chapter one ♰ Scrambled Eggs, With Love

  Sydney woke up to breakfast already on the table and Matt dancing to Tainted Love by Soft Cell round the kitchen, singing into a spatula.

  Believe it or not, it wasn't the most compromising way she had walked in on Matt since moving in. This was actually quite tame. Including the frilly apron tied around his waist in a surprisingly neat bow, over his police officer uniform. Honestly, Sydney had seen him in all states. Staggering through the front door, cradling a bottle of whiskey, slurring about needing help to the bathroom ━━ Sydney proceeded to spend the night sat on the opposite end of said bathroom as he emptied his guts in the toilet and she patted his back from afar). Bumping into furniture as he haphazardly tried peeling the coat off a pretty woman he met at the bar, falling over the coffee table, knocking over everything and cutting his hand on a shard of glass ━━ his brief lover left and Sydney had to begrudgingly patch him up.

  So, the domestics of his apron, bad dancing and mutilated breakfast was actually a welcomed sight.

  "I see you're having fun," said Sydney, sitting down to eat.

  Matt nearly had a heart-attack, jolting so hard he whacked the small of his back against the handle of the under-the-sink cupboard. "Ow, fuck! Sydney!" He slapped the spatula to his heaving chest. "Can you, I don't know, announce yourself next time?"

  "I did," remarked Sydney. "I said ━━"

  "Try knocking."

  Sydney frowned, looking around at the open space of the kitchen and living room, merged into one. "Where?"

  Matt considered it, and pointed his spatula at her. "I'll let you off this time."

  Sydney rolled her eyes, fondly. For all his discretions and absences, she was warming to him. She guessed that's what happened when you shared a living space with someone for a certain amount of time. They worm between the cracks. And Sydney had many cracks.

  What she'd never warm to, though, was Matt's cooking. She appreciated the sentiment ━━ she'd have to be heartless not to. Matt's arbitrary at most things ━━ ad hoc in fatherhood, erratic at work and a general mess in life ━━ but he'd never make a hash of something as badly as he did with breakfast.

  The thought was there, sure. But that's all there was. The eggs looked a bit like someone had regurgitated last night's dinner onto a plate and the toast was so overdone it looked charred ━━ he had butchered it so horrendously today when spreading the butter, the bread was torn in some places. And Sydney dreaded how it tasted. The eggs gooey and half-raw. The bread like buttery charcoal.

  The first time he made her breakfast, he had jokingly said, "scrambled eggs, with love," and Sydney had been so touched that her eyes watered. He must've thought that meant she enjoyed the food, rather than just him caring, because he tried making a thing out of it. But, really, it was more like, "scrambled eggs, with salmonella."

  "Orange juice?" he offered, shaking a carton in front of her. "Or coffee?"

  "Umm━━ " Sydney's eyes fleeted to the grandfather clock across the room, remembered it had broke, and then checked her watch ━━ Christine's watch, "neither, thanks."

  Matt frowned, settling down the juice. "Got somewhere to be?"

  "Yeah ... school," said Sydney.

  "Right, ha." Matt scratched his head. "I forgot that everyone isn't like I was."

  Sydney's head tilted, feigning interest ━━ maybe if she distracted him by indulging his high school stories, he wouldn't notice she had no intention of eating breakfast. "What were you like?"

  "The worst," Matt laughed, sliding into the chair across from hers at the linoleum table. Sydney had to suppress her smirk, subtly pushing her plate away and putting her chin in her hand. "The only time I really turned up was if I had basketball practice. You know, I wasn't always like this ━━ aging, beer belly, a fuck-up. I was alive and young and electric. Those halls were mine. When you're 17 ━━ you feel like you're king of the world. And then you reach your 20s and you realise you're not even king of yourself."

  "You really only went to school for basketball practice?" asked Sydney, trying to prolong his ramblings.

