The city would be loud and intimidating to anyone, but the two girls have faced a lot more than some creeping guys. They clench each other's hands tighter, regardless of the fact that a week ago they were at each other's throats and literally trying to kill the other.

Both girls wear dark clothes and have dark hair but their skin is as pale cream so they pull their hoods over their faces and over their hands. The first girl pulls the second along as the second stumbles from exhaustion. The first girl is tired, too, but years of ignoring discomfort allows her to pretend as if her feet don't ache from the inside out.

The first girl has been here before, so a little more confidence washes over face like neon lights when she sees the warehouse. Her creased forehead smooths for the first time in a week and she straightens, the responsibility of her friend's safety rolling off her back.

"This is it?" the second girl mutters, her lip curling under the hood.

The first girl nods simply, not one for using many words except around certain people. She's about to see one of them and her hand tightens on her friend's.

"Does she know we're coming?"

She squeezes the second girl's hand again.

"Are the others coming?"

Squeeze.

"I thought you killed it."

The first girl sighs and speaks for the first time, her voice raw and wavering as it rolls off her tongue, throat sore, "I hurt it. Really bad. And you and me and her made… what happen happen…" she pauses for a second to take a breath when it feels like her chest is being run over by a truck. "When we hurt it. But we need everyone to kill it and seal it in."

"She stayed back to watch over them, though, right?"

"She'll call us back when it's time," the first girl says quietly, tugging the hood off her head to reveal curly brown hair barely pulled back into a bun, smaller strands framing her face like a halo. "Until then we kill the people who started this."

"We could do it with more help," the second girl presses, an argument she's started more than a couple times, and pulls back her own hood. Dark, ravenette hair flows over her shoulders and is tucked into the back of her sweatshirt.

The first girl shakes her head. "I don't want them hurt."

"Oh, and you want me hurt?" The two of them have practically memorized this argument by now.

"You're different," the first girl murmurs. "You can protect yourself."

"You don't need me," the second girl huffs, straying off the path of the normal conversation. "You opened it and let it out. You closed it and hurt it, really bad. And that was all without us."

"It's probably gotta be me," the first girl nods, raising her hand to knock on the door. "But you guys gotta help me."

Nearly the second she knocks the door swings open, and a whole group of people wearing clown masks blinks down at the pair until the leader speaks up.

"Finally."

Mike wakes up straight out of a nightmare.

He can't quite remember what it's about, can remember ash floating in the air and a dog barking, someone counting and getting to the number thirteen before stopping, but that's it. It's not surprising, actually, considering recent events. He doesn't want to say he's used to it, but…

He's used to it.

"Mike!" Karen yells up the stairs. "Come on, you're going to be late and you've got to bike to school today because I can't drive you if you're late!"

"Coming!" Mike shouts back, shaking his shaggy hair like a wet dog. He really needs to get it cut, or soon he's going to look like a girl. He's seen one or two girls with this hairstyle before, but he can't recall their names. It's not like anyone goes out of their way to talk with the party.

Mike drags a hand down his face and stumbles to the bathroom, gripping the sides of the sink and looking into the mirror intently. He's got scrapes on his face he can't quite remember the origin of, but he supposes he must have gotten them while he was helping to build that treehouse for Holly.

Mike huffs out a laugh and splashes water on his face. Jeez, that project had been such a trip. Nearly everyone else had been too busy to help so he'd had to build the whole thing himself, except for when Holly helped to fetch him objects strictly under five pounds. Mike's little sister's in that age where she's too cocky to believe she should be doing any heavy lifting. She had just painted the house and at one point, upended a bottle of spare paint over Mike's head.

A rock hits Mike's window with a sharp clatter and Mike turns with a yelp and a curse. Lucas is standing underneath his window, tossing a pebble back and forth between his hands.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," Lucas calls up, grinning.

Mike flips him the bird. "Happy Halloween. Is it time to go already?"

"Nah, I'm early. Just wanted to mess with you," Lucas admits. The shit-eating grin still hasn't left his face. "I can't believe Halloween's on a Monday."

"Dude, you could have broken my window. How big was that fucking pebble?"

