PRETTY SICK!
— mother stands for comfort ☆

Pete's voice was in the walls, it ricocheted off of the corners and came from peeled wallpaper in whispers that left as quickly as they came. He stood in the doorway and watched over her. He set the mugs in the drying rack for her. He reminded her of her quizzes on the calendar. He pecked her cheek as her eyes shut to sleep. Peter Bell was there — he was somewhere, he was somewhere and the only way Angie got her mind to shut the fuck up about it was to slide on her pointe shoes. Worn out past how long she should have been using them, but customized to her liking perfectly; they were another part of her, she felt bare without them.

When she danced, she wasn't nutty Angelica Bell with the missing druggie brother and deathly ill mother. When she danced she became whatever she wanted: a swan, a princess, a heartbroken villager, one half of star-crossed lovers — she could be whoever she wanted for as long as her cassette tape of Tchaikovsky and Adolphe Adam played throughout the small bedroom. Angie wanted to dance forever, until her feet couldn't bear her weight and her head spun with exhaustion.

She wished to be a ballerina in a pretty little box, and she would be, eventually.

As much as she liked her quaint little dance studio in the center of Hawkins, Indiana, Angie longed for something bigger, something better. A place where she could meet her match and be pushed to the furthest of her abilities — Angie planned to go into the dance program at the University of Chicago — and maybe they didn't specialize in ballet, but it made sense that it would help her achieve her goal of playing Giselle. Even just once.

Angie would embody the youthfulness of Giselle, she'd excel in the representation of heartbreak and sorrow, and most importantly, the girls who liked to pick on her at the studio would eat her fucking shit.

Don't get her wrong, she tried to be kind to people — she tried, but Angelica Bell was a spiteful creature at heart, and Hawkins had yet to see the brunt of her teenaged malice. She'd step all over Carol Perkins and her stupid red hair, and laugh in the face of Vicky Carmichael as she would always be stuck in the stupid little town full of the same people with their perfect nuclear families. Bits and pieces of her wanted to see the entire town crumble at its foundations, it was the reason her life went to shit anyway, but no — good people stayed in the dreary hell hole, too.

She grit her teeth as she brought her leg higher behind her, trying to perfect her arabesque for what she felt like was the millionth time. Angie's muscles burned and she nearly had it, if she just bent her leg a little more —

She wished her dad were there.

The thought caressed her brain in a hug and held it tenderly, a warm feeling spread throughout her chest and crawled up her collar bones — then it started to burn, red-hot and fucking painful. She learned to dance for him, she took care of her mother for him, she did everything — for — him. It wouldn't hurt him to have taken a day or two out of his life to drive down (if he still even had a license) into Indiana to watch a dance recital or two, hell, maybe they'd go out for dinner after, too. If Norman Bell stuck around a little longer, played a little nicer: maybe Angie wouldn't crave the attention of immature men who wanted to see how fast they could get a new notch on their belt.

She'd be a liar if she said that she didn't like her men a little rough around the edges; they clouded her mind in an air of mystery and felt warm, a tactile image of undoubted protection and love — something she craved. Those kinds of men never wanted that, those kinds of men left as soon as they came and Angie felt a familiar sense of abandonment all over again.

Instability became a daily occurrence, and she blamed Norman. Sometimes she wondered what her mother saw in him, if Julie bothered to look any deeper at all.

As a child, Angie used to look down on her mother — how she never had the same reason Angie and her father did, they'd send each other insightful glances whenever she made an unintelligent point, and laugh behind their hands when he made a joke at her expense. Angie played it cool for him; she was the funny one, the smart one, the creative one — this collusion never saved her from falling into the same dark fate as her mother. Forever stuck; hysterical, emotional —

— Woman.

Whole-heartedly, undoubtedly: woman. One that, when she grew into her curves and bled from her uterus, became the tactless and unintelligent woman her father used to glance away from over dinner. She felt the rage her mother held fester in her head, her chest and her heart, her throat, too — for the next time she saw that man she would scream, scream until her throat went raw and red and her eyes became clouded with tears. For the pain he caused her mother, who, surely, was the same teenage girl that Angie was when she fell in love with him.