  "Yes!" he insisted. "Well ━━ your mom and me, we were neighbours. So, if she came pounding on the door, yelling at me to give her a lift, what was I going to do? Say no? Nobody said no to Chrissie Sommers."

  Sydney smiled weakly ━━ hearing people talk about Christine didn't hurt as much as it used to. Before, it was a visceral, gaping wound. Now, it's a healing bruise. It still ached to touch, but it's not the laceration it was. There was a time where she couldn't help but choke up at even the mention of her name. A few months ago, she'd have been tempted to slit Matt's throat. Now, it was almost a comfort for him to speak about her so warmly. Sydney was so caught up in her own grief the first few months that she forgot Matt had lost someone too.

  Granted, Matt and Christine's relationship was a corpse when she died ━━ parenthood was its funeral, and Christine hadn't mourned it. But Matt had lost ... something. A lover was too intimate. An ex was too final. He had lost an almost. A very tangible almost.

  "I was a bad influence on her," mused Matt thoughtfully. He looked very haunted all of a sudden. As if Christine's spirit had pervaded him. He laughed, shaking his head and wiped his brow with his thumb. "She could've gone to an Ivy League college. Instead, she spent periods under the bleachers with me━━ "

  Sydney grimaced. "OK, OK, that's enough."

  She was healing, not ignorant.

  Matt grinned weakly. "Sorry, kiddo. Hey, aren't you gonna eat ━━"

  An angel from heaven, Toby honked the car-horn outside. Sydney nearly fell out of her chair trying to get away from the botched, untouched breakfast. She scrambled for her backpack she had dropped at her feet, shouldering it so quickly she got the straps twisted.

  "That's Toby," she spluttered, "sorry, Matt."

  Matt looked a bit crestfallen. "Oh." He looked down at the table, at the plate, and then back at her with those oblivious, wide eyes of his. "I was thinking I'd give you a lift today?"

  Sydney's throat went dry. "Oh. It's just that ━━ Toby's already outside, Matt, and━━"

  "No, no, of course," said Matt, standing up and waving a hand. "It's just ━━ how about tomorrow instead, yeah? Hey, it gives me excuse to be late for work, huh? Haha."

  "Ha, yeah," said Sydney, straining a smile. "That would be nice━━ " Matt started beaming, "but━━" she should've led with the negatives; his smile fell instantly, "it's kind of, like, a tradition? Toby always picks me up. So..."

  "No, yeah, yeah." Matt nodded frantically, grasping his hands and then gesturing at her enthusiastically. "Yeah, no doubt, no doubt."

  Sydney winced, nodding. "Cool. I'm..." She pointed over her shoulder. "Gonna...go..."

  "Yes! Good ━━ hey, don't let me be bad influence on you too, huh? Haha..." Matt started laughing awkwardly.

  God, bury her.

  "Haha, yeah. Bye, Matt."

  As Sydney stalked down the hall, balling her fists at her sides and squeezing her eyes shut to try blank out the past minute, Matt called out a pathetic bye. As Sydney shut the door, put her back flush against the oak and tried to get all the thorny air from her lungs, Matt put his hands on the granite countertop and bowed his head to the window above the sink.

  Daughter regretted not reciprocating the effort, whilst simultaneously kicked herself for feeling any guilt at all for a man who'd been nothing but a gnawing absence in her life. Father cut himself open brutally and tried to dissect where it all went wrong, and found an amorphous mass attached to his heart. Within the organic rot, he found scraps of paper with crayon drawings Sydney used to send in the mail before she gave up trying. He saw a man ━━ 24 physically, but stuck in his late teens ━━ stood numbly outside of a hospital room, looking through the window with a stinging carving up his chest. A glowing light in that darkness clinging to his heart, he saw Christine's face emit love, her hand cradling a younger Sydney's head, his little girl's broken leg suspended above her. That's where it all went wrong ━━ Sydney in that hospital room, Matt's hand hesitating over the doorknob, his daughter a tiny creature in linen and clinical light, Christine the adoring mother. Father didn't walk in. Father left. Father didn't answer Mother's belligerent phone calls. Daughter would always wonder why Father never showed up. Father would never repent.

