✦ Hawkins Community Pool – One of the First Hot Days of Summer ✦

The water smelled like chlorine and cheap nacho cheese, sunscreen and teenage bravado. It was loud — laughter bouncing off concrete, Marco Polo being shouted from three different corners, a lifeguard whistle blowing every seven minutes just to prove a point.

Eddie Munson hated public pools.

And yet, here he was — sunburn already ghosting across his pale shoulders, combat boots replaced by bare feet, lounging awkwardly in a plastic chair too small for his lanky frame. His hair was half-damp from Dustin pushing him in earlier. He was still muttering threats about vengeance via gelatinous cube.

“Hey, you’re the one who bet me I wouldn’t do it,” Dustin said from the foot of his chair, sipping on a red Icee. “That was basically inviting violence.”

“You’re lucky I like you,” Eddie grumbled, shoving his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “Otherwise I’d have summoned a pool kraken.”

A few of the other Hellfire guys were at the far end of the deck, trading sunburn horror stories and arguing over which Final Fantasy character had the best weapon. It was loud, dumb, perfect.

Eddie let his head fall back against the chair and closed his eyes.

Then—

He heard a whistle — not the lifeguard’s this time — but the kind that cut through boyish yelling like a needle.

“Dude.” Dustin was staring past him, eyes comically wide. “Isn’t that—?”

Eddie cracked one eye open, lazily. “What are you—?”

He followed Dustin’s line of sight.

And then he froze.

There, walking past the shallow end like some vision pulled from an old record sleeve, was a girl Eddie had once crushed on so hard in high school it physically hurt. The kind of crush that made geometry class unbearable. The kind of crush that stuck in your ribs for years after the bell rang.

She wore a retro, heart-shaped top and high-waisted bottoms — all sun-faded cherry red with tiny white polka dots — the kind of suit you’d see in a pin-up calendar your uncle kept in the garage. Her hair was piled up in a loose scarf, cat-eye sunglasses balanced on her head like she didn’t need them because the sun should just move out of her way.

She wasn’t the most stunning girl at the pool. But she was the kind of beautiful that made you stop breathing for a second — the kind with soft thunder behind her smile and a walk like she had music in her bones.

Eddie swallowed.

Hard.

Dustin tilted his head, grinning. “Wait. Didn’t you like—”

“Yes,” Eddie said too fast. “Shut up.”

“You wrote a song about her. Three songs.”

Eddie hissed. “We agreed never to speak of that era.”

“She’s walking this way,” Dustin sing-songed, slipping back into the pool like a smug sea otter. “Better fix your face, Munson.”

Eddie sat up straighter, suddenly aware of how feral he probably looked — wet curls, no shirt, a faint tan line in the shape of his guitar strap. God, he probably smelled like Fritos and chlorine.

Then she reached their side of the pool deck.

Then she looked at him.

Then she smiled.

“Eddie Munson?” she said, her voice like summer rain on blacktop. “I thought that was you.”

Eddie blinked. He sat up straighter. “Oh. Hey. Yeah. That’s… me.”

Smooth.

She laughed. “You were in my lit class. Junior year. You used to doodle all over your copy of Frankenstein.”

“You remember that?” he asked, stunned.

“Hard to forget the guy who wrote ‘Victor is the real monster’ in Sharpie across his desk.”

Eddie grinned sheepishly. “Still stand by it.”

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You look good.”

He blinked. “Really?” Then caught himself. “I mean — you too. You look like… one of those posters they don’t make anymore.”

She smiled again — a soft, amused thing. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

A whistle blew again. A kid cannonballed into the deep end. The moment felt too fragile for sound.

“I’m just visiting for the weekend,” she said. “Heading back to school tomorrow.”

Eddie’s stomach twisted like a guitar string tuning up too tight. “Cool. Yeah. School. That’s…”