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Westley: I told you I would always come for you. Why didn't you wait for me?
Buttercup: Well... you were dead.
Westley: Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.
Buttercup: I will never doubt again.
Westley: There will never be a need.
- The Princess Bride (1987) (dir. Rob Reiner)
It’s past nine o’clock when Nancy gets back to the house on Maple Street, the long sunset having dwindled from golden to rose to colorless dusk. She’ll never take that final corner from Dearborn onto Maple without her nerves screeching up, up, up like a bow along strings. Too slow. Too slow. Like a children’s game gone wrong.
Tag, you’re it, all her life.
There was a children’s game going on today, though Nancy could only hear its familiar echoes rising up the basement stairs. Apparently Mike and his friends ditched the cool kids’ grad parties for one last campaign. Mom made lasagna. And Nancy had fled, not wanting to sit around that table and watch Mike try again and again for something like happiness. The flicker of a dimming lightbulb set them all on edge—Mom and Dad now, too—but it was Mike who seemed geared, even all these months later, to feel a shift in barometric pressure, to hear an off-key note.
The kind of hope that couldn’t promise anything.
Call Nancy a coward, call her an emotionally constipated bitch, but she didn’t like seeing it. And she didn’t, often, hang out for very long at home.
But then there’s Holly.
Holly, pushing twelve, has all the hopes and dreams of quality time that a girl who finally caught a glimpse of her big sister’s world could muster. And it doesn’t matter, apparently, that that world was horrible. It was the in Holly needed to keep Nancy from leaving her (the way Nancy leaves everyone else), and Holly, with typical Wheeler persistence, isn’t letting her go.
So Nancy lets herself in the door, shrugs off her oversized blazer—smelling a little of the beer Robin splashed onto it, when they all crowded into a somewhat maudlin hug—and flicks on the kitchen light, already expecting a step on the stairs, a voice saying—
“Nancy! You’re back!”
She drops her keys on the end-table. “And it’s not your bedtime?”
“Puh-leeze,” Holly says, rolling her eyes. “Mom lets me go to bed whenever I want.” She smiles, sunny and blonde and fearless, the girl that Nancy found at the heart of the nightmare, the girl who saved all of her friends.
“Yeah?” Nancy says. She feels a little exposed in her tight little sweater, like Holly of all people will read something into the discordant pieces she assembled into an outfit.
(But how do you dress for something like… that? The four of them, better friends now that they’re apart than they were when they lived in each other’s pockets. All gone their own ways, and all of them insisting on how happy—)
Holly asks, excitement hanging off her like Christmas-tinsel, “Are we still having our movie night?”
See the thing about Holly is, she doesn’t forget anything. She has religiously catalogued all the popular stuff she missed from March of 1986 through… well, all of 1987 (November was a wash, December felt like some kind of funeral), and she made a list to rival fucking Santa Claus. She waved the VHS tape in Nancy’s face this morning, when Nancy was half-listening to the radio and half-listening to Mom tell Mike how she’d tried to press the creases out of his gown but polyester was impossible—
Anyway. Nancy saw the word Princess on the cover of said VHS tape and inwardly groaned.
“I don’t know, Hols.” Will the nickname soften the blow? Nance plays in her mind—he didn’t say it all night. Like they were friendly strangers, now. Him in that big suit, talking about Forest Hills. And Kristin.
(Julie, Dawn, Margaret—why the hell does Nancy know their names?)
“It’s late,” Nancy adds. She wishes she couldn’t recognize every line of disappointment falling over Holly’s face, the way she looks a little like Mike, a little like Mom, a little like Nancy in the mirror of the past. “I just…”
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” Holly says. “And—” pout backed by gimlet stare, another Wheeler special—“you promised.”
So here Nancy is, in her old pajamas (which still fit; she’s never passed her freshman growth spurt of five feet, four inches), curled up beside Holly in her old bedroom. Holly’s room was torn apart in ’87, of course, and almost two years later, she still hasn’t wanted to go back to it.
