"So, I have some bad news."

Franklin's words made Emerson's heart drop as he drove them back toward Hawkins after class.

"What is it?" she asked, a myriad of worst case scenarios flying to mind. She was right to be worried, because Franklin said: "I'm not going to be able to drive you to Indianapolis for your audition on Thursday."

"What?!" Emerson said, eyes widening. "No! Why not? Is it gas money? Because I don't have it right now, but I promise that when I get paid next week, I'll give you my cut, and—"

"No, nothing like that!" Franklin said. He grimaced. "My AP Calculus test was supposed to be Friday, but Mr. Corcoran moved it up a day. I think he wants to make sure nobody skips the day after Halloween."

Emerson groaned and put her head in her hands.

"I'm sorry, Emerson," Franklin said. "So, so sorry. Maybe you can get your audition switched to one of the other cities holding them? We could road trip to Minneapolis in a few weeks? Or maybe go to the auditions in Chicago in January?"

"It has to be Indianapolis," Emerson said. "They make the scholarship decisions on a first-come, first-serve basis. If I wait too long, they may give them all away!"

Panic gripped her from head to toe. This was her big chance—her ticket out of bumfuck nowhere, Indiana. She had to get to the audition somehow.

"What if you ask David Baker to take you?" Franklin suggested as he zipped past the "Welcome to Hawkins" sign. "You guys have been fooling around for months."

"Maybe," Emerson admitted. "But he's not very reliable. Though he is good at...other things."

Franklin snorted.

"Keep all the lurid details to yourself, please."

He apologized multiple times on the drive to the Buckley residence for being unavailable on Thursday. Em promised him she wasn't mad and that he didn't need to apologize—school came first.

A bit later, while eating a dinner of lukewarm chicken nuggets and carrots at the kitchen table with her sister and parents, Emerson broached the subject of needing a ride to her audition Thursday morning.

"I'm sorry, Emmy," Mr. Buckley said, stifling a yawn. "I'd love to, but I'm working the early shift all week. From 5 a.m. to just after 1 p.m., I'm behind the wheel of the bus."

"I wish I could, sweetie," Mrs. Buckley said. She reached over and squeezed Emerson's arm. "But the Hawkins Parks and Recreation is trying to cut our art therapy program for veterans. I have a very important meeting with the head of the department that morning to try and save it."

"But my audition is important!" Emerson begged. She tossed her fork down on the table, and it clinked against the side of her plate. "This is my whole future we're talking about!"

"Honey, we understand," Mrs. Buckley said tiredly. "But we have to work, so we can take care of our family's future. Why don't you ask Noelle to drive you?"

"Noelle Kline?" Robin said with a scoff. "The heinous bitch who's been making Emmy's life miserable since they were ballet babies?"

"Robin Dawn Buckley," Mr. Buckley warned. "We don't say the b-word at this dinner table."

"'Babies'?" Robin asked, feigning confusion. Mr. Buckley tried to glare, but his lips twitched with a barely concealed smile.

"Robbie's right," Emerson said. "Noelle would laugh in my face if I asked for a ride. Then throw my pointe shoes in a mud puddle. Then run me over with her car, probably."

She could picture it now: Noelle, Mary-Beth, and Kirsty tossing Emerson out of Noelle's expensive car in the middle of nowhere and laughing as they headed to Indianapolis without her.

"Oh, I have a great idea!" Mrs. Buckley said, eyes shining. "Lorelai Harrington volunteers at the Community Center often and she always talks about how bright and responsible her son Steven is. Why don't you ask him to take you?"

Robin choked on her milk. The cup fell out of her hand and bounced onto the tabletop, rendering the ramekin of leftover carrots a soggy mess.

"Aw, shit!" Mr. Buckley said, leaping for the towel on the kitchen counter and beginning to wipe up the milk.

"Nelson Buckley," Robin joked in-between hacks, eyes watering. "We don't say the s-word at this dinner table."

"Robin! Is everything all right?" Mrs. Buckley asked.

