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Holly doesn’t know why, but she keeps expecting some drastic change.
The world almost ended, after all. Hawkins was crawling with the military for eighteen months, and their roads were patched up haphazardly with pieces of metal to hide what lay underneath. But now it’s almost garishly, utopically happy, and how is Holly supposed to just… go back to fourth grade after all that?
She expects some drastic change, but her father still slumps into his chair in the living room every night and all but pretends the rest of them aren’t home. She expects some drastic change, but Thomas, who called her a bitch and she then rescued from a demon, goes right back to turning his nose up at her in the hallways. She expects some drastic change, but her music teacher still snaps at her for being tone deaf, and Mrs. Harris still tells her to get her nose out of her books, and Mike still calls her a pest (but maybe there’s a little more affection in his voice than before).
There’s a million little changes, though, the most surprising being that she and Dipshit Derek are- if not friends, then something pretty close to it.
“You ever been to the arcade?” Derek asks her after school one day as they’re walking out to the bus. He’s careful only to approach her when Mary isn’t around, and Holly is surprised he’s perceptive enough to notice to do so.
“A couple times.” She shrugs her shoulders. “With Mike and his friends, when Mom made him take me. He’d never give me any money to play, though.”
“I have a shit ton of quarters,” Derek says, his face lighting up in excitement. “You’ve got to try Dig Dug! We could go after school? Tomorrow?”
Max likes Dig Dug, Holly thinks, and for a split second she thinks she can ask the older girl to come, but then it hits her like a truck. Right. The wheelchair. The leftover coma stuff.
“Yeah, sure, but you can’t laugh at me, okay? I’m going to suck at first.” Derek draws his brows together, almost looking apologetic, but before he can open his mouth, Holly finishes with, “But after I warm up, I am so going to kick your ass.”
She has so much fun she almost forgets this is her old nemesis. Derek gives her a crash course of each of the games before turning her loose, and Holly takes them on with vigor. She keeps coming back to Dig Dug (it’s the Max in her). She kind of sucks at all of them.
Derek pokes at her a little, but Holly gives it right back. She might not be able to match her talk in the games, but she steals his bag of quarters and goes running in circles around the arcade, laughing as he tries to keep up.
They decide to come again next Wednesday. Nancy drops them off. And the Wednesday after that, and the Wednesday after that.
Her favorite change, though, is Max moving in next door.
It’s supposed to kind of be a secret, Max explains to her, something about the general inappropriateness of a high school girl living with her boyfriend. But Holly doesn’t care, so long as Max is only a few yards from her at all times.
She goes careening over to the Sinclairs’ at least three afternoons a week. Everyone’s nice about it. The Sinclairs have lived next door since Holly was born, and she knows all of them fairly well. While Holly hadn’t been one to barge into their house before all of this, Lucas had barged into her own house enough times for her to think it was more than fair.
Lucas himself didn’t mind at all when Holly came over for Max time. Sometimes he’d stay, other times he’d leave the two of them to their own devices and head off to some other part of the house. Holly never minded either way. Lucas was solid, the kind of person you could trust if you needed help, and she never quite saw Max’s face look so soft with anyone else.
Today, she finds not only Max and Lucas in Lucas’ bedroom, but Mike as well. “Hey, Holls,” her brother says easily, tipping Lucas’ desk chair back on two legs. He has this casual, self-assured air about him that Holly wishes she could gather into a jar and keep for herself.
She looks up to Mike more than anyone else in the world, she thinks. She wonders if she’ll ever have the guts to tell him.
“I didn’t know you were here, too,” she says, slipping off her boots at the doorway. She goes to sit on the carpet, but Lucas gestures towards his place on the bed beside Max, slipping to the floor with a squeeze of his girlfriend’s hand.
“Weirdly enough, these are my friends,” Mike says, but Holly knows the annoyance in his voice is fake. He’s smiling at her, that sort of sideways grin that he used to give her when she was younger and he’d sneak her extra pieces of candy before bedtime. It’s his cool-big-brother smile. Holly much prefers it to the asshole brother smirk when he’s trying to push her buttons.
“Max likes me better,” she tells him, scooting back on the bed so her back rests on the wall and her shoulder brushes up against Max’s.
Max smirks. “Not even a contest. You’re definitely my third favorite Wheeler. Fourth. Hell, Ted might even rank higher.”
Mike looks at her with disdain. Holly just snorts at the idea of her dad being better than Mike at anything. (Except maybe driving. Mike is a shit driver. No one in the family would even get in the car to practice with him anymore.)
“Who let Holly so far up the ranks, anyways?” Mike tips the chair back even farther, and secretly Holly hopes he’ll lose his balance and tumble to the floor. “She was like, in kindergarten when you met her.”