Nancy’s old room, meanwhile, is still pink, though Holly’s sprinkled her own vibrant tastes across its frilly surfaces. There’s a Tiffany poster, for one thing, to keep Tom Cruise company.
(Steve. Sunglasses. Hawkins High. Take those stupid things off.)
“I still can’t believe,” Nancy says, shying away from the rolodex of memories her mind serves up, “that Mom and Dad let you have your own TV.”
Holly wriggles indulgently under the quilt that Grandma Wheeler made Nancy. Nancy thought about bringing it with her to Emerson, but…
It’s better that it’s here.
“I told you,” Holly says. “Whatever I want.”
This has extended to Nancy, tonight; not only are they pressing play on The Princess Bride, which seems custom-made to raise every last one of her hackles, but Nancy has actually popped and buttered a gigantic bowl of popcorn.
Which, seeing the grin splitting Holly’s face from ear to ear?
It’s all worth it.
“OK,” Nancy says. “Let’s see this princess turn into a bride, or whatever.”
But Holly pauses the tape.
“Oh,” she says. “I forgot something. You earned me five bucks today.”
Nancy’s head snaps right. “What?”
It’s been a long day, what with the familiar chaos of breakfast, Mike being Mike, the grueling ordeal of the graduation, milling around her old stomping grounds and trying to quiet the drumbeat in her chest, then the drive to the Squawk…
Every month. Philly.
Wonderful.
“Yeah,” Holly says. “Derek bet that you’d come to his game this morning, and I bet you wouldn’t. Five bucks.”
“Derek…” Nancy says slowly, resisting the urge to stuff her mouth full of popcorn, hide behind the business of chewing. “Why would I come to Derek’s game?”
“Come on,” Holly says, shaking her head in teasing disbelief. “His coach is Steve?”
A flare of irritation, which Holly doesn’t deserve, sears Nancy’s throat. She shakes her head in turn, taking her time so that she doesn’t snap and say something she regrets.
“It’s not like that. Not with Steve or Jonathan,” she adds, like she’s imparting some great sisterly wisdom. And maybe she is, right? Maybe Holly needs to hear this. “We’re all very different people, and I don’t think… I don’t think Steve would appreciate knowing that you and Derek were placing bets about… about whether I’d see him.”
(Steve understands, Jonathan told her, unprompted, when they’d finally reached that Christmas, after the military had released them without charges, after Mom was released from the hospital to recover from surgeries seven and eight. He gets it, that it’s not in the cards for you two.
She’d frozen. Not in the cards. Such a Steve way to say it, and did that mean—that Jonathan had talked—)
“But he’s great at coaching,” Holly says, like Nancy’s the one going on twelve, and not a particularly bright twelve at that. “And the team won.”
“I’m sure it did.” She can picture Steve, dumbass hat and probably like, a monogrammed jacket, clapping for every successful play (and a few that aren’t), shouting out good effort, good effort, knock ‘em dead.
She can imagine Steve happy, and mostly, she does.
Forest Hills. Kristin.
“It was a busy day,” Nancy says. “I saw Steve tonight. And Robin. And Jonathan.”
“So that’s where you were,” Holly says, looking satisfied. “OK. Did they like your hair?”
Nancy bites her lip. She’s been trying—and mostly succeeding—to feel good about her hair. Confident, about how it flatters her features. Her mom praised it almost excessively. Which like… moms.
“Yeah, they said I looked great. Do you like my hair?”
“It kinda reminds me of Steve’s,” Holly says, devastatingly bland, and presses play at last.
The movie has no right to break Nancy’s heart.
I must know. Get used to disappointment. Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. We’ll never succeed. We may as well die here. No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp?
Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...
Death cannot stop true love.
I will never doubt again.
As you wish.
“Nancy,” Holly says, in a stage-whisper, “are you crying?”
“No! No. I got something in my eye.”
“What, popcorn?”