Robin ignored the question and said, "Steve Harrington is a total dingus. And he's stupid, and he's inconsiderate, and—"

"I don't even know him," Emerson interrupted. "Not really." She never quite understood her sister's deep hatred of Steve Harrington, but she also didn't think he was the right person to ask for a ride.

"You've been in the same class since kindergarten," Mrs. Buckley said. The whole family cleared their plates as the conversation continued (and Mr. Buckley grumbled about milk in his shoes).

"But still," Emerson said. "We don't talk."

"But he knows who you are, he has a car, and he hasn't broken any laws, as far as I can tell," Mrs. Buckley said.

Emerson sighed and said, "I don't remember us ever having a real conversation that wasn't just, 'Hey, can I borrow a pencil?'"

That wasn't the full truth. She had a vague memory of running around the playground with Steve during 2nd grade recess. Steve had bragged about how his parents had done away with his bedtime, so he stayed up late watching James Bond movies the night prior and asked little Emerson if she wanted to play Spies. She preferred to play Fairy Princesses. Young Steve wasn't interested in that, so they devised a new game: Spies-versus-Fairy-Princesses. Steve would pretend to shoot a gun, and Emerson would retaliate with magic spells. It was great fun, and they spent a whole week building up the game and creating exciting backstories for their characters.

At the end of recess on Friday, Steve told Emerson they would continue the game on Monday. But Monday rolled around, and when Emerson found Steve on the playground, he was sitting on the top of the jungle gym with Tommy H. (The kids weren't supposed to climb that high without supervision, but the teachers were sharing a cigarette on the T-ball field and didn't seem to care.)

"Come on up, Em!" Steve called down. "We're going to play Spies-On-A-Skyscraper."

But Emerson was too nervous to climb to the top. She was worried that she'd fall and hurt herself, and not be able to dance anymore. She tried to explain that to Steve, stumbling over her words at the smirk on Tommy H.'s face. (He'd been a rude little thing since the beginning.)

Steve nodded. "Okay, we can climb down and play Spies-On-The-Ground."

He started to shimmy his way back to the ground, but Tommy stopped him.

"Just stay up here," Tommy said, sticking his nose in the air. "Girls aren't allowed to play Spies anyway. They can only play Family."

"That's not true," Emerson said, forcing herself to speak up, despite being nervous to do so.

"Yuh-huh," Tommy said. "Right, Steve?"

"I'm not sure..."

"Well, I'm sure," Tommy said haughtily.

"We don't just play Spies," Steve explained. His eyes shone while he explained the story they'd started to craft: "Em's a Fairy Princess, and I'm James Bond, and we're rivals who—"

Tommy cackled.

"You're letting her pretend to be a Fairy Princess?! That's girly and lame!"

Steve seemed to shrink in on himself, before suddenly becoming stony-faced. He glanced down at Emerson and coldly said, "Yeah, it's dumb girly stuff. I always thought it was stupid."

Emerson's heart sank. At that moment, she realized Steve was the type of boy who did whatever he could to avoid being teased by the other boys. She never told Robin about that, but she wondered if Robin somehow knew anyway, and if that contributed to her ire of Steve "The Hair" Harrington.

Emerson hadn't thought about that day in years. She absentmindedly washed the dishes while the rest of her family watched "Wheel of Fortune" in the next room. She wondered if her mom was right—if she should ask Steve to take her to Indianapolis. Something had shifted around him since last fall, around the time he and Nancy Wheeler got together, and then took a month break, before getting back together again. He didn't have as many close friends, but he was friendly with a lot of the student body and well liked in general, especially now that he didn't hang out with Tommy H. and Carol anymore.

"Don't do it."

Em looked up. Robin had entered the kitchen and had her arms crossed.

"Don't do what?"

"Do not ask Steve 'Demon Spawn' Harrington for a ride to your conservatory audition."

"Somehow, I don't think that's his real middle name."

"It might as well be!" Robin exploded. She threw her arms in the air and began to pace the length of their cramped kitchen, narrowly avoiding bumping her knee into that one loose cabinet door that never seemed to get fixed. "He'll ruin it for you somehow. I just know it."

Emerson put down the pan she was scrubbing into the sink and placed a hand on Robin's arm to get her to stop pacing. Quietly, as if she was afraid to startle her sister, Em asked, "Robin, did Steve bully you?"

