#⟨⟪ Baby Kowalski is so blunt. ⟫⟩

[urdearestmom]

Lights, Sound, Screwdriver! | Chapter 2

Max and El had simply been minding their own business in study hall when in front of them who should appear but Troy Harrington.

“Hey, Mayfield, you free this Saturday?”

Max groaned and slammed her head down on her history textbook. “Why, Harrington?”

He smirked. “It’s time for that date, baby.”

Max buried her head further into the pages. “I’ve told you no a million times, can you just fuck off already?”

Troy came closer. “I could fuck you, instead,” he leered. That was El’s breaking point. She had been fingering the screwdriver in her pocket ever since she’d seen Troy enter the library, just knowing he was going to come bother them.

“Or you could fuck off instead, just like Max said,” she answered, standing to her full height and holding her arms out threateningly.

Troy scoffed at her. “Or what?”

El whipped the screwdriver from her pocket and in an instant Troy was bent over clutching his stomach, wheezing. “Or that. Your choice.” She sat back down and put the tool away.

Troy looked up at her with something akin to terror in his eyes. “You crazy bitch! She stabbed me! You freak! She stabbed me!” He cried. Mr. Kowalski, the librarian, came over to shush them.

“Mr. Harrington, what is going on? You need to be quiet!”

“She stabbed me! With a screwdriver!” He motioned to El. Max had yet to remove her face from her textbook.

Mr. Kowalski looked over his glasses at the girl. “Is this true, Miss Hopper?”

She shrugged. “He deserved it,” she answered defiantly.

The old man’s face darkened. “Go to the office. Now.”

“I’ll be back later,” El said, patting Max’s shoulder. Max nodded, head still down.

“Miss Hopper!”

She held her hands up. “I’m going! Geez, get your panties out of that knot, will ya?”

She could hear him grumbling about kids and their disrespect for authority all the way to the door. Maybe you should pay more attention to these stupid boys and their disrespect for women! Troy so deserved what he got.

Upon entering the office, El saw that other than the secretary, there was one other person there, and it was Mike Wheeler. She knew him from classes they’d shared and from the one time Hopper had brought a crying little blonde girl into the station and Mike had come flying inside in a panic, looking for his sister.

Ever since the first day of eighth grade, El had thought he was cute. She had seen him in the hall at the start of the day and she recognized him in her homeroom and third period class by his sweater (it was kind of hideous, but he somehow made it work). Over the years, they had had several classes together, and he was a student that was very engaged in the classes he liked, so she got to hear him speak a lot. He was enthusiastic and compelling, able to make even the most boring topic sound interesting. She could have listened to him talk for hours; she liked his voice that much. And sometimes she caught him watching her, and when she did he would look away as if he’d been burned (it made her feel fuzzy).

Of course, Max only knew that El thought he was cute and had somewhat of a crush on him. If Max knew the whole extent of El’s feelings about this Mike, she would never let up on the teasing. El had already made that mistake with Hopper because she was very blunt and told things as they were, so when he asked her about school she had told him all about this kid she was so interested in, and after that he would randomly ask for updates on the situation. El would always duck her head in embarrassment and mumble about how he would never like a girl like her.

She was an outcast, she supposed. She liked to wear black and all her jeans were ripped, and she carried around weapons of varying bluntness to stab deserving people. Her only real friend was Max, who no one really liked either because she didn’t try to fit in with most of the other girls in their grade. She was a skateboarder who liked the arcade and forest adventures.

Hopper would always try to cheer her up when she got like that, reminding her that she was wonderful the way she was, and if a boy couldn’t see that then he wasn’t worth it.

Either way, El was now confronted with two options: ignore him, or take the opportunity presented and finally talk to him. Suck it up, Hopper, she thought, before taking the seat next to him and speaking.

“So what are you in for?” She asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Be confident! She felt like her stomach was about to erupt with nervousness.

Mike looked at her and then looked behind him, as if she was talking to someone else. “M-me?”

“Yes, you, who else would I be talking to?” Shit, was that too forceful?

He looked like he was a little scared by her, which she could understand but which also made her a little sad. Was she really that intimidating? “I-I don’t know. Um, they just want to know if it’s cool if I miss my classes tomorrow to run sound and lights for a presentation in the auditorium.” Ah yes, sound and lights. El also knew that he was president of their school’s AV club.

She nodded, of course he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for anything. He was a model student. “Cool.”

“What are you in for?” She didn’t know how to answer, because she didn’t want to scare him off or something, but she also didn’t like lying.

“I stabbed a kid with a screwdriver.”

His eyes widened. “We lead very different lives, then.”

Shit, I just blew it. “That we do.”

“Well I’m sure he deserved it. What’d he do?” Wait a minute, he was actually agreeing with her? It seemed he wasn’t weirded out by her slight violent tendencies after all.

“Existed, in front of me,” she said sarcastically. Okay, now he looks scared. “I’m kidding! He was being a dick. Troy Harrington, you know him?”

Mike inhaled. “You bet. Biggest asshole this side of Indiana.”

El almost laughed. Good, she and Max weren’t the only ones with that opinion of Troy. “Well, he was trying, once again, to ask my friend Max on a date. She’s told him no about a thousand times, honestly, when will he get the point? So, I stabbed him and he went crying to Kowalski like the little baby that he is.”

Mike snorted and she felt a sense of pride at him having found her story amusing. She suddenly felt very comfortable. She wasn’t afraid of him being scared of her now that he had almost laughed.

“Sounds like he did deserve it, after all. Why’d you have a screwdriver?”

El looked him directly in the eyes, which was hard but worth it because his eyes were so pretty. It also added to the drama of her next statement. “To stab people who deserve it.”

“Half this school is screwed, then,” he sighed, slumping down a little bit and glancing at her as if to gauge her reaction to what he’d said.

Did he just- AAAAAAAA HE TOLD ME A JOKE! She started giggling. “Oh my god, did you really just make that joke?”

“Sorry, was it lame?” Now he looked disappointed, as if his joke hadn’t worked.

“A little. But it was cute.” Now or never, Ellie. “You’re cute.” She steeled herself for a weird look or a swift rejection, but instead Mike just started blushing violently.

“I am?” How is he unaware of his own cuteness?

She nodded, now trying to appear confident and suave but really trying not to squeal because he was BLUSHING at her compliment. “I’ve always thought you were cute. Max thinks I’m insane, but I guess it’s good ‘cause that means I have less competition.”

“You what?” He asked faintly. Shit, was that too far? Oh god, why am I like this.

El was saved from having to answer by the vice principal coming out of his office and calling Mike. A few minutes after, the principal called her into his office, gave her the usual stern look, then told her she had detention after school and let her go.

She was sad that Mike wasn’t out yet, but also giddy that she had finally managed to talk to him and she didn’t think it had gone too badly. On her way back to study hall, she stopped at Mike’s locker, suddenly having an idea and another burst of confidence. She was having a lot of those today, wasn’t she?

On a piece of ripped out notebook paper, she scrawled her house number and under it she wrote:

Call me. Be prepared, you might get my dad haha

xoxo JH

El almost wrote EH as her initials, but then she remembered that Mike didn’t know her nickname was El or that she went by it, he probably only knew her as Jane.

She could only hope that he had liked Jane enough to call her.