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Max had called Steve to help her take some boxes to the dumpster.
She wore a red cap and was waiting for him at the door of her Cherry Road house, two big cardboard boxes at her side.
Steve opened the trunk and put the boxes in; they’re not closed and he could see metal tapes, some clothes, a leather jacket and other things he can more or less recognize.
Max entered the car without a word. Steve kept silent for a little while.
“Are those things…”
“Yes,” said her, sharply.
“Are you sure you want to throw them away?”
Maz lowered her head, and answered after a couple of minutes.
“He… doesn’t want me to keep them,” and she looked at Steve, and Steve’s heart skipped a beat. She had a black eye and a cut on her lips. Like Billy had sometimes. He felt a bad pressure in his chest.
Neil Hargrove wanted Billy’s things out of his house. And now he didn't have his son as punch ball anymore, he gladly unleashed his anger on Max. She told it in a growl, crying silently a little, and Steve could recall the way Billy hid his face when he had bruises in it. Bruises he thought were well deserved from some fight.
“Could you keep those things for me?” asked her at the end with a thin voice.
Steve nodded.
They buried Billy a week ago, and he didn’t go. They were not friends, technically and publicly, but his death hit him really hard.
It was during the graduation ceremony. They wore their green cap and gown and he felt absolutely ridiculous, with his parents at his sides like they had some interest in him. Billy seemed to feel the same, between Neal and Susan and Max at their side like they were a happy family.
He crossed with him in the bathroom.
“How gross, don’t you think?” said Billy cheerfully, coming out of a stall, while Steve was trying to fix his hair and some flaws of the gown.
“Ridiculous,” answered Steve, looking at himself in the mirror. He catched Billy’s glance at his face. He suddenly turned to him, ready to face whatever bitchy thing Billy had for him.
Billy scoffed and lowered his eyes. “Don’t worry, Harrington. I will not bother you again at school”.
He tilted his head toward him, looking him directly in his eyes, before closing them and leaning to Steve’s face. He touched lightly his lips and Steve could see the pinky flush on his cheeks before he flinched. Billy smiled sweetly for a second, then sighed and went away.
It was the last time he talked with Billy. He didn’t come to the graduation parties and he didn’t see him in the club. He knew he had started working in Hawkins pool, but he was not brave enough to search for him there.
And then Starcourt happened. He died and he couldn’t do anything about it. And he was heartbroken. Because he would talk to Billy about that single kiss, about what it meant and yes, about what Steve felt in regard. Because he felt something and he knew, by the flush on Billy’s cheeks and by his shiver, that he wouldn’t mock him.
He passed his hands on the boxes, at his garage.
“Do you mind if I… look into them?” he asked. He would touch and see Billy things, but he would understand if she wanted to maintain those boxes private. He would keep them for all the time she wanted.
Max nodded. “Can we… Can we sort and arrange them? He… he didn’t let me look into them and… “ she, again, cried softly. Steve felt at the edge of crying too. He nodded, silently, took a box and took it in his living room.
There were a lot of tapes and magazines with naked girls. The few clothes Max could hide -Neal threw away the rest, all the jackets, the jeans, the shoes-, a hoodie, some polos, oddly a pair of jeans hot pants and a pink crop top, still labeled, still in the shop bag. A necessaire, they opened it and found some used lipgloss, some eyeliner and a cream blush, and of course they blushed, looking at each other, Steve’s heart was racing like a drum.
Then, he found a Barbie at the bottom of the box. Max took her from his hands.
“It was mine…” she whispered, surprised.
It was a regular Barbie, blonde, blue eyes, a pink little cap and a coloured top and a pair of pink shorts, elbows and knee protection and yellow rollerblade at her feet. She didn’t seem special, really.
“Do you want it back?” asked Steve.
Max shook her head.
“I… I threw her against him back in California… I thought I lost her in the move…” she sighed. ”I think I saw her in his room sometimes, but… I never paid attention until now”. Max seated the Barbie on the table, smiling absent-mindedly. Steve looked at her, as she knew secrets he wanted to know.
Max went away for a moment to go to the bathroom, and Steve kept emptying the boxes. He found some big notebooks, all with a fake leather red cover; he opened the first on the pile and read 16 April 1983, and a page covered by a clear handwriting with some irrelevant things at the beach.
