It was the day after Will made it into the in-between and confirmed that Eleven was still alive. The boys were hanging out in Will basement again. Lucas was sitting on the old couch against the wall with Dustin. They were passing a bag of chips back and forth swapping a Star Wars comic book in turn. While one ate chips the other read the comic book. "Stop losing my page Dustin." Lucas said as he got the comic back from Dustin. "You read too fast."
"No I read at a normal speed. You read too slow." Dustin answered back. "And stop getting chip grease on the pages. It smudges."
"What's the big deal Dustin. It is not like it's ever going to be worth anything. It's just a comic book." Lucas said.
"That's not the point. I like to read them again and the grease smudges the pages. Just wipe your fingers before you pick it up. Is that so hard?"
"I don't know. Is it too hard for you to keep a finger in my page so you don't lose my spot as you speed read?"
Dustin and Lucas kept fighting as Mike sat with Will at the table. They had been playing Dungeons and Dragons and their binders were stacked in the center. Will was bent over a drawing of Eleven.
"Is that what she looks like right now?" Mike asked as he leaned towards will and bent his neck to get a better look at the page.
"Just about." Will answered.
"Her hair looks longer than last time we saw her." Mike said smiling.
"She has really pretty eyes. It is hard to get the eyes right." Will leaned back and held the picture up and looked at it for a minute. There was a faint smile in the corners of his mouth. Mike didn't notice. He was looking at the picture as well.
"So tell me again. Did she look OK?" Mike asked.
Will was getting tired of answering the same questions over and over. "Yes Mike she looked OK. I was only in the in-between for a second."
"But you think that you can get back? How did you get there in the first place?"
"I am not sure. You know how the upside down works. If I get scared enough or I think about something that scares me I go to the upside down. When I think about wanting to come home I come home. That is pretty clear. The in-between is a bit different. I just found myself there." Will knew that the last part was a little bit of a lie. He was pretty sure he knew what emotion he was feeling that put him in the in-between, but Mike was the last person he could tell.
"Have you tried to get into the in-between again?" Mike asked.
"No. Not yet." Will lied again. The truth was Will had been trying to get back into the in-between all last night and all of today. He had drawn ten different pictures of Eleven and thought about her constantly but he couldn't slip into the in-between. He was sure that was the emotion that he was feeling when he went there the first time but couldn't figure out why it wasn't working now.
"Well let's try." Mike suggested.
Dustin stopped arguing with Lucas about grease smudges and comic books and got up from the couch and walked over to the table. "I don't know if that is a good idea Mike. Remember what Will said. The Demagorgon is in the in-between now. I don't think we should go messing around in the dimension where the Demagorgon lives without a plan."
"But it is fine. Eleven has him trapped, remember. And besides, the school is a long ways away, we could practice here and then go back to the school and get Eleven." Mike was pretty transparent about why he wanted Will to get back into the in-between.
"Then what Mike?" Lucas asked from where he sat on the couch, still reading the comic book. He was holding the comic book with a tissue in each hand so he and Dustin must have come to an agreement. "She already said that she was not going to leave the in-between so long as the Demagorgon was there. Even if we get back into the school and back into the in-between, then what. She isn't going to come back with us."
Lucas was right, and Mike knew Lucas was right. "I know I know." Mike said. "I just want to do something." Mike slumped back in his chair and picked up one of Will's pictures of Eleven. He looked deep into her crayon eyes, trying to remember what it had been like with her. It hadn't been that long ago but it seemed like an eternity.
Will saw Mike looking at the picture and wanted to snatch it out of his hands. That was his picture, he had drawn it, why should Mike get to look at it? Will had not been there when Mike had been with Eleven, he had never seen the two together. So he didn't think that it was off limits for him to think about Eleven too. It wasn't like he was going to do anything about it. He was just little Will Byers. Girls didn't look at him that way. People said that he was different, some thought that he was gay. Will knew that he wasn't, but that didn't seem to make a difference. He like Eleven, was that such a bad thing? He knew that it was, Mike liked Eleven first. Their group didn't have a code about how to deal with girl troubles, they had never had girl troubles to deal with, but he was pretty sure that if the group had a code about girls number one rule would be no hitting on your friends girl. Will kept drawing another picture and was lost in thought. He didn't notice that Dustin was talking to him until he felt a smack on the arm.
"WILL. Are you listening to me?" Dustin bellowed.
"Oh sorry. I was just thinking…" Will trailed off.
"I asked you a question. How long did you say you were in the in-between?"
"I don't know exactly. I was looking at Eleven sitting on the table, then she was just 'more there'. It felt different than the upside down, nicer, but empty. Then I heard the Demagorgon behind me, I turned and saw it, it scared the crap out of me, and I was back in the upside down, and then just as fast I was back here." Will tilted his head up and to the side and it looked like he was adding in his head. "The whole thing was maybe a few seconds. Why?"
"That's not enough time." Dustin said half to himself.
"Not enough time for what?" Lucas yelled from the couch, he was still holding the comic with the tissue paper and looked to be on the last page.
Dustin got up and started pacing the room. He did this when he was thinking out loud. "We want to get Eleven back right?"
They all answered "Yes."
"And she is not going to come back so long as she has to keep the Demagorgon trapped in the in-between right?"
Again they all answered "Yes."
"Well then the answer is obvious right?" Dustin said with a finality that implied the whole room had come to the same conclusion that he had. The looks on their faces told him that they had not. "Oh come on guys. There is only one way that we can get Eleven back."
"What?" Mike asked "How do we get Eleven back?"
Dustin took a deep breath, looked each boy in the eyes and said. "We have to kill the Demagorgon."