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Steve was usually a calm and collected guy.
He very rarely experienced true anxiety. But when he did, he always seemed to lose his peripheral vision. He also lost it when he was shitfaced drunk. He wondered if the two things might be related.
Another thing that happened when he was experiencing anxiety was that everything seemed to move very quickly, but every moment also seemed to drag out forever, at the same time. He would attribute that to the speed of his heart racing. He didn’t know the science behind it at all, but that made the most sense to him.
He also felt the sound change. Sometimes it was muffled. Often times, there was a ringing in his ears. Although, those things might have been more related to the concussions that seemed to always occur at the same time as his moments of heightened anxiety.
He was undoubtedly concussed already as he drove the Toddfather back into Starcourt’s parking lot. He probably shouldn’t have been driving at all, considering the drugs that were certainly still in his system. The concussion was the icing on the cake.
Perhaps that was why he made the decision that he did.
He could see the blue Camaro hurtling toward Mrs. Wheeler’s station wagon. Billy was driving it. There was no question about it. Nancy stood to the side of the station wagon, arms extended as she fired a gun at the windshield, but Billy would not be deterred. He kept going, increasing in speed as his engine revved loudly.
Billy was going to kill Nancy, and likely everyone else in the car as well. Even if Nancy killed him first, the car was speeding forward in a straight line. He would still hit them even if his foot fell off the gas.
There was no real thought behind the decision, only action and the sound of Robin screaming into his ear.
Steve slammed his foot onto the gas and for a moment, he was afraid. Terrified. He felt anxiety burning through his veins and he couldn’t see anything except the Camaro in front of him. As the nose of the Toddfather T-boned the Camaro, time seemed to slow down to a crawl.
Steve hated it. He hated every fraction of every moment. As dumb as it was, he kinda fucking loved the Camaro. He didn’t want to ruin the car. He could feel it in his bones as he watched the hood of the Toddfather crumple against the passenger door. The horrible sound it made echoed through his ribs and against his spine, tearing at his ears painfully.
He could see the indentation left behind, a concave divot in the metal. It was like a piece was scooped out, hollow to match the gaping hole it left in Steve’s heart to see the wreckage.
Shards of glass went flying; spinning and vaulting through the air. Steve could see his memories reflecting off each piece.
In a shard that bounced off the windshield, he could see the day Billy first rode into the Hawkins High parking lot, engine loud and attention-grabbing, directing all eyes on him, just like Billy always did.
Another piece showed that day after the Byers’ house last November when Steve begrudgingly drove a half-conscious Billy home and he and Max struggled to drag his dead weight inside without waking their parents.
A piece with a jagged edge showed the week after, when Billy finally showed his face at school again, more bruised and purple than Steve’s fists could have possibly left it. Even then, Billy’d shoved Steve into the Camaro’s door and demanded to know what had transpired that fateful night. Steve could still recall the cool press of the window against his back when he realized that Billy thought Steve was touching Max and he didn’t have a good cover story to convince him otherwise. That was one of those rare instances of anxiety.
In a triangular glass shard spinning through the air, Steve could see a reflection of Billy smoking a cigarette in the arcade parking lot, leaning against the passenger window. It was the first time the two of them had something resembling a civil conversation. It was just Steve bumming a smoke while Billy pretended not to shiver in the December air, but when Billy passed him the cigarette, it felt a lot like an olive branch.
There were lots of tiny glass particles bouncing off the hood of the Toddfather, making tinkling sounds that echoed in Steve’s ears. Little crumbles of conversations over the months, slowly shifting from curt to cordial to friendly to even flirty as Steve found himself sitting in the passenger seat more and more often.
A large chunk of glass bounced right over the Toddfather’s headlight, just missing it as the car ricocheted off the Camaro’s door and swung into a tailspin. In it, Steve could catch a glimpse of the terrified face Billy made when he realized he’d kissed Steve for the first time. They’d been in the Camaro, jokingly arguing over Billy’s loud ass music when Steve grabbed Billy’s hand to pull it away from the radio dial. He didn’t let go, continuing to laugh as an overwhelming fondness overtook Billy’s face. Suddenly, Billy leaned forward and kissed Steve. He drew back quickly, panic in his eyes, but Steve wasted no time in leaning across the center console and kissing the expression right off of his face. His lips made contact right before the glass crashed into the asphalt and crumbled into pieces.
As the two cars separated from the impact, Steve just barely caught sight of the backseat of the Camaro, briefly lit up by the Toddfather’s headlights. He saw the phantom of a memory of himself and Billy crammed into the backseat. They had been parked in the woods, making out, but it had quickly turned into something more as they fogged up the windows. There wasn’t nearly enough room for what they were getting up to, but they made do. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but they didn’t need comfortable. They were both more than happy with the fact that it just wasn’t home and that they were together. They didn’t need more than that.
The cars continued spinning away from each other and the memory vanished as the Camaro was no longer in Steve’s field of vision. He could still see tiny bits of the wreckage sprayed around the parking lot. Yellow pieces from the Toddfather’s hood and broken bits of blue, everywhere. Pieces of the undercarriage and the side mirror were sprinkled on the ground.
Suddenly, time seemed to catch up and Steve found himself panting as if he’d run a marathon. The Camaro and the station wagon were both behind him now, due to the tailspin. He almost didn’t dare look back. He couldn’t bare the sight of what the Camaro would look like now, where all the rest of his memories would have landed.
He wasn’t sure if it was the drugs, the concussion, or some type of adrenaline-induced psychosis to blame, but his brain wouldn’t even begin to process the fact that Billy was in the car. Billy was in the car! BILLY WAS IN TH-
The Camaro didn’t hit the station wagon. Nancy, Jonathan, and the kids would be okay. That was all Steve could manage at that moment.
His entire body hurt. He was already in pain from the beating earlier, but his bones felt as if they’d been rattled until they were all out of alignment. It was almost as if he’d been in a car crash or something.
He took a deep breath. “Are you okay?” he asked Robin, too frazzled to even look at her directly.
“Ask me tomorrow?”