Robin barked out a hollow laugh.

"He would have to notice me to bully me," she said, resentment leeching out of every word. "I'm completely invisible to him, and to all the other popular kids."

"I get the feeling."

"No you don't!" Robin shrugged Em's hand away. "You're pretty and talented. Everyone's impressed by you." She crossed her arms. "You're going to make a name for yourself as a pro ballerina, and I'm just—"

"The smartest person I know," Emerson said firmly. "Great at solving puzzles and learning languages. An aspiring filmmaker and music savant, and the most talented kid in drama club." Emerson pulled Robin into a hug. "And the best sister ever."

"Your only sister," Robin mumbled into Emerson's shoulder.

"And thank God for that. I don't know what I'd do if I'd been saddled with some other schmuck."

🩰🩰🩰

Emerson skipped family TV time and beelined to her room as soon as the dishes were done. The Buckley house was small, but homey. Her parents' room was downstairs, so the upstairs only contained Emerson's room, Robin's room, and the postage-stamp-sized bathroom they shared.

Emerson's bedroom was also the only room in the house with hardwood flooring. For her 14th birthday, Mr. Buckley had torn up the carpet and put in the hardwood so Em could use a small back corner of the room for ballet practice. He'd also installed a floor-to-ceiling mirror and a makeshift ballet barre. It was right by the window, which gave Em a view of the cherry tree in their side yard.

A few feet further into the center of the room was Em's bed. The fluffy pink bedspread and matching bedskirt were "Pepto-Bismol monstrosities," as Robin called them, but Emerson loved the look. Strings of colored Christmas lights were strung through her white headboard. The ceiling was slanted, and Emerson had wallpapered it with posters advertising shows at the Indianapolis Ballet, the Chicago Ballet, and the New York City Ballet.

Emerson's room also contained a short white dresser, pushed up against her bed as a makeshift nightstand; a desk-slash-vanity; and a small closet, shoved chock-full of Em's day-to-day clothes and old ballet costumes. A framed picture of Emerson and Robin from last Fourth of July sat on the dresser, next to Em's first-ever pair of pointe shoes (now completely worn out and much too small) and a copy of Angelina Ballerina, a children's book from the U.K. about a dancing mouse and her adventures. Robin had gifted it just a few weeks ago when Emerson turned 18.

Also on the top of the dresser was a pink phone. Emerson took a few deep breaths before picking it up from its cradle. She dialed the Harrington's home number, scrawled in her mother's address book next to their home address and the note "ADD TO CHRISTMAS CARD LIST."

Please don't pick up, Emerson thought, suddenly very nervous. Please don't pick up. Please don't—

"Hello?" Steve said.

Emerson's heartbeat quickened. She hated phone calls.

"Hi!" she squeaked. "Is this Steve Harrington?"

She screwed her eyes shut and cringed. At her shrill voice, at her stupid question, at her whole existence.

"Uh, yeah, it is. Who's this?"

Take a deep breath, Em thought. It's just a phone call, you idiot.

"Emerson Buckley," she said. "I'm in your grade. And, uh, our parents know—our moms know each other, I mean. From the art classes. The, uh, Hawkins Community Center classes? My mom teaches them; your mom volunteers."

She half expected Steve to laugh at her for flubbing this so badly. On the contrary, he was nothing but kind.

"Oh, yeah! Hey, Emerson. How are you?"

"Good! Well, actually, bad. Very bad. Um, I need a favor?"

A beat of silence. Emerson started to sweat. Suddenly very serious, Steve said in a low voice, "What do you need? Is everything okay at home?"

"Yes!" Emerson said quickly. "Sorry. I'm being vague and it's confusing. I'm sorry. It's just...ah. Okay. So I have this audition in Indianapolis on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. It's for a conservatory. Like, 'art college,' I guess. Or 'dance college.' And Franklin Ito—you know Franklin, right? He was supposed to drive me. But now he has a Calculus test. And my parents work, and my mom—well, she suggested that I reach out and ask you since she knows your mom so well. And since you have a car. So, uh, could you? Drive me, I mean?" Emerson pulled at the collar of her sweater. Why was interacting as a human being with other human beings so goddamn difficult?

