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He pokes at his split lip with his tongue, slightly wincing at the sting and copper staining his mouth. It’s a slow day, one of those days where it feels like an army crawl to the next hour, counting down the seconds and swearing that the clock is actually just going backwards. Like it’s an effort to keep your eyes open, stay alert. But he always watches the door, no matter how thick the haze coats his mind. Always. It’s one of those days where it takes an eternity to reach nightfall, waking up seemed like it happened yesterday, yet you remember none of it. Like you’ve just existed in nothingness for the day.
He watches the minute hand tick to the next minute. The teacher’s bassy drone becomes white noise, a constant whir in the background like a janky fan. Someone taps their pen on the desk repeatedly. Tap, tap tap tap tap taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap-
He blows air out his nose sharply. Someone starts murmuring. A bag shuffles. A cough. A sniff. He rubs his eyes with a hand, dragging it down his face. The clock ticks to the next minute. A page turns.
A fly buzzes through the window, whizzing up and around in a manic formation, up and around, against the window, up and around again. Into the window, up and around. It whizzes by his head, the grating BZZZZZZZ making him flinch slightly. It flies up and around the room once, twice. Up into the lights. Down again. Up and around. Against the window, once. Twice. Three times. Four. He grits his teeth, chest bubbling. Why is the fly so fucking dumb? If it just went down enough, it’d be free. But it keeps just bumping headfirst into the glass. Again, again and again. Freedom is right there and it just keeps going. Whatever, it’s its own fault. Dumb fucking fly.
He tears his eyes from the fly up to the clock; it ticks over to the next minute. A minute until he can leave. Someone giggles. Bags rustle. Paper crumples. The tapping hasn’t stopped. Fifty seconds. The air is thick and stuffy around him, suffocating and itchy. Forty seconds. A chair scrapes along the linoleum floor, grating his ears. Murmuring. Thirty seconds. Bags zipping, paper rustling, shoes squeak on the floor. Twenty seconds. People are talking now, overlapping voices becoming one unintelligible noise. A shrieking laugh stings his ears. Ten seconds
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One…
The bell rings, a piercing scream whiting out his brain. He stands. The fly is still trying to pathetically overpower the impenetrable glass, again and again and again. He leaves.
The halls are a painful cacophony of shrieking noise, laughing, screaming, shouting. Pulsating movement of bodies swerving one another, bumping off each other in the surging crowd. He slinks along the wall, drifting unseen. He turns a left. A right. Then into the bathroom.
It’s cold, he realises. And quiet. He can breathe, finally. He falls away from the door and leans against a sink, the cool porcelain gripped in his fingers. He doesn’t look in the mirror; instead he rests his head against it, forehead pressed against the glass, slightly sticky and faded. He doesn’t mind. The biting chill of the room staves off the itching anticipation rippling beneath his skin, the desperate need to do something trying to crawl out from under stifling boredom and routine. He sighs.
A door opens.
“Uh, you okay?”
Steve turns around.
“What?” It comes out sharper than he intended. He doesn’t care though, even when the boy in front of him shrinks. Steve doesn’t recognise him, but he looks to be a year younger maybe? He’s small and spindly, thick framed glasses and a hooked posture. Hands ringing together, over and over, he looks up.
“I, uh, I asked if you’re okay?” He stutters out, unsure. His voice is pitchy and grates unpleasantly over Steve’s ears. He glowers.
“Why the fuck do you care?” He snaps. Too sharp. The boy cringes, shrinking further and starts stuttering out an apology. Steve’s stomach twinges with something like guilt or regret. He’s supposed to be better. He forces himself to untense.
“Wait, uh,” he starts, words failing at the end of his tongue. Say it. “S…Uh. Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean that.” I did. The boy freezes, eyes wide.
“Oh! Uh, no, no, it’s okay, it’s fine, honestly. I’m Sorry. Uh, what…What’s wrong?”
Fuck off and mind your own business, freak.
