Chapter 9

005

• 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐬 •

────✧･ﾟ: *✧･

☄. *. ⋆ Stella fixed the black ribbon in her hair before giving herself a couple more sprays of hairspray. She turned a bit to see the back of her costume before grabbing her candy bucket and leaving her room.

The girl thought her costume seemed pretty good— minus the broken arm, she felt like that kind of ruined the look. She would have said the same about the bruise, but what wasn’t hidden by the sling, she managed to cover up pretty well with makeup, and she had removed the bandage from her knuckles before she got into her costume.

“Steve, I’m ready to go!” She called as she made her way downstairs. She insisted on Steve driving her because she didn’t the wind to ruin her hair or costume on her bike. Plus, it was hard to ride the bike with one arm.

“Alright,” Steve said, grabbing his keys. “Let’s go.”

–

☄. *. ⋆ Steve spoke up as Stella checked her appearance in the sun visor mirror. “Alright, I want you home by 9:30, okay?”

“Okay,” the girl said, shutting the mirror. She opened the door and hopped out of the car when Steve spoke again. “And I’m gonna be at that party, so you and uh, lover-girl will be alone.”

Stella’s eyes widened at her brother’s words. She glared at him before quickly glancing around and behind her, then getting closer to Steve, slightly closing her car door. “Lower your voice! Don’t make that a thing, please.”

Steve waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, fully knowing that he would make it ‘a thing.’

“Go have fun,” he added.

“Later.”

Stella shut the car door and walked up to her friends as Steve drove off.

“Oh, shit, look at you!” Dustin cursed.

“It’s broken!?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, I need this for four to six weeks,” Stella told the boys.

“Shit,” Dustin cursed again.

“Yeah. It’s okay, though, it doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m more upset about it sort of ruining the costume.”

“You look great,” Lucas complimented.

“Yeah,” Mike agreed. “Even if it’s not Ghostbusters-related,” he smiled.

Stella chuckled. “Thanks.”

She turned around when she heard a car pull up, seeing that it was Will. “Hey, man!” She shouted, running up to the boy to give him a one-armed hug. “Nice camera!”

“Thanks,” He hugged back for a moment before pulling away. “What happened to your arm? Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, I fell off my bike,” she explained.

“We almost got run over by Mad Max,” Dustin explained, seeming weirdly excited.

“It was her brother,” Stella added. “We turned and I fell off my bike.”

“Oh. How long do you need that?” Will asked.

“They said four to six weeks.”

Will nodded.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Mike asked rhetorically. “Let’s go!”

Max wasn’t there. Was she even going to show up? Stella hoped she would.

–

☄. *. ⋆ “If I get another Three Musketeers, I’m gonna kill myself!” Lucas exclaimed after they went to a few houses.

“What’s wrong with Three Musketeers?” Dustin asked, sounding offended.

“No one likes Three Musketeers,” Mike added, Will agreeing. “Yeah, it’s just nougat.”

“Woah, ‘just nougat?’ It is top three for me!” Dustin told the group.

“I mean, there’s chocolate too,” Stella added.

“Top three?” Mike asked incredulously.

“Top three!”

“Give me a break.”

“Seriously, I can just eat a whole bowl of nougat, like, straight up.”

“I’ll tolerate it, but I don’t like it very much,” Stella added with a shrug as she looked at her Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

“You guys-” Dustin started, only to get cut off by someone in a Michael Myers costume jumping out from behind a bush, causing the whole group to yelp, flinching back. Lucas let out a high-pitched scream, and Stella almost dropped the candy, accidentally hitting it a few times while she scrambled to catch it, eventually succeeding. She really needed to work on her reflexes. The person removed the mask, laughing.

It was Max.

“Holy shit! You should’ve seen the look on your faces! And you?” She looked at Lucas. “Who screams like that? You sound like a little girl,” Max laughed before walking off. Stella followed after the redhead, who turned around when Stella was the only one tagging along. “Hey, you guys coming? I heard we should hit up Loch Nora, that’s where all the rich people live, right?”

She turned back around to start walking and looked at Stella. “Oh, shit, it’s broken?”

The brunette looked back at Max. “Oh, uh, yeah. I’m okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

After a moment, Max spoke up again. “I like your costume. Alice in Wonderland, right?”