Another pause from Steve's end. Em began to ramble, to fill the awkward silence. A Buckley family trait.

"It'll be an excused absence, if you're worried about that," Emerson prattled on. "Since it's for college stuff. Well, it's excused for me. I'll be getting a fancy note at the audition. And, uh, we can just use the library photocopier and make you a copy, and you can tell the school administrators that you were auditioning too. If you don't mind lying to the Hawkins High staff. And, uh, pretending that you're a dancer, I guess." Emerson let out an awkward chuckle. "I hope you've brushed up on your fancy footwork."

Maybe a bolt of lightning would arc through the window and render Emerson into nothing but dust. That would be preferable to this trainwreck of a conversation.

However, Steve didn't seem bothered by Emerson's social faux pas and poor phone communication skills. He chuckled too.

"Admittedly, my dancing skills need work," he said. "I wish I could help, but I can't."

Emerson let out a breath like a deflated balloon. "Oh."

She was surprised when Steve—suave Steve Harrington, inaugural visitor of the Skull Rock make out spot—started to ramble just as much as she did.

"It's just, Nance—you know, my girlfriend, Nancy Wheeler? She's been having a pretty hard year. The anniversary of her friend Barb's dea—disappearance is coming up, and I think she's struggling with it. I really want to be there for her. You know? To, like, distract her from the bad stuff. So we're going to Tina's Halloween party tomorrow, and we're going to get totally wasted and just have a blast. And I'll probably be like, super hungover Thursday and no use to anyone. You know?"

"Totally," Emerson said. She wondered if Nancy's idea of support was a distraction. Or if she wanted to be heard and understood. But it wasn't her place to say.

"But good luck!" Steve said. "Or, uh, break a foot!"

"Break a leg," Emerson corrected politely.

"Yes. That. But only metaphorically!"

"Thank you, Steve. Bye, Steve."

Emerson hung up quickly, willing herself to calm down. So Steve couldn't drive her. No big. She'd just call David Baker. It would be easier to talk to him, anyway. They'd been hooking up on and off since late summer. Em felt comfortable around him. Even if he was a dingus, like Robin liked to say.

When she did call, David Baker assumed it was for a salacious conversation.

"So what are you wearing?" he said, but David Baker was terrible at sexy talk, so the tone was more akin to an interrogation.

"Uh, jeans and a sweater. But that's not what this call is for."

Em explained her predicament. Thankfully, her paramour was willing and able to help out. However, he just didn't seem to get how important it was.

"So I'll pick you up at like...10?"

"No! The audition is at 11:30."

"Indianapolis is only an hour away—"

"But there might be traffic," Emerson said. "I would like you to pick me up at 8:30, please."

David Baker let out a beleaguered sigh, the kind of sigh that made Emerson's skin crawl. It was the sigh he gave her the first time they went to Skull Rock, when she politely declined his request to sing his feelings for her in-between kisses. It was the same sigh he gave her after they slept together a few weeks later, when she asked him to drive her home.

All of a sudden, she knew why she called Steve Harrington first.

"Fiiiiiine," David Baker said. "But you owe me one."

"I can pay you the gas money next week—"

"Nah, that's not what I mean," David Baker sing-songed. "You have to come to Corroded Coffin's post-Halloween gig at the Hideout Friday night. I can't be the only guy in the band not bringing a groupie!"

Emerson bit back a groan of disgust. She hated the Hideout. It was loud and full of sweaty, inebriated boneheads who preferred to pick fistfights than listen to the music. It was a socially anxious ballerina's worst nightmare. Plus, she didn't love the insinuation that she was nothing more than a "groupie" to David Baker. They'd slept together more than once, over the course of a few months. Wouldn't what they were doing be constituted as officially "dating"?

But, she needed a ride to her audition, and so Em said: "Yeah, sure. I'll go."

David Baker barked out a laugh and quipped, "Well, don't sound so excited!"

Emerson rolled her eyes so hard, she wondered if they really could get stuck like that. Before she could end the phone call, David Baker slyly said, "So jeans and a sweater, huh?"

