My brother, before he died, gave me his motorbike. I'd been riding it to school for months now, I had to teach myself and hope the police wouldn't ask for my non-existent license. Mind you the chief of police didn't really care about things like that, he had his own problems to deal with. Or at least that's what one of my mothers stupid friends had said. 'He had a daughter, emphasis on the had.' That's the problem with a town like this, everyone knows everything about everyone.

Every day, I had to shove my leathers in my locker and change my boots into my worn out vans. Every morning I had to ride to the back of the school and dump my bike in the carpark. It got pretty tedious after the first few days, but today something felt different. It was my first day back after the lab incident, I'd been playing ill and sneaking out the house while my parents were at work. I'd been trying to investigate the files I took from the lab, I'd seen the kids that it mentioned from the high school (they were all still in middle school). But I couldn't make sense of it, there were pictures of the wheelers and Lucas Sinclair. Other than being friends with the towns 'zomby boy,' I couldn't see any further connection than that. 

But now the midterms were on the horizon, I had to pull myself together. I don't why the incident affected me so much, I has started fires before. Both literally and figuratively. It was probably because the harrowing face of Brenner was permanently tattooed on my mind, day and night I found myself in a depression of bottomless curiosity, the chain of events that had been welded together in the past year. I can't piece even the slightest thing together yet, I'd tried to speak to Jonathan, but, by the sounds of it, even the arteries closest to the heart couldn't fathom the whole truth. 

But today felt different, as I twisted my hair into a bun and put my helmet over my face, as I kicked the peddle to start the damn thing, something felt different. It certainly felt like the world had flipped from north to south. 

I pulled out the garage and drove down the driveway, the wheels rattling at the surface change onto the road, as it did everyday. A cold wind swept in around my helmet, kicking the breath from my lungs, as it did every day. I rode with my back straight and as I got onto the country road between downtown and main town I allowed my eyes to close for a second until I felt myself drifting off the road.

I always love being immature, ever since my brother died, as my emotions became harder to control I started doing things that even the best poets could hardly imagine. Hanging from the pipes of buildings, playing hopscotch on window ledges. As I veered towards the edge of the forest and felt myself on gravel I pulled my eyes open, the stark morning light like daggers. 

Suddenly a blue cameo, with its low and rumbling boy racer engine, sped past me, my heart skipped a beat and I nearly fell clean off. The leather seat seemed to slip from underneath me. Everything in Hawkins was so samey you think I would have noticed a new car, but with all the kids leaving for summer break, I was hardly surprised at the increase in car sales recently. Every way you looked someone was flexing a new motor. But I had my bike, and that was passifiable for me, my red Suzuki 500, made in 1976 New York. 

The trees slip away and as I traverse the bridge into main town, the timeless landscape slips away behind me. The school emerges from around a corner, no matter how many times I do this journey I never get any more optimistic. The large grey buildings and the many gatherings of kids and teenagers: kids that look like teenagers and teenagers that act like kids. 

I said about Hawkins being samey, but I was sure that this was the most cliché part about it: the popular kids or the mildly attractive dumbasses (as they were more commonly known) were standing by the cars, most of their parents were rich and they could afford anything they wanted. That's probably why people like them, you could get things off them. The punks and the rockers were round by the art blocks and the skaters and the jocks by the sports hall. That was forbidden territory for people like me. I usually hang round with the punks, the amount of cigarettes they got through in a day was unbelievable. Even in the weeks after my brother died I only got through one or two.

The golden light bounces of my windscreen as I pull up at the side of the road, even before I pull helmet off I can hear people calling my name. They weren't my real friends they were just a bunch of stoners who happened to know me. 

My stomach flipped to worlds below as I made direct eye contact with him, I pulled my helmet off, the world went from an aesthetic orange that's the screen provided to it's regular blandness in a matter of seconds. And as my hair untwisted and fell onto my shoulders, I saw him. The scorpions new release playing in the background. I automatically got respect for him, he was into rock music, I like that. Staring into his angel eyes seemed to last for eons, I saw his whole soul in that one moments. When the cigarette smoke cleared and I saw his whole figure, I thought maybe, maybe. But as he strolled past Carol Fletcher and her minions, I knew he was whore hunter. 

