Chapter Text
Allison Campbell has it all: a big house, good grades, and popularity—but underneath all of that, behind the perfect girl next door facade, is truly where it gets interesting. When she gets stuck tutoring the notorious Freak of Hawkins High, Eddie Munson, her life takes unexpected turns as she battles her step dad, her awful friends and, most importantly, falling in love for the first time.
November 17, 1986
Mornings are a mundane ordeal in the Campbell household, always the same. Brenda Campbell, the obedient little housewife she is, is always in the kitchen by the time Allison comes downstairs. Her step-father, Dan—Dan The Dictator, she likes to call him—sits at his usual spot at the dining room table, reading a newspaper and making snide comments about how the food smells, even though he's going to scarf it all down anyway.
Pig, Allison thinks. She slips into her seat silently, munching on a dry piece of toast as fast as she can without earning the wrath of her step-father.
She fails.
"Slow down, Ali, the food isn't going anywhere," he says. "People are gonna mistake you for a pig if you keep that up." He oinks, then chuckles to himself like this is the funniest joke he's ever heard.
Allison bites down both the toast and the sarcastic remark on the tip of her tongue. She looks back at him as she wipes crumbs from the side of her mouth, eyes flickering down to look at his—no, her actual dad's tie.
I hope you get hit by a bus, she thinks, and she really means it. "Sorry," she says instead. "Guess I'm just excited to get to school."
That was a goddamn lie.
High school is a similarly mundane ordeal. She falls into her usual routine, sitting with the cheer squad and feigning interest while they talk about things she really couldn't give less of a damn about. No, Heather, she does not want to hear about parties or Madonna or guess who bumped uglies with Steve Harrington at Skull Rock!
God, she would rather choke herself with a hot branding iron than keep having these conversations but she knew how important image was to her mother and Dan. Not that she gave a shit about pleasing Dan, he could go choke for all she cared. But it was important to her mother too, and unfortunately, Allison did give a damn about pleasing her.
The second she makes her way to the classroom with its painfully harsh fluorescent lights, Mrs. O' Donnell asks if she can speak to her after class.
Allison frowns. "Am I …?" she trails off, eyebrows furrowed, and Miss O' Donnel seems to understand the unspoken word without her having to actually say it.
"Oh, don't worry," she says. "You aren't in trouble. I just need to talk to you."
Still, anxiety pools in Allison's stomach through the entire class. The bell rings, and she looks back down at her notebook, completely blank except for the topic written across the top in big letters. Damn. She'd have to ask someone if she could borrow their notes later.
That was the least of her concerns, though. Her main concern was figuring out what Miss O' Donnel wanted from her. She made her way to the front desk, clearing her throat to make her presence known.
The woman peered up at her through thin-rimmed glasses. "Ah, yes. Allison, I'm looking for a tutor for Eddie Munson and I was wondering if you'd be interested."
The metaphorical record in Allison's brain scratches to a stop. She opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again, gapping like a fashing out of water. "I'm sorry, what?" she eventually settles on.
Eddie 'The Freak' Munson, the resident drug dealer of Hawkins High. He definitely has a … reputation, to say the least. He was the leader of the Hellfire Club. Allison is pretty sure that it's just a bunch of nerds playing a tabletop fantasy game, but everyone else seems convinced that it's a bunch of satanists sacrificing virgins.
Either way, she doesn't really want to do it. Nonetheless, being the ass-kissing people pleaser she is, Allison says yes.
Mrs. O' Donnel smiles at her. "Thank you, Allison, I knew I could count on you." She hands her the paper with his address and contact information. Allison thanks her absentmindedly, them goes about the rest of her morning classes in a bit of a daze.
She just agreed to tutor Eddie Munson. Eddie fucking Munson.
Finally, it's lunch. She takes her tray with a weird meat mush—seriously, what is that stuff—and sits down at the table. This group is a little different than the ones she ate breakfast with. In addition to the snobby girls, there was the basketball team. She hates them and their weird suburban hair and the way they mock people. As she sits there, listening to Andy drag on about the new truck his daddy bought him, her attention is turned away by something more interesting.
Eddie Munson, who had been sitting with his Hellfire Club, is now on the table shouting about conforming and useless highschool cliques. Allison resists the urge to bury her face in her hands. God, he is totally embarrassing. He's absolutely right, but still. Embarrassing.
Jason Carver stands up. "You want something, freak?" he squares his shoulders as though he was doing something important, defending the basketball team's honor or whatever. He's embarrassing too.
Eddie responds by sticking his tongue out and making faux devil horns with his fingers. Allison hides a smile by shoving a forkful of food into her mouth.
Jason abruptly sits down “God I hate that freak," he scoffs. "Don’t you guys just hate him?”
The group nods and agrees— except Allison, who is too focused on staring at Eddie: his long curly hair, his beautiful brown eyes and the way his mouth forms a flirtatious smirk when she catches his eye.
“Allison!” Jason yells out. She quickly jolted back to reality. “I said don’t you just hate him?”
She gives a quick glance back at Eddie. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, he's just the worst."
Well this is going to so much fun