Hawkins, Indiana, with its population of around 30,000 citizens, wasn't a place people just ended up at. Either you were born there and never left or...well, that was pretty much it. Hawkins was the type of small town where everyone was privy to everyone else's business; except most of the time, people were just too polite to comment on it.
For these reasons, the attractive, new Reading teacher, to be employed at Hawkins Middle School, was quite the talk about the town. Not that any of this interest was made apparent to her face; instead, people peered through their blinds when she drove past in her Chevy pickup truck, that was new enough to stand out in town but not so new as to imply she came from money. Eyes followed her every move as she perused through the supermarket; all were wondering what would bring a young woman to a town like this: alone, apparently with no family nearby, and with no husband nor children to boot.
None dared speak to the thirty-something brunette though; who was likened to a new toy in a town deprived of entertainment, but she was frequently spoken of behind closed doors.
At the start of June 1983, Ana Thompson had blown into town in a wave of moving trucks and mystery, taking up residence in the old Mooney house just on the outskirts of town. And, that's all anyone knew of her: where she had chosen to take inhabit and who would be her employer upon the completion of summer.
Perhaps that isn't the fairest of assessments; there was one other thing that the townspeople of Hawkins did recognize quickly about the new soon to be school teacher: that she was partial to beer.
This mutual affinity for a good ale would be the foundation of the growing, would be tumultuous, relationship between Ana Thompson and Police Chief Jim Hopper.