  "You good?"

  Toby's windows were down, and he had one arm draped over the side of the car, and his head poking out of it. His smile was a drug. A sedating one. Sydney opening her eyes to seeing it, dimples and all, made it all go away.

  She came running down the three steps leading up to Matt's cabin and hurried round Toby's car to get into the passenger side. "Hey. Sorry I took so long."

  "No sweat," said Toby, reclining back in his chair, keeping one arm outstretched to grasp the wheel. "Matt troubles again?"

  "You guessed it," gritted out Sydney, fastening her belt.

  Toby waited until the belt lock clicked to turn on the ignition. Ever since Sydney had a panic attack in his car three months ago when a bad storm made the roads volatile, Toby had been conscious of 'road safety', and all that. As she sunk down in the passenger seat, he extended one arm round the back of it and used the other to turn the wheel, the tires grinding over the gravel driveway of Matt's place, and driving away.

  Shrunk inwardly on herself, Sydney glimpsed at Toby as his jaw clenched in concentration ━━ a muscle tightened and she found herself staring at it, at him. He had a patchwork, long-sleeved shirt on ━━ rolled up to his elbows and block-coloured print ━━ unbuttoned over a plain white tee. Dangling round his neck was a silver chain, glittering on a slither of his collarbone exposed by the tee's neckline. He smelt strongly of Obsession by Calvin Clein, and she could faintly hear Fleetwood Mac on the radio.

  Toby had just drove out of the allotment of cabins pitched by Lovers' Lake when he did a double-take glance at Sydney and started to laugh. "Hey, you OK, Sid?"

  Sydney jolted. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, m'fine."

  She straightened bolt upright and stared right in front of her at the yawning road ahead. Toby was laughing and grinning and saying something, but Sydney was too busy trying to will the warmth from out of her cheeks.

  "So, you're still babysitting Jonathan's brother tonight?" asked Toby, settled.

  "Uh huh," replied Sydney. "Yep. Should be."

  Toby nodded, eyes quickly fleeting between her and the road. "You sure you're good? Did Matt try bond with you over grass again?"

  "No," grumbled Sydney. "Worse."

  "Oh?" Toby furrowed his brows. "Do tell."

  Sydney pouted, pining childishly out the window. "He offered to drive me to school."

  "He didn't?" gasped Toby. He then broke into a fit of laughter. "Jeez, what did he do next? Did he ruffle your hair and give you a hug? That bad, bad man."

  "Fuck off, Tobias," snarled Sydney. "It was a dick move."

  Toby snorted. "Listen, you know I'll support you no matter what ━━ like that time in seventh grade when you smacked Tammy Thompson for absolutely nothing━━ "

  "She made fun of my bangs!"

  "She didn't even say anything!"

  "She looked at me funny!" Sydney said scathingly. "I saw it."

  "Whatever," said Toby. "But Matt offering to give you a lift to school? It's kinda nice."

  Sydney scoffed, glaring at him. "You don't understand."

  "No, I don't," agreed Toby. "'Cause when my dad left, he didn't come back. He definitely didn't come back after sixteen years and say, 'hey, son, how about I drop you off school, huh?'"

  "He didn't come back," muttered Sydney, scowling. "He was forced to take me in. There's a difference between choosing and legal custody."

  "He was forced to take you in, sure," conceded Toby, "but not to make you breakfast every morning, or try sway you into movie nights, or drive you to school. I'm not saying forgive him, Sid ━━ I'm just saying he's trying. Cut him a bit of slack."

  "Or I could just cut him."

  Toby frowned at her malice. "Weirdo."

  "Whatever," said Sydney. "I don't care. This morning was so awkward, I don't think he'll talk to me until graduation."

  "I think you do care, and that's why you're so upset."

