Chapter Text
Max let her head fall back into a long dramatic groan in hopes of finally snagging her mother’s attention. It hadn’t worked five minutes ago, and it also hadn’t worked five minutes before that, and the first five minutes before the second five minutes. Her back was starting to hurt from lying awkwardly on the carpet. It was a Friday afternoon, 4:03 pm to be exact, the clock on the wall ticked away as if to mock her.
The redhead already knew that her radio was crackling in her room down the hall, she rolled her eyes at the thought, glancing over to her mother who was still quietly sifting through papers. Her baby blues slowly scanned each document through her delicate red-rimmed reading glasses. Max was supposed to be at the arcade by now, she had told Lucas she’d be no later than four o’clock. It was now 4:04 pm.
She groaned again. Thumping her arms against the carpet as her eyes bore into her mother begging for her to notice the time and let her go. There was no point in her even being here, it’s not like she knew what any of Neil’s useless work jargon meant. She was more just in the way, her time probably better spent at whipping Dustins ass and taking his top spot from him for the fifth time this month.
Max let out another grunt as she pushed herself up.
“Maxine, please, you know we have to do this.” Her mother is currently perched on Neil’s rickety old leather chair in the corner of the room. They were in his office space, it had been almost eleven months since the events of that horrid Hawkins Fourth of July. Neil had been booted from the now Mayfield house back in mid-December, just before the start of Christmas break. Six days before Doctor Owens dropped a still healing Billy Hargrove off an hour before Christmas Day.
It’s May fourth now, and her mom had just started getting rid of whatever had been left of Neil’s things. First, it was the garage and the shed outback, the storm cellar, then what used to be a shared bedroom now belonged to her mother. Then it came to the office, a locksmith had been called to come and remove the locks off Billy’s door and the office door. The whole situation was messy, what it came down to was her mom finally losing her shit on Neil for finally losing his shit on Billy for dropping a mug. Max shuddered remembering the way Neil had him pinned to the wall by his hair. She never really heard her mom scream before, she hardly raised her voice at either of them.
Then, of course, things got messy. Billy ended up killing Neil. Ripped him up into little tiny pieces in the backyard. The government had swept him away for six days, pulling strings here and there to cover up Neil’s sudden demise. The town’s local paper said it was some freak animal attack, probably some rabies-infected mountain lion had attacked her poor old stepfather while he was taking out the garbage.
“Mom I promised the party I’d be at the arcade four minutes ago! I have to skate there and it’s going to take me forever at this rate.” Max grumbled out while thumping back down to the floor, tossing her wild hair out of her face. She glared over at her mom, pulling at the carpet fibers with a snort.
“Max, please. I know you want to go hang out with those boys, but a little extra time with your mother isn’t going to kill you. I’ll tell Billy when he gets home to let you stay a little later. I’ll push dinner back since it’s the weekend, or we can order pizza in.” Her mother smiled up at her, Max sighed, it was a good compromise.
“Fine, but what are you even looking for, I thought the lawyer said he’d look through all of this junk.” The younger got to her feet, looking around at all of the paper scattered about. “Why can’t we just throw it all out? Or shred it or something.” Her mom sighed, setting the papers down on the edge of the desk, finished and clearly not what she was looking for. Susan looked around, pushing herself up from the chair.
“Well, some of it the lawyer can handle, but I’m more interested to see what he was so careful to hide in here. Not to mention I have seen nothing with Billy’s name on it.” Max circled around to Neil's desk, yanking open the drawers and digging around to see if Neil had a snack drawer like some of her teachers. Dustin and Lucas both taught her that most of the teachers they had for their shared classes, had snack drawers. They mostly were the drawers to the left, closest to the windows. Easy pickings they called it.
“It’s just so odd, there are no records of Billy anywhere, no social security number, no hospital records, no police reports, no school records or vaccination records! It’s like Neil just, never even had a child.” Susan shook her head, looking around the room once more, she had already emptied out all the locked file cabinets by the time Max got home from school.
“Maybe Billy’s real Mom has them, back in California,” Max suggested, moving onto the next drawer to poke through. The drawer stuck about halfway through, she rolled her eyes and yanked on the drawer again trying to get it to unstick. Her teeth ground together in irritation, she gripped both sides of the drawer, planting her feet, took a deep breath, and yanked as hard as she could. Max let out a gasp in surprise as the drawer popped free and she flew back. Landing flat on her ass, the drawer's contents flew all over the floor. Susan was by her side helping her up, doting over her daughter to make sure she was okay.
“Maxine please, you need to be more careful you could have gotten hurt.” Susan shook her head and started picking up the scattered pens, staples, and sticky notes. Max snorted, slowly maneuvering the drawer so she could stand up without putting it down. Once up she placed it on the desk, then crouched down to see if she damaged the drawer tracks. Her eyes widened seeing a thick purple folder hanging down.
