Chapter Text
Hawkins smells exactly the same.
Cold air, pine needles, and that faint, dusty scent old Midwest houses get in the winter, like the walls have been storing Christmases since 1970. I breathe it in when stepping out of the car. My coat still smells like smoke, like the burnt wreck of what used to be our living room, but Hawkins cuts through all of it.
Dad parks in front of the Buckleys’ house and exhales. He keeps both hands on the steering wheel for a second longer than necessary.
“You ready, mor?” he asks.
No.
“Yeah,” I say.
As I step towards the unlit house, I notice a shadow wandering in the living room, and some movement in the top floor. My shoes crunch through the layer of dead leaves on the sidewalk while I try not to step on the slugs and worms on the soil. I follow Dad up the front porch, dragging the smaller of our two surviving suitcases. It wobbles slightly when I tug it behind me, one of the wheels molten just enough to become a nuisance.
Dad looks over his shoulder before knocking with a forced smile on his face. He’s trying to look brave. He failed at that somewhere around the airport.
The Buckley’s porch light flicks on, and then the door opens, and Melissa Buckley gasps like we’re ghosts she accidentally invited in. She smells like cinnamon, she always has. The scent hits me before her arms do.
“Diana?” she says, and then, “Alejandro!” like she can’t decide who to hug first. She goes for both of us, arms full of cold cheeks and suitcases, and the last ten years of Christmases.
She pulls back just enough to look at me, cupping my face like I’m seven years old again. “Sweetheart… look at you. You’ve grown so much...Alejandro...you look so, um... ” she looks at my dad, unable to say what he looks like. Understandable, he looks like shit. Soot on his hair and under his nails, tired eyes that don’t really seem to know where they are, and a smell of smoke that may be from the fire or his smoking habit when stuff goes wrong.
I hear footsteps thundering on the stairs before she can say anything else.
“Who’s here? Mom, who’s-”
Robin bursts into the doorway like she’s late to her own surprise party.
She stops. Blinks.
Her hair is shorter than last year.
Her eyes are exactly the same, scanning me: the smoke-stained coat, the too-long flight on my face, the small smile I’m trying to fake.
Then:
“Angel?” she says.
The name hits me right in the ribs. For a split second, I’m back to being little Diana, following her around the house with hair in my eyes, paints on my fingers, and a stuffed rabbit under my arm.
And my stupid mouth smiles without asking permission.
“Hi, Angel,” I say before I can stop myself. I’m too old for the nickname now, but it slips out anyway, the way it always does when I’m too tired or too relieved or too close to Robin Buckley.
Her grin is ridiculous, wide, sudden, and almost disbelieving, like she wasn’t sure I’d still say it. You’d never see that in school hallways or at Midnight Mass.
She doesn’t hug me. Robin and I don’t do that anymore. We used to be attached by the hip when we were little, but that has now faded, although I wish it hadn’t. Instead, she steps aside, like she’s opening a secret passage I forgot existed, offering me a hand which I take.
“Come in,” she says. “You look freezing.”
Dad carries the bigger suitcase, the one that survived the fire, while I drag the smaller one behind me. It wobbles on the linoleum as well. The Buckley house looks exactly the same as it does every Christmas: crochet blankets, crooked photos, that ceramic snowman with the chipped hat, a lava lamp that’s too yellow and has seen better days, a carpet that’s always slightly crooked.
For a second, it hurts.
It’s too familiar.
Like nothing burned down except us.
Melissa’s fussing over the thermostat, Dad’s insisting we don’t need anything, falling into rapid talking, insurance, flights, how terrible the fire was. Their voices blend into the background, going into the kitchen, leaving Robin and me in our own smaller bubble. She’s just standing there, watching me with that tilted-head look she gets when she’s trying to decode something.
“You smell like smoke,” she says gently.
I shrug. “Yeah, so does everything else, so I hope you don't mind it. ”
She nods like she knows something about things sticking to you even after the fire’s out.
“You okay?” she asks quietly.
I nod. Lie. “Just tired.”
She nods back, like she understands the lie too.
“C’mon,” she murmurs. “You can crash in my room until we figure everything else out. I cleaned it last week. Miracles do happen.”
I snort. It feels good.
I follow her up the stairs I used to climb with smaller feet, listening to her talk about school like everything is normal. Like we’re just picking up where we left off. Maybe we are.
Hawkins isn’t home, but it sure is the closest thing to home I have left.
And when I step into her room, with the posters I recognize and the new ones I don’t, something in my chest loosens. I think , dangerously, that maybe I can be someone here.
We both sit. She’s at her desk chair; I’m on the floor like I always used to be. For a moment, neither of us says anything.
“I thought you weren’t coming this year,” she admits.
“Neither did I,” I say. “Until the house… you know.”
She nods. Her eyes flick over me again, checking, assessing, worrying.
“Are you gonna be okay?” she asks.
The question is too short for what it’s trying to carry.
“I don’t know,” I say truthfully.
She nods again, slower this time. Her foot taps the floor, her tell when she wants to say something bigger.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay,” she says. “Then we won’t.”
We don’t. But she stays there, sitting across the room, like she’s guarding me. Like she remembers that I always hated sleeping the first night in any house.
Hours pass. Robin’s dad gets home, we have dinner, hang out for a bit, listen to the silent record on the spinning table.
Everyone else goes to bed. Robin and I lie awake, her on the bed, me on the floor mattress Melissa set up.
The lamp is dim. The wind rattles the window.
“You’re staying for a while, right?” Robin asks into the dark.
“Dad said… maybe a few months. Maybe longer.”
“Like… permanently?”
“I don’t know,” I breathe.
Silence.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
My chest hurts. In a good way.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
She fidgets with the bedsheets, turning to my side. “We’ll make space. Or you can share my room. Or we’ll kick my dad into the garage. Lots of options.”
I laugh quietly. “Your dad won’t go in the garage.”
“You don’t know that. For you, he might.”
I don’t respond because I don’t know how.
She shifts entirely, hair falling over her cheek, watching me.
“I’m really glad you’re here, Angel,” she says softly.
I want to tell her that I’m not, not really, that I don’t know who in their right mind would be happy that their cousin is over at their house, in this circumstance specifically.
But I just say:
“Me too.”
When the house goes quiet, I stare at the ceiling. I listen to Robin’s breathing from the bed above me. I listen to my own heartbeat, too fast, too human. I think: Maybe this is where things start changing, but I hope they don’t.
And it’s not a bad thought.
Not yet.