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Max walks through the halls of Hawkins High School early one morning, avoiding eye-contact with anyone still lingering in the halls.
God, she fucking hates this place. It’s worse than the middle school and that's saying something. The lights are too fucking bright, the halls too crowded, the people too fucking nosy, everything fucking sucks.
She reaches Ms. Kelley’s door.
God, she hates this too. She fucking hates these mandatory meetings they have to have. She’s not getting jack-shit out of this. It's fucking pointless.
She takes a breath and pulls the door open, stepping inside the small room which she hates with it's stupid pink walls and loud ass clock and stupid inspirational posters.
She tosses her bag on the floor and takes a seat in one of the wooden chairs across from the woman sitting behind her gray desk.
Max crosses her arms over her chest, looking pointedly at her shoes.
“Hey, Max,” the older woman greets, smiling at her. “How are you today?”
And Max hates this shit. She hates this stupid song and dance they do, fucking detests it. It's always the same thing, the same questions met with the same lackluster answers. She's fucking sick of it.
“Fine,” she replies stiffly, like every time.
It's a lie, she's not fine.
Max Mayfield hasn't been "fine" in a long time.
With a nod, Ms. Kelley jots that down in her stupid fucking notes about Max and her fucked up life. “So,” she says, looking up at Max, “would you like to talk about anything in particular today?
Max resists the urge to roll her eyes, they’ve been doing this for so long the older woman should know her answer already.
“Not really,” Max mutters, picking at a loose thread of her jeans.
Ms. Kelley nods. “I thought so.” She writes something down then folds her arms over her papers. “Max, I would like to try something different today, if that’s all right with you?”
Max lifts her shoulders and drops them unceremoniously to show the older woman that she really doesn’t care.
“I know that you’re hesitant to talk about things, and I get that…”
This time, Max does roll her eyes. Ms. Kelley sure doesn’t “get” anything. She doesn't know what Max has been though, the shit she's seen. No one can understand Max's fucked up brain.
“…so,” Ms. Kelley presses on, “I would like you to tell me something nice.”
Max looking up at the woman, frowning and brows furrowed. “Like what?”
“Anything,” Ms. Kelley says, smiling softly. “Whatever you want, as long as it’s nice.”
Nice…something nice? What kind of bullshit is this? What the fuck is Ms. Kelley's angle?
She doesn’t want to talk about anything, especially to Ms. Kelley, but something nice…she can at least do that.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Max gives it some thought.
What is something in her life that is nice?
Max almost laughs at that thought, fucking nothing in her life is nice.
But Ms. Kelley did say that it could be anything so it doesn't have to be about her life, right?
“There's are two species of male penguins that propose by giving a female a pebble,” Max says finally, looking down at her shoes and toeing at the dark blue carpet.
“Wow,” Ms. Kelley says, looking genuinely pleased at having succeed in getting Max to talk, “I never knew that. How did you find that out?”
“A friend told me,” Max tells her, still not looking up. “He knows a lot of random facts so…”
“Anything else?”
Max looks towards the door. “I don’t know uh…” she looks down at her hands. “Your uh, lips have around a million nerve endings and are hundreds of times more sensitive than your fingertips or uh, the rest of your body.”
Ms. Kelley smiles. “Did the same friend tell you that?”
Max is silent for a moment. “Yeah,” she replies stiffly.
Dustin had told her both those facts.
He had told her the penguin fact while they were eating lunch last year. He had told her penguins were his favorite animal and rattled off a list of facts about them, that being one of them. The other fact he said before they…
Max shakes her head before she can relive the memory. She doesn’t really want to think about that right now.
“Can you tell me about your brother?”
Fuck, Max doesn’t want to think about that either.
“He died,” is Max’s stony reply. “In a mall fire.”
“Yes,” Ms. Kelley says with a nod, “I know that. But I want to know about him, the kind of person he was, what he liked, your relationship with him. Things like that.”
Max feels a hot, angry beast crawl its way up her throat. “He’s dead,” she says again, glaring at the woman. “What does it matter?”
“Even in death, things matter,” Ms. Kelley says simply, unaffected by Max's ire.
Max doesn’t reply, just glares at the floor, anger feasting on her flesh and burning her alive.
“It’s okay, Max,” Ms. Kelley says softly. “It’s allowed to be painful. You’re allowed to feel pain.”
Max’s eyes burn and her chest aches but she refuses to say anything.
“It’s okay to grieve,” the older woman continues. “It’s okay to hurt.”
“He died!” Max snaps, unable to hold herself back any longer. “He’s fucking dead, okay?! What fucking else is there to say?! He’s fucking gone!”
The words are painful. They’re so fucking painful and she is aching from having said it aloud. She can’t fucking breathe because her throat is closing up. Her fingers dig into the skin of her forearms, grounding herself because she feels like she's about to float away.
“How does it feel?”
And Max should be angry at Ms. Kelley’s stupid fucking question, but she’s not. She’s just...she's drowning. She's fucking drowning in grief and she can't fucking breathe. She is gasping for air that isn't there because she is drowning.
She just wants her fucking brother back. Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to ask to have him be here and not buried six feet under everything that he ever loved?