“Hmm?” Stella turned back to the redhead. “Oh, yeah, it is. Thanks. I like your costume, too. I love horror movies.”

Max smiled at Stella, and the brunette reciprocated it. The two made eye contact, holding it for a couple seconds before Dustin’s voice caught their attention. “Oh, here! This house. They always give full sizes,” he told them, approaching another house in Loch Nora.

–

☄. *. ⋆ “See? Another full size. Rich people are such suckers,” Dustin said as they left the house. “Sorry, Stella.”

“You’re rich?” Max asked, turning to Stella, who just shrugged.

“You’re not rich, are you, Max?” Dustin asked, afraid he accidentally offended the redhead. The redhead shook her head. “No, I live up Old Cherry Road.”

“Oh,” Dustin seemed sympathetic.

“No, it’s okay. The street’s good for skating,” Max told them. “Oh, yeah. Totally tubular,” Dustin nodded. Max and Stella looked at each other with confused and amused looks on their faces. Stella’s expression remained while she turned back to Dustin and spoke. “What?”

“What? Did I say it right? Or is it, like, tubular?” He asked, the last word being in an accent.

“No,” Lucas butted in. “It’s like, totally tubular,” he corrected, saying the last two words in an impression of a ‘Surfer Dude.’

“Totally tubular!” Dustin tried, Stella laughing a bit as she joined. “Totally tubular!”

“Totally brodacious, bro!”

“What a gnarly wave, dude!”

“Stop, my ears are hurting!” Max laughed.

–

☄. *. ⋆ “Guys!” A panicked Mike ran up to the group. “Guys, I- I… I can’t find Will.”

“What?” Stella started to panic, too. “He was just there, and I- I looked away for a second, I don’t know where he went!”

“Oh, shit, shit, shit!” Dustin cursed, immediately running the other way, retracing his steps. They all scrambled, looking for Will until they saw Mike run down some stairs, quickly following.

“Holy shit!” Dustin yelled as he made his way down the stairs. “What happened!?” Stella asked once they were all in front of Will. The boy was curled up in a ball on the floor, his knees tucked up to his chest and his back up against a brick wall.

“I don’t know, I just found him like this,” Mike told them. “Come on, I’m gonna get you home. I’m gonna get you safe, okay?” Mike comforted in a soft tone, his demeanor switching entirely as he helped Will up.

“Careful,” Dustin tried to help, but was stopped by Mike.

“Mike,” Dustin spoke.

“Keep trick-or-treating, I’m bored anyways,” Mike told them, a passive-aggressive tone in his voice before walking home with Will. Stella furrowed her eyebrows, confused as to what set the boy off when just an hour ago he was debating nougat with them, perfectly content.

The other two boys decided to call it a night after that, too, so it was just Max and Stella, now.

“Do you wanna go back to my house now?” Stella asked, earning a nod from Max. “Yeah, my feet hurt,” the redhead agreed. Stella chuckled at her answer. “Okay,” she said before heading up the stairs.

“So what happened? To Will just now?” Max asked as they walked.

“Oh, he was just lost for so long, and… some things give him really bad memories or flashbacks, you know?”

Max nodded.

“You wanna do something fun before we go to my house?” Stella asked, a mischievous expression on her face as she looked to Max, who furrowed her eyebrows. “What is it?”

–

☄. *. ⋆ Max and Stella stood outside of Peter Hanson’s house, eggs in hand.

“You really hid eggs yesterday for this?” Max laughed incredulously. The girls had gotten the eggs from a bush around the side of Peter’s house, courtesy of Stella. The brunette shrugged as she smiled. “Yeah,” she chuckled into her sentence. “A broken nose wasn’t enough for this asshole,” she threw the egg at the brick wall of his house, Max doing the same before looking to Stella. “Broken nose?” She asked before throwing another egg. Then she stopped to look at the Harrington again. “Wait, is that why you had that bandage on your hand that first day?”

Stella’s eyes hadn’t left the brick walls once, and kept her eyes stuck to them as she nodded. Max chuckled, her smile beaming as she glanced at the brunette again. The glance earned one from Stella, who smirked at the redhead before they both turned back to the house and continued to pelt the eggs at Peter’s house.

“I’m out,” Stella eventually said, looking to Max. The redhead threw one more, and then looked to Stella. “Me too.”

