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The warm glow of flickering candles kisses Max’s cheeks as she thinks about her wish.
It wasn’t too long ago when her one and only wish was one simple thing. What she pleaded and begged for every day she was trapped.
Her freedom.
To not be stuck in the memories of a twisted psychopath for an eternity. To not live with Vecna’s curse hanging over her. To be able to hold Lucas one more time and feel the safety of his arms.
And somehow, she got her wish.
Hawkins got its freedom from Vecna, too.
Things were normal again, or as normal as they would ever be anyway. National headlines about Hawkins had long since been swept under the rug by the military. Most people left town the first chance they got—who could blame them—but those who stayed tried to do everything they could to get their lives back in order. Back to the way things were before.
For Max, though, there was no going back to before. Not really. The doctors said it was a miracle that she was even here, but that’s where her miracles ended.
They told her she would be blind for the rest of her life, all because of that stupid noseless asshole.
Going from being trapped in the visions of another, only to now never see anything of her own ever again. What kind of sick joke was that?
There was nothing she could do about it, and nothing her friends could do either. But they tried to be there for her in other ways.
Like throwing her a birthday party even when it wasn’t that long ago when the world almost ended. There were other things to worry about, she had insisted. It was ridiculous and totally unnecessary. She was glad they did it anyway.
With a new wish in mind, she blows out all of her candles with a big woosh.
“What’d you wish for?” Lucas asks her.
Max scoffs, “What makes you think I’d ever even think about telling you that? It’s supposed to be a secret.”
She can hear someone pull the cake away from her and the clinking of silverware and plates as someone begins dishing out slices.
“Seriously, dude,” Mike says, “do you want her to get bad luck or something?”
“…bad luck?” El asks.
“You know, if you tell someone your birthday wish, you get bad luck for a whole year. Like a curse,” Mike explains.
“Right, exactly. Vecna’s curse was bad enough, but I’ve been just dying for another one.”
El plays along with them too now, “Lucas, really. Your own girlfriend? She should dump your ass.”
“Again.” Will throws in helpfully.
Max can almost picture Lucas rolling his eyes, “Yeah, yeah, just eat your damn cake,” he says as he places a plate on her lap.
She smiles into her bite, equally savoring the sweetness of both vanilla cake and the sound of her friends continuing to bicker about nothing important.
***
A little while later, after they pile Mrs. Wheeler’s sink sky high with dirty plates, they reclaim their spots in the basement to gather for presents. Max settles in close beside Lucas, curling her arm around his bicep, a place as familiar to her as her own name.
Mike got her a gift card to Scoops Ahoy, which he probably got at the last minute, knowing him. Part of her thought that a gift card was kind of a cop-out gift, but you know. Ice cream is ice cream, and Mike is, well, Mike. (Except around Will, of course).
From Dustin, she got a Dig Dug minifigure key chain. She wonders if he ever forgave her for taking his top score.
El got her a huge pack of 100 scrunchies, which Max figures was as much a gift to herself as it was to Max. She has no idea how many of her scrunchies have magically ended up at El’s cabin, and it seems like many more would be joining them soon.
“I was buying more paints at the art supply store and saw they started carrying clay,” Will begins as he places her gift in her lap. It was some kind of box supporting a plate-like disc that felt cool beneath her fingertips.
“I don’t know, for me art has always been my happy place, so I thought maybe pottery could be yours too.”
Max had never really been the artsy type. She’d always been more drawn to skateboarding or video games. Definitely not pottery. Billy would have given her hell for something like that.
Her hesitation makes him weary. “Unless you hate it. I can just—”
“No, no, no, it’s great. I–thank you. It’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever tried it before.”
“It’s a little bit of a learning curve, but it’s not too hard.”
“Max, you can be an artist like Will!” El exclaims with excitement.
“I think it’s a WHEELY-great gift!” Dustin’s joke is met with silence. “Eh?? Get it? Like, wheely as in pottery wheel, you know?”
“Yes, we do know. Thank you for that wonderful contribution, Dustin,” says Max.