Julie gave birth to that pain, Angelica Bell was the product. Her mother may have been a monster; the worst kind, without claws, or teeth, or pointed horns — a monster with a kind smile and words that cut like a freshly sharpened knife. But if her mother was a monster, then so was she: wide-eyed, legless in a world that needed her to run.

It made sense that Julie hated her, no sacrifice Angie made would ever compensate for the high price her mother paid for the losses she'd accrued over her 42 years of life, simply by being a woman and a mother. But, more importantly —

Angie would always be her father, to her mother. And to her father, she would take a shadowy clone of her mother.

It pained Angelica to be born with awareness of herself, her surroundings, and to feel the emotion of everyone around her as if it were her own — but the first step of a cycle being broken was to recognize that a cycle existed. She just hoped that the snake of time wouldn't visit her, wrap its torso around her neck and sink its fangs into her; the venom would replace her mother's warm blood, which she held, until she was like her father. A cold-hearted spectre.

Knowing of her mother's pain never stopped her from having a distaste for her. The snake of time had long burrowed itself in Julie Bell's neck, her blood replaced with venom — a different venom than one that would kill Angie, but a venom nonetheless. It dripped from her words and evaporated into the air to smother anyone who cared enough to listen.

The venom made most time spent around her mother unbearable. Especially when she'd organize "family" (the only two people left in the house) dinners, which consisted of greasy takeout two hours later than Angie liked to eat over a silent table and Family Feud playing in the background.

Unfortunately, tonight was one of those nights. The sun had long set over the trailer home, candlelight illuminated the faces of the women in a warm yellow tone, one that exaggerated every line in her mother's face — each proof of her age, and each a reminder of the time she had left with her. Angie grimaced to herself and shoved a piece of chicken tender into her mouth to cover it up.

"How was school?" Julie asked, her blue irises barely flicked onto her daughter; usually she had the TV to keep her gaze rested on, but the power went out for some reason, so they had to entertain each other to "feel like a normal family" or anything along the lines of that.

The younger blonde shrugged, just a little while she pushed the food around on her plate. "Fine... I missed first and second period, but that's whatever. My — I'm like, pretty sure I'm top of both those classes, so... Yeah."

Her mother hummed, the whites of her eyes visible when she looked up to the ceiling in displeasure. She said something she disliked. "Oh, right. I did get a call from school... well, it's not like you're going to college anyway," she chuckled to herself.

Angie wasn't humored as she furrowed her brows, quite the opposite, really. "But I've wanted to go to UChicago since like, forever," she retorted, setting down her fork. She even had a banner in her room, and a few sweatshirts she nicked from a thrift store way back in Chicago.

Julie thought for a moment with a curt hum, then waved her hand dismissively. "I — well, I thought that was a pipe dream, monkey," she excused, "Being ambitious is... good, but I think you're aiming too high. I don't want you to expect that and be disappointed later."

"I have a 4.3 GPA," she deadpanned, her face stonewalled and all she could manage was a stare. "I'm on cheerleading, volleyball, and Honors Society. I've won a bunch of school awards, and I'm on track to get valedictorian this year. I dunno why you haven't noticed that I've busted my ass for this "pipe dream"."

"I'm glad I raised such a humble woman," Julie guffawed, her flyaways floated around her face with the movement, like a greying halo of wispy blonde. She glanced at Angie for a response, an attack of retaliation, but she only stared blankly at her mother. "Can you blame me? You bum around and party whenever you get the chance, just like your father."

"That was one party, the first one in like, a whole year," Angie frowned, though the first comment stung. "I dunno what I did, did I upset you?" The answer was a bright, bolded, and underlined 'YES', but her mother's therapist insisted that Angie tried to communicate with her slowly, and resolve the issue rationally. Why did she have to be the rational one?

Julie sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, their food grew cold as they argued senselessly. "What do you think, Angelica? How would you feel if your daughter started to brag about all of her "achievements" when you tried to point out the obvious? You know I never got the chance to do any of those things."

