PRETTY SICK!
— a nutjob's duty ☆

Few things always stayed stagnant in Hawkins: the seasons that changed with each coming month, the boring (for the most part), boring population, and Steve Harrington's habit of absolutely needing Angie at the worst possible times. She sat at her desk, which wobbled dangerously every time she erased something off of her AP Biology notes, and stuck her tongue out in concentration — genetic variations, genes, and heredity in organisms raced her mind while she kept her entire focus on the sheet in front of her. Blue ink smirched along the lines as her hand dragged across the page while she wrote, her doodles of flowers and faces she didn't quite recognize in the margin were equally as smudged.

Cool December wind ceased to whistle through her balcony sliding door as it flung open and the gust of air sent her notes soaring around her room. "Oh, Christ! Steve!" Angie hissed while she tried (and failed) to catch her airborne papers, she hadn't needed to turn around to know who the late night intruder was. "We have a front door."

"And I have an emergency," Steve Harrington insisted as he brushed his shoes clear of snow and shut the door behind him. His hair had a light dusting of white on it, and he dragged in heaps of snow on his letterman's jacket, which nearly swallowed him. He claimed he would "grow into it." by his junior year.

"Oh, please," she retorted and shuffled around the room, half asleep, bending over to pick up her notes. "This couldn't wait until tomorrow? You're gonna wake up the beast."

"Julie can't resist my charm." He winked, and Angie's face contorted into an unflattering cringe. Angie did not get charmed. "But this can't wait until tomorrow, Chicago. The football guys asked me — and they were really convincing, but they asked me to skip the last few periods to pregame with them before the party tomorrow."

"And?" she beckoned him to continue and sat down on her bed as she pretended to ignore the endearing, yet stupid, nickname that made her cheeks heat up in embarrassment whenever he called her it.

Steve flopped onto her bed too, face first into a Love-a-Lot care bear plush. His carefully styled hair had come undone with the weather, and he brushed it out of his face to look at the bear. It was nearly blasphemous to see his brunette locks loose in their natural shape, "And... I told them I'd go. I was going to ask you what I should do, but I already gave them an answer." He failed to stop talking once Angie raised her brow in a look that said 'seriously?'. "I'm only a sophomore, Ange, they don't usually get invited to stuff like that."

"I would have told you to focus on school." Angie rolled her eyes and flicked her lamp off. "So you broke in for nothing?"

"No, look. He's asking you to come with me," he said and turned Love-a-Lot to look at her. Steve made the stuffed animal's body move as he did a cartoonish voice, "Please come with him, Angie. He'll be so lonely."

Angie rolled her eyes and shoved the stuffed animal away; she knew she would end up accompanying him, but he didn't need to know how easily she gave into his peer pressure. "She's a girl, and absolutely not. I like being at school, and spending my afternoon with a bunch of wannabe frat boys down my neck isn't like, my idea of a good time."

The arm of Love-a-Lot smacked her in the face. "Lonely Steve..." he pouted and moved the stuffed animal as if it were living, and she laughed at him.

"Stop it! I'll consider," Angie giggled, "you're really an idiot, Steve." She snatched the pink bear back from him and shook her head as he reached over to shake her so hard, her head lolled to either side, out of control. The blonde shrieked quietly and gave him gentle smacks to the shoulders while she tried to wriggle from his grasp.

"But you love it."

Two shakes and a snap in front of her face made Angie blink as she refocused her vision onto the pink Love-a-Lot bear in her hand, it stared at her blankly as it was just an inanimate object, and the blonde cursed under her breath. Angie's memories became more vivid once Pete went missing, she found herself frozen in place, stuck in her thoughts often. Far too often to be normal. She sighed and glanced to her left at the perpetrator who shook her and glared, Raymond Murdoch stood next to her with his arms crossed, unamused.

Average was the only word Angie could use to describe Raymond. He was an average man, who lived in an average house, and had an average job that he liked an average amount. He woke up and had eggs, bacon, and a slice of toast with jam on it for breakfast, served with a side of coffee, which never had too much cream or sugar. His hobbies included birdwatching, looking at his collection of 'cool' rocks, and learning a variety of languages — Raymond was a loser, for lack of a better word. She knew this, she assumed he knew this, but neither of them spoke of it too much.

She didn't know why he agreed to help her, or what he thought he would get out of it besides some publicity when they found her brother. Angie had a few dollars at most to her name by the time all of the bills were paid and her grocery list was made. Unless he planned to bill her at the end of it, which was a royal dick move and he would end up mauled if he even brought the prospect up to her. She thought maybe he was lonely and enjoyed the company, but then he always complained about how lame he looked to be stuck with a teenager as one of his three friends. So maybe she projected onto him.

"Are you paying attention to me?" he scolded her, his arms crossed over his chest and his black tie crumpled. Angie stared blankly at him and he let out a groan as he pointed to the corkboard she hung up on her wall, which had red yarn that connected photos and documents to one another. "Just, okay, I don't think Benny killed himself."

The blonde shut her eyes, which ached for sleep, and sighed. "Look, I just want to find my brother, man, I don't wanna get into some conspiracy shi—"

"No, no!" Raymond waved his hands. "Listen to me. Benny doesn't seem like the type of guy to just... shoot himself in the head in his diner, that thing was his baby... and don't crucify me or anything, but I went through his file — don't give me that look. I saw how he was sitting, and it makes no sense, unless he was bent over the table already, he just wouldn't land like that."

"Gravity is tricky, are you saying someone came and shot Benny in the head? 'Cause...?"

"Because of the bald girl." And Angie deflated like a balloon, enough about the random bald girl, she already had to deal with following up on hundreds of bogus tips. "I know you told me to leave it, and I did this just happened to come up when I was asking around with Benny's friends. Apparently some bald kid, which we know is a girl, broke into Benny's kitchen and he took care of her. The same bald girl that was living in Ted Wheeler's basement."

