#can you imagine having billy’s racist ass haunting you when you’re trying to go on a date

[unfinishedslurs]

Nancy’s GBF Part 2 angstlectric boogaloo

MAX MAYFIELD AND NANCY WHEELER PARALLELS I LOVE YOU 5EVERRRRRR. WOMEN!!!!!

Pt 1

No one else is home when she hears the doorbell ring.

Her mom took Holly to the park, her dad is golfing with his friends, and Mike has Hellfire this evening. So Nancy has been sitting on the kitchen counter, kicking the cabinets and trying (failing) to talk to Barb. It hurts her more than she wants to admit, the quiet days. They’ve progressed in the past month now that Nancy isn’t in denial. Short conversations in between the screaming and crying. Whispering to each other into the early hours of the morning, just like they used to. They have inside jokes again. She’s gotten used to her new laugh.

Looking at her hurts more than anything she’s ever known. It brings her back to the middle school gymnasium, El blindfolded and in a kiddie pool. “Gone, gone, gone,” ringing through her head like a bell.

Barb is watching from the corner like she always is when Nancy opens the front door.

Max looks smaller than she’s ever seen her, even when she was lying still in her hospital bed. Her hair is short and choppy, and there are tears in her eyes behind her glasses. Her arms are shaking around her crutches.

“Max? What’s wrong?”

She sets her jaw, like she’s trying not to cry. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” she moves aside, resisting the urge to help her in. It wouldn’t be welcomed. “Mike isn’t home right now.”

“I know. Lucas hasn’t shut up about how excited he is for this session in days.” She sits down, and some of the strain around her eyes relaxes, before they dart to the side. Looking at something.

Nancy almost turns around to see if Barb is there, but she’s right in front of her. Whatever Max is seeing, it’s not her best friend.

“Is everything okay?”

“The rest of your family isn’t here, right?”

She blinks. “No, why?”

“I just…wanted to make sure. Mike said you would be home alone today.”

“Why did…never mind. How did you get here? You didn’t walk, did you?” She doesn’t think that she could, given her crutches and the fact that she still needs physical therapy twice a week, but Max has always been very determined.

Luckily she shakes her head. “Eddie dropped me off on his way to Hellfire at Steve’s.”

“How long ago was that?”

“…I don’t know. A while ago.”

“Max,” she says, agast. “Why didn’t you knock sooner?”

Her eyes go sideways again. Then she looks at Nancy, determined. “Mike says you’ve been acting weird.”

“Mike needs to mind his own business,” she snaps back automatically. Barb snorts. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Max fidgets with the end of her braid. “He said you’ve been…freezing cold, and distant, and looking at things no one else can see, and El told me to talk to you because you would understand. And I just wanted to see, I guess. If you really had the same thing I had.”

If you really had the same thing I had. She takes another, longer look at Max. At the sweater she’s wearing in late June, the unnatural paleness in her face, the way her eyes keep wandering, involuntary, past Nancy’s shoulder.

She and Barb share a wide-eyed look.

“Who is it?” She asks, but she already knows the answer.

Max covers her face with her hands. “Billy.”

Shit.

“When did you cut your hair?”

“Around…two hours ago?” She huffs a tired laugh at Nancy’s surprised face. “I didn’t mean to, I just…he always used to pull it to mess with me, and I know he can’t touch me but I could feel it and I needed it gone. Eddie offered to fix it for me, but…”

“But…?”

She looks down at her lap. “He listens to the same kind of music Billy did,” she confesses, “and he has the same metalhead hair, and the same posters on his wall, and I know it’s not the same, because Eddie is actually pretty nice when he’s not trying to scare people, and I like him a lot and we bitch over PT together but he’s still a boy and I didn’t want him to touch my hair. It just felt so bad.”

“I cut my hair too, after Barb died,” Nancy blurts out.

“Really?”

“It looked way worse than yours does, actually. I couldn’t really see myself in the mirror, so it ended up more uneven than I meant it to. My mom found me in a puddle of hair clippings and tears. She fixed it for me, and then we got an appointment for a perm the next day.”

It’s actually one of her best memories of that awful time between Barb’s death and writing the article. Her mom’s soothing voice, the way she held her gently and didn’t scold her.

When she was done evening everything out, she stepped back and wet her lips.

“Sometimes…” she said, “sometimes, we need a change, before we can heal.”

Now, she looks at Max, and can’t help but see herself as her mother saw her years ago.

“Do you want me to fix it?”

Max slumps, and Nancy pretends her heart isn’t breaking when she asks, voice cracking, “Please?”