  "I'm not upset," Sydney seethed.

  Toby grinned. "Whatever you say, Sid."

  "I'm not," she spat. Sydney snarled and sunk back down in the chair. "God, you're so annoying ━━ I want to rip your head off."

  He arched a brow at that. "Oh, yeah?"

  Sydney swallowed thickly. "Yeah."

  "Whatever you say, Sid."

Toby Stanfield had been best friends with Sydney Sommers since the third grade. She loved Fleetwood Mac; high-waist jeans; laughing until her cheeks were sore from smiling so much; the colour purple; Star Wars; Doc Martens; the suede jacket Chrissie bought her a few Christmases ago with the tassels down the arms; sunsets, sunrises, summertime; pink gin; full moons and glittery eyeshadow. He loved her.

  His mum said it was just how strong their friendship was ━━ that he mistook platonic intimacy for love. Toby knew how delicate that line was. He also knew he had been in love with Sydney Sommers since she shoved Tommy H's face into his lasagne after hearing that he made fun of Toby's braces. Imani had a soft-spot for Sydney ━━ saw her as a daughter. That's probably why she was so terrified when Toby told her that he had it bad for his best friend. He explained his symptoms ━━ the throbbing chest, the difficulty to breathe, the exhilaration, the clinging to her every word, the way she invaded his bone marrow ━━ and Imani had looked at her son like his condition was terminal.

  He supposed it was. He loved Sydney lethally. It'll kill him.

  She was slotting her textbooks into her locker and complaining about Matt ━━ she did that a lot. Bellyaching about her dad. Toby tried to listen, he really did. Clung to each syllable. But it all bled into the same pain and she was so pretty. A lock of hair had fell out from behind her ear and he was too distracted by that to pay attention to anything else.

  "━━ and then, he told me to call him Dad!" Her exasperation grew hands to shake his shoulders. "I mean ━━ the fucking audacity, right? Right?"

  Toby blanched, moving from against the locker next to hers and standing upright. "What? Oh, yeah. The audacity."

  Sydney slammed her locker shut. "You weren't listening."

  "I was! At first," he muttered.

  "You're unbelievable." She started stalking off from him.

  Toby chased after her. "I was lost in thought, I'm sorry."

  "You think I'm mean for not trying back with Matt," stated Sydney. "I know you think I'm a bitch."

  "Hey, I never said that."

  "No, but you thought it."

  "Sid, it's physically impossible for me to think anything like that about you," Toby preached earnestly.

  Sydney glanced at him, and he was looking at her religiously. Like how a zealot looks at a crucifix. A puritan at a pyre. He had stopped walking and so had she. The rest of Hawkins High continued to breathe around them.

  She looked at his eyes ━━ onyx and devout. "Whatever... I'll see you after class."

  She left Toby as still as taxidermy and hurried to the girl's bathroom, cradling her books tight to her chest.

  This year had been far too much. Violent changes started to cut her life up into pieces. Her mother died. Her mother. Almost 10 months ago, she buried her mother in frost-kissed earth and her entire world spun out of orbit. Now the father who hadn't been a father at all was trying to get her to call him dad and her best friend ━━ who was like another limb to her, her iron lung, her very own exit wound ━━ looked at her differently. At first, he treated her like glass. Like a porcelain doll who'd smash if he didn't handle her right. It was still like that ━━ the delicacy, the piety ━━ but now paired with those eyes. Like it wasn't just concern that she'd go nuclear.

  Now. . .it was as if she could go nuclear and Toby wouldn't complain. That the glass could shatter and cut him into thousands of pieces and he'd be a perfect saint.

  That was worse.

  She flung the bathroom door open, eyes entrenched on the ground so adamantly she went crashing right into someone's chest.

  "Fuck, shit." Sydney staggered back. "Sorry."

  She didn't know who she was expecting when she glanced up ━━ but she certainly hadn't expected to see Steve Harrington, king of Hawkins High, staring down at her in the girls' bathroom.