“I know–you are being sarcastic,” Dustin said it like a statement, not a question. Over the years, he has gotten better at picking up her sarcasm and dry remarks. Which was too bad, she always liked seeing how long she could mess with him.
“Well, I thought it was pretty good,” Will says to Dustin.
Mike scoffs. “It wasn’t that good.”
Dustin is trying and failing to hold in a laugh at a joke he hasn’t said yet. “To that I say fuck off… WHEEL-ER.”
Mike and Dustin are still arguing with one another when Lucas slips what felt like a cassette tape into her hand. At first, she thinks it could possibly be a new album that came out recently, Whitney Houston, maybe?
“When you were hospital, we got through most of the Talisman, but we never got through it before you decided to join us in the world of the living, and then of course we had a bunch of other things to worry about with Vecna and the Mindflayer and all that—”
Lucas is still talking. Rambling, really. What an idiot, she thinks fondly.
She squeezes his arm, and she feels him ease slightly.
“I guess I just realized that I really liked reading to you, for you. I had to take your collection of Wonder Woman comics without asking, but I promise I’ll never steal from you ever again.”
Max holds the cassette a little tighter because did he really–?
“I know it won’t be the same without the illustrations, but I hope you like it anyway,” he finishes.
She didn’t know what to say. At all. How can she possibly thank him for all the time he spent on this? For her? Her heart is fuzzy at the affirmation of how deeply he really, truly knows her.
So she simply went with, “I can’t believe I’m dating a stalker AND a thief.”
“Yeah, I guess you are,” Lucas says warmly.
***
The cassette tapes quickly became her favorite things in her possession. Lucas starts the recording of the first volume a little early. She likes that she can hear him settle in with the stolen comic book and rustle the first page and clear his throat before he begins:
The Secret Origin of Wonder Woman
Somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle lies Paradise Island, home of the legendary Amazons….
Despite the peace and prosperity in the land, their ruler, Queen Hippolyte, lived thousands of years of a hollow existence. It was a deep ache for something unknown that she did not know how to name. The oracle Menalippe told her that what she longed for was the loving embrace of a child of her own.
Queen Hippolyte’s sorrow and despair were so acute that the Gods could feel it high up on Olympus. They instructed her to go to the island’s beach and sculpt a figure of an infant out of clay from the earth.
“Then, from the clay of Paradise, form you an image!”
“Your heart shall race with anticipation, but steady yourself.”
“…and shape the image with care!”
“Then open yourself to fair Artemis, that the midwife of all Olympus may enter you!”
“And with her guidance, let your spirit cry out…unto the womb of Gaea!”
The goddesses then united to imbue the sculpture with life, merging it with the final soul from the Well of Souls, a soul that was meant to be a champion of the Amazons.
“I, Demeter, grant her power and strength–like that of earth itself.”
“I, Aphrodite, give her great beauty and a loving heart.”
“I, Athena, grant her wisdom!”
“I, Artemis, shall give her the eye of the hunter and unity with the beasts!”
“I, Hestia, grant her sisterhood with fire–that it may open men’s hearts to her.”
“I, Hermes, give her speed and the power of flight!”
“All this will be hers as she grows into womanhood. And Blessed, too, shall she be with Great Gaea’s gift—life!”
When Hippolyta had finished her sculpture, she fell to the ground exhausted and fell into a deep slumber on the sands of Paradise. And as the sun rose, she was awakened by her child, the destined champion of her people. A daughter who had been transformed into flesh and blood by the gifts of the gods and a mother's deep love.
***
The gifted pottery wheel of hers sat untouched ever since Lucas helped her set it up, tucked away in the corner of her room. But as she listens to him recount the origin story of her favorite fictional superhero, she feels herself being drawn to it.
As she pulls out a small piece of clay, she feels the chaotic, unformed material in the palm of her hands. It is hers to command at will and to mold into any shape that she desires.
Max does not know what she would make or what it would look like, but it would be her own creation. Certainly not an Amazonian champion, but divine and beautiful in its own right. Forged by and with the love present in her own life, the kind you could only wish for.