Max tries and fails to ruffle Holly’s hair. Holly smiles to let her know she understands. Max’s hands are just about back in working order, but she’s still gaining control over her arms. “Cause Holly’s a lot less of a shithead than you are, duh.”
Lucas grins up at both of them from the floor. “She’s kinda got a point, Mike.”
Mike calls him a traitor and throws balled up pieces of paper off the desk at him. Max asks if the discarded papers are love notes and urges Holly to grab one that’s landed on the bed and unfold it to see what it says. Lucas starts throwing the papers back, laughing, as Max eggs him on and yells “Hit him in the head!” Holly squints and tries to read Lucas’ scribbles, noting, “Your writing is really shit,” and he throws a paper over his shoulder at her, and they’re all laughing, and this is her brother and his friends, but now she gets to keep them, too.
Josh asks her to partner with him for their science project, and Holly feels the familiar butterflies resurface.
“Yeah, for sure!” she says, smiling wide enough that she knows her dimples are showing, because a couple weeks ago Steve tousled her hair and told her she was pretty cute, especially with her Wheeler smile. Holly knows that was mostly just his leftover Nancy feelings talking, but every compliment means a lot, coming from Steve.
“Okay, okay, cool,” Josh says, sitting down in the desk next to her. “So um. It’s a pretty big project. We should probably work on it outside of school. Your house, or mine?”
The thought of going to Josh’s house kind of makes Holly want to throw up, and also she doesn’t think she can go there by herself without freaking out. But Josh in her house is probably worse, because her mom will fawn all over him, and Mike won’t leave her alone, and probably Dustin and Steve and Will and the entire world will be at her house, like always. And Holly’s getting ahead of herself, because they’re just doing a stupid project about the states of matter and that’s literally it.
“Let’s do the library?” she says hopefully. “For research. We need lots of notes and… yeah.”
“Yeah, okay.” He goes back to his own desk, and that’s that.
“How do you know you’re ready for a boyfriend?” Holly asks that afternoon. Max chokes on air.
When she’s recovered enough to form words, she looks at Holly with raised eyebrows. “Where’s this coming from? You have someone in mind?”
Holly’s cheeks burn as she looks away from Max’s probing stare. But she knows her secrets will be safe here, so she admits, “Maybe. Kinda. There’s this boy Josh, in my class at school, he was one of the kids Mr. Whatsit took with me. But I kind of liked him before that? We’re working on a project now, and it’s just the two of us, so I’ve been thinking. How do I know? If I just want to be friends with him or more?”
“Josh!” Max’s eyes dawn with recognition at the name. “He was one of the kids that Lucas tried to take down in the tunnels, to run out of Hawkins when Vecna was going all kidnapper on you guys.”
“He was?” Holly’s never heard this story. She doesn’t talk much one-on-one with Lucas, and Josh has never brought up their experience in the other dimension, though she’s discussed it separately with both Debbie and Derek.
“Yeah. He’ll never forget either of those kids, he was pretty torn up for awhile about not being able to protect them. But Josh especially. He said he reminded him of himself a bit, when he was little.”
Holly smiles. “I’m not sure Josh is that cool.”
“Oh, Lucas is cool now?” Max throws her head back in a laugh. “That boy is the biggest dork to ever enter Hawkins High, except for your own brother. You’re giving him too much credit.”
Holly can’t help the giggles that slip out. “Okay, he’s a dork, whatever. Back to my question now.”
“Right. Boyfriends. Holly, you’ve got all the time in the world for that. Don’t rush yourself.”
“No, but I still want to know! Like, what about with you? How could you tell?” And okay, maybe Holly’s just nosy, but this could be useful. So sue her.
“I mean, I didn’t even want one, when I met Lucas,” Max says, a half smile crossing her face. “But he convinced me.” She snaps back to attention in an instant. “Wait, shit, that came out wrong. Holly, never let a boy convince you to do anything, you got that?”
Holly nods quickly. “So… what did you mean, then?”
Max smiles. It’s gentle without being pitying, which Holly appreciates. So many people treat her with kid gloves, even after, but Max never has. “If it’s the right person, you’ll be able to feel it. In here.” She touches her heart. “You might have doubts, like, all the time, about going through with it, about yourself. But you’ll never doubt that it’s supposed to be them.”
(She could’ve asked the same question to Mike, Nancy, her mom, and gotten equally eye-opening and noteworthy advice. But each of those conversations had the potential to be awkward, except for maybe Nancy. And you could call her disloyal all you wanted, but nothing she witnessed in her own house really measured up to the love story she watched like a soap opera next door.)
Karen Wheeler is a pretty good mom. Holly’s always thought that, even during that long stretch of the time when she felt the unhappiest. There was a reason her mom was the only one she told about seeing Mr. Whatsit. There was a reason her mom was the one she ran to for help.