  "What the hell?" she seethed. "Did you miss the sign on the way in?"

  "I ━━ Shit." Steve scratched the nape of his neck and looked round him. "This looks bad."

  "You think?" Sydney glared. "What are you? Some kind of pervert?"

  Steve's eyes widened. "Pervert ━━ I'm not a pervert. I was just ━━"

  "Perving?" challenged Sydney.

  "I'm not a pervert!" he exclaimed.

  "Sounds like something a pervert would say," mused Sydney.

  Steve looked frantic. "Please. I'm not ━━ not a pervert."

  "Relax, I'm messing with you," she said, grinning at his stressed expression. He looked at her in horror, pupils dilating. "Well, I wasn't at first. I really did think you were perving. But then remembered who I'm talking to ━━ so, who's your conquest of the week, Harrington?"

  Steve narrowed his eyes at her. "Do I know you?"

  It didn't hurt. "Probably not."

  Steve Harrington was known for many things ━━ his big house in Loch Nora, his hair, his reputation for dating no one and everyone. He wasn't known for his awareness of the world around him. Sydney thought he was ignorant, and arrogant. He had an ego bigger than his hair and didn't really care about anyone who wasn't in his intimate little group at the top of the Hawkins High hierarchy ━━ or if it was one of the girls he was aggressively flirting with.

  It wasn't even as if Sydney was a pariah, or an introvert at all. She had friends in different social groups, and was fairly sociable before Christine died. Went to parties, joined in on smoking sessions between periods in the bleachers, the whole nine. She just happened to be only really close with Toby. It's just that Steve hadn't had any use for her yet. She hadn't entertained him. Caught his interest.

  She was glad, frankly. Catching Steve Harrington's interest was a bit like contracting an illness. He'd be a parasite for a bit. Make you sick. Make you weak. And then he'd leave you with sore ribs, and not much else but a bad memory of a few weeks of hell.

  "Holy shit, you're Christine Sommer's daughter," he blurted.

  Sydney blinked. "I was."

  Steve paled. "Jesus, Fuck. Wow. I'm so sorry. I'm an idiot."

  "Yeah, you kinda are," she said, squinting. "You knew her?"

  "I went to her funeral."

  "I must've missed your condolence handshake," said Sydney dryly. "Why did you go to her funeral?"

  "I mean, she was the district attorney," replied Steve, wincing and putting his hands in his pockets. "I think everyone went."

  Sydney nodded, throat raw. "Right."

  Steve looked around awkwardly "So, you're name is..."

  "You can leave, you know," sighed Sydney.

  "Thank you," he breathed, clutching his bag. "So much."

  Sydney smiled thinly and stepped out of the way. He bowed lowly, and then straightened up instantly, reddening with regret. Looking a bit confused with himself, Steve walked out the girls' bathroom and left Sydney to glance around the now empty room.

  She wondered if the whole school would feel the walls if tremor if she were to scream.

  She didn't.

  She stood in the silence, bit down on her tongue, and then left.

Sydney warped her knuckles against the door of the Byers' bungalow.

  She didn't remember the exact details of how she got a job babysitting Will Byers ━━ the younger brother to Jonathan, Hawkins High's reject. She was at Melvald's one day, buying the kind of shit Matt would forget about, and Joyce Byers was having a neurotic fret over the phone with her eldest son about him taking hours at the mechanics, leaving Will without anybody to come home. Next thing she knew, Joyce was enthusing about Sydney babysitting whenever Jonathan had to work, offering her five bucks an hour. And Sydney really needed the cash. Like, really needed it.

  Which brought her to the pale light of the Byers' porch, standing shivering in the cold after being dropped off by Toby.

  She waited a whole minute after her first knock to try again, and then heard heavy, panicked footsteps thundering over floorboards.

  "Will? Will, honey, is that━━ " The door almost flung off its hinges from how violently Joyce tore it open. The woman deflated as soon as she saw Sydney on her porch. "Oh, Sydney, it's you."