He looked rapidly into the other notebooks and could see some anterior date and some posterior, and little changes in the writing.
Billy’s diaries, he thought holding his breath. He didn’t imagine Billy as a diary person. And they were surely private, and Max would keep them for herself or maybe she didn’t want anyone to read them.
He rapidly took all the notebooks and hid them under the sofa pillows. Barbie seemed to be looking at him, and Steve avoided her eyes.
Max returned and they sorted the most important things in a box and other things in the second box, they took them again in the garage and finally Steve drove back Max home.
They forget the Barbie in the living room, and Steve found her when he returned to collect the diaries.
He put them in order and opened the first, feeling like a rat in Billy’s life, but he couldn’t help, the notebooks were calling him. Billy's writing was hypnotic, and he started to feel drowsy when reading.
“Mom told me we will eat hamburgers tonight! Where’s mom? I don’t want this!”
A little boy, Steve could see nine or ten, was fussing in front of a sad, pale pasta plate while a good-looking man was chewing his cheek.
“This is all you’ll have, so eat and shut up” said the man with a boiling race voice.
“No, I want mom! Where’s mom?”
The man didn’t advise more, but suddenly hit the kid with the back of his hand.
Steve felt an exploding pain in his mouth, his teeth breaking his lips and when he touched them, he saw blood in his fingers.
The man grabbed the kid by an arm and threw him in his bedroom, and Steve felt the same pain in his shoulder. The kid started crying desperately and the man locked the room.
“Are you ok, kid?” asked Steve, scared and confused, while the kid cried, curled on the floor. “Kid? Can you hear me?” The kid raised his eyes on Steve’s face, and Steve’s heart skipped a beat. Those blue eyes, red and full of tears… little Billy looked in his direction but as Steve was transparent, he couldn’t see him; the kid crawled in his bed, stifled by sobs for a long time.
Steve raised the eyes from the notebook. He calculated that that entry was from when Billy was thirteen years old, but he was recalling when his father beated him for the first time. His mom disappeared that day and he talked about it in all the notebooks, because he missed her so painfully that Steve could feel his desperation right inside his own chest.
The Barbie had fallen from the table, so Steve seated her at his side and opened another page.
That day Billy had his first kiss.
Steve had read the previous pages, and felt physically Billy’s fear and the confusion. The terror and the pain when his father randomly entered in his room and threw all on the ground, breaking his little bottle of colony “Faggot” he screamed, the hairspray his friend borrowed him, and he grabbed him by his hair and threw him at the ground, tossing the can on his face, he ripped the floral shirt he bought at that street market because it seemed so festive to Billy. “Faggot” screamed his father, ripping also the poetry books he borrowed at the library while Billy tried to save them, and his friend’s mixed tapes just to piss him off.
And Billy cried over those things, because they are precious to him and they all made him think about his friend; he read poetry with him, he wanted to wear that shirt next time they would go for a walk in the afternoon, he imagined how he would cherish him for it.
And he was shivering because now he didn’t have those things anymore, and also because Argyle wasn’t only a friend, not for him, and he was scared to death of his father's reaction if he had known.
Steve had to catch his breath and dry his eyes, and he realized that he was shivering as Billy’s father was in that room with him. It was so strange, it’s like he was there with Billy and felt the same things, but it was impossible, obviously. Surely it was because Billy’s death touched him so deeply and he was really sad. Max’s visit and sorting his things, and seeing that he knew very little about him made him deeply wretched.
He looked at Barbie, she was sitting with her typical pose and she wasn’t looking at him.
Next day Billy met Argyle with an old t-shirt instead of the floral shirt.
“Oh I like that shirt, it’s the one we bought at the fair, right?” said Argyle, and Billy felt his face flushing and a sweet warm honey in his heart.
“Do you want to walk to the panoramic wheel?” said Argyle pointing far though the beach, red and golden in the sunset.
Billy knew that they had to cross the dunes, where there were no people at that hour. When they crossed the first dune, Argyle took his hand.
Steve felt a warm sensation, a soft touch on his right hand.
