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lab partners

mlm ᛝ stranger things

“i’ve got to get to know you, but i’m so afraid,”

Mrs. Williams’ fifth period English class was torture. Soul-sucking, clock-watching, degrading torture. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the radiator clanking every twenty minutes, and the smell of pencil shavings and bad perfume clung to everything. Torture.

Eddie Munson was pretty sure he’d read Hatchet enough times to recite half the pages from memory. Three years running, the same battered paperback, the same man versus nature essay, the same glazed-over looks from every half-awake kid in the back row. It was like some kind of cosmic joke—two senior years weren’t enough, so the universe decided to throw in a bonus round. Third time’s the charm, right? Or maybe just the last straw.

This December felt different, though. The snow had started piling up on the edges of the parking lot, and Eddie was desperate. He needed this year to count, needed to scrape together just enough credits to finally, finally get out of Hawkins High. He was sick of this place. Sick of the cracked linoleum floors, sick of the same old faces, sick of people who’d already written him off as a lost cause. Graduation was so close he could almost taste it-- freedom on the tip of his tongue. If he could just keep his head above water till June, he’d finally be free. No more high school, no more Hawkins, no more of the same group of assholes in the hallway every day. Just a diploma, a bus ticket, and maybe a future that didn’t echo his fathers.

But first, he had to survive this. One miserable step at a time, Munson.

The real problem wasn’t even the class or the book or Mrs. Williams, though she’d been especially brutal since a messy split with her husband. She’d never been a fan of Eddie’s so-called “creative writing,” and lately she’d been particularly cruel, like she had a personal vendetta against Eddie. His grade was already circling the drain, and Mrs. Williams seemed determined to push it the rest of the way down. If he blew this last project, worth a solid ten percent of the semester, he’d be screwed, locked in this hellhole for another year while everyone else got to walk the stage.

He needed a miracle. Or at least a halfway decent grade.

The real kicker, though? He wasn’t even doing the project alone. Mrs. Williams, in her infinite wisdom, had decided this was going to be a “collaborative exercise.” Which meant partners. Which meant he was stuck with someone else’s work ethic to sink or save him.

{{user}}.

“it’s so hard to be a friend and be in love this way.”