Chapter 12: The Chrissy Escalation
March brought muddy thaw and the awkward dance of figuring out how to ask someone to prom.
I caught Chrissy alone in the cafeteria during lunch—deliberate timing, away from her cheerleader friends and Jason Carver's persistent hovering. She was picking at a salad she clearly didn't want to eat, anxiety written across every movement.
"Hey." I slid into the seat across from her. "Can we talk?"
Chrissy looked up, surprise and wariness mixing. "Sure?"
"Prom's in six weeks."
"Oh god, is this—" She flushed. "Are you about to ask me to prom?"
"Depends. Would you say yes?"
"I don't know. Are you asking as King Steve claiming his crown princess, or as the actual Steve I've gotten to know?"
Fair question. The cafeteria had gone quieter around us, people watching, waiting to see what social drama would unfold.
Screw the audience.
"I'm asking because I like who you are when you're not performing," I said quietly, leaning forward so only she could hear. "The real Chrissy who admits she's anxious and overwhelmed and scared of not being perfect. That's the person I want to spend prom with. Not the cheerleader everyone expects you to be."
Chrissy's expression softened. "That's... really sweet."
"So yes?"
"Yes." She smiled—the real smile, not the pageant version. "But if you make me do the couples photo with everyone, I'm going to be annoyed."
"No couples photos. Just dancing and probably mediocre punch."
"Deal."
I stood to leave, caught Jason Carver's glare from across the cafeteria. He'd been circling Chrissy for months, assuming they'd end up together eventually. My invitation had just ruined those plans.
Good, I thought. She deserves better than someone who sees her as a trophy.
Chrissy
Chrissy Cunningham spent the next six weeks alternating between excitement and terror.
Steve Harrington had asked her to prom. Not as a status play or social maneuvering, but because he actually saw her. The anxious, imperfect girl hiding beneath cheerleader polish.
Her mother had opinions. "The Harrington boy is suitable. Make sure you look perfect. This could be important for your future."
Chrissy wanted to scream that Steve didn't care about perfect. He cared about real. But explaining that to her mother would require admitting she was anything less than the ideal daughter, and that conversation never went well.
Laura cornered her at practice. "Steve's gotten weird. Are you sure you want to be associated with that?"
"Weird how?" Chrissy executed a perfect toe touch, landed precisely.
"He hangs out with freaks. Eddie Munson. That band girl Robin. He volunteers at the middle school AV Club, for god's sake. It's like he's deliberately tanking his social status."
"Maybe he just doesn't care about social status."
Laura stared. "Everyone cares about social status."
"Or maybe Steve's smart enough to realize high school popularity doesn't actually matter." Chrissy grabbed her water bottle. "Did you ever think about that?"
She walked away before Laura could respond, feeling something shift inside her chest. Defense of Steve came naturally now. He'd spent months showing her it was okay to be imperfect, okay to struggle, okay to be real.
The least she could do was return the favor.
Steve
Prom night was unseasonably warm.
Chrissy wore a blue dress that matched her eyes, hair loose instead of the typical prom updo. She looked beautiful and uncomfortable in equal measure until we left the gym and headed outside.
"Thank god," she breathed once we were alone. "It's suffocating in there."
"Want to skip most of it?" I offered my arm. "We could just walk. Talk."
"That sounds perfect."
We wandered the empty football field, shoes sinking into soft grass, music from the gym fading behind us. The night sky was clear enough to see stars—rare for Hawkins with all the light pollution.
"My mom spent two hours on my hair," Chrissy said. "She kept talking about how tonight needed to be perfect. How I needed to make Steve Harrington fall for me so I'd have options after high school."
"Options?"
"Rich boyfriend. Comfortable life. The things she wanted but didn't get." Chrissy hugged herself despite the warmth. "She never asks what I want. Just assumes I want what she wanted."
"What do you want?"
"I don't know." She laughed, but it sounded hollow. "Isn't that pathetic? I'm seventeen, I should know what I want. But all I know is that I'm tired. Tired of performing. Tired of being perfect. Tired of pretending the pressure doesn't hurt."
