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Max overhears Steve calling her some random girl and bristles. She isn’t having much success with convincing herself of what she told Lucas earlier - that she doesn’t care about these boys, that she doesn’t want to be part of their stupid party.
This guy is just as random to her as she is to him. But Steve must be important to Lucas and Dustin, to have been summoned to help with this particular adventure. Dubious as Max remains of Lucas’s claims, she’s impressed by this teenager’s participation in their antics, slathering an abandoned bus in old metal sheets, suiting it in armour. It seems a lot to do for a prank, from boys she knows not to be mean-spirited in the same way that Billy is.
Steve seems to be Billy’s age. He’s good-looking, and she’s heard enough whispers about King Steve to know that he’s popular, but the similarities end there. Even the agitation he feels is so different in nature to Billy’s - he’s exasperated rather than angry. He’s clucking like a mother hen. When he calls the kids shitheads, there’s a level of fondness there, something so unlike the brittle way her brother talks.
It’s different to how other older people have treated her. Max knows herself to be a nuisance to adults; she’s used to being shooed away, told to make herself scarce, encouraged to be quiet and respectful. They’re common sentiments offered to kids, not just her. But Steve is listening to them, humouring them, talking to them. Max begins to wonder if it’s possible that he actually cares about them.
He offers the theory credibility, when the first demodog arrives. It stands atop the bus, curls its scaly feet around the ladder, and, though sightless, peers down at Max. Its face unfurls, unveiling a fleshy mass of teeth, and as it roars, as Max screams – Steve puts himself between her and the monster. He beats it with the baseball bat she called ridiculous, the first time she saw it. He keeps her safe.
After that, the way he deemed her random girl has a different meaning. Max realises that Steve is unlike any adult she’s ever known.
Evidence of this builds over the night. Billy comes tearing through the darkness to unleash a different kind of evil on her new friends – the human kind, with which they’re already far too well-acquainted.
“It’s my brother,” Max says, when she recognises the car through the window. “He can’t know I’m here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill us.”
She could be accused of hyperbole, but she knows she’s closer to understating things. Even if there’s no threat of murder, Max is still afraid to enrage him. He’s unpredictable, violent. Angry, as she told Lucas - looking for an outlet, and he’s chosen her. She remembers the days in California, before the end came, when Billy played with fire and bones. She can’t be sure it won’t escalate again.
And it does. Steve orders them to stay inside, and for a split second, Max wilts with the relief of not having to answer to Billy. Somebody else is going to deal with him. Steve is going to protect her, lie for her. It makes her feel all the worse, when Steve plummets to the concrete.
Billy strides inside and lifts Lucas into the air, tosses him about like he’s weightless, an unmoving ragdoll, and not the person who has come closest to understanding even a sliver of Max. The only person who has ever cared enough to try. Though Max cannot make her feet move to defend the boy she already cares so deeply about, Steve does it for her. He returns to the living room and gets his fists bloody, gets his face bloody, crumples under Billy’s thrashes so that Lucas doesn’t have to. Helpless as Steve seems, Max knows that the goodness in him holds more power than the creature in the junkyard and the monster in the living room.
The thought galvanises her. She grabs the needle and jams it into Billy’s neck.
It feels less like repayment and more like doing the right thing. It isn’t quite a thank you, though the boys are adamant, as they plaster Steve’s face with rainbow band-aids, that Max is the only reason he’s alive.
Max regrets never thanking Steve for his help that night. It’s a long time before she musters the strength to correct it.
The world has gone grey and Max doesn’t let herself mourn it. She bears the burden of her fate with grim resignation. She finds herself envying those terminally ill people who get their death sentences in advance, who sort out their affairs and spend their last hours in the company of loved ones.
Max doesn’t have that luxury. She barely has time to say goodbye. It’s what feels most important, at the end. She decides on writing letters, because she’s never been good at talking about her feelings. Even the letters will be difficult to give up; she knows her hand will shake when she gives Lucas his envelope, the way it did when she gave him back the ticket to his basketball game. At least she won’t be the one to make the passover to El.