Billy grabbed Argyle's hand in return, but he didn't have the guts to look him in the face for a few meters more. Then he stumbled a little and almost fell in the sand. Argyle helped him to get back on his feet and dusted the sand from Billy’s shirt.
Their eyes crossed for a long, long instant when the sun was hidden under the horizon. Argyle smiled and leaned his head to Billy, who closed his eyes and just felt the sweet, sweet touch on his lips when Argyle kissed him tenderly.
Steve was overwhelmed, he recalled the kiss with Billy at graduation day, but in that moment he was lost in a pair of black, sensual and shining eyes and in that odd and sweet smell of pineapple, that he felt he knew forever in that moment.
The fight was savage that time. His father caught them holding hands, and closed Billy in his room, left him there in waiting, mad of fear, until he returned with his leather belt, and when the blood was running on his face and Billy fell to the ground, he hit him with his booth and broke one of his ribs. Billy laid in the carpet, stained of blood, the breath breaking for the pain, screaming for help and panic when he heard the lock in his door, and the call from his father to Argyle’s father.
Steve was lying in the same carpet, covered in blood, his chest stabbed for the pain and his heart broken, because he would never see Argyle again. He lost his first love and Steve felt as if he just wanted to die at thirteen.
He was fifteen now, he was growing alone and resentful, he was the bully of his class and he was violent and bossy when he surfed at the beach. Nobody wanted to be his friend but he had a sort of gang of bullies who terrorized kids their age. Fairy they said to the little kids that were scared by them. Faggot they call the ones that surfed quietly or didn`t dare to go out when there were high holes.
Faggot said his father to him when he indulged to comb his locks and use a little colony to see some chicks. Because now he went out with girls, and with a certain success, because they loved the bad boy type he showed while he looked slightly to other boys, struggling and ripping his heart in a thousand pieces.
Steve turned the page, breathless and sweating, and while he read he started to feel a cold shiver on his back, he was frozen by fear and revulsion.
“I remember you when you were this tall,” said the man at dinner. Billy played with the fork in his salad that his father bought at the deli on the corner for the dinner with his business partner. He wanted to convince him to invest in some business, and it seemed he just did it. Billy didn’t want to look him in the face because he had a strange sensation when the man looked at him.
“Come on, Billy, behave,” said his father sharply. That man asked him something he didn’t understand.
“I said, how’s school? Are you doing well?”
“Yes, good” answered Billy, then he caught his father’s glance. “Good, sir,” he added.
“Do you know if you want to do something during the summer?”
“Oh, no, sir, I didn’t think about it”.
“Well, I was talking with his father, if you want to make some money you can help my gardener at the villa, mow the lawn and clean the pool…”
Billy looked at his father. He really didn’t want to deal with that man, but he has learnt not to go against his father.
He nodded. “Of course, sir”.
Steve felt nauseous. He could feel the disgusting sensation Billy wrote in his diary and the difficulty of sleeping that night, he didn’t know why, but all his body tensed as he wanted to run, and run, and run.
Billy’s tears were the same tears that were running on Steve’s face, against his will.
The Barbie fell against his leg, and he returned to the notebook. He couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.
“Oliver told me you did a good job, good first day, Billy,” said that man staying on his back door. The gardener had already left and he had to wait for his father to pick him up. “Do you want a beer?”
“I’m… I’m fifteen, sir,” said Billy, playing his part because he was drinking from thirteen, after his father forced him to never see Argyle anymore.
“A soda?” smiled the man, a sly smile that made him nauseous.
“I have to wait for my father…”
“Well he called, he can’t pick you up, I’ll drive you home later”.
Billy’s heart stopped, and Steve’s too. Billy had written everything, it seems he didn’t have anyone to talk with, and he needed to shake out all he had inside. Steve felt his loneliness and fear and anger, and his need for someone and the continued frustration because he was only a bully and a burden for everybody.
Billy entered the house. He felt trapped.
He took the Coke the man gave him. He poured him a glass of liquor, at some point, and Billy accepted. The man subtly got nearer to him and lightly touched him, casually.
He wasn’t new to the bourbon, but he had worked all afternoon in the sun, and he was thirsty and hungry. He started to feel a little drowsy and the man filled his glass again. He had to sit down in an armchair, and he catched a glimpse from the man.