Oh. So, that's what that was about. "I'm sorry, but I didn't... it just felt bad when you said I wouldn't go to college. Like you thought I was stupid or something." Were they really communicating? Like normal people?

"It feels bad to have waited nine months for a child and it being an insensitive asshole, too," she shot back, the venom dripping from her tongue onto Angie's skin. Nevermind.

She felt her jaw set in anger, a familiar sensation of blinding rage snaked itself up her spine and settled in her ribcage. It beat against her chest unpleasantly, wanting to be let out in a string of fervent insults against her mother. "Maybe there's a pattern," Angie muttered under her breath, her eyes locked on her barely-touched plate.

"What did you say?" Julie fumed, her eyes narrowed at her daughter, who fell silent at the tone of her voice. "Don't you speak to me like that, I'm your mother!"

"And I'm your daughter!" Angie snapped back, teary eyed and standing up with enough force, that the dining room chair screeched against the floor. She wished this was the first time she'd been pushed to scream back at her mother. "I said, maybe there's a pattern! I'm fucked up, Vincent's fucked up, Pete's fucked up — kids like us don't just spawn outta thin air, mom! Maybe. There's. A fucking. Pattern."

"So it's my fault, so I'm an awful mother when I had to deal with your father letting all do what the fuck you wanted for years? I sacrificed everything for you all — everything, Angelica. And this is the thanks I get? Getting... sworn at, and... and treated like I'm some horrendous monster for trying, unlike Norman," she replied, waving her hands in emphasis. "Norman, who ditched us the moment he got bored. I should've — I could've done the same, but I didn't, why? Because you're my child, if only you treated me like your mother."

Her breath caught in her throat as she realized what she'd done. Should've... should've — the slip-up stuck in Angie's brain like glue and her mouth became dry with a cotton-like sensation. Maybe she said something after that, or she just stared blankly at the wall behind her mom while she went over the argument in her head again, the words that fell out of her lips boomeranged right back into her heart.

"I tried to get you to change," Julie continued, "I really, really tried. But you're a leech, just like him — if you want to point out a pattern, point at that one. Don't blame me for his mistakes."

Why did she say that? What she said to her mother. Her mom. The woman who held her in her stomach for nine months, only to have some sorry excuse for a child to pop out instead of being like her brothers.

Angie wanted to wipe the smug look off of Julie's face when she laid her power-hungry eyes on her daughter's tears, but she could only sniffle in response and wipe at her wettening cheeks.

Julie coughed a bit and spit up some mucus into the kitchen sink, scowling while she did so. "You're gonna send me to an early grave. Call Aunt Tabby over, I don't wanna deal with you right now."

Too ashamed to argue, but too fearful of how finicky her health was, Angie slipped off her Care Bear slippers and slid on her white tennis sneakers. The best decision she made was the one with least resistance, at least then if she didn't want to be kicked out of her home for the next week. Angelica Bell hated everything about her life, including herself.

She wished her dad were around, she wished he wasn't such a piece of shit — Angie wished her brothers were there and she wished her mom liked her, she wished she could just fucking find Pete already, and she longed for the day that she could burn that shitty trailer home to the ground with her closet-skeletons inside.

She'd smile as she did it. Angie would smile so widely that the flames would reflect off of the whites of her teeth as it swallowed the house whole — people would hate her for it. They'd set her alight and she'd go down with the house, but by that point, Pete would be returned home and in a few years time; after the ash had be long blown away throughout the town, they'd finally realize that maybe — maybe the Queen of Hawkins didn't go fucking crazy.

Angie just knew more. She knew the evils that lurked around Hawkins through light flickers and missing people, she saw how differently Will Byers acted, even through short glances when she passed him in the parking lot.

That wasn't a boy that went missing in the woods.

But she digressed. She needed to call her aunt.

—————
——— AUTHOR'S NOTE
nooo angie ahaha stop having
long increasingly unhinged
monologues about your life in
your head... aha... you're so
sexy.... ahaha (looking left and
right)

anyways nothing super important
happens in regards to plot, but
you get major stangie content next
chapter fr 🤫 but you didnt hear
it from me

PRETTY SICK!
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