I think I smirked, somewhat, slyly at him as Connor put his muscly arms around my neck and pulled me off the bike. Even as he steered me away and behind the art blocks I never lost his gaze, I must have smoked something that day because for the whole of school I couldn't stop thinking about it. Every detail in its finest colours. 

He was the headturner of the school and I didn't even know his name, people spoke about him in the hallways and as I shoved my leathers in my locker, got my books and cradled them between my arms, I found his name was Billy. Billy Hargrove. 

It just rolls off the tongue doesn't it? I knew I really needed to sort myself out, I'd already seen him in the arms of three girls in the space of a day. And it wasn't until I was waiting to go home, putting my gloves and stuff on that I realised I'd already met his sister or friend or whoever she was to him. Me and Max were acquaintances through skating. 

I decided to walk round there, leaving my bike in it spot, not knowing what I would do when I arrived, as they got in the car, he was already shouting at her, she slammed the car door and skated off towards Will and his friends. "Fine skate home," he shouted through the open window. I was torn between following her or talking to him, so I said my greeting to her and smiled at him, he went red hot embarrassed. Talking to someone like me I'm not surprised. Then I turned and went home. 

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I sat in the shaded area of the sports buildings at lunch the next day. Watching the boys as they watched Max in awe. She really was a good skater. The papers shifting in my lap, I had to try and figure this out before Halloween break. Of course I already knew the names of Mike Wheeler, Lucas, Dustin and Will. I mean how many people do you meet called Dustin? But now I watch them, or rather watched the 3 of them, I couldn't see how they were connected to this lab girl, barcoded 11 by Brenner and his inhuman monkeys.

Then I heard his laugh and I almost shit myself. Him and Steve, jostling back and forth insults, rounded the corner, I shoved my stuff in my bag and got up to leave. As they power walked up the ramp to the sports hall, he leaned over the rail to talk to me. I stopped dead in my tracks. "Hi," he said as he smirked wildly. I don't why, but in front of Steve (who I've known for years) I had to keep my dignity, I didn't want to fall for someone on the first day I saw them. I was a punk not a hopeless romantic but honestly sometimes they seem like the same thing. 

"No," I say flatly cutting of the conversation and striding forward to go. I heard Steve snigger, "shut up Harrington it's not like you've never been rejected before." And it wasn't, despite his undeniable fame, Steve 'the hair' Harrington didn't have much luck with girls.

                                                                         ,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.                                                             

Family dinner, a perfect excuse to watch my mom cry at the empty seat at the table, to watch my dad get stressed at every one of my breaths. To watch them row about work. And to watch me look for a door to slam my head in. 

They know I was fired, and for some reason, despite the fire being big news, they didn't seem to connect the dots of me getting fired on the day after the fire, the police stalking our house and a forensics investigator taking my finger prints. Or maybe they had and they just didn't want to punish me for it. They'd got on used to me being an 'almost criminal.'

"Dad?" I say stirring the grease into my ketchup. He doesn't reply, I sit forward in my seat reproachfully, "dad."

"No your grounded, no talking," my mother waves her hand at me, raising her eyebrows. I reward her the 'your not intimidating look.'

My eyes revert to my dad, the stubble growing up the side of his face, "Look," I say, surprisingly calm. "I'm sorry I got fired," mom drops her fork and goes static, we've talked about this, or rather shouted about it ever night this week. "But it's not my fault," I say, almost pleading with them.

"Who's is then Avangaline," she says, cementing ours eyes together. I can't believe I came out this woman. 

"The governments," I murmur to my food, barely audible, yet she still hears me, she can hear me when I whisper, but she never seems to know when I've dropped two floors from my window into the bush, or when I get on motorbike and drive away at 2 in the morning. 

"No don't come that with me again."

"Daniel believed me."

She breaks. But I still don't feel like I've broken any boundaries. 

"Go to your room."

I slide from my chair, I know she gets more annoyed when I'm calm than when I'm angry, there's no slamming or doors in this house. Not because it's a rule, because we're all so wrapped up in our own minds, that we don't notice each other. I simply give her the finger and shut the door. I think the reason she makes so many allowances is because she feels bad, she and I both know what it's like to be depressed. After she has us both, her and dad decided to live separately and her boyfriend abused the both of us. And after Daniel died, her and dad decided to move together again. He couldn't live on his own. He's pretty much dysfunctional now. Then her boyfriend killed himself, so she lost two birds with one stone.