“No. Oh, Holly, please shut up.”
Holly presses pause. The room—this dear, deadly old room—is eerily quiet, rendering Nancy’s sniffle perfectly audible.
“Do you ever miss it?” Holly asks, after a respectful, unbearable pause.
“Miss—what?”
“That time.”
Surprised, Nancy twists to face her, her knees knocking against Holly’s under the covers. “What? That was—we almost—”
“Died, I know,” Holly says gravely. There’s no trace of little girl left in her. All time is loss, in Hawkins.
Nancy felt that today.
“It was horrible,” Holly continues, “but also—I met my best friends there. Really met them, you know? Because I didn’t understand Debbie, or Mary, and I certainly didn’t understand Derek in the same way before. And Mike was happier then—that whole year and a half, I know it wasn’t easy, and I know he had his moods, but he wasn’t so empty. Because…” She blinks. “I didn’t know El, really,” she says. “I never got to. But I feel like I know her because—she’s what’s missing in Mike. And something’s… I can tell something’s missing in you, Nancy. And it’s not Jonathan, and I thought maybe… I thought maybe it was Steve, but you don’t have to say anything, you don’t have to get mad…”
“I’m not mad,” Nancy says. “I just—I don’t think about missing that time, that’s all.”
“OK,” says Holly, accepting it. Because Holly’s wise beyond her years, and Holly sees a lot, but Holly doesn’t know everything. Doesn’t know Nancy left Emerson, doesn’t know how ugly Nancy’s little apartment is, doesn’t know how lonely it felt underneath the laughter, watching Steve pace the station rooftop and talk about looking for the love of his life.
They finish the movie.
It breaks Nancy’s heart.
“Did you like it?” Holly asks eagerly, and Nancy says,
“Sure did, honey.”
“Don’t call me honey, ugh. You sound like Mom.”
“Well I look like her now too, don’t I? With my Steve haircut.” Nancy fixes her with her own piercing glare.
Holly quails, suitably intimidated.
“It was a good movie,” Nancy adds, relenting. “Sweet. Funny.”
(He makes me laugh.)
“Will you stay here tonight?” Holly asks, when Nancy gets up to take away the popcorn bowl and shut out the lights. “Just because?”
Nancy pauses. Considers. The walls of the house aren’t what they used to be. The window in this room—sliding open and shut, her hopes and dreams ricocheting like a bullet—aren’t what they used to be.
She can spend one more night in this room.
“As you wish,” she says, dramatically, and crawls back into bed beside Holly.
And she should leave it at that. The next day is Sunday; she could get an early start on her drive back to Boston. She should. Instead, she leaves her suitcase half-packed and takes an aimless drive down Cornwallis. She steels herself for another pass by Barb’s old place. She survives that; she’s past the restored library now, and the old Hawk Cinema. There are still balloons and streamers trailing in the wind, an aftershock of the graduation festivities of yesterday.
The military left scars, but people live with scars every day.
(Do Steve’s girlfriends ask about the noose-line that healed in a narrow, silvery ring around his throat? Do they press their fingers into the gnaw-marks the bats left in his stomach?
Robin says he’s doing great. Robin says she’s doing great, and she loves Smith, and she’s always going to visit Nancy but then she never does.)
Last night was the first time the four of them were back together, sure, but also the two of them. Any two of them.
What, like Nancy was going to make the trek to New York City and hang out with her ex?
(Love the suit, Jonathan had said yesterday, on the Hawkins High lawn. It’s so you.
Which it wasn’t, and which made Nancy wish she’d worn pink fucking tulle or something, but…
Whatever.
Thanks, was what she’d said. Thanks, it’s good to see you too.)
She’s about to keep to her guilty course, head southeast on Cornwallis, when she realizes: she doesn’t know where Steve lives anymore. When she left, he was still holding down the fort at his parents’ old place, but that was… that was eighteen months ago. A missed Christmas break (so sorry, I have to study) and no spring break (first year, she’d just started; second year, she’d already dropped out) meant that she has let a year and a half of Hawkins life elapse without her. She’s played over the guilt that brings when it comes to her mom, Mike, Holly, but…
You left him, too.
