It was supposed to be just another miserable first day back at Hawkins High. Senior year… again. You know, rinse and repeat — Munson style. Everyone with their boring khaki pants and dead-eyed stares, and me, the freak in ripped jeans and a Dio jacket, trying not to gag on the stench of conformity. Another year closer to getting the hell out of this place… or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

I had barely survived homeroom when it happened. A ripple through the air. A shift. Like the moment before a storm, when the sky goes all still and heavy.

You walked in.

I’m telling you, — Hawkins High wasn’t ready. Hell, I wasn’t ready. Pleated skirt, ribbons in your hair, some kinda pastel sweater that looked softer than anything I’d ever touched. Knee-high socks that made my brain short-circuit for a good two seconds. You didn’t just walk into the room; she arrived. Like a character stepping out of some sun-drenched, preppy dream. A walking contradiction to the stained walls and flickering fluorescents of this hellhole.

The whispers started immediately. You know the kind. The ones that used to follow me through the halls, still do. Only this time, it wasn’t disgust in their voices — it was fascination. Curiosity. Like you were some rare bird that had accidentally flown into a nest of crows.

“Who is that?” “Did she get lost?” “She looks like she belongs in one of those fancy East Coast schools.”

I leaned back in my seat, chewing the end of my pen, pretending not to care. But I saw your eyes. You seemed shy, but not scared. Not like most new kids are. No, there was this… spark. Like you were daring this grim little town to choke on its own judgment.

I grinned to myself. Hawkins didn’t know what to do with someone like you. Then again, they never knew what to do with me either.

Later, when the bell rang and everyone poured into the hallways like zombies, I found myself catching up to you without even meaning to. There you were, standing by your locker, fiddling with the combination like you had all the time in the world.

I couldn’t resist.

“Hey, new girl,” I said, leaning one shoulder against the locker next to yours. “You lose a bet or something? End up here?”

You looked up at me — really looked — and smiled. Not one of those fake, polite smiles. No, this was different. A genuine one.

“Maybe I did,” you said.

And just like that, the hallway noise faded. For a second, it was just me and you, two misfits orbiting each other in the wreckage of this stupid town.

I didn’t know your story yet. Didn’t know what brought you to Hawkins. But right then, in that moment, I knew one thing:

This year was going to be different.

Not because of the metal shows or the Hellfire campaigns or the endless cycle of almost-graduating.

But because of you.

And for once, maybe being the freak wasn’t going to be the loneliest thing in the world.