Stranger Things by Brenna Yovanoff

Author:Brenna Yovanoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

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My mom was basically useless when it came to being fierce or protective. I’d read that mother wolves and bears and lions would mess you up if you came near their cubs, but she didn’t have that instinct. She was always mousing around or apologizing, acting like she didn’t know what was happening in our house.

Sometimes, though, she had an eye for things I didn’t. Sometimes she took me by surprise.

The garage at home in San Diego had been attached to the house. It was big enough to park two cars next to each other, even though we never did, and you could get to it from inside through a door at the back of the laundry room.

Billy hung out there a lot, with his friends or by himself. He kept a transistor radio on the workbench and a bench press in the corner. On weekends and afternoons, I’d find him out there in the shade of the open garage with the music blasting, lifting weights or working on his car.

I’d been changing the wheels on my skateboard, and when I went out for an Allen wrench, Billy was in the garage with the door up. He was in his undershirt, working under the hood of the Camaro with a cigarette clamped between his teeth. He’d finally gotten his keys back from Neil.

Before he and Neil moved in, the garage was just where we kept the Christmas lights. My mom mostly parked her car in the driveway, and I never went out there except to look for the Allen wrench—and no one ever smoked. Now there was always a jumbo Folgers can on the corner of the workbench, full of ashes and cigarette butts. Before, I hadn’t cared about the garage one way or another, but now I felt weirdly protective, like it was just one more conquered territory in a house that had been mine and wasn’t anymore.

I sat on the concrete step with the door to the laundry room open behind me and watched Billy for a while. The hood of the Camaro made an aggressive angle, smoke puffing up from underneath.

I leaned forward with my knees on my elbows and cupped my chin in my hands. “At the health assembly in school, they told us that we’re not supposed to smoke.”

Billy straightened and closed the hood, wiping his hands with a rag. “And do you always do everything your teachers tell you?”

That idea was so wrong it was hilarious. My grades were usually okay, but my conduct cards were a mess. I was always in trouble for something—talking back, or drawing cartoon hot rods on my desk with a felt pen. I laughed and shook my head.

That seemed to make him happy. He smiled in a slow, lazy way, then pulled the pack of Parliaments out of his shirt pocket. He held it out to me and waited, watching my face until I took one.

I’d never smoked before, and the cigarette felt weird in my hand, but the actual mechanics of it seemed pretty simple.

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