Chapter Text
Daily Life of 80s Girls - Barb
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Barbara fiddled with a loose thread on her sleeve. It felt too long—sitting in the auditorium, surrounded by the rest of the school cheering and laughing and clapping, like watching kids embarrass themselves on stage was some kind of sport. Nancy sat beside her, clapping politely as a group of boys finished thrashing through a song, yelling lyrics into the mic. Barb crossed her arms and endured two more performances: one kid doing a shaky magic trick, and another pulling off a cheer routine by herself.
Barb gets it though. Going up on stage for the talent show is a risk in this school that people are willing to take. Showing some talent that people might like, or is socially approved by the popular kids can elevate their social status. It’s a ticket to escape being a nobody, or bullying. What she doesn’t get, is why her sister, in her first year of middle school, would want to go up on stage and show everyone who she is.
“Being popular isn’t everything,” her sister said one afternoon while walking home from school.
“Being popular don’t guarantee a good paying job.”
“Doesn’t.” Barb automatically corrected her. “Does not guarantee a good paying job. You need to work on your grammar.”
Her sister ignored it, instead humming a tune Barb doesn’t recognize, then turning to her and saying, “I signed up for the talent show.”
Barb clapped after the girl finished cheering, noting that all the popular kids seated at the front was clapping and hollering. She must be a shoo-in for the next generation of popular assholes.
The stage darkened back up again, and she saw her sister bring a chair in to the middle of the stage, then going back up with a guitar and a tambourine in each hand. She sat on the chair, placing the guitar on her lap and attaching the tambourine on one ankle. A teacher lowered the microphone to her head, and she lowered it down to her guitar. Her eyes scanned the room.
“Go home!” Someone yelled from the front. Barb can see Tommy H.’s head lower down in a snicker, Chris F. punching his arm but also laughing maliciously. Barb’s jaw clenched. It was a bad idea. She should have told her. Her sister’s eyes landed on her, ignoring the two boys, and smiled. “Hi,” she said to the mic. “I’m Kelly.”
Then she plucked the strings, a solid twang of sound for each note.
“You and me, we’re not the same, I am a sinner, you are a saint”
Barb watched in surprise as Kelly lightly tapped her ankle against the tambourine in time for the song. She had heard her sister sing before, but not like this. Nancy glanced at Barb with a smile. “I didn’t know she sang,” Nancy whispered.
“I’m a loser, a disgrace. You’re a beauty, a luminary, in my face”
“Loser!!” Someone else yelled from the side. Laughs scattered around in the crowd. Barbara’s face heated up. She glanced around, seeing other kids smiling and laughing, whispering to each other and pointing up on the stage. Barb avoided being bullied by sticking with Nancy. Kelly didn’t have anyone.
Suddenly, Kelly leapt out of her seat and stomped her foot down, the clanging of tambourine smothered under her voice.
“IIIIII got proooooblems, noooooot just the ones that are little, IIIIIIIts those peeeeooooooople prooooooblems”
From the side, Barb saw some kid stand and yell “Yeah!” to her sister. Another kid stood up and clapped on the beat.
“It’s something to consider, when you come for dinner, something to consider, when you come for dinner, at my place~”
Kelly ended the song with the same notes from the beginning and a two stomps of her feet in the stage. She leaned down to the mic with a soft “Thank you,” before putting the guitar down on the ground and jumping down the stage. She walked up quietly to Tommy and Chris. Barb stood up in alarm. “No! Don’t!!”
Nancy gasp as Barb tried to climb over the seat in front of her, the other kids sitting on the chairs exclaiming.
She watched, unable to do anything as Kelly brought her arm back, hand closed in a fist, before nailing Tommy in the middle of his face. The boy fell back in shock, his head smacking the ground and blood gushing from his nose. From either side of him, Chris and Steve Harrington jumped up yelling in shock. Kelly turned to Chris, grabbing both his shoulders, and bringing him down to knee his stomach. The boy heaved, eyes wide. Steve quickly grabbed her from the back, his arms going around hers and pulling the girl away from his friends. Barbara watched in horror as her sister kicked around violently and the teachers finally snapped out of shock to stop her.