And now you don’t even know where to find him.
She pulls off on the shoulder near the Motel 6, hopefully out of sight of its curtained windows. Last thing she needs, some out-of-town folks, homecoming kings and queens holed up with their Sunday morning smokes, going oh, shit, Nancy Wheeler. Bawling her eyes out on the side of the road.
Because that’s what she’s doing. She’s biting her fist, bent double so her forehead knocks the rim of the steering wheel. The sobs come like her nightmares do: in waves.
Do you ever miss it?
What did Holly mean? Nancy knows a different history: the guns, the grit, the suffocation. The fear, the rush, the violence. The long hours of planning, the long hours of dying inside with a dozen other people dying right alongside you.
That’s not all it was.
That’s not—
Like—if we were meeting for the first time right now... a part of me... I don’t know... part of me thinks we would’ve made it.
She doesn’t hear the engine of the car pulling up behind her until it shuts off. Like there was all this chaos, all this fury, and then some of it went utterly silent. She sits up, tempted to just—floor it, drive away and escape. But that’ll freak this other driver out—this other driver, probably some Hawkins busybody who nonetheless means purely well, who stopped when they saw a little beater car sputtering across from the motel.
Who, if they looked closely, saw a once-aspiring star reporter crying her eyes out like she was a kid.
Nancy scrubs her hands over her face, through her hair. It’s too short; it’s always falling in her eyes. She didn’t even put mascara on today.
Sorry, officer. I usually look better.
God, that’s a thought. What if it’s that douchebag Callahan?
She dares a glance in the rearview, only to see a glimpse of blue.
A blue truck.
Oh—
But he’s already tapping on her window, familiar knuckles, tanned and yes, a little scarred. Familiar wristwatch, not the one ruined by Lovers’ Lake.
“Nance?” he says, muffled by a pane of glass.
Nancy rolls the window down.
“Hey,” she says, waterlogged.
“Oh, shit. What’s wrong?” He looks terribly, charmingly concerned, in the way only Steve Harrington can. The Levi’s she knows so well are back, along with an overshirt she remembers falling asleep against one night at the Squawk when her crawl maps got the best of her. She woke up, certain that she’d drooled on his shoulder.
He’d assured her it was fine. Everything was fine, with Steve.
Until it wasn’t.
“I’m fine,” is what Nancy comes up with now, of all things.
“Fat chance of that.” He rolls his eyes, drops down so that his elbows rest on her window frame. Eye-level with her, not caring how he looks to the rest of the world, just…
Waiting.
“I’m… overtired,” she says, a trifle stiffly.
“Me too. Didn’t catch much shuteye last night. Otherwise you wouldn’t have caught me out on a Sunday morning, driving in circles. No practice today, y’know?”
She nods, even though she doesn’t.
There’s just so much she doesn’t know.
“Last night,” she tries, forcing herself to say something that isn’t nothing. “It was just—it was a little overwhelming, I guess. The whole day. But—I wasn’t ready to—”
Not ready. The Nancy Wheeler special.
But Steve doesn’t get that guarded look he sometimes does, when she holds back. Again. He just smiles, a little knowingly.
“Yeah, it was kind of a mixed bag,” he says. “Good to start somewhere, though.”
“Did it feel like a start?” she asks, having accepted at this point that he’s seen her cry, seen her broken, seen her in every way it’s possible to see another person, and he’s still… stayed around.
He shrugs. Straightens up from his crouch, so she’s facing his hands, his hips. His hands on his hips, because he’s Steve, and that’s what he does when he’s thinking.
“You wanna get breakfast?” Steve asks, overhead.
And Nancy’s only human, right? Her heart skips a beat.
We’ll never succeed. We may as well die here.
We have already succeeded.