"You're overreacting. Get dressed and try not to drool during history again!"

"Fuck off, Lucas!" Mike calls back down lightly before slamming his window down and grabbing newly washed clothes at random from a pile he has yet to fold.

Nancy is on the phone when he walks down the hallway, barely acknowledging his existence, before returning to arguing with another one of her school friends. Something crashes in Holly's room.

Mike stops to look at his reflection in the mirror. When he blinks, a cloud passes over his eyes, blurring the mirror. He blinks furiously, rubbing at his eyes, trying to get the dried-out tear secretion out.

"Mom!" Nancy screams as Mike pounds down the stairs. "Mom, what are we doing on Sunday?"

A stack of papers on the table remind Mike that he had only meant to take a short nap yesterday before doing his homework. He cusses softly, but Karen appears behind him and cuffs the back of his head nonetheless.

"Nothing, apart from church!" Karen yells back.

Holly stumbles down the stairs in overalls and her hair in pigtails that she tugs at. She's been wheedling for Karen to braid her hair, but it's still too wispy for that to happen. Holly doesn't really understand that, though, and has started to try and get Mike to braid her hair, even though he has no idea how. Karen grabs Holly and pulls her into the entrance hallway to pull on her coat.

Mike grabs an Eggo. At the same time, his throat tickles and he lets out a harsh bark-cough that sounds more like he's choking than anything else.

"Michael!" Karen shouts. "Are you all right?" She appears in the room with her hands on her hips, a brush in one of them. Holly follows after her, darting around her mother despite the wider backpack she's wearing, and snags another Eggo out of the fridge and eating it cold.

Mike cringes when he sees the brush and shoves the rest of the waffle in his mouth, darting out of the kitchen the same time he swallows the rest of the waffle, resulting in indigestion. Mike pounds on his chest, swallowing multiple times, before the discomfort passes. That brief moment of weakness allows Karen to catch up with him and she nearly scalps him while trying to pull a comb through Mike's hair.

Lucas starts to knock on the door.

"Coming!" Mike shouts, ducking away from his mother, who sighs heavily.

"Mike, remember, if you yell at any of your teachers again today you won't be going out with your friends, all right?"

There's another crash above his head, accompanied by Ted cursing loudly, but thankfully takes Karen's attention off of him. Mike winces and instinctively looks at Holly, but she doesn't seem to have heard it and is still happily enjoying her frozen Eggo. He thinks it's disgusting, but one of his friends eats them any way they can. Mike can't remember exactly who it is. It's probably Max; she's not picky.

Mike nearly slips on the slick tile floor as he rushes back into the kitchen to get his papers. Holly is rummaging through them with sticky fingers.

"Gimme," Mike snaps and snatches them. Holly lets out a sound of protest but doesn't complain too much. Her fingers left orange stains on the papers from her juice.

Lucas pounds on the door again.

"I need a pencil!" Nancy shrieks, standing in the doorway with her messenger bag draped over her shoulder. Mike reaches up to where one is sticking out of her frazzled hair and races out the door, leaving his hectic house behind. Lucas and Dustin are waiting for him, snickering as they hear Nancy's self-righteous screeches inside the house, screaming Mike's name and promising revenge.

"It's not like there aren't other pencils in the world," Mike grumbles, balancing his Science binder on his handlebars and putting one hand on the papers so they don't blow away.

When he sees that Lucas is wearing a Green Lantern shirt and that Dustin is wearing a Batman shirt, he remembers that he was supposed to wear his Spider-man shirt. Oh well. Too late now.

"Where's your costume?" Lucas asks.

Mike grimaces. "Forgot it. I'll put it on for trick-or-treating."

"Dude, you didn't do the study guide?" Dustin asks as they start pedaling, Mike trying to bike and write at the same time. If he didn't have to perform this trick so many times he might crash and fall. Thank goodness for summer, when he could perfect the art of pedaling without using his hands to steer.

"No, I did, I just wanted to do it again," Mike says sarcastically. "Practice makes perfect, Dustin!" He taps the side of his head mockingly.

"You're too close," Lucas says vaguely to Mike before striking up an argument with Dustin.