I stopped walking, turned to face her. "You know what I want?"
"What?"
"For something terrible to stop feeling inevitable. For the people I care about to be safe. For time to slow down so I can actually enjoy moments like this instead of constantly preparing for disaster."
Chrissy tilted her head. "That's specific."
"I have this feeling," I said carefully. "Like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like everything good right now is just the calm before something horrible happens. And I can't shake it no matter what I do."
"Steve." She touched my face. "You're scaring me a little."
"Sorry." I covered her hand with mine. "Just been stressed lately. Training too hard. Sleeping too little. Trying to prepare for a future I can't control."
"What if you stopped trying to control it? What if you just... lived?"
"I don't know how anymore."
Chrissy kissed me then—soft and tentative, giving me space to pull away if I wanted. I didn't want. I leaned into it, let myself exist in this moment instead of the hundred anxious futures playing through my head.
When we broke apart, she was smiling. "That's how you live. You find moments like this and you hold onto them."
"Yeah." I kissed her again. "I can do that."
We stayed outside for another hour, trading confessions and comfortable silences. Chrissy admitted her eating issues, the way her mother's criticism made food feel like warfare. I admitted my parents' absence, the way their neglect made the empty house feel like a prison.
Neither of us solved our problems. But sharing them made the weight more bearable.
By mid-May, we were officially together.
Chrissy integrated into my friend group with surprising ease. Robin liked her immediately—two people exhausted by performance recognizing each other. Eddie treated her with careful respect, clearly shocked that a cheerleader willingly hung out with metalheads.
The Party was suspicious at first. Mike especially.
"She's going to distract you," he said during one of our research sessions. "From the important stuff."
"The important stuff includes maintaining relationships with people I care about," I countered. "Chrissy's not a distraction. She's a reason."
"A reason for what?"
For doing all of this. For preparing to fight monsters. For trying to save a world that includes people like her who deserve to live without fear.
"For trying harder," I said instead.
Chrissy noticed things I couldn't fully hide. The bruised knuckles from training. The way I sometimes flinched from nothing—phantom pains from healing others. The basement full of equipment and mysterious items that made no sense for a teenager to own.
She didn't push. Just made it clear she'd listen when I was ready.
"You're keeping secrets," she said one evening while we studied in my living room. "Big ones. And I'm not going to force you to tell me. But I want you to know—when you're ready, I'm here. Whatever it is."
"It's complicated."
"I figured." She closed her textbook. "You're preparing for something. I don't know what. But I see the way you look at your friends sometimes. Like you're memorizing them. Like you're scared they'll disappear."
My chest tightened. "Maybe I am."
"Then hold on tighter while they're here." Chrissy squeezed my hand. "That's all we can do, right? Hold on to the people we love and hope it's enough."
"Hope it's enough," I echoed.
June arrived with blazing heat and growing anxiety I couldn't shake.
The backpack was at 30% charge. Fight Master had fully transitioned to Phase 2—I could now learn simple techniques in thirty minutes, my body adapting with supernatural speed. Pain Heal remained at Phase 1, but I'd gotten better at managing the suffering.
My investment portfolio hit eighteen thousand dollars. Apple continued climbing. Microsoft's IPO had made my early investments worth triple what I'd paid.
The Party's research had evolved into frighteningly accurate dimensional theory. Will's sketches of the Upside Down were perfect despite him having never been there. Dustin's calculations predicted extraction patterns with eerie precision.
Everything was falling into place.
And in 183 days, Will Byers would vanish into the Upside Down and everything I'd built would be tested for real.
I stood in my basement at midnight, surrounded by training equipment and hidden weapons and items from impossible dimensions. Chrissy slept upstairs in the guest room—she'd taken to staying over when her mother got particularly critical, needing space from the constant pressure.
She was my anchor to normalcy. The reminder that life existed beyond preparation and training and countdown timers.
But even anchors eventually pulled loose when the current got strong enough.
183 days, I thought. Less than six months now.
Better make them count.
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