I.
I would be lying if I said my sister's brother-in-law is someone who crosses my mind often. I would also be lying if I said I can remember the exact time I saw him last, or where he's living now, or what he's even doing with his life.
Nevertheless, I find Will Byers there, sitting in my brother's living room after I get back from a run down Navy Pier early that Saturday evening. And while I know he and Michael were friends long before Nancy and Jonathan got together, it still catches me off guard.
"Hey," he says, like he hadn't expected to see me.
"Hey," I say the exact same way.
Oddly enough, I notice his new haircut before I do the new breathing tubes strung to one of those oxygen tank backpacks by his feet. The circles under his eyes are a permanent shade of purple to match the heavy knit sweater he has on, the collar of a button up shirt poking out from underneath, and the bones of his face and wrists are much more prominent than I remember.
Will has always been sick, but this is the first time he has ever looked it.
"What are you doing here?" we both ask at the same time.
A smile spreads easily across his face, and he looks much more like himself again. "I was just in the area. Thought I'd stop by."
"Auntie!" Charlie calls from the floor, and it almost sounds like a sneeze. "Look."
She is splaying stickers shaped like stars and planets over a piece of purple construction paper. "Very pretty," I tell her.
"She's redesigning the sky," Will explains as Jane breezes in.
"Yeah," Jane agrees, handing Will a glass of water and settling in beside him. "And the whole thing will revolve around her."
Charlie slaps a crecent moon into place.
I head upstairs for a shower.
"Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes, Hols," Michael calls from the kitchen after my retreating footfalls.
II.
The times Karen and I sat and ate meals together grew fewer and farther between as the years went on. One of the most recent I remember was when we drove out to Bloomington to have dinner with her latest boyfriend so that I could meet his son.
She really knew how to pick them, my mother, and for the most part Peter was no exception. He was about a decade younger than her; a widow who worked at a call center in the city for some washing machine company and wore a wiry moustache and his Gap polo tucked into his Gap jeans, but he was totally enraptured by my mother. He was awkward and went on nervous tangents if you let him, but at least he didn't talk down to Karen like Rich and he didn't have a wife and family she didn't know about like Harris.
He was no knight in shining armor, that Peter, but at least he tried to be. That evening, he took us out to a pizza place with a jukebox and a couple arcade games in the back so he would seem like fun, but if I had to guess it was probably the best he could afford for a table of four on his customer support salary.
Karen pretended she didn't mind. Put on her good bra and brick red lipstick anyway, and Peter insisted we order pepperoni, and the two carried on conversation like their children weren't even there, and although I hadn't spoken a word to the kid beyond my obligatory, "Hi," I could tell Pete Junior was getting sick of it about as fast as I was. He was around high school age, like me, and had an owl's face, with his sharp nose and watchful eyes.
I asked him if he was any good at pool, and he glanced over to the unoccupied table across the restaurant. He nodded once and that was good enough for me. We stood and I could tell Karen had never been happier with a decision I'd made in years. She even had us wait as she looked to Peter expectantly, and he fished us a few quarters from his front pocket.
"Your mom seems nice," Pete Junior said as we walked away, but it sounded like a formality. "My dad says you have a brother and a sister?"
"Yeah. They're a lot older."
"That must be cool. I always wanted siblings."
I didn't bother mentioning that I had always wanted siblings, too.
I fed the quarters into the table and he racked the balls it released. He insisted I break, and I sunk two stripes before he did three solids.
As I lined up my next shot, I tried to recall everything Ted had taught me about pool during one of those seasons he decided to remember he was supposed to be my father. I put a little too much force behind it anyway, and the cue ball went rolling into the pocket right after the eleven.
"So what grade are you in, Holly?" Pete Junior asked conversationally, positioning the scratched cue on the maroon wool.
"No one calls me that," I said too sharply before I could think it through.
He gave me a lingering look with those wide, attentive eyes, but didn't say anything. Just took his shot.
Thing is, I wasn't trying to be mean, I was trying to be honest. I was trying to maintain as much distance as we could. Because no matter how much I didn't hate Peter, or even his Junior, I knew my mother. Even the decent ones she'd get bored of after a while; she always did. It wasn't anything personal, she always had her heart set on the next best thing, always making room, getting rid of something.
I just never expected there to come a day when it would be my turn.
III.
Over dinner, Michael and Will and Jane laugh and I am reminded of all the times I heard the sound float up from my mother's basement.
There had been a point when I desperately wanted to be in on their plans. They seemed so cool to me then, my brother and his friends, but he'd always remind me that I was just a little kid. I wish that were still the case.
Now, I finally sit as a silent observer of their clan. They joke about old times, wear nostalgia like a proud badge of adulthood, and I make crosshatches in my mashed potatoes with the tines of my fork.
This time there is no Pete Junior to escape to the pool table with. There is only Charlie, munching happily on bits of grilled chicken and steamed carrots.
"So," says Will, "how are things over at Newby?"
Newby. My ears perk up.
