Holly was back. The town didn't feel like her skin on inside-out anymore, cramped and contained like being shut into a cupboard with the lights out and no handle to get out. The club had been too much and not enough, play-acting at being someone else instead of being able to climb inside their skin and walk around as someone else and it had made the club somewhere confusing, on the border line between hers and that weird place she existed sometimes, when the sound was turned low and the lights were dimmed and everything sounded like water in her ears. She wanted it back. She wanted all of it back, weird, confusing skin-shifting shit and all.
She avoided all of them when it went down, aside from Steph's oblivious forum post. Not Cat, not Steph and certainly not Eddie. The piece that was missing? She didn't know if it was as obvious as it felt. Destiny and Patrick mostly didn't matter if she kept the door shut and the old movies turned up loud, and she saw out the run-up to Thanksgiving that way.
But it was all back in place, every last inch and she rolled into the arcade looking for family that didn't quit, even if the magic was sucked out of the air for a little while. Denim and fishnets and scarlet scarf and the weird little riff of music overhead. Holly didn't know about Second City and what lay beneath. She didn't know Eddie craved power sometimes. What she remembered? Was the guy who'd cared enough about a little kid to hold onto, and the arcade made perfect sense for that guy.