  Sydney tried to not let the chagrin bruise her ego, instead looked at Joyce's overwrought features and swollen eyes. She glanced over the woman's shoulder and saw Jonathan observing a singed telephone. Will wasn't in sight.

  "Yeah, hi..." Sydney emptied her throat. "I thought you said Mondays were one of the nights Jonathan worked overtime, so I figured━━ "

  "Shit, the babysitting job!" exclaimed Joyce, pinching the bridge of her nose.

  Sydney smiled weakly. "Yeah...I'm guessing Will's not in?"

  "He's ━━ he's not anywhere," said Joyce.

  "What?" asked Sydney, glancing again at Jonathan who had reluctantly approached the door. He was fidgeting with a bleeding cuticle, and hesitating to actually look at Sydney. He was a friend of Toby's ━━ that's where their similarities ended. "He's ━━ missing?"

  Jonathan looked between Sydney and his distraught mother. "We don't know that yet."

  "Yes we do, Jonathan," gritted out Joyce. She stared at Sydney helplessly. "I've looked everywhere, Sydney. He's gone. My boy ━━ "

  Sydney solemnly put a companionable hand on Joyce's shoulder. "Hey, hey, it's alright. Have you filed this at the station?"

  "I went this morning," said Joyce, a bit fervent. "Your dad ━━ he... he was very nice. I think he was the only goddam cop who took me seriously. He said he couldn't imagine how he'd feel if this was you."

  Sydney's stomach was in knots. "Will's out there, Joyce. He's a bright kid."

  "Thanks, Sydney," exhaled Joyce. She didn't look the least bit eased, but she smiled anyway, and Sydney retrieved her hand. "I feel bad that you had to come all this way... Hey, Jonathan can give you a ride home."

  Jonathan's eyes widened and met Sydney's in horror. "That's really not necessary━━ "

  "I'm really OK, Ms. Byers ━━"

  "Nonsense!" insisted Joyce. "You live at least two miles from here, and it's dark, and━━" she paused, paling, "Jonathan'll take you."

  Sydney glanced at Jonathan, wincing. "Yeah, sure."

  She gave Joyce a quick hug. It felt weird. Like hugging a ghost. Like Joyce wasn't really there. Joyce seemed to appreciate though, because mustered a smile when they pulled away. Jonathan had fetched his keys from his coat pocket and was already stalking toward his car on the driveway. Sydney braced herself the entire way there, cursing herself for not getting her license when she had an actually financial stable parent around.

  They drove in eating silence for the first five minutes of the journey. Jonathan seemed to be searching through the windows ━━ squinting through the shadows in the overgrown wood on either side of theo road ━━ and Sydney couldn't quite believe she was sitting in Jonathan Byers' car.

  Then, Sydney bit the bullet.

  "Your mom... she seems on edge."

  God, kill her.

  Jonathan looked at her weirdly. "Uh, yeah. She suffers with anxiety, and stuff."

  "Oh," said Sydney, nodding. "Is she on Prozac?"

  That weird look bloomed.

  "They put me on it after my mom died." Why was she telling him this? Had she lost her mind? "They thought I was depressed or something."

  "Shit, I forgot about ━━ " Jonathan stopped himself. "I know we don't talk ━━"

  "And we don't have to."

  Jonathan laughed abrasively. "I get that."

  "I'm sure he'll turn up," she said. "Like I told your mom, he's a bright kid. I'm friends with Nancy, so I hear the kids in the basement till all hours. He's probably in the woods somewhere, got lost. Head stuck in that game of theirs."

  "Yeah," nodded Jonathan. "You're probably right."

  Sydney smiled. "I tend to be."

  Just not about this.

  But how was Sydney Sommers ━━ brittle girl with a brittle life ━━ meant to know that little Will Byers was in an alternate dimension, fighting for his life against an extra-terrestrial?