"I have to practice for my audition," Emerson said, voice clipped. "See you at school."

She slammed the phone into the receiver, harder than intended. Or maybe it was just hard enough.

Down the hall, Robin bobbed her head to a song on the radio when someone knocked on her bedroom door. She put down the book she was reading and opened it. Emerson stood on the other side, eyes narrowed, arms crossed.

"How come you didn't tell me how much of a tool David Baker is?"

"What?! I definitely did tell you, just today!"

Em entered her little sister's room and flopped onto the bed facedown, letting out a stifled scream onto the royal purple comforter.

"I take it the call went poorly?"

"On the contrary," Emerson said, flipping over onto her back and staring at the ceiling, hands folded over her stomach. "He's going to drive me."

"That's great!" Robin sank into her desk chair, tucking her knees against her chest. "So the problem is just that he's sleazy and lame and not as nice as you deluded yourself into thinking he was?"

"Yep. But he's a great kisser..."

Robin pretended to vomit into her trash can so loudly, their parents came running to offer anti-nausea medication.

🩰🩰🩰

Hawkins High buzzed with energy on Halloween, with all the students excited about the parties they'd be attending and/or various mischievous behaviors they'd undertake once the sun went down.

Emerson, on the other hand, felt like a cocktail of anxiety, excitement, dread, and just a pinprick of panic. If tomorrow's audition didn't go well, she didn't know what she'd do. Give up on her dreams, she supposed. Be resigned to a quiet life in Hawkins, working at the Community Center with her mother, since she had no other skills or aspirations besides dance.

"I can hear the wheels turning in your brain," Franklin said, not looking up from Emerson's essay of Jane Eyre. During study hall, the chorus class was holding tryouts for their winter showcase, so Em couldn't go to the auditorium and practice for tomorrow. Instead, she sat in the library with Franklin, using the answer key in the back of his Calculus textbook to check his practice test while he proofread her essay.

"I just can't stop thinking about my audition," Emerson said. She chewed her lower lip, a fresh set of nerves washing over her, as they seemed to every few minutes when she remembered how important tomorrow was.

"I promise, Em," Franklin said, glancing up at her. "You've got this."

He shot her a small smile before turning back to the proofreading. Em took a deep breath and started to focus once more, but sudden movement to her left caused her to startle.

Steve Harrington pulled out a chair at her and Franklin's table, spinning it around and sitting in it backward, his arms resting on the back of it. "Hey guys!"

Franklin looked up in surprise. He blinked once, twice. He'd never spoken to Steve Harrington, not once.

"Hey, man," Franklin said, a hint of caution in his voice.

Steve turned to Emerson.

"Listen," he said. "I wanted to apologize that I can't drive you tomorrow. Were you able to figure out a ride?"

Franklin's eyebrows shot to his hairline. He looked between Emerson and Steve and back again, curiosity piqued. Emerson's face flushed, knowing that Franklin would want a full breakdown of exactly why she'd reached out to Steve in the first place.

"I was," Emerson said, her voice softer than it had been the night before on the phone. Something about the face-to-face interaction made speaking to Steve all the more difficult, despite the fact that he'd been nothing but nice in the two (2!) times they'd spoken in the past decade, which happened to both be in the span of less than 24 hours. She cleared her throat and added, "David Baker is going to drive me."

Confusion flashed across Steve's features, but he quickly masked it.

"Cool!" he said. "Uh, I didn't realize you guys knew each other?"

"Well, they're sleeping together," Franklin said. Steve's eyes practically bugged out of his head. Emerson kicked Franklin from under the table. "Ouch! What? It's not a secret, right?"

"Sorry for the too much information," she said, addressing Steve. She gave Franklin a side-eye and continued, "But yes, he and I have been...seeing each other."

"A whole lot of each oth—"

Emerson kicked Franklin harder and he wheezed.

"Jesus Christ, Em! We're dancers. We need our legs. Stop trying to break mine!"

Maybe that lightning Em prayed for last night would arrive fashionably late to strike her now, or to strike the much-too-chatty Franklin. She sheepishly glanced at Steve, who looked confused, and embarrassed on her behalf, and a little concerned for Franklin's leg.

