"Yeah, I know," Steve says. "The day I found out about it I'd been in a fight with Jonathan Byers over some stupid misunderstanding." And because he reacted to that misunderstanding in a very, very bad way.

"So I, uh. I went to his house to apologize but Nancy Wheeler was there, and this is back when we were dating, and sort of what the misunderstanding was about but that's not important," he goes on, dropping his focus to a spot on the floor. He scratches idly at it as he speaks, a sort of nervous tic as he recounts the night the world as he knew it changed entirely. "The thing is, they looked like they were getting ready for a war or something. Nance had a- a gun and she was gonna shoot me if I didn't leave and... Yeah. I really thought I was going crazy, and that was before a monster came out of the wall. So I get it. This whole thing, it's just really messed up."