ir·re·spon·si·ble

adjective

(of a person, attitude, or action) not showing a proper sense of responsibility.

Standing in the bathroom in a towel, Emilia danced to the music in the background. It was Bruce Springsteen's newest "Dancing in the Dark", and it had a great beat to swing to. Frothy toothpaste covered parts of her lips, dribbling down her chin, but she didn't care. Her head bobbed side to side, wet hair whipping around. The little radio on the corner of the vanity was getting terrible reception, but she didn't care. She didn't have a care in the world, not out here, in the middle of nowhere with Jonathan and good tunes.

A knock came upon the door.

Emilia leaned over the white sink with cracks in it, and spat out the toothpaste, "It's open!"

Jonathan opened it and widened his eyes at Emilia's lack of attire, but then grinned. In the small space with ugly green walls, they were the happiest two people in the world. He reached around her and grabbed his toothbrush and the toothpaste. Joining her in her eccentric tooth-brushing routine, he loosened up. That shy Jonathan always reappeared, but it never took Emilia long to break it down and reveal the Jonathan that was forward, fun and playful.

"Message keeps getting clearer. Radio's on and I'm moving 'round the place" Emilia sang with a frothy mouth.

To her surprise, Jonathan joined, "I check my look in the mirror. I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face."

"Man I ain't getting nowhere, I'm just living in a dump like this," she sang along with Bruce.

"There's something happening somewhere, Baby I just know that there is," they sang the rest together, belting it out like there was no one else in the world. The chorus rang through the room, the radio turned up to mask their terrible singing voices.

They had not a care in the world, until the banging on the wall came through followed by someone shouting, "Keep it down! These walls are paper thin!"

They stopped singing, turned down the music and listened. The banging stopped, but they knew it would come back -or worse- if they started up their little duet once again. Emilia smiled, sticking her tongue out between her teeth slightly, "Oops."

Jonathan chuckled, "Come on, let's get outta here."

"The lake today?" She asked, knowing that they had a few days to spare with how many she had taken off of work. Still, they didn't know what might come their way.

"Yeah," Jonathan gave her that half smile he was so good at, and she felt the whole world was turning for her.

Lake Michigan was beautiful. It wasn't the ocean, which Emilia planned on going to see one day, before she croaked or was killed by monsters, but it would do. They'd taken the shots of her, posing just as her mother had years ago -she always wondered who took those photos of her mother, surely not her father?- and Jonathan had pushed her under the placid water's surface. Soaked in her clothes from head to toe, she felt so alive when she was with Jonathan.

So far from Hawkins, it was as if they were adults, living a life on the run, no longer fearing anything or anyone. She knew they had to go back, they were heading back today in fact. As they left the waters, laughing and looking like teenagers who had never had to deal with anything serious in their lives, Emilia stopped and grabbed Jonathan's cold hands. Despite the warm August weather, the water had been cold.

"Hey, Jonathan?" Emilia asked quietly.

They stood on the shoreline, the waves lapping at their feet. Already they were drying with the sun beating down on them, that last heat wave before school and fall rolled in. Emilia loved the fall, the way the brilliant and bright colours turned into completely different colours. Greens to orange and yellow, and eventually falling back to the Earth and turning the colour of the soil below. The decay that occurred was subtle, beautiful. Even the bare bones of the trees were beautiful, signs that anything can grow back.

"Yeah?" Jonathan faced her, his forehead only an inch away from hers. Their closeness showed the world around them just how intimate, how loving they were.

"What happens next summer?" She asked.

"What do you mean?"

"With New York."

"I think... we'll apply for scholarships, that should help. We can leave right after we're finished senior year, if you want."

"What about our families?" Emilia mostly meant Joy and Will, who needed Jonathan in their lives. But she also meant Hopper and El, Emilia's secret family.

Jonathan shrugged, "They can't keep a hold on us forever, right?"

She nodded, a bit too aggressively. "Yeah, yeah..."

"Hey, are you worried something is going to happen?" He asked seriously, "We beat it, we beat all of it... There is nothing out there..." Even as he said the words, they felt hollow.

It hadn't been her worry, but now it was seeping in. She shook her head and ran her fingers through her wet hair. That morning she had no cares in the whole wide world, it needed to last, and she refused to let herself go down that dark rabbit hole. An idea struck her, something incredibly irresponsible. If Hopper ever found out, he'd probably give her back to her dad. But it was something she might share with El, something sister's told each other about.

"Hey, Jonathan?" She asked again.

"Yeah?" He too repeated his very words.

"Want to do something really, really stupid?"

He eyed her, clearly curious but not entirely sure if he wanted to make the commitment without knowing what this stupid thing was. Instead of giving her an answer, he shrugged passively. Emilia laughed, a bit wickedly if he heard right, and then pulled him along to the car. He swooped down to grab his camera, and the bag with all his gear. They strode up to the parking lot that was starting to fill up, and without any idea where Emilia was dragging him, Jonathan got into the passenger seat nervously.

She reached her hand over, palm up. When he didn't put two and two together, she did the universal signal for "gimme" and he figured it out. Digging the keys from deep in his soaking wet pockets, he handed them to her. She jabbed them into the ignition and left the parking lot. There was a sign pointing towards town, another to the highway. She turned towards the town, and Jonathan felt his heart racing; this was a side of Emilia he had never seen before, but felt oddly proud.

When Emilia found what she was looking for, she pulled into the parking space and turned to smile at Jonathan.

"No," he shook his head.

"Oh, come on!"

"Mum will kill me!"

"Hopper will kill me!"

"That's a pretty good reason why we should not go get-"

"I'm doing it," she said as she opened the car door, "Whether you come join me or not is up to you."

He stared at her, mouth agape, then rushed to get out of the car to follow behind her. No way he was going to let her do this alone, no way he was going to miss out on this wild side of Emilia. The thrill ran through him as he opened the door, entering the small and clean smelling building behind Emilia. She was already talking to the receptionist, she was really doing this.

And so was he.

Just so you guys know, this chapter connects with the prologue. That made sense, right?

Question of the Day: What do you think they did that was so irresponsible?