“Sure,” she says. “But you pick the place—I haven’t been here in ages.”
“Big responsibility, Wheeler.”
Now that she has Nance back, she can enjoy the occasional Wheeler.
“I trust you,” she says. “Lead the way.”
“Derek swears by these pancakes,” Steve says, through a mouthful.
Nancy smirks.
“Derek swears by you, I think.”
“That too.” He douses them in more syrup. “May I not end up so doughy in the middle, as they are.”
“I don’t think there’s much danger of that.” She raises an eyebrow at him over her coffee mug. She’d ordered a fruit cup… not something Hawkins is capable of doing particularly well.
“Really? I feel like, everybody is just picturing me already as a suburban dad. The jock who peaked in high school. Which, since I used to think I wasn’t going to survive high school, is pretty damn good, I guess.”
Nancy nods, considering. “Pretty damn good.”
“You heading back to Boston today?”
“Yeah. Holly guilted me into a late movie night last night because of it.”
“Holly, Holly,” Steve says, with wry fondness. “You know Derek’s crazy about her? OK, never mind. You don’t know that. Not a word, please.”
Nancy lifts a finger to her lips.
Steve swallows his mouthful of pancakes.
“So, uh, what was the movie?”
“Oh…” She’s suddenly, terribly embarrassed, but it’s too late to back out now. “The Princess Bride.”
“What?” He nearly chokes. Takes a sip of his own coffee. “No kidding. You know, Robin sent me that for Christmas. With a very insulting note. It said something like, Hey dingus, only a single VHS and the pretty boy is totally you. Which…” He stops short, flushing.
Nancy has not forgotten a single one of his tells. She shouldn’t grin. Shouldn’t feel satisfied.
But she does.
“Why?” she asks, staring carefully at her disappointing fruit cup.
“Oh, you know. A total pushover. But also a badass when the occasion called for it. At least, that’s how I console myself.”
She dares a glance up at him. He’s looking at her like—like it’s six years ago. Five. Three.
Like it’s last night, and the beer has made him just a little bit brave.
“Definitely a badass,” she says, exaggerating her approval in expression (though she means it, every word). “I have no doubt that you’d swashbuckle with the best of them.”
“I could have been a pirate.”
“You could have been a pirate.”
“Just never had the chance.” He sighs.
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up. We were a little busy.”
There’s nothing more to say, suddenly. Nancy hides in her coffee again.
“So, you want to tell me what’s really going on? It’s not exactly a tearjerker, that one.”
She drains her cup to the grounds staining the porcelain. “It is,” she says, mouth twisted with bitterness, “if you know what you’re looking for.”
“OK, so you were having a bad morning because of Westley and Buttercup?”
“It’s not 1987 anymore, Steve.”
“Don’t I know it.” His ability to follow this kind of acrobat dive between non-sequiturs is pretty impressive.
“I just… I’d do things differently, I guess.” She shifts in her seat. “Sometimes I feel like I never made it out of the fire swamp.”
“We quite literally did, Nance.”
When the white walls of her frozen prison tumbled down—
When the tower hit the sky—when he fell, and she couldn’t get to him—
It was always a push-and-pull, always a question of how soon to be relieved. How soon to be grateful.
(Mike knows about that. It’s why they can’t talk about it. What they won, what they lost. How none of it means anything if you don’t have the person you need beside you.)
“I let it get to me,” she says quietly. She can’t look at him, at first. Then she knows she has to. “On and on, eating away—I lost myself, I lost…”
“Nance…”
“You. I lost you.”
“You didn’t.” He reaches across the table, and she doesn’t wait for him, not this time. She meets him halfway, fingers linking through his.
The smile that breaks over his face is the only one she ever wants to know.
“I let you go,” she says. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
“Fat chance of that,” he says. “I’m a stubborn bastard.”
The farm boy. The pirate. The miracle pill, its promise of life not quite enough to do all the work of an honest man.
Nancy will never doubt again.