The letters for Lucas and El are the ones she expects to upset her, but she soon realises that every letter is awful to write. Every word is carved out with agony. Her chest goes hollow, thinking about the love she holds, the love that will go to waste.
She never told her friends how she felt about them. This is the first time she’s telling Dustin how often he made her laugh. The first time she’s telling Will that she admires the way he picked himself up. The first time she’s telling Mike that she wishes they had been closer. The first time she’s telling El about how light she felt during their summer nights together.
This is the only time she will ever tell Lucas that she loves him.
It’s so much to admit, all at once. Max imagines that a normal person would be reduced to tears. But she’s too practical for that. She plods on.
She writes Steve’s name at the top of the paper – lined with blue, torn from a notebook, so the side is ruffled from its collision with the spirals – and takes a deep breath.
She consults her heart and sets her pen to paper.
Dear Steve,
Sometimes, I think about that night two years ago, when El closed the gate. Before Billy died, it was the worst night of my life. It was the day I found out the truth about monsters. It was also the day I met you, and if it hadn’t been for that, it would’ve been my last.
So, thank you for saving me. I guess it’s kind of a cop out to write it in a letter, but I’ve been wanting to say it for a long time. Hopefully this is better than nothing. I play it back in my head, the times where you put yourself in danger for me. You barely knew me, but you still protected me, because that’s just the kind of guy you are. It’s weird, knowing that I have someone like you to count on. You’re not that much older than me and my friends, but you’re old enough that you don’t have to care about us, and you still do. You look out for us, you laugh with us, you listen to us. When my mom told me that I was going to get an older brother, that was really what I was hoping for. So thank you for showing me what that might’ve been like.
Whatever happens today, I know you’re going to be there for me. I know you’re going to do what you can to stop it. It probably won’t be much - sorry, but we’re talking about inter dimensional monsters, so you’re a little bit out of your league. But you know that, and you try anyway, and I’m grateful for that. We all are. I hope you know just how much.
Love, Max
Death chases her in a world of red. The sky falls and the ground shakes, crumbling to crush her. Max is showered in crimson clay, covered in black water. She can hear her blood throbbing in her ears as she runs, holding onto the memories of her friends. She’s been choking her love down for months, pushing everybody away, and it’s going to kill her.
This would be death by her own hands, she knows. So she runs. She runs through the scarlet wasteland, through the anguish with which it has been built, and makes her escape.
Max reclaims lucidity with a gasp. She floats in a merciful sky, an earthly blue-lilac, then lands in the grass, in the arms of her friends.
Lucas puts his arms around her. Max sinks into him, falling until she can fall no more. She clings to him for dear life, knowing it’s what he gives her. He’s her life source, he’s the love that saved her.
“I’m still here,” Max pants. She can hardly believe it.
“I’m still here,” she says, for herself, for Lucas. For Dustin. For Steve - Steve, who kneels by her side, his eyes bright with relief, his face slack with it. He’s right there, his hands frantic around his knees. When he hesitantly reaches out to her, Max reaches back. He holds her hand, clenches her palm. His skin is sweaty against hers.
His smile is crooked and breathless. She thinks of what she wrote in her letter, about how he reminds her of her naivety, of what thought she wanted in a brother. She doubts she’s out of the woods, but for a moment, she humours a silly thought - the possibility that she gets out, and the monsters will leave her friends alone, and Steve will become her brother. Her real brother.
It’s a far-fetched notion. Not only her survival, but Steve’s reciprocation of her bizarre regard for him, as her sibling. Still, it’s a nice thought.
After everything she’s survived, she lets herself imagine it.
In the aftermath of everything, Steve pays Max a visit. She feels embarrassed about letting him into her dingy little trailer, though she knows it’s a petty thing to worry about, in light of this latest adventure they’ve endured. She should know better than to worry about Steve judging her, but there’s no denying how bleak her home is.
“Nice place you got here,” Steve says. It’s a blatant lie, told poorly. He’s stuttering, awkwardly trying to make her feel better.
Max rolls her eyes at him. “Yeah, I obviously know it’s a piece of shit. Do you want something to drink? My mom has, like, half a liquor store here.”