Surviving the end of the world doesn’t automatically make Holly above the rest of her childhood feelings. She still cries when she fails her math test. She still cries when she grates on Mike’s nerves too hard and he snaps on her, even though he comes to apologize later. Most recently, she’s crying because of her father.
She still goes to her mom for help. She does so right now.
Holly doesn’t really know how to describe the overwhelming, gaping disappointment she feels when she talks to her father now. Nancy says that he knows what happened to him, that he saw the demogorgon in the house and even brought it up once, after. But it was just easier for him to brush it to the back of his mind and act like nothing ever happened. Like it was the same old Hawkins as always. (“He shouldn’t just decide it gets to be easier,” Holly says angrily to Nancy. “That wasn’t an option for the rest of us!” Nancy only shrugs. “But can you blame him for choosing it?”)
“What’s wrong, baby?” her mom asks her, smoothing down one of Holly’s pigtails as she cries. “Did Daddy say something to you?”
“He never says anything,” Holly gasps out, “and that’s the problem! Mom, he knows what happened, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he?”
Her mother’s face softens farther as she sits down next to her. “I think so. He doesn’t talk about it, and I think he’d prefer not to. But that’s not something I’m going to force. If he’d like to pretend that he doesn’t, that’s his choice. We choose differently. We choose to talk, and to have people around us, and that’s what’s better for us. But maybe that’s not what’s better for him.”
“Nothing changes,” Holly sobs, and she can feel the tears dripping off her face into her lap. “Dad just sits in his chair and yells at you, and you and Mike and Nancy let it happen, even though you’ve seen- you’ve done things braver than he can even imagine!”
Her mom’s eyes grow watery, too, and she squeezes Holly’s shoulder. “Sometimes, sweetheart, the bravest thing you can do is just to live.”
In class, Holly’s gaze always slips to Mary at the desk next to hers, fixating on the back of her messy ponytail, at the necklace glinting just below her hair, and wondering what if she just… ripped it off?
Only, she would never. Because she was a good friend. Unlike Mary herself.
(Well, she did have that moment with the radio. But that was life or death. That was only because she had to.)
She wants to confront her, sometimes. She wants to ask her how she could ever do that to her- reach for Holly’s neck and pull the beaded string so tight it bit into her throat, so tight she gasped for breath- but even thinking about saying it feels like she’s choking all over again.
She opens her mouth once to do it. She ends up red and gasping as Mary hovers over her, concerned and calling her name.
But with each passing day, Mr. Whatsit’s world feels a lot more like a fuzzy dream, and she wonders how much Mary even remembers. If it’s worth bringing up, and the inevitable fight that will follow.
Mary’s been her best friend since kindergarten, after all. She doesn’t want to mess that up now. Who would she watch scary movies with, and who would swap beads with her for bracelets, and who would paint her nails just so, never once missing and getting on Holly’s skin? Who would sneak into Mike’s room with her and switch around all his stuff, and bike with her to the diner and the library, and push her on the merry-go-round at recess?
No one, probably. And sometimes the bravest thing to do is just to live, so Holly keeps her mouth shut, and smiles, and forgives, and tries to forget.
“Do you like video games?” she asks Debbie as they’re riding to the Millers’ house one day after school to work on homework.
Debbie shrugs. “I guess. I haven’t played them much, but I think they’d be fun.”
Derek needs more friends, and Debbie is the sort of person who tries very, very hard to do the right thing. She forgives easily, she hands out kindness like confetti, and in seeing that Holly’s extended the olive branch to Derek, Debbie will surely follow.
“Well, you should come and play with me at the arcade!” Holly says eagerly. “On Wednesday. I always go with Derek, and it’s so much fun, I swear.”
Debbie’s face scrunches in confusion. “With Derek? I don’t know, Holly…”
“Just once, okay? Pleaseee?” She knows if she asks, Derek will tone things down, but she might not even have to ask. He’s found that balance lately of knowing when to quit while he’s ahead, when it’s okay to make jokes at her expense and when Holly would rather him not.
“Just once,” Debbie agrees, but if Holly has it her way, once will become twice, three, four times.
She ends up being right. Her and Derek stick to Wednesdays. Debbie joins them.
She doesn’t know why, but she never ends up asking Mary to go.
Or actually, she does know why. It just makes her feel all squirmy on the inside to admit it. She likes having this one thing just for her. Where she gets to be the one who organizes what they do, and the one who brings them together. She never got to be that person when Mary was around. And it’s not that she dislikes her best friend for that, exactly… it’s just that she might be taking advantage of her absence.