She wants to tell him that she’s sorry. She's sorry for being a burden. She's sorry for dragging him into this shit.
She wants to tell him that she loved him, that despite how much she hated him, she loved him too.
She wants to tell him a hundred things, a thousand things, even.
And she wants him to hug him, wants to smell his stupid cologne again, wants to sit next to him in his stupid fucking car while he drives too fast with music too loud. She wants him to sing along to his fucking loud ass music, wants him to yell at her, call her names, fucking anything, but he can’t.
He’s dead.
Billy’s dead.
Billy’s fucking dead.
Her brother’s gone and she can’t change that.
She can't fucking change that.
“I—I can't-” Max is gasping, her nails digging deeper into her skin, dark red blood under her nails.
“Yes, you can, Max.”
Max shakes her head. “No. It—I—”
Sobs fill the room but they can’t be hers, they can’t be.
“It-It wasn't his fault,” Max sobs because it wasn’t.
Billy was in the wrong place at the wrong time and a monster got him. That monster forced him to do things he wouldn’t normally do. The monster forced him to kill and build and die and it’s not his fucking fault.
“No,” Ms. Kelley agrees softly, “it wasn’t. But it wasn’t yours either.”
And Max sobs louder because Ms. Kelley doesn’t know.
Ms. Kelley doesn’t know how Max just watched as Billy stood and faced the monster. Ms. Kelley doesn’t know that she stood by and watched as her brother fought off a literal monster to protect her and her friends. Ms. Kelley doesn’t know that Max didn’t run to him until he was already on the floor dying. Ms. Kelley doesn’t know that Max might as well have been the Mind Flayer because she killed her brother, she killed her fucking brother.
She cries so hard her ribs hurt and her lungs burn. She cries so hard that her throat is raw and she tastes her bitter, ugly blood.
Max is crying so hard and it’s fucking terrifying. It's fucking terrifying these feelings she has. It's fucking terrifying that she is the way she is.
Ans she knows that she will forever feel guilty because Billy is gone and despite what people say, it’s her fault, it is all her fault. Her brother is gone and it's because of her.
Ms. Kelley doesn’t say anything while Max sobs, she just lets her stay there, crying, for how long Max doesn’t know. It could be minutes. It could be hours. But she cries in Ms. Kelley’s office until there isn’t one more tear left to cry, until her breath stops hitching in her chest, until she can't possibly cry any more.
She takes a deep, shuddering breath and it fucking hurts.
She stares at the floor, her eyes puffy and her face red and blotchy. She has tear tracks down her cheeks and snot dripping from her nose. She feels tried. She feels so fucking tired. She feels like she has lived through an entire life while she was crying.
“Max?”
And she feels like sobbing all over again but she doesn’t, can’t find the energy to.
“How does it feel?”
“It hurts,” Max whispers as she feels her fucking chest cave in. “It really…” she hiccups, “really fucking hurts. I m-miss him,” she says, new tears stinging her eyes. “I miss him and he’s gone. He’s gone and I–”
And I want to join him.
“And I’m still here.”
“You feel bad for surviving,” Ms. Kelley observes. “You were there with him but you survived and you feel bad for it.”
Max doesn’t answer, just sniffles.
“It’s called survivor’s guilt,” Ms. Kelley continues. “You survived and Billy didn’t and you feel guilty for it.”
And God, does she, she feels so fucking guilty.
Why did she survive when Billy didn't?
Why was it him that was rip to shreds by a monster?
Why wasn't it her?
Why couldn't it have been her?
Being torn apart by the Mind Flayer wouldn't have hurt this fucking much.
But she doesn’t say anything.
“Do you think that if you had died, it would’ve been better?”
Yes.
It’s almost automatic, the way she's about to respond. She even opens her mouth, the words just on the tip of her tongue, because she’s thought about it a lot, more often than she should.
Her eyes have lingered too long on the broken bottles that pile in her trailer. She's often wondered if she should just press the glass against her pale fucking wrists.
Her feet have taken her to the edge of the quarry more times then she can count. She's often fantasized about taking a leap into the water. It would be quick and painless, probably.
But she doesn’t answer, can’t exactly tell the truth but can’t find it in herself to lie either.
Ms. Kelley sighs, something heavy. “Max,” she reaches out and takes Max’s hand in hers, “you deserve to be here.”
And Max wants to laugh because Ms. Kelley has never been more wrong. Max doesn’t deserve to be here. She doesn’t deserve to be happy. She doesn’t deserve love. She doesn’t deserve friends. She deserves to rot in whatever version of hell there is.
The bell rings and Max rips her hand away from Ms. Kelley’s.
Max only ever has to be here until the bell rings and then she can leave so she’s out.
She grabs her backpack and stands.
“Max,” Ms. Kelley says, standing, “if you need more time–”
“I’m fine,” Max lies before leaving the room.
Ms. Kelley doesn’t follow her and Max is thankful for that.
Tears threaten to fall but she ignores it, she has a full day of school to complete and she can’t be fucking crying.
God, Max is so fucked up.
Maybe she should just do it and save everyone from drowning in the fucked up ocean that is Max Mayfield.
But she's a coward and she won't.