“Hey mom, I think I found something.” Susan stood up, pushing her glasses up into her hair. Max reached in the space left by the absent drawer, tugging the folder free. She straightened up, eyes wide as she read the neat handwriting on the small tab that jutted out further beyond the papers that were stuffed in it.
William.
“Who’s William…?” Max handed the file off, following her Mother over to that old armchair. Susan sat down, crossing her legs and quickly flicking the file open. Her glasses perched back on her nose as she scanned the first few documents. “Mom? Does Neil have like, another kid or something?” Susan shook her head, flipping a page over and reading the next.
“Well, this changes things.” She muttered, eyes narrowing as she continued reading.
“What?” Max cocked her head to the side, she was getting impatient with all this ominous waiting. Her mother sighed, handing her a sheet of paper. Max was eager to snatch it up, looking over it, she found it was just a normal birth certificate.
The top read the State of California, Certification of Vital record. Her eyes followed the boxes from left to right; Name of child - First; William, Middle; Ocean, Last ( Family ); Hargrove, Sex; Male, Date of Birth MM/DD/YYYY; 04/19/1966, Hour; 0300. Everything in the Place of Birth section was covered in a layer of heavy dark ink. She moved over to the next section. Father of Child; Neil Hargrove. The Mother of Child section was also covered in a heavy layer of the same ink.
“Mom, is this, is this Billy’s birth certificate?” Max looked up, her mom was still flipping through papers. From where she stood Max could see more papers with dark ink covering up information. “Mom..?”
“Max why don’t you head to the Arcade, I think I found what I needed. All of this will have to go to the lawyer, not to mention I’ll have to make some calls to make sure this paperwork is legitimate.” Susan sighed, closing the file and standing up, making her way out of the room. She glanced back. “Have fun dear, if you need any extra change grab some from my purse on your way out. I’ll see you and Billy when you get home.” Max nodded, the paper still clutched in her hand at his side. As soon as her mother disappeared in the hall, Max made a dash to her room, picking up her Walkman. Her brows furrowed as she glanced over at the clock.
It was 4:13 pm. She was late.
“Hey, it’s Max, I’m on my way to the arcade. Over.” She threw the Walkman down on the bed, grabbing her backpack and dumping out her school books. On second thought, she threw the walkmen in, and the birth certificate then crossed the room over to her small vanity. Grabbing the bag of quarters she’d been saving up all week.
“Max! What the hell have you been doing? Dustin is almost about to beat your Dig Dug score from last week! You better get down here! Over.” She smiled, hearing Lucas come over the channel and the shouts from the others in the background was somehow comforting. She quickly scooped her bag off the bed and strode out the door down the hallway. She hoped that El would be there at least, she and Mike had begged Hopper to let her out just this once to come and enjoy the arcade. Maybe learn a few games.
“Max!” She turned, the front door half-open, her mom peeking out from the entrance of the kitchen, phone to her ear. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Billy, I don’t want him worked up until I know for sure. He doesn’t need the extra stress right now.” She nodded, waving her mom off as she stepped out the door, running through the porch door then down the steps. She was on her board in a few breaths, skating down the road, wind in her hair as she thought.
How the hell do you get Billy out of William?
It was one of the million questions that swarmed in her head. They kept Max occupied the whole skate to Hawkin’s arcade. She practically kicked down the door in search of the Party, board tucked under her arm as she weaved through the other kids and tall flashing machines. Head whipping around wildly until someone grabbed her by the shoulders and steered her to the PAC-MAN game.
“They are over here, El and Mike are currently kicking some kids high score for one of the top three spots.” Max grinned at hearing Steve’s voice, of course, he was here, how could she have forgotten today he was buying them all Pizza?
Mike and El were pressed up against each other while he tugged at the joystick and directed El to push buttons every so often. Lucas was by her side, fist-bumping her alongside Dustin, Will was leaning against the machine. Will gave her a small wave which she returned as she knocked her shoulder up against Lucas’.
“Took you long enough Mad Max. We thought you weren’t coming.” Max scoffed and rolled her eyes, gently punching at Lucas’ side. The boy chuckled, throwing an arm over her shoulder as they watched Mike coach El through the motions.
“Sorry it took me so long, my mom is still dealing with Neil’s crap. Are we sitting for pizza soon?” She glanced around seeing that Steve had already vanished.
“Yeah, Steve will be back with it soon. Is your mom cooking something gross? You are like never this excited for pizza unless it’s for D&D.” Max sighed, her grip on her backpack strap tightening. Lucas looked at her in confusion, eyes filled with worry. “Max, what is it?”
The Party all turned their attention to her, the GAME OVER block letters flashed on the screen, illuminating the worry in Mike’s eyes, and the confusion in El’s. They all had one thing on their mind; The Upside Down and the Mindflayer.
“It’s about Billy.” She gnawed at her lip, the mystery of the folder still sitting at the front of her mind. “We’ll talk about it later, I want to kick Dustin’s ass at Dig Dug first. Show El how it’s done.”