"Hey, Jonathan?" Will whispers into the dark, hoping for an answer but dreading it all the same.
"Yeah?" His brother whispers back.
It's the weekend after Will's ninth birthday, and Jonathan's sleeping on the floor next to the bed, mostly because it makes Will feel safe, but also kind of because Jonathan's afraid to be alone. Their parents have been raging for hours in what's probably their worst fight yet. Sometimes a silence falls over the house, a hush so quiet it's almost louder than the yelling itself. Then, Lonnie opens his mouth again, and everything's back to square one.
"What's a fag?" Will asks.
Jonathan sighs in that way, the way that says he wishes he could give a nice answer, but there either isn't one, or he doesn't know how.
"You're not a fag Will. I know what Dad says but…you're not a fag, okay?"
"Okay…but what is it?"
Will hears Jonathan roll onto his back.
"It's…it's a really bad word for someone that's queer. But…umm…queer's not nice either, I guess."
"What does it all mean though, Jonathan?"
"They're just…bad words for guys that…you know…like other guys."
"Oh."
Will has to think for a moment.
There was a time, back when he was five and just starting Kindergarten, when he had boldly proclaimed to Jonathan that he had made a new friend, and one day they were going to get married. Of course, that friend had been Mike, and neither one of them knew what getting married actually meant; just that you ate cake and got to live together for the rest of your lives. Jonathan had been ten, and blunt in a way that only a ten-year-old could be when he told Will that boys could only marry girls. And when Will had asked why he just got a brisk, "boys just aren't supposed to like other boys."
Will had cried on and off again for two whole hours, thinking that Jonathan meant that Mike and Will couldn't be friends anymore because they were both boys.
But after ice cream and the clarification that boys just couldn't marry each other but could be friends forever I promise please stop, the saying never left him. Not really pressing but rather lingering just a little bit in the back of his mind.
"Boys aren't supposed to like other boys," Will repeats now.
"Yeah," Jonathan mutters.
Will's more than old enough to understand the difference between like and like. His new friend Dustin likes Lisa Donovan because she shares her snacks sometimes, but he likes Sarah Anderson. Will has no idea why. Something about her hair, maybe. So, boys can like boys as friends, but it's wrong to like one more than that. You can't have a crush on a boy. And he doesn't. Will doesn't have a crush on a boy. At least he doesn't think he does. He doesn't exactly have anything to compare his feelings to, because he's never had a crush on a girl either. Maybe.
"Jonathan, how do you know if you have a crush on somebody?"
Jonathan scoffs into the darkness.
"If you have to ask, then you don't, Will."
Will's not so sure.
"Well, just...what does it feel like?"
The room is quiet for so long, Will almost thinks that Jonathan's gone to sleep, but then he hums thoughtfully and starts to speak again.
"I was just a little bit younger than you when I had my first crush, I think. Her name was Brenda Sipes. She had this really long, blonde hair that she used to always wear in a braid, and she wore the same yellow dress a lot. She got made fun of for it, but I thought it looked nice, you know?" Jonathan sighs and eases himself up on one elbow so he can look up at his brother in the dark. "The thing about crushes, Will, is that they're kind of stupid. They don't make a lot of sense. I didn't know Brenda. We weren't friends. But every time I saw her, my heart would start beating so fast and my stomach would feel just...sick...like I ate a bunch of—"
"Butterflies," Will interrupts.
"Yeah," Jonathan laughs, "yeah, like butterflies. And I'd always try to stand next her in the lunch line and stuff and I'd just get so nervous that she'd notice me even though that was exactly what I wanted. It's like, all I could think about was Brenda all the time. It...honestly, it was kind of awful. I got really bad grades that year."
"So, what happened?" Will asks.
"Hmm?"
"With Brenda?"
"Oh, I told her I liked her on the last day of school. And she told me that I was dumb and I smelled bad. But she ended up moving away before we started middle school so it doesn't matter."
"I...That's...I don't think you smell bad," Will finally says, because what can he do to make something better when it happened such a long time ago?
Jonathan chuckles softly.
"Thanks, Will. But does that answer your question?"
Will nods his head, because, yeah, he's pretty sure it does.
Butterflies and sweaty palms.
His heart pounding like he just raced Dustin a hundred miles on his bike.
Wanting to be seen but wanting to be invisible.
The weightless feeling of falling too far too fast just from the sound of a laugh—the sound of Mike's laugh.
It had been that weightlessness and those butterflies that had started the argument between his parents in the first place. Earlier this evening, Mike had dropped by, dark hair windswept and chest heaving like he had been peddling his bike in a ghost race with himself.
"I have a present for you," he'd said. And Will's heart had soared.
"But, you already gave me a present."
And he had. The best present. D&D figurines, fresh and unpainted, ready for a new campaign.
"Nah, that was from my mom. This is just from me. You know, from my allowance."
And out of his backpack, Mike pulled a fresh sketchbook. It was hardcovered and spiralbound—finer than anything will had ever owned. On the inner cover, scribbled in Mike's messy penmanship were the words 'for the adventures of Will the Wise.'
Mike shuffled his feet.
"I thought you could put all your drawings in it."
Will had never owned a real sketchbook. He had drawn on children's paper and lined paper and scratch paper, but never real art paper. And in the moment, he was so lost for words, he did the only thing he could think of; he pulled his best friend in for a hug.
It wasn't the first time he'd hugged Mike, but it seemed like the first time that truly mattered. His heart felt like it was somewhere down around his feet and his head felt full of air, and when Mike's arms reached up to hug him back, a tiny part of him wished that the moment could last forever.
Until Lonnie opened up the door, beer in hand, and screamed Mike right off the porch while yanking Will inside by his forearm.
The seconds after that stretched on for hours—a barrage of questions and shouting and words Will had never heard before; words like "fag" and "homo," until Joyce came in like a mother bear, ready to rage until the bitter end.
Here, in the middle of the night, lying awake with his brother, with stories of crushes still fresh in his brain and the feeling of Mike still fresh in his arms Will has to wonder…
"Jonathan…"
"Oh my God, Will, what?"
"If…if I were…a fag…would you still love me?"
Jonathan sits up as if he heard a gunshot.
Even in the darkness, Will can tell Jonathan's mind is moving a thousand miles a minute. There are most likely a million things he wants to say, and twice as many things he wants to ask.
Instead, he reaches a hand out and pats his little brother on the arm.
"Will," he says, so softly that it can barely be heard over the sound of their parents, "I will always love you, okay? No matter what. Don't you ever forget that."
Will Byers feels five years old again as he asks, "Promise?"
"Promise."
