𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒, steve harrington

07 | running up that hill

Chapter Seven
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Running Up That Hill

𓆩♡𓆪

Back in the basement, Dustin, Steve, and Lucas were staring at Max as if she was going to break any second from now. "I know you guys are staring at me," Max accused. The boys instantly deny it and mindlessly pretend to be focused on something else. Olivia rolled her eyes at the boys, understanding where Max was coming from.

            "How you think your eyes are boring the back of my head is protecting me from Vecna, I don't know," Max stated, standing up from the desk and walked over to the them.

            Steve pretends to mindlessly toss a ball back and forth to the ceiling and Max shakes her head. "You can look at me now," She mumbled and hands each of them a freshly folded envelope.

            Olivia glanced down at her envelope curiously that had her name neatly written on it. She knitted her eyebrows together in confusion and looked back up at Max. "Oh and um, give these to Mike, El, and Will. If you can ever get a hold of them again," Max instructed, handing three more letters to Olivia.

            The boys began to open their letters, but Max quickly stopped them, telling them to open them later.

            "I'm sorry, what is this?" Dustin asked.

            "It's um..." Max hesitated, carefully choosing her words. "A fail-safe, for after. You know, if things don't work out."

            If there were only three words Olivia could use to describe Max, it would be brave, courageous, and fierce. Olivia couldn't grasp the idea of possibly loosing Max, the young girl Olivia thought of as a her little sister. She would do anything to protect her, and only hoped that Nancy and Robin would soon have some answers on how to save her. She wasn't going to watch Max die right in front of her eyes, let alone a horrible and gruesome death that was supposedly waiting for her as Eddie described.

            "Wait, woah," Lucas interjected, feeling protective over the girl that he loved. "Max, things are going to work out."

            "No! No, I don't need you to reassure me right now and tell me that it's all gonna work out. Because people have been telling me that my entire life and it's almost never true. It's never true," She scoffed angrily. "I mean, of course this asshole curses me. I should've seen that one coming."

            Olivia could feel the sadness that was lingering in the air, and Olivia wished there was some way she could comfort Max. Olivia desperately wanted to tell Max that everything was going to be okay, but she couldn't bring herself to, not when she was terrified herself and had no idea of what was going to happen.

            This was far more worse than anything they have experienced before. Even worse than monsters. If Olivia went back in time to four years ago, and someone were to tell her everything that she was going to go through, she would have never believed them. Even now, she still sometimes thinks she's stuck in a terrible dream and that one day she'll wake up, back in the real world where monsters didn't exist and Hawkins would just be Hawkins, a quaint and simple town where nothing bad ever happened. She really missed those old days when the only worries she had was passing her history class.

            Tears started to glisten in Max's bright blue eyes. She turned around and picked up Dustin's walkie, her eyes filling with curiosity. "If we go to East Hawkins, will this still reach Pennhurst?" She asked.