"Good," says Michael. "We keep ourselves busy."
Michael's company—Robert Newby, LLC—comes rushing back to me. That is where I have heard the name before. Does Michael know him from Hawkins?
I remember that woman's voice from the news report, begging to know who is next after what happened to Bob Newby. What could that have been? Would Michael know?
Again, I never expected this kind of urgency, this level of danger, from a couple of physicists.
IV.
After dinner, it is Michael's turn to watch Charlie with Will in the living room, and I go to help Jane with the dishes.
She turns on the faucet, but the spray head malfunctions, douses us with water. My hands fly up over my face, and the squeals we let out are borderline embarrassing. She twists off the water and our cries melt into laughter. I grab the counter for support.
"Oh, my god." She tosses her head back.
"You're drenched."
"So are you!"
"What the hell happened?" Michael rounds the corner into the kitchen, grabs a roll of paper towels.
"I don't know..."
"The sprayer—" I tried to explain, inspecting it.
Michael starts laying down paper towels over the puddle on the floor. Jane thanks him and reaches to help. "Shit. My watch."
"Did it get wet?" I ask, stupidly.
She nods, tries to twist the tiny dial on the side.
"Can't you put it in rice or something?"
"Rice?" she arches a brow at me.
"Yeah. Dry rice. Doesn't it absorb the water?" I look to Michael for confirmation that I'm not crazy.
He nods. "She's right. It might a day or two, but worth a shot." He picks up the sopping paper towels. "We're gonna need more."
He gets up, goes to grab another roll from the basement.
Jane sighs, takes off her watch, reaches for the pantry cabinet, and that is when I see it. In the watch's place, on the inside of her wrist right where the clasp should lay, is a tiny tattoo. From here, it looks like numbers, and I can barely make them out: 011.
It is jarring and, at the same time, a little impressive. "Since when does Jane Wheeler have a tattoo?"
"Oh," she says, lays her flat hand over her heart, hiding the inside of her wrist, and reaches for rice with the other. "It was a drunk, stupid mistake I made in college."
It's a lie, I can tell. My air of impression disintegrates.
The Jane Wheeler I know is excruciatingly un-spontaneous. Anything but careless. Intoxicated or not, she has never been one to not first consider every possible outcome, or to brush something off so casually as a stupid mistake.
V.
After Jane puts Charlie to bed, after Will says he better head out, after I get back up to my bedroom, I try and make sense of all this senseless information.
I steal a couple loose-leaf pages from my backpack, write down everything I knew to be true before I came here:
How Karen sang Christmas carols and baked sugar cookies.
How Ted groaned as if I were getting big as he pulled me into his lap on the Lay-Z-Boy.
How Nancy giggled when she looked back at me from the passenger seat of her boyfriend's car.
How Michael helped me up, lifted my bike, and made me try again.
How Michael brought Jane around for as long as I can remember.
How Jane brought herself around, even after Michael left for college.
How Nancy hardly ever came back.
How I, in the midst of it all, cannot remember when exactly we decided to stop being the Wheelers.
How the child support checks waited on the kitchen counter.
How the wine bottles filled the recycling.
The infrequent visits, the phone calls, the holiday cards, the apathy.
How old my mother looked when she said, "I am very disappointed in you, Holly."
How burnt out she looked when I realized this wasn't the first time she had considered sending me to Chicago.
On a second page, I write everything I know to be true now: Michael and Jane live in a three-story brownstone. The first floor is for living, the second floor is for sleeping, and the third floor is for working. Jane is a librarian at a public school, and Michael speaks vaguely of his research, but they look like they have a lot of money. They look like they have everything. They have Nancy's book, even, signed TO MIKE AND EL. Nancy was best friends with Barbara Holland. Barbara Holland went missing and Barbara Holland was killed. Summer's father worked the case. Something happened to Bob Newby, and now Michael works for his company. Will Byers looks sick. Will Byers is sick, always has been. Jane has a stupid mistake of a tattoo, and she hides it.
None of it connects, and I can't help but hope Mrs Larrabee is onto something. Maybe, if I pour it all out of me and onto the page, give it tangibility in the word, answers will follow.
Maybe, if I tape the papers to the back wall of my otherwise useless closet, surround them with sticky notes of questions, I'll learn to reflect on them, learn to start asking them the right way, and the shape of the truth will emerge between the secrets and lies.
A/N: Baby Holly got a scene with lines this season! What stars Anniston and Tinsley Price are becoming.
candy95: I know, the actresses have grown so much! So happy you liked the chapter. xx
Stranger Records: Thank you! I can't wait to delve deeper into how Nathan ties into all this.
Butterfly Ring: Thank you so much, I'm happy you're liking it!
phieillydinyia: Yes, she's definitely digging up a lot of things she feels she should've known. I'm so glad you liked the chapter, hope you enjoyed this one, too.
TorontoBatFan: Haha yes, the iconic Google scene hadn't been invented yet. I'm happy you liked the chapter. xx