“Are you tired, Billy?” and he said “Billy” like he was sucking a sticky candy. Billy shivered.
The man put a hand in his own pocket, and lent it to Billy. “Take one,” he shows two strange white stones that seemed like glass. Billy looked confused and scared, and tried to shake his head.
“Come on Billy, be a man, enjoy the time,” the man insisted, and Billy took one of the stones.
“No!” screamed Steve, his head spinning and his heart racing like he was drunk.
Billy raised his gaze and seemed to Steve to look at him, but it was impossible; his eyes were so beautiful, sparkling and glassy and wet, and so young and fragile Steve felt desperate to save him. But he couldn’t, and he felt the salty taste of the drug melting in his mouth.
The writing became confused. The handwriting was less tidy but he wrote all the things, it wasn’t clear if he was venting or punishing himself.
Billy emerged like he had been under the water holding his breath. The man was between his legs, he had opened his pants and was sucking his genitalia.
He breathed heavily, trying to cry, but the voice didn’t come out. He tried to push him away but his limbs didn’t work well. The man looked at him from below and he felt sick again and passed out again.
He regained consciousness lying on the sofa, naked, sweated, covered in bruises and sticky and dirty.
The man was above him.
The pain hit him suddenly and deeply.
Steve couldn't describe that pain, that horrible suffering in his lower back, like he had been ripped in two and he wanted just to cry and to run away but he couldn’t move at all.
When Billy revived again, he was alone on the sofa, leg spread, sticky and bleeding. He wanted to throw up but he didn’t. He cleaned up himself with a towel and wore his clothes again.
The man came into the room after a little while, dressed again, too. He smiled like it was all normal; he had a bundle of cash in a hand.
“We had a good time, eh?” he blinked, and Billy wanted to vomit at his feet. He lent him the money and Billy took it. He didn’t say anything when the man drove him to his home, and when the man called him another time some days after, he went again. He looked at his father when he was about to go and he had a strange look in his eyes, like he felt sick of him but he was using it. He knew. His father knew.
The man kept working with his father, Billy kept working in his garden, and after a while he got used to waking up naked in his bed.
Steve had to run to the bathroom and threw up. Billy noted everything, and he was feeling in his guts everything Billy felt.
After a while, Billy stopped writing about that man. He didn’t write anything about anyone else, and Steve shivered and cried a lot of tears for this. Because Billy had only that terrible experience and never let himself feel something anymore. Until…
Steve read every other beat his father gave him, with futile excuses. He read every fight he had at school and with Max, when she and Carol moved with them. He read the rage, the anger, the pain he felt inside when other people closed him out and just saw the bully and the violence he emanated.
And then Steve read about their move to Hawkins. He felt the loneliness and the impotence because he couldn't choose for himself, he never could.
He read about the girls he pursued and took out and never touched with a finger. He read how he looked to their boyfriends and how they thought he wanted to steal the girls, but he just looked to what he wanted and never could have. How he was forced to look at naked ladies in the magazines while he shivered cold, sneaking a naked Bret Michaels in the paper shop.
How he… sometimes looked to Steve Harrington at basketball practice and in the showers, and Steve felt that sensation oddly inside himself too, looking to them showering together as he was just a spectator, and feeling the beating of Billy’s heart in his chest, screaming “look at me, notice me, like me…”.
He felt his hope while he was preparing for that date, the night of the fight at Byers, because he had a girl but he wanted to go to the bowling alley, and he knew that Steve sometimes was there too. He then felt his own fists and the pain of the fight, and the confusion after Max drugged him, and the punishment when he returned home late and without Max.
And the painfully thoughts when he saw Nancy and Steve naturally near as a boy and a girl could, and the vain hope she wasn’t his soulmate, and the dream Steve raised his eyes and looked at him.
He feared to be touched, but wrote poetry about his body being touched by Steve, being treated well, hugged and caressed for once.
He felt his own lips against his’ on graduation day, and his struggle and dream and hope were so strong he had to touch his mouth to retain the warmth of his touch.