Mike glances up just enough to see himself only about a centimeter from someone's car, almost scraping it as he breezes by. He drifts away from it, swerving away and then back, scribbling out an answer quickly, glancing up and making sure he's good before writing out a longer answer.

"'How can an extinction event be negative for a species?'" Mike reads aloud, snickering. "You mean, apart from them going extinct?"

Lucas snorts.

"I dare you to write that down," Dustin goads. Last year their Science teacher, Mr. Clarke, would have laughed and given Mike full points if he had written that on a study guide, but this year, Mike has already pissed off most of his teachers, Mrs. Dunbrough especially, by cussing them out. It's not his fault; they're really very dull.

A feeling creeps over Mike, something like nostalgia, and he shoves it away. Not many people are as generously endowed with brains as he and his friends. He doesn't miss something, except for maybe the Yoda toy Holly had stolen to bring to school and had brought back charred. Mike still doesn't know how she did it.

"Mrs. Dunbrough will probably fail me out of spite anyways, so what the hell," Mike shrugs and writes it down.

"Too close again," Lucas says anxiously. Mike swerves away quickly; he was about to run point-blank into a red, dusty van.

"Ah, school," Dustin sighs. "A lovely place full of bloodthirsty teenagers. Just what I wanted!" Mike nods meaningfully and stuffs his now-completed study guide into his backpack, not caring where it ends up.

"Mrs. Dunbrough, here we come," Dustin says mournfully, reaching into his pocket and pulling out an M&M. He pops it into his mouth, oblivious to Mike and Lucas exchanging exasperated glances. "I can truly say I've looked into the face of Satan—"

"Oh my gosh, Dustin, she's not that bad!" Will exclaims, popping up at Mike's elbow as if from the ground.

"That's because she likes you," Lucas mutters.

"Every teacher likes Will," Mike sighs mournfully, "when it's obvious he's planning a coup. They should love me instead."

Dustin clasps his hands together and bats his eyes. "Oh, yes, Mike, what a good student you are—oh, and what's that? You're cursing me out again? How sweet!"

"It's 'cause they're all stupid," Mike mutters, casting his gaze at the ground.

"It's 'cause you have zero patience," Lucas corrects.

The four enter the classroom, where their other friend is supposed to be waiting. "Where is she?" Mike asks as he puts his study guide in Mrs. Dunbrough's basket.

"The teacher?" Dustin asks for clarification.

"Yeah, Dustin, I was so worried about our dear Science teacher's wheareabouts," Mike rolls his eyes again and twists around, saying, "No, I'm worried about—" his elbow catches on his textbook and it thunks to the floor. Mike sighs with exasperation.

Will pipes up, "I heard she got in trouble with Hopper, but that might not be right."

Mike shrugs at that. Hopper couldn't get very mad at her, so he's not worried.

The bell rings its first warning and several students start to trickle in, but it's hardly their whole class, which isn't unusual. Most kids wait until just before the third bell, which is the last one. Mike wouldn't dream of doing that because he would probably get to the classroom two minutes before the bell and that would be the day Mrs. Dunbrough would declare that for her class, the second bell is the final bell. Seriously, call her a bitch one time and she has it out for him the rest of the school year! All of Mike's other teachers have gotten past his outbursts in the beginning of the school year, but some of them might even want them back because now all Mike does in class is stare out the windows and grunt. At least with the yelling you could tell he was paying attention and invested.

Remember, Mike tells himself, no matter what she says or does, you can't yell at her. Ignore her. Completely.

None of Mike's friends would understand the aching urge to leave school and get out, away. They're perfectly happy right where they are, or at least that's what they appear to feel. Mike wishes that they knew what he felt, the ache in his stomach that clenches sometimes and forces words up his throat like vomit, the nostalgic feeling for something. Mike wants something and it's infuriating not to know what he himself wants.