Kelly Holland got suspended for a week. And somehow, everyone knew her by the end of the day.
---
“You should stop being friends with Nancy,” Kelly said one afternoon.
They were sitting at the dining table, filling out their course forms for next year. Barbara was heading into high school; Kelly was going into seventh grade.
Barbara looked up, gave her sister a dry look, then went back to her paper. “You should stop being friends with Munson,” she shot back.
“No,” Kelly said casually.
“Then mind your own business.”
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the scratch of pens on paper. Barbara finished first and leaned back, arms crossed. She watched Kelly for a moment, frowning.
“You know…” Barbara began. “You need to start taking school seriously. I know it’s not easy, but if you want to get out of this town, you need—”
Kelly didn’t even look up. “School’s not hard,” she said. “It’s just… not that serious. I’m not even gonna survive high school.”
“Jesus, you’re so dramatic. Just because some kids are jerks doesn’t mean your life is over. Munson’s a bad influence, and ever since you started hanging out with him, your grades—”
“My grades have nothin’ to do with Eddie,” Kelly cut in, finally looking up. “But if you keep hanging out with Nancy, you’re gonna disappear.”
Barbara blinked. “What do you even mean?”
Kelly twisted the end of her braid between her fingers. “You just will.”
“You always do this,” Barbara snapped. “You deflect. You make everything someone else’s fault. You’re almost failing, you’re getting suspended constantly, and you act like none of it matters.”
Kelly sighed, rolling her eyes. “Okay, okay. If I raise my grades, will you get off my back?”
“This isn’t just about your grades,” Barbara said, her voice stern. “It’s everything. You’ve been suspended so many times that Mom doesn’t even want to answer the phone anymore, because it’s going to be the school calling about your behaviour again. Dad has to juggle work just to keep you out of trouble. I’ve had to speak up for you at school so many times, I’ve lost count. Do you even care? You’re just so selfish.”
Kelly stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the tile. She grabbed her papers, and stormed out of the dining room.
“Hey!” Barb shouted after her. “Don’t you dare slam the door!” From upstairs, the door of Kelly’s room slammed shut with a loud bang.
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Barb spots her sister sitting by in front of the principal’s office looking defiant. Her arms were crossed over chest. Her hair, which Barb braided that morning, was unraveled in a mess. There are red lines going down from the lower part of her cheek to her neck. She had her spread out like a man, taking up a quarter of the bench she is sitting on. Beside her, four boys were squeezed in the rest of the bench. All of them looked tense, but only one of them, a boy with curly hair, looked beat up and has a bruise on one cheek. The door to the office opens, and two boys walk out, both looking rough. Their parents accompanied them, throwing dirty looks at the girl. She bared her teeth at them as they passed by. One of the boy's mother gasped and clutched her pearls and ushered the group away.
“Dusty!! Oh my baby, what happened?” An older woman rushed past Barb, Kelly finally spotting her and looking a bit sheepish. The younger girl looked away while the woman, presumably the mother of the beat up boy starting fussing over him. The boys started talking over each other loudly, explaining what happened.
Barb walked up to Kelly, both ignoring the boys’ chattering. On a closer look, Barb realized one of the boys was Nancy’s younger brother. “Mom’s not coming,” Barb said.
“I know. I already have detention later. They’re just going to extend it to a week instead of three days.”
“Why’d you do it?” Barb looked down at her sister. She was tall, like Barb, so she got the clothes Barb doesn’t want anymore. Kelly has never complained about it. She wore one of Barb’s old button-up shirts, but she had torn off the sleeves and made a hairband out of the scrap. She wore her skirt above the knee, but wore shorts underneath. Kelly was strange, and violent, and still, Kelly was her sister.
“I’m against bullying.” Barbara sighed. Since their argument, Kelly had indeed raised her grades and done better in school, but she hadn’t changed her attitude, hadn’t apologized to their parents, and hadn’t fixed her violent streak. “I’ll tell mom. Don’t start another fight during detention or she WILL actually cut off your allowance.”
“’Kay.”