And he felt again the sickness of a predator look when he wrote Karen Wheeler glances, how she threw herself on him and how he felt defenseless in front of her, because she was an adult and he was just a kid, but she knew how to have him, and once again he felt he had no choice. He didn’t deserve enough for himself to fight her and her persecution.
And then Billy wrote the last pages with ashes in his heart. Steve felt a big hole in his chest reading how Billy wasn’t brave enough to talk to him again, and how he hoped Steve would come to the pool one day. Steve avoided the pool willingly because he didn’t want to see him.
And now there is no time nor possibility for Billy.
Steve closed the last notebook and dried his tears. He felt broken and injured, physically and mentally and he felt guilty for Billy, for everything everyone felt free to do to him. For him that seemed a tough guy and a blatant bitch, and was nothing but a pile of rags.
Barbie fell to the ground and Steve picked her up. He looked her in the face and looked at those blue eyes, blonde hair and understood. She was like Billy. She was stunningly beautiful and had the same colors, and she wore pink and no one could criticize her. Steve recalled the pink crop top Billy wasn’t brave enough to wear. He didn’t steal the Barbie for the same purposes other boys took her, to look at her boobs and between her legs.
Steve cried and felt ashamed for treating Billy so bad.
He was a doll for everyone. For his father, who decided for him and used him. For that man, who drugged him just to play with him to fullness. For Karen Wheeler, who believed he was just a gorgeous dick hanging up to a young body, and just tried to abuse him like the man. Because he was just a puppet to them.
And at the same time he envied that doll…. He wanted to be that doll, because if he was a girl he could wear pink, and people maybe wanted to protect him. Maybe his father wouldn't sell him to that rapist. Maybe the man wouldn't consider him for free use. Maybe Karen let him be, without chasing him and making him so uncomfortable.
Maybe Steve could see him, really see him and maybe, maybe consider him for a date. Maybe they could be soulmates.
“I’m so sorry, Billy”
Steve touches Billy’s stone, the ground was still fresh on the grave. He sat the Barbie there, heartbroken because he didn’t know how, he had the possibility to enter in Billy’s soul, but too late.
“You came,” said Billy behind him. There was a thick fog around them, and little sparkling in the air. Billy was smiling, so young and tender, and fragile like a breath of silk.
Steve was speechless.
“They say you wouldn’t come,” added Billy, leaning a hand to him. Steve grabbed it.
“Who?”he whispered.
“They… down there. It’s hell… maybe”.
Steve gasped. It must be a terrible place because Billy already experienced a living hell.
“I’m sorry,” repeated Steve. “I… I wish I could go back and change things. I’m so sorry, Billy”. A single tear ran down his cheek.
Billy nodded, and Steve hugged him from the bottom of his heart, struggling to fix up things.
“What the heck,” the alarm woke up Steve that had difficulties catching his breath. He was… having a strange, intricate dream that faded away immediately when he opened his eyes. He felt nauseous and beaten like he had been shaking in a washing machine. He felt like he broke and broke his face again, but he looked at the mirror and he was perfectly fine.
He went to pick up Nancy, still a little confused. He felt like he had something in his chest that broke his breath; Nancy was chatting as usual but he honestly could barely hear her, so she turned on the radio. He was busy driving in something he barely recognized as the reality, and the speaker started to read the news of 28th October.
Steve parked just in time to see a blue Camaro loudly stop in the parking lot, and a blonde guy came out of it and lit a cig.
He felt like he had already lived that moment and already hated that scene. But he didn’t hate it now. The boy caught his eyes just for a moment, and Steve’s feet moved alone.
He didn’t know if he believed in soulmates, but he wouldn’t wait to decide it. This time oddly resonated in his head.
“Steve. Steve!” Nancy was calling him, but he didn’t stop. Carol Perkins was approaching the guy, but he pulled her to the side while going straight to the blonde.
“He’s mine,” he muttered.
The blonde saw him coming and put on a mocking smile, waving the cig as it was a defense weapon. Steve smiled, extending his hand.
“Steve Harrington,” he said, with a funny twitch in his nape.
“Billy Hargrove,” said the other guy after a while, as he was considering whether to insult him or shake his hand in return. He decided on the second thing and he took his warm hand.
It is a beginning, thought Steve. It was a beginning.