Mary notices eventually, though. There’s only so many excuses Holly can make on Wednesdays before she grows suspicious. And when Holly is busy, Debbie is usually her next option, so when Debbie, too, is turning her down with a kind smile, Mary isn’t just suspicious. She’s angry.
“I know you’re avoiding me, Holly Wheeler,” she hisses on a Thursday, the latest scorn still fresh. “There’s no way you just so happen to be busy every Wednesday of the entire school year. We have all the same homework, I know it’s not a project. Are you hanging out with Debbie without me?”
Holly doesn’t want to lie, not when she’s already been caught out like this. “I mean… kind of. But not like that, I swear! We’ve been going to the arcade with Derek, it was his idea, and I… didn’t think you’d be into that?”
Mary rolls her eyes. “Holly, I like the arcade. I go on Fridays with my brother. You know that.”
Holly bites her lip. “It was more about Derek. We’re friends now, for real, and I feel like you don’t get that. I didn’t want you to be mean to him, or tell me that I shouldn’t be.”
Mary takes a minute or two to ponder this before she speaks. “Just because I don’t want to be best friends with the dipshit doesn’t mean I can’t be like, civil,” she says. “It’s once a week, right? I can do that. I’ll be nice. Plus I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I destroy him in Dragon’s Lair.”
So Mary joins the arcade squad, and it goes better than Holly expected. So much so, in fact, that it carries through the rest of the school year and all the way into the summer.
Holly has nightmares, sometimes, about tubes of flesh latched onto her face, about men with pocket watches and the Black Thing looming over Hawkins. She always wakes up screaming.
“I’m Holly the Heroic,” she says to herself, shaky and shattered and weak. “I’m Holly the Heroic. I’m Holly the Heroic.” The replacement figurine Mike gave her sits on her bedside table (she can’t bring herself to wear necklaces anymore) and she holds it tight now in her fist. It still comforts her a little, but no matter what Max tells her she knows it’s just a toy. She’s not heroic. There’s nothing for her to face now, and maybe living is being brave but she sure as hell isn’t being brave right now.
Her door flies open. It’s Nancy, a gun cocked in her hand like it belongs there. So of course, Holly keeps on screaming.
“What’s wrong?” she asks frantically, pointing the thing in every corner like she thinks a demogorgon will jump out. “Did you see something, Holly?”
“No,” Holly gasps, catching her breath. “I mean, yeah, but just a nightmare. I’m okay.”
Nancy drops the gun to the floor and comes to sit on the edge of her bed. “I get them too, sometimes. Was it about him? Vecna?”
Holly shrugs. “I never have them about Vecna. I have them about Mr. Whatsit. His human version. I kind of think that’s worse.”
Nancy nods, taking her completely seriously for once. Holly appreciates her for it. “Definitely. Human monsters are the worst kind.”
“How do you get rid of your nightmares?” She wills her voice not to tremble. She’s Holly the Heroic. She is. (Or maybe not.)
“They still come sometimes, Holly. But I always wake up. I always look around my room and focus on the little things. Stuff from after. New posters on my walls. If things keep changing, that means we’re still here. That means it’s real. He’s gone.”
Holly looks at her little figurine, and thinks it might just help her after all. “Will you stay in here for a while?”
Nancy smiles. “Of course.”
Josh stops by her desk on his way to the pencil sharpener, a nervous smile on his face. “Hey, Holly.”
Holly used to wish on her stray eyelashes that he’d pay attention to her, but she doesn’t even feel the familiar jolt in her stomach. She just feels… neutral. “What’s up?”
“Um… um…” He leans on the edge of her desk, his smile slipping a little. “Do you wanna… come watch my game this weekend?”
The smile comes to Holly’s face automatically, but she isn’t sure what to do about it, after that, so it kind of sits there, frozen, as she thinks about what it means. If Josh is asking her this, it means he likes her. It has to. Jennifer goes to all of the games for Thomas. But… Max said Holly would know. When she was ready to have a boyfriend. And she has no idea what she wants.
“Sure!” Holly says, a little too fast. “But like, just cause we’re friends, ‘kay? Nothing… else.”
Josh takes this in stride and nods his head. He doesn’t look too bent out of shape about it, so Holly figures he must not know what he wants yet, either.
“Hey, Josh?” she calls to him before he can get too far away. He turns back around with the same nervous smile, and maybe this isn’t quite the right thing to do, but she kind of gets the feeling that it is. “Some of us go to the arcade after school on Wednesdays. You should come, okay?”
Josh’s smile melts into a real one. “Yeah, okay!”
So maybe some things have changed. Holly’s in fifth grade now, she still doesn’t have a boyfriend, and she might not be heroic anymore, either. But she’s still being brave (living is being brave, after all, her mom said) and she likes to think she’s making a difference in her little corner of the world. And isn’t that enough?