Chapter Text
From San Diego to Hawkins, they drive in one orderly, straight line.
Neil’s in the moving truck, Susan drives Neil’s car, and Billy escorts Max in the Camaro. Not a step out of place. No stopping to take a leak. No snacks. No sightseeing.
Max complains the first half of the thirty hour drive, and spends the second staring out the window sulking. Billy doesn’t know what the fuck she’s so sullen about, because she’s the reason they’re moving in the first place. If she never opened her big, stupid mouth. If she never wanted to get one over Billy—
“Oh yeah? Then who’s the guy hiding in your room?”
Billy shoots her a glare. He leans into the ache of his broken ribs, and can picture the dripping gash on Joel’s face as he begged Neil to stop, please, Mr Hargrove, I won’t say anything, I promise—
Max isn’t looking his way, and Billy hates her for spying on him, hates her for opening her mouth, hates her for running away and hates her even more for getting caught. Rookie move. Billy ran away three times as a kid, and only returned home when he realised no one was coming after him.
They cross into Indiana on Sunday morning, and Neil graciously gives them a day to prepare for their new school. Billy knows it’s because Max’s school misplaced her records, and Neil doesn’t actually give a shit if Billy goes to school or not. Under normal circumstances, Billy would go anyway, Maxine be damned, but his body is stiff from the drive, tired and lethargic.
Billy uses the day to unpack his stuff from the boxes he could fit in his car, polishing the Camaro, and choosing the jeans which show off his ass the best.
He has one shot at cementing his rule at Hawkins High, and he’s not going to fuck it up. If Billy has spend the next two years in Indiana, trapped until graduation, he’s going to do it at the top of the food chain.
Billy’s done the new school routine a few times in his life. After his mom fucked off, Neil moved them from Malibu to fucking Fresno, four hours from the beach. Asshole couldn’t even swing San Francisco. Billy was nine, couldn’t catch a goddamn bus on his own, and relied on his dad’s rare goodwill to get any surfing in.
His new school in Fresno was fine, except three weeks in he ended up splitting a sixth grader’s lip and cussing out the principal. He didn’t last much longer, and learnt a valuable lesson in respect from his dad.
His second school was also in Fresno, but in a different district which forced his dad to drop him off every morning. Neil didn’t like the hassle, and Billy usually skipped to smoke by the bleachers with some middle schoolers. He stayed there for six months, and when they moved to San Diego, his dad taught him about responsibility.
San Diego had the ocean, so Billy behaved himself. He hated his third school, thought everyone there was a poser or a geek or worse. He managed to string together a few followers, but none he wanted to hang out with. But he was 11-years-old, owned a second-hand bike from his old neighbour, and the beach was only an hour ride away.
Only Neil met someone.
When Billy’s mom left, he became Neil’s full responsibility. A child with needs and requirements who couldn’t be left alone for days at a time while his father hauled himself across the country. Billy’s mere existence forced his dad to quit his trucking job and shuffle from place to place, holding down shitty mechanic positions.
Neil barely graduated high school and flunked out of the police academy—a fact Billy still finds hilarious—but he’s tall and looks mean. Eventually, security work called to him because he’s a sadistic motherfucker who likes to throw his weight around.
While working security at a Bank of America, Neil Hargrove met divorcée bank teller Susan Mayfield.
They got a fairytale wedding, and Billy got a new sister and a new high school.
Billy made sure he tried at his fourth school. He liked the teachers because they didn’t give a shit and he liked the students because they thought he was cool because he knew how to surf like a pro. He joined the swimming team, the basketball team, tried baseball but fucking hated it, and learnt how to play his new life to the best of his ability.
The sister—step-sister, Billy viciously corrects himself—was the biggest downside. The thorn in his side.
Speaking of—
“Mom says you have to drive me to the arcade,” Max says from the doorway, interrupting him as he tries to put together a semblance of a vanity. It’s held up with old crates he found in his new, rented closet and a plank of wood from the wood shed around the back. He misses his vanity in Cali, thrifted vintage with carved roses and ornate brass handles. He found it in the shittiest Goodwill he ever stepped foot in the week he bought his car. It was pretty and sturdy and looked like something his mom would have loved.
When Billy tried to load it onto the moving van, his dad told him he wouldn’t be taking any queer shit to Indiana.
Billy left it behind, car already full of his clothes and Max’s piles of stuff.
Billy resists the urge to snap—to say he’s not going to be ordered around by some bitch and her whore mother, but he’s on thin ice as it is—and glares instead.
“How do you know this shithole has an arcade?” he sneers, and moves to organise his cassette collection. The first things he packed from San Diego were his music collection and stereo. “You’ve been here a day.”
“We passed it when we arrived in town yesterday. It’s called the Palace, or something. It was next to a video store,” Max replies, and shifts nervously from side to side. “I’d skate, but Mom said I’m not allowed.”
Max was not allowed to skate anywhere on her own anymore because she ran away last time, a day after being told they were all moving to Nowhere, Indiana.
She ditched the mall for the bus station, and the police caught her before she could buy a ticket to L.A. and her deadbeat dad.
Billy weighs up the consequences of saying no. Max would probably go crying to Susan, who would bitch to Neil, and then Billy would likely spend his first day of school taking care to not let his re-broken bruised ribs dictate his movements. He needed to be able to move tomorrow. It was part of his plan to rule Hawkins High.
She could also take her board and skate there on her own anyway, and Billy would miss the first week of school.
Billy dumps his cassettes on his bed, grabs his keys, and walks out the door.
“So you’ll take me?” Max calls out. “You know you have to pick me up, too!”
Jesus fucking Christ, he hates her.
Two more years, then he’s gone.