Saying nothing, Stella approached the Hanson’s front door, making Max’s eyebrows furrow. “What are you doing?” She asked, earning no reply. Smirking, Stella reached for the pumpkin displayed on a ledge. She lifted it up, making eye contact with Max as she brought it above her head, the smile staying plastered on her face.

Then she let it go, dropping it and letting it fall until it smashed against the ground, splitting open, as Max watched with a smile.

“Arnie, what’s going on outside?” Stella heard from inside the house. It was Peter’s mom. The youngest Harrington widened her eyes, whipping her head to look at the door before rushing down the front steps. As she ran, when she reached Max, she grabbed the redhead’s hand to take her along, and the two ran off, hand in hand as Peter’s mom opened the door.

“Your son’s an asshole!” Stella called out as they ran.

Peter’s mother looked at the mess in confusion.

–

☄. *. ⋆ Stella led Max up the Harrington’s driveway. She grabbed the spare key from on top of her porch light and smirked at Max cocking a brow as she held it up. She opened the door and stepped inside, Max following in as she looked around in awe. “This is your house?”

“Mhm.”

“So you’re, like, actually rich,” Max said, following Stella up the stairs. Stella just shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know.”

“This is my room,” Stella said as she opened her room door.

“Oh, shit,” Max cursed.

“What?”

“Your room is amazing.”

Stella chuckled. “Thanks.”

Max walked over to a shelf, where several basketball trophies were. “How many games have you won?” The redhead asked. Stella looked over, not knowing what Max was talking about until seeing what the redhead was focused on. “Hm? Oh. Uh, oh, God. Not sure I can name them,” she chuckled. “Those aren’t from games, though.”

“What are they from?”

“Um…” Stella leaned over to read one. “This one’s for ‘most points scored’ from last season,” then she went to read another. “That one’s for ‘best shooter’, and the others are… I dunno, you can read them.”

She admired them for a moment before looking back at Stella. “So, what are we gonna do?”

Stella hummed in thought before her face lit up. “We should watch a bunch of scary movies! We can watch them downstairs, my parents aren’t home and my brother’s not gonna be home until whatever random time in the middle of the night. Plus, he already knows you’ll be over, so, he won’t care,” she suggested with a smile.

Max smiled, her face turning a light shade of red. “Okay,” she nodded with a bit of a giggle. The blush on Max didn’t go unnoticed by Stella, and it turned her face pink as well.

“Here, you can borrow some of my pajamas,” Stella said, pulling out a baggy T-shirt and pajama pants from her dresser drawer. “Oh, thanks,” Max said, taking the clothes. “Yeah. Uh, you can go ahead and shower first,” Stella told the redhead.

“‘Kay, thanks.”

–

☄. *. ⋆ After both girls had taken their turn in the shower and got dressed, Stella kneeled down in front of her bed and reached under it before pulling out a bin full of movie tapes. “Which one should we watch?”

“Jeez, Ess, you have a lot of tapes,” Max commented, earning a shrug from Stella. “Which one?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, here,” Stella started, taking the horror movies from the bin. “These are all my horrors. We have Cujo, The Shining… Oh! Halloween. Perfect,” Stella dropped her other horrors back into the bin and slid it back under her bed before standing up. “Come on,” she reached her hand out, which Max took and the two went downstairs.

Around an hour into the movie, the pair fell asleep. Stella lay sprawled out on the couch, her head resting on the armrest. Max was subconsciously cuddled up into the girl’s side, her head resting on Stella’s stomach. Stella’s right arm— her good arm —was around Max.

Steve got home extremely upset, having gotten in an argument with his girlfriend, Nancy, who was also Mike’s sister.

At the sound of the T.V. on, he looked over to their living room, only to find the two girls peacefully sleeping, surrounded by candy wrappers and two empty soda cans.

He playfully rolled his eyes and smiled at the sight before switching the TV off, picking up their trash, and turning the lamp off.

He was definitely going to tease Stella about this later.

─────✧･ﾟ: *✧･

i really like this chapter 🙂
i hope you’re enjoying this so far!!!

fun fact: i’m writing this months before you’re reading it. i haven’t finished my other max fic, but by the time you’re reading this, it’s done.

that’s kinda crazy

later edit but happy 4th guys!!