Barb walked away. She glanced back to her sister and saw that the boys had started talking to her. The mother of the one called “Dusty” took Kelly’s hands and shook them. Her sister had a small gentle smile as she spoke back to the woman.
---
It was halfway through her freshman year when Barb found out that her sister, who was two years younger and also not even in high school yet, had already been invited to a couple of parties, while Barb had only ever showed up as Nancy’s plus one.
It came as a shock when in George Caldwell’s Halloween house party, she sees her sister dressed as a pilgrim, squished on the couch with 6 other people. She had a drink in hand, watching two seniors arm wrestle on the coffee table.
“Kelly!” Barb yelled. Nancy followed with furrowed eyebrows. Kelly looked up and waved. “Yo yo yo,” she says with the same strange inflection she always had.
“What are you doing here?” Barb hissed, grabbing her sister’s drink. She looked inside and almost had a heart attack when she saw the colour of the drink. “What are you doing?” she almost screeched.
“Damn, relax,” Kelly replied, reaching out for the cup. Barb held it out of reach. “It’s apple juice, I swear!”
Barb took a small sip and sagged in relief. Kelly had jumped over the couch to face them. “I got invited when I was at the store. By uhhh,” she scanned over the heads of teenagers scattered around the house. She pointed to a group of people hanging by the stairwell talking to each other. “That guy! He asked me which class I was in, and I told him it’s nunya business. I think he liked me cuz he gave me his number and the address to this house.”
Barb looked affronted. “Did he know your age?”
“Kelly, you don’t just randomly go to some stranger’s house without letting anyone know,” Nancy piped up beside Barb. “You’re a… a young lady, and it’s dangerous. What if you get kidnapped?”
“What if you get kidnapped?” Barb exclaims, throwing her hands up and spilling juice on the person behind her.
“I didn’t come alone, obvi, Ed’s right there,” she gestured to the couch behind her. Eddie had taken up the space she vacated and was laughing at something the guy beside him said. “He’s my plus one cuz he didn’t get invited.”
“You don’t even go to our school, why would you go here?”
“Uh, cuz it’s cool and I got invited? I think he thought I was in highschool too. Maybe he thought I was ‘mature for my age’,” Kelly joked, making quotation marks with her fingers.
“This isn’t funny,” Barb said. “You need to go home right now.”
“No,” Kelly said. She looked her down defiantly. Even though they were two years apart, Kelly stood at the same height as Barb did. They both shot up during puberty, and it only made it harder for Barb to put her foot down as an older sister. “I’m not going home unless you are.”
Nancy lightly touched Barb’s arm. “Hey,” she said. “Maybe it’s for the best. You can keep an eye out for her while we’re both here.”
Kelly’s eyebrow raised. “Is that so, Nance?” she mocked. “You wanna keep an eye out? You sure you’re gonna do that?”
Nancy was taken aback with her reply. Her eyes jumped between Barb and Kelly. “What?” she said.
“If I wasn’t here, were you gonna keep an eye out for my sister?”
“I don’t need to be supervised, unlike you,” Barb cut in as Nancy was about to answer. “Why are you being rude to Nancy? Apologize right now.”
“Ugh. I’m sorry Nance,” Kelly said. She didn’t look a single bit sorry.
“It’s okay…” Nancy replied. The three stood there for a moment, the air between them tense.
“Fine,” Kelly said after a while. “I’ll go home.”
“Go straight home,” Barb ordered.
Kelly ignored her and tapped Munson on the shoulder, gesturing to the door and pointing to Barb. He just noticed Barb standing there and made a face. Despite him being the same age as her, she obviously can’t rely on him to be the responsible role model for Kelly. Barb watched the two grudgingly grab their coats and exit the house.
“Sorry about that,” Barb said to Nancy. The other girl gave her a small smile. “It’s okay. Mike can be jerk sometimes too.”
As the night dragged on, more people trickled in the house and less people left. The music got louder, and teens got drunker, and dumber. People danced, and pressed up against each other, and made out. By this point, Nancy and Barb had got separated, and despite her better judgment, took a few sips or ten of the concoction someone made in the kitchen that obviously had alcohol poured in. Barb had started to feel overwhelmed by the people and the music and left her cup on a side table, opting to going up the stairs to get a bit of peace and quiet. She spotted Nancy dancing in the crowd with Steve Harrington of all people. She paused in the middle of the steps, hand touching the cool wall. The music made the walls vibrate against her palm. She wants to go home.