"That's great," Steve said, though Emerson picked up on the false enthusiasm. "Uh, about you and David. I didn't realize he was your type?"

"What do you mean?" Emerson said, suddenly feeling defensive—despite the fact that she was considering breaking things off with David Baker after she attended his show on Friday night.

"Like, his whole I'm-gonna-be-a-tortured-musician schtick is kind of a drag, right?" Steve continued. He scratched his cheek and said, "My friend Nicole from the school newspaper—well, ex friend, she was more Carol's friend than mine—dated him sophomore year. Said he was a pill. Kept trying to sing while they were hooking up."

Franklin laughed so loudly, Ms. June the librarian shushed him. Steve's girlfriend, Nancy Wheeler, looked up from her seat a few tables away, her gaze curious.

"He doesn't do that anymore," Emerson said quickly. Franklin coughed into his fist, "Liar!" Emerson tried to kick him again, but that clever bastard now had his legs perched up on the fourth chair around their table.

"Anyway," Emerson said. "Thank you, Steve, for even considering it. But I'm all set with a ride, now." She smiled at him, a little soft, a lot shy. Something that made his heart do something funny in his chest, because Nancy used to look at him like that, but she'd been pulling away from him lately...

"That's great!" Steve said, a little too loud to drown out his train of thought. Another shush from Ms. June. He lowered his voice and said, "Great. Really great. And you and David? So great."

He clumsily stood from the chair, waiting there for a beat too long, before lifting a hand and saying, "So. Bye."

He turned on his heel and rejoined Nancy.

Emerson and Franklin shared a look.

"That was weird," Franklin said.

"That's partially your fault!" Emerson hissed. "Why were you trying to embarrass me in front of Steve?!"

"I wasn't! Honest. Just making conversation. Why were you acting all flustered? You don't like him or anything, do you?"

"No!" Em said hotly. "I don't. In fact, I think he's a total dingus."

Robin would be proud, she thought, as they each turned back to their work.

Across the library, Steve settled in near Nancy.

"What was that about?" she asked quietly.

"Oh, Emerson's mom and my mom are friends," Steve explained. "She asked me for a ride to some college dance tryout thing tomorrow, but I said I couldn't do it. We've got our big party tonight, remember?"

Nancy nodded.

"Ah, yeah." A beat, and then: "But, you know, we can skip the party."

Steve's face fell.

"Huh?"

"I don't mind, if you need to do Emerson a favor," Nancy added, reaching over and patting Steve's arm. "Really."

"Oh, no, it's all sorted out. David Baker's going to take her. So we're still on for tonight."

He grinned at her. Nancy gave him a tight smile, as fake as a plastic plant.

"Oh. Cool."

Nancy turned back to her work, trying to push the anxieties and guilt from her mind.

{Published July 14th, 2025}

A/N Happy (almost) 9 Years since Joe Keery appeared on our TV screens as Steve Harrington for the first time. I loved dropping some Stemerson crumbs in this chapter (Stemerson or Emereve? Which are we feeling?)

I also think I may have finally chosen a face claim for Emerson after quite a journey...basically I chose a professional ballerina to be the fc; realized she's only ever been in 1 movie; panicked because I'm thinking of getting into video editing again and won't be able to make the edits I want with such a limited filmography; thought, "NO FC WE DIE LIKE MEN!!!!" because I kind of hate picking face claims anyway; and THEN picked another fc who has a pretty limited filmography, but still has more to offer than the first, and looks marginally like Maya Hawke to make the "sister" thing work.

Anyway, I'm thinking the new fc is Lucy Freyer, who played Billie in the Adults sitcom that premiered this year (seen below! Sorry for a terrible screenshot that doesn't really show her similarities to Maya at all but the power of suspension of disbelief will guide us through this journey together). Adults also has a character named Paul Baker, whom the other characters always refer to by first-name, last-name, which is where I got the idea to call David Baker by his full name almost constantly.

QOTD: Oh shit. Steve Harrington's walking toward your study hall table. Quick, what do you do?!