Will kicks Mike's chair like he can tell his friend is getting unsettled, like he could sense it somehow. Mike berates himself; he probably just stiffened and Will saw it, why'd he have to use the word sense; it implies something supernatural or strange when—

"Good morning!" Mrs. Dunbrough barks out her usual greeting, a cheerful exclamation that sounds like an insult when coming out of her shockingly red lips. Her eyes sweep over the class once, twice, three times to take attendance. Mike's lips twitch when he remembers some of the more outrageous theories the party had come up with to explain how the Witch remembers her seating chart for every class without fail. Will said a photographic memory, Dustin said photographic memory but in order to get that photographic memory she made a deal with a demon, and so on. "Has everyone turned in their study guides?"

Is it just Mike's imagination, or does she narrow her eyes in his direction? Seriously, she's been holding this grudge for way too long.

"Remember, your study guides are for a grade, so any smart-aleck answers will count against you." Now Mike is sure that Mrs. Dunbrough is glaring at him. Oh well, too late now to change the answers that had been sarcastic. "You have ten minutes to review, starting…" She turns over the old-fashioned hourglass on her desk rather than a timer or just using the clock. "Now!"

Mike spares the notes in his binder a disgusted look before turning around to talk with his friends once more.

Mike watches his hand as he taps his fingers on the table, chin propped up with the other hand. If he moves his fingers fast enough, his skin almost looks like it's rippling, the thin bones of his fingers making a hypnotizing pattern that he just can't tear his eyes away from.

"Mr. Wheeler!"

Mike's elbow slips off the desk and he clips his chin on the hard surface before popping up to look innocently at Mrs. Dunbrough.

What, is it still first period?

"Yes, Mrs. Dunbrough?" Mike asks innocently, blushing when he hears his friends snickering behind him. He had hoped to just doze through the entire school day, lazily drifting from class to class and making sure not to even be provoked by teachers, but he's not even a quarter of the way done with the day.

Damn.

"Are you finished with your test yet, Mr. Wheeler?" the Witch inquires coldly, peering over thin spectacles. Come to think of it, the Witch meets every criteria for 'strict teacher' tenfold. Mike tries to imagine her doing anything other than bothering him at school and can't.

"Yeah, I'm done," Mike says easily, handing over the test where the only thing he wrote was his name. Maybe if one of his friends could easily calm him down he wouldn't get into so much trouble, but all they do is egg him on or rile him up.

The Witch spares him a look, exasperated or disappointed or tired, but doesn't press it too much. "All right, time for notes!"

The whole class groans. Last year they could use the whole period for their tests, and the faster test-takers had loved being able to relax before another class. Now the Witch just likes to torture them. Thankfully—or at least for the people behind on homework—Mike loves to take as long as possible while taking the tests.

Mrs. Dunbrough starts handing out note papers and Mike immediately starts folding them up into paper airplanes.

When the bell rings, Mike jumps up and tries to sprint out of the classroom, not wanting to spend any more time with the Witch than he has to because she's the teacher that annoys him the most. Right before his feet are in the hallway, she calls his name and he can't pretend he didn't hear her because her voice was loud.

Will spares him a sympathetic look as the party exits the room, Lucas and Dustin rapidly disappearing down the hall, but Will waits at the door for Mike and checks his watch purposefully.

Mike approaches the Witch with heavy feet as she pins him into her gravitational pull with her laser eyes. Mike really needs to write her into one of the party's campaigns as a monster, right after he finishes the draft about that one monster. He has no idea why he started writing about a Shadow Monster, especially when the party would need a Mage to defeat it and their Mage isn't ready to play yet.

"Mr. Wheeler, I researched your school records and found that last year you seemed to be struggling just as you are now," the Witch says, for once her voice not harsh and clipped but soft and smooth. Does she have to make herself talk harsher for school?

Mike shrugs, picking at the hem of his shirt. Last year was a blur. He had been so high-strung during Will's disappearance that he'd gotten himself sick afterwards and had weird hallucinations for a day or two but he'd been fine afterwards. It had been anger that someone had tried to hurt his friend that had kept him lashing out for nearly a whole year, then from Christmas and through the whole summer he'd been fine, probably because there'd been no pressure from school to stress him out.

"I just want to know… are there home problems I should know about?"