She reached the top of the stairs, and upon trying a door, heard moaning inside. She grimaced, and tried another. The sound of the shower running slipped under the door. One of the doors at the end of the hall was halfway open, and she could hear the giggling of people from inside. She heard a muffled “Oh my god,” and laughter erupted from the room.
With nothing else to do, she decided to go out of the house instead. She pushed through the crowd, spotting the door to the backyard. Someone had mentioned that there was a fire pit in the back yard. She made her way outside and stopped. By the bonfire, surrounded by drunk teens, was Kelly still dressed in her pilgrim outfit, strumming a guitar. Some other teen has a drum between his knees and was banging away in tune to the song. Beside her, Munson had his arm around another guy, laughing with a cigarette between his fingers.
“..and when you think about me all those years ago, you’re standing face to face with I told you so,” Kelly sang with her eyes closed. Her hands held down the strings of the guitar expertly, callused from years of playing. Barb was going to yell at her, maybe drag her home, but… Kelly doesn’t play like this at home. She doesn’t sing like this. All Barb had ever heard was the soft strum of a loved guitar and a whisper of a song Kelly doesn’t want anyone to hear. Sometimes, Barb can hear the twang of the guitar at night, and she presses her ear against the wall separating their bedroom and just listens. Kelly almost never reveals herself like this.
“I told you so!” Kelly sings as Barb sits down on one of the vacant seats by the fire pit. Kelly’s eyes open and meets Barb’s, and she almost stumbles on her words. Barbs lean back mouthed out ‘you are in trouble’ with a small smile. Kelly shrugs, but continues singing, lips curled up.
“...good luck babe, well good luck babe…”
Barb closes her eyes and just feels.
---
When Barb was sitting down on the edge of Steve Harrington’s pool after Nancy had told her to just go home, she hadn’t expected her life to take a turn that night. She nearly jumps up when she hears the squeal of a car stopping suddenly. She was more shocked when her sister jumps the fence of the private residence, a crowbar in hand, with Munson struggling to climb over the fence after her.
“Get out of the pool!!” Kelly shouts, preparing to swing the crowbar. Barb screams when Kelly runs past her, and Munson drags her away from the water by her arms. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking up, pale and shaken. Barb follows his line of sight and gasps when she sees her sister smacks a monster in the face with a crowbar. She screams louder when the crowbar doesn’t do anything to stop it, and it grabs Kelly’s arm in a tight hold and crushes it. Kelly’s scream of pain accompanies Barb’s. Steve Harrington and Nancy poke their heads out to see the commotion, both no longer wearing a their respective shirts. From the darkness of the forest bordering the Harrington house, Jonathan Byers runs in with a rock in hand. He throws it, hitting the monster in the back. It turns towards him but doesn’t let go of Kelly.
“Fire!!” Barb hears Kelly cry out, agony lacing her words. “Ed, fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!” Munson lets Barb go and dashes in, hairspray in one hand and lighter in another. He points and sends fire roaring towards the thing. Its guttural roar joining the screams before disappearing. Steve and Nancy had gone from the window, both running out to the backyard where Eddie and Barb knelt over a sobbing girl. Jonathan stood paces away, shaking from shock and adrenaline. The four all look at each other. Steve gripped his hair with both hands.
“What the hell was that?”
---
???
I was 6 when I remembered I had died. I was looking at myself in the mirror, brown hair, and freckles, and young – and also black-haired, pale-faced, and weary. I remember the oncoming lights, and the sound of machinery chugging, and the uncomfortable feeling of wood and metal pressing up against my back painfully as I voluntarily laid down on the tracks and watched as my death rushed towards me – I exhaled slowly, my hands painfully gripping my skirt. I bit down a shudder and opened my eyes. It was the past, I whispered to myself. It’s all in the past. It’s all in the past. It’s all in the past. Over and over and over again like a mantra.
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Thank you for reading.