Steve chuckles, startled by her blunt reply. “I’ll take a soda, if you’ve got one.”
She fetches cans of Coke from the fridge and ushers Steve into the living room. They sit together on the sofa. Steve eyes Max as she takes her first sip, drumming his fingers on his knees.
“So,” Max says. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, nothing,” Steve says. “Nothing. I just - ”
He pauses, apparently unable to finish his sentence.
“Is this about the letter?” Max guesses. She’s had to sit through many conversations about those letters. She didn’t expect to have to deal with their consequences – now she lives in a world where the people she loves know exactly how much she loves them.
“Well, yeah.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Max says. “Really. I never expected a response.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get one,” Steve says. “I mean, you bared your soul, it only seems fair that I bare mine.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“Hey!” he huffs, before he considers the reason why she isn’t meeting his eyes, why she’s squirming among the cushions.
“Max,” Steve says, more gently.
“Seriously,” Max mumbles, glancing up at him. “I know that letter was weird and intense. I’m happy to never talk about it again.”
“It wasn’t weird,” he says, frowning, looking genuinely confused. “Did you mean it? Everything you said?”
Max arches an eyebrow at him. “You think I’d lie to you in my parting words?”
“I guess not,” Steve says. “It’s just that I wasn’t even expecting a letter from you. Let alone the one you wrote. It was so… It was beautiful.”
She snorts at this. Loudly, trying to make a joke of it, trying to get to the punchline before Steve does. She knows he’s not the type to make fun of a teenage girl, but she’s embarrassed by the memory of her earnest letter.
“No, really,” Steve says, setting his soda on the coffee table. “I teared up.”
Max manages a wooden smile. Steve puts a hesitant hand on her shoulder.
“I don’t know if anyone’s ever… said those things to me, before,” he continues. “I never even thought of it that way. Protecting you guys, and being there for you. I always saw babysitting as a chore, you know? But after your letter, it seems different.”
“In what way?” Max asks.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Steve admits. “I just know I’m lucky to hang out with you guys. I should probably stop complaining about it so much.”
The levity is a relief. Max laughs, Steve grins, and the world seems less sharp.
“In your defence, we can be pretty annoying,” Max says.
“No, Dustin can be pretty annoying,” Steve corrects her. “The guys are little demons, but you’re just funny. When you’re not encouraging them, anyway.”
Max looks at him sceptically. She can only see honesty in his gaze, but it’s difficult for her to trust him.
“You don’t have to be nice to me just ‘cause I almost died,” Max says, averting her eyes. “Or just ‘cause I said nice things about you.”
“I know I don’t,” Steve assures her. “I just want you to know that I care about you too, okay? I was relieved by what you said about me maybe being like a brother to you, ‘cause I’ve been thinking about you like a sister forever now.”
A sound escapes Max, half a sob and half a laugh. She stares at Steve with her doubt, and he nods adamantly, his hair flopping around his face.
“Nancy used to talk this way about Mike and Holly. I could tell, even when she didn’t say it, that she worried about them, that she felt protective of them,” Steve says. “That’s the way I feel about you. I worry about you. Ask Robin – I used to freak out every time you’d come into work and barely talk to me. Really, ask her, if you don’t believe me! She has a freakishly good memory.”
In the delirium of this strange new reality, Max has to remind herself to speak up.
“I believe you,” she says, giggling in surprise. “It’s okay.”
“Yeah?” Steve asks. He still seems frantic.
“Yeah,” Max says. Her heart is swelling in her chest, as it seems to every time one of her friends pulls her aside and finds a way to tell her that they harbour the same love for her as she does for them. It’s becoming increasingly obvious how she survived. How they all have.
Max is still startled every time she listens to her heart. Like now, when she scoots along the sofa and settles into Steve’s side.
“Thanks,” she tells him, in a strange little voice.
He pulls her closer.
“Of course,” Steve murmurs. “Anything for my little sister.”
There will never be another reason to write him such a fervent letter. But if she ever finds a reason to write to him - and she imagines she will, come college - she decides she will sign every letter the same.
Love, your little sister, Max.