Mike hunches his shoulders and lets his long hair fall into his eyes, flicking it back with irritation, letting it fall back, rubbing the pads of his fingers together. He doesn't want Mrs. Dunbrough to think he's having home problems. He doesn't want her to take it easy on him. He wants to know that she gets mad at him because she thinks he's an asshole. He doesn't want her to make him feel bad that she feels bad for him, he doesn't want the pressure building behind his eyes.

"If I wanted to deal with a bitch, I would have gotten a dog," Mike snaps, rubbing at his eyes furiously. "Go to hell."

"Mr. Wheeler," the Witch calls after him, still using the voice that puts him off his guard and makes him feel like he missed a step down the stairs.

Mike storms out of the classroom, not knowing why, exactly, he's crying, only that he feels broken because he should be able to feel something but he can't, only anger. He's only angry. He should be grateful that Will's following after him, he should be worried about missing his class, he should be mad at himself for cursing at a teacher, he should be hoping that the Witch won't call his parents.

"Mike!" Will yells after him.

Mike snaps, "What?" but doesn't take his eyes off the wall. He doesn't want Will to see him crying.

"Mike, are you all right?" His smaller friend approaches him and Mike's grateful he doesn't say anything about how he rubs furiously at his eyes.

"I'm fine, just tired," Mike nods and it's true. He just wants to go home and sleep until it's time to go out with his friends. "Kind of starting the day off wrong, aren't I?" He huffs out a bitter half-laugh.

Will joins him in staring at the wall. Mike feels like they share a secret only he doesn't know what the secret is.

Will's fingers trace over the bullet holes in the wall—

Screaming, running

—while saying, "Can I talk to you?"

"Can it wait?" Mike glances at his watch. He doesn't want to go to his class but he doesn't want to be cornered to talk about feelings.

"Wanna go to the park?" Will asks instead of answering.

When Mike gets home that evening, his mother doesn't scream at him right away, which leads him to believe there's still hope and goodness in this world. When he walks into the kitchen, braced for the shrieks, she just smiles at him and he relaxes. Thank God.

He grabs two of the cookies on the counter and races up the stairs to his room, slamming it so hard something crashes in his closet. After tugging on his Spider-man shirt, he pulls his closet door open and breathes in the slightly musky scent. One of the shoeboxes filled with pointless mementos had crashed, spreading pictures over the floor and the pile of dirty laundry.

Mike curses under his breath and tries to sweep up the pictures with one wave of his hands, but one bends and then springs upwards before fluttering through the air and onto the ground. Mike's eyebrows furrow when he sees the subject of the picture: a girl with curly brown hair, her back to the picture taker.

It must be Nancy's, accidentally swept up into his mess, although no one in Mike's family apart from Karen ever touches the shoeboxes.

Mike stuffs it in his pocket to give to Nancy and finishes cleaning up the mess.

"Trick or Treat!"

So far they've gotten to five houses that'd judged them for dressing up and they've only been trick-or-treating for twenty minutes. They've learned to brush it off, though.

"—I mean, would they rather we be partying and getting roaring drunk?" Lucas grumbles as they turn their backs on yet another house. "Where is she, anyway?"

"We're going to meet her at the store; Hopper's dropping her off," Dustin supplies. Lucas has asked the same question no less than six times in the entirety of their trick-or-treating session.

Mike tries to grab a candy from Will's bag and the smaller boy pushes him. Mike stumbles, laughing, and Will catches a glimpse of the picture that Mike had forgotten to ask his sister about. In the dimming light, it looks as if Will gets significantly paler.

"What's that?" he asks, pointing at the photo.

Mike holds it up to reflect the dying sunbeams and shrugs, peering at it. He's probably seen the girl around before; she looks a little familiar and's got the hairstyle he's currently sporting. He can't see much of her apart from the sweatshirt and jeans she's wearing, except for the fact that she's barefoot.

Will flips it over to look at the back. Mike peers at the messy writing—similar to his own, in fact—before shrugging and flicking it between his fingers in Will's direction. "Never heard of her. Must be one of Nancy's friends."

Will fumbles to catch the photo and examines it. He flips it over as well.

On the back are words that he can distinctly remember his friend scrawling, still blushing a bit and hair completely windblown: El, First Day of School.