top of the cafeteria table crossed her mind and her cover was blown immediately.

"I kinda think you do," he sang out with a wide smile, grabbing the edge of the table and leaning back as he grew restless. "You can't just refuse a performance like that in the cafeteria a smile; a well-earned, encouraging smile at that," he whined playfully.

"If that was a performance, I don't think you intended on earning smiles, Eddie," she smirked, tilting her head as she engaged in the conversation.

He was outraged about something when he made his statement earlier and he was actively reaching into people's personal space for some kind of reaction. And based on his approach to the situation, it was obvious that he wasn't trying to earn a standing ovation. He was trying to aggravate people, to inflict the same rage he faced about being called outrageous names with dangerous affiliations. He wasn't performing for entertainment, not exactly.

"Maybe just one..." he implied mischievously, forcing Lennon's eyes up to his again and earning himself a look that lasted longer than any other she gave him since they met.

As she looked back into those enchanting brown eyes of his, she realized she didn't need to scribble her anger and fear into a journal when his company was enough to cure her of her insanity.

Maybe he was right...

Maybe she was odd.

Because she managed to drive herself crazy with the need to be liked and popular, but almost instantly, this strange man unraveled her like a sacred scripture.

He provoked her in the best kinds of ways. He broke her out of her shell and allowed her to express all the things she felt without the fear of judgment or ridicule.