“Uh, nothing. Headache.” Steve gestures somewhere near his head, hoping his fucked up face passes enough as an excuse for being weird. Why do I even care? Tell him to fuck off, why does he deserve an explanation? I’m not the nosy fucker here.
The boy nods apologetically. Ugh, no one wants your pity, geek. What, think I can’t handle myself?
“I don’t have any painkillers on me, sorry. You could go to the nurse?”
Thanks, but no one fucking asked. I don’t need your help.
“Maybe.” The boy shifts his weight to his other foot.
“Well, um. I better get going. Yeah, I should… I should go. Hope you feel better though.”
Steve forces a smile, “Thanks.” And with that, the other boy slips back through the door, once again plunging Steve into calm silence. His smile drops.
Fucking finally, Jesus Christ.
Steve turns to face the mirror, giving in to look at the reflection. His face is an amalgamation of browning yellow staining blue and purple, turning his skin a sickly green colour; mottled and branded. He doesn’t recognise the figure before him. Doesn’t know who he is, what he is.
I’m fucking King Steve.
He isn’t. He’s trying not to be.
Not hard enough, apparently.
He shakes his head. Nancy would be so disappointed. She hated that side of him, said it’ll never get him anywhere. It’s an ugly trait.
Well, you’re not so pretty without it, either. Look at you.
He couldn’t go back, he had to keep trying. He dropped his friends for this. He couldn’t go back now. He can’t.
It’s easier, though. They don’t deserve my effort.
Who? This isn’t just for other people, Nancy had said. This benefits him too.
‘Doesn’t it feel good to help people?’ She’d said once.
It feels fucking great to show them who’s King. To be respected.
No, feared.
Steve doesn’t want to be feared.
He thinks of the kids, the little dipshits he’s managed to adopt since the return of the Upside Down. Does he really want them to fear him? He thinks of Dustin cowering outside of his basement. Of Max screaming in the face of a Demodog. Of Lucas trembling in Billy’s tight-fisted clutch, rammed into a cupboard. He shudders. Never.
But then he thinks of the hallways. Of the stifling stares, of Tommy H and Billy fucking Hargrove. He misses his crown. He misses the admiring looks he’d get, the cleared halls and hushed voices. Friendly claps on the back, party invites, respect.
He misses the biting cruelty, climbing up the ladder of popularity with insults and crudely thrown fists until people had to look up at him. He ate up the demanded attention with a damn dessert spoon, flourishing in the addictive sweet fantasy of it all and coming back for seconds.
Well, he fell off that ladder hard. And now, licking off the pathetic crumbs of the dessert in the bottom of the barrel, it’s turned bittersweet. No, just…sour.
Steve looks into his eyes, seeing his father’s glare back. He bites his tongue. King Steve was his father, a picture perfect copy. Rich asshole graduates and works under his father, takes over the company, gets trapped in a boring, lifeless marriage, reproduce and repeat the formula. The Harrington Way. King Steve was who his dad wanted him to be, needed him to be. Top dog, ruler. King.
He couldn’t. He’s always hated his eyes. He looks away, down.
He thinks of Nancy. Sweet, beautiful, delicate but totally badass Nancy. Nancy, with her righteous preaching of kindness and empathy, how he could be better. How he was different, and she could fix him. How the others held him down, how King Steve held him down. He thinks of how she changed him. How she tore his heart in half. But the damage was done, and in doing so she’d also torn open his eyes. What a refreshing yet terrifying view. He teetered on the edge of a cliff, the beautiful crystal ocean below him, visible now the mist cleared. But the mist cleared to also reveal a dangerous drop. To get to the top he had to fall. And fall he did. He plunged, terrified, kicking and screaming, lost in the sheer force of the new-found gravity. He’s still falling, but the blue looks closer now.
The bell rings and it reverberates around Steve’s skull, rattling the thoughts into a jumbled heap. He’s just so tired.
He leaves the bathroom, manoeuvring through the hall. He slips back into the class he just left, being cursed with a double lesson and slumps into his seat. He looks to the window.
A breeze drifts through the opening, and the fly is gone.