"The same bald girl you harassed his middle schooler son about," she deadpanned.

"Yes! I didn't... I didn't harass him, whatever, just look at the bigger picture. Think of the people behind this as invaders, they infiltrate America through a small town to go unnoticed," he coughed, "Soviets," and cleared his throat. "It started with Will Byers, he fell off of the street while biking and accidentally ran into the wrong people, he got kidnapped. While they do this, they're distracted, and the bald girl escapes and she goes to the nearest place with shelter, warmth, and food."

"Benny's."

"Correct; she goes to Benny's and he's hospitable and lets her stay over, the invaders catch wind of this, hunt her down, shoot Benny to get to her — she escapes again, she's slippery. So now, Will's missing, Benny is dead, and the girl is on the loose, but at this point everyone knows that Will is missing. Especially his friends, who go to look for him in the forest by Cornwallis and find the girl, they happen to store her away," he took a swig of water and continued. "A day or so passes, and your brother is out for a late night drive, like he usually does before he picks you up from your friend's. But he hears something, and he thought it could have been that missing Byers boy, so he headed into the woods to check it out... You see Barbara go to head outside to the pool again as you head to the living room couch to lay down, the woods right next to the house are very close to where Will's bike was found."

Angie felt her face solidify unpleasantly as she remembered that night, it had been the last day she remembered feeling "normal"(as normal as she could when she hung out with Carol Perkins and Tommy Hagan), and the last time she had seen her brother. She didn't like to think about it, no matter how many ways she thought about how that day could have gone differently; if she had just stayed home with Pete, things would be good for her.

"Pete's the first to get taken, Barbara hears him while he's being captured, goes to look, and gets taken too while the invaders try to cover up their disappearances. What d'you think?" Raymond finished and sat down to admire his own conspiracy, as Angie stood up to look over the documents and photos strung up on her wall.

She frowned slightly and looked at a photo of Pete, the last close up of him before he disappeared. "My paternal grandmother is Russian."

The ravenette blinked at her, then glanced at the board, then at her again. "Is that what you have to say about that?" he gaped.

"I think that sounds crazy and insensitive, there's no reason for them to be here. We're landlocked, unimportant, and wouldn't that be obvious? Everything that goes wrong can't be blamed on someone overseas," she explained, and Raymond gave her a look that beckoned her to come up with something better. "I think our own government is working against us."

"Now that's crazy," he scoffed.

"Look at the map we have, Steve's house, Will's house, where Pete's car was found, and the forest where Will's bike was found. It makes a shape, and in the center of the shape is a government owned building that looks like it would kidnap people to experiment on them or something — MKUltra shit," Angie spelled out, and he seemed to be more understanding of her idea, but still hesitated. "Not to mention, the government would've been all over the story if Will said he got kidnapped by a bunch of soviets."

"And Barbara's car? That was found at the bus stop?"

She furrowed her brows and paced around her room, each step made the floor let out a loud squeak underneath her weight. "I dunno about that one. You're right, can you get a copy of that part of her file? And bring it to me to read. I know you said that was like, useless, but just let me go over it."

"Fine, but if anyone at the station catches me, I could lose my job. And if I do, I blame you," he warned. The same warning he used each time she asked him to photocopy a file for her to look at, with the same goofy look, too: his hands placed themselves on his hips while he tapped his foot impatiently.

"I got it," Angie sighed out of exasperation. "Now get out of my house, I'm tired."

Raymond stood up and knocked a pencil holder off of her desk on purpose, only to ignore that it fell and headed over to her door. "Don't boss me around. I'll see you later — Hey, happy Halloween by the way. Leave me some candy, my favorites are 3 Musketeers."

She ignored him as he made his way out of the house and picked up her belongings, setting them back in place onto her bare desk, which held a few knicknacks, most of which were Garfield themed.

That fat orange cat brought her joy like nothing else could. The little guy was so round. So sly. Angie wished she had a lasagna eating friend for herself, but she feared a cat could be a responsibility she couldn't handle with how busy she felt all the time.

For now, she enjoyed him from a distance, in the form of countless stuffed animals and posters and clutter she'd collected. Garfield couldn't judge her for what she'd done, what she was doing, his glossy, plastic eyes were always cool to the touch and they stayed locked in the same place, unmoved from when she first found him. They couldn't squint into a sharp glare, sharp like metal that pierced her consciousness and gutted her mentally whenever her peers did it — Garfield had a permanent smug look etched onto his face, Angie would even go as far to say he was content.

Garfield had an unconditional liking for her, and it hurt.

It hurt her when she realized a lifeless stuffed cat was the only thing that would stick around. Not because he wanted to, but because he couldn't possibly do anything else. He had one purpose. And he filled his purpose well, as an unmoving, unblinking, and unfeeling friend.

"What?" A feminine voice laughed from behind her. It echoed, and faded out just as fast as it came. Barely a whisper. Something like a memory.

Angie blinked to herself and set the orange cat down onto her desk and glanced around the room, she worried that someone from school could see her, hear her thoughts that sometimes got even a bit crazy for herself. She thought someone might have been listening to her, and watching. Or — more likely — it was her own paranoia and stress of being found out being materialized in the form of auditory hallucinations. Maybe the crazy gene that ran in her family finally caught up with her.

—————
——— AUTHOR'S NOTE
hey 😙😙 new chapter out now!! dont
forget to vote and comments. i love to
see it.

this chapter is kind of boring?? there's
only a little glimpse and mention of
canon characters. but next chapter
there's a whole bunch (plus gen gets
officially introduced!!!). this chapter
is more plot and oc based

PRETTY SICK!
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