James and Joyce were a little surprised on Sunday night when their grandmother told them that they were already registered to go to school in Hawkins the next day.

"Your dad took care of all of it," she had said. So, early Monday morning, James and Joyce woke up, ate breakfast, packed the minimal school supplies they had with, then got in their grandmother's car. The first stop was at the high school, where Joyce got out. It took her a while to find her first class, English, but she eventually did and walked in. She looked around and was happy to see a familiar face.

"I'm glad I know someone here," she said, walking over to Barb, who had found a desk right at the front of the room.

"Yeah, that helps," Barb said. It was obvious that he was thinking of something else. "Do you know why we're here?"

"Like… in this English class, or Hawkins in general?"

"Hawkins in general."

"No idea. My dad just told us to pack and get in the car."

"That's pretty much how it happened with me. I thought your dad might have told you more before you picked me up."

"I have this feeling that something's wrong."

"Like what?" Barb had a similar feeling, but he couldn't quite figure it out.

"I don't know. But I still feel like something is really wrong."

The bell rang and the teacher walked in. She was an older woman, but not that old. Joyce thought she must have been a couple years younger than her grandmother. She also looked ever so slightly familiar, almost as if Joyce had seen her before in a long forgotten dream.

"We have two new students in our class today," the teacher said. She opened her bag and pulled out a piece of paper. After putting on her glasses, she read off of it. "Everyone, please welcome Barbra Harrington and Joyce Wheeler." The teacher's voice seemed to shake a little bit when reading off the names. Once she was done, her eyes lingered on the page before turning to the girls and forcing out a smile. "I'm Mrs. Carter."


Mike parked the car at the cemetery and turned off the engine. He turned to Eleven in the passenger seat.

"Are you ready?" he asked. Eleven looked down and shook her head. "Would you just like a little time?" Eleven nodded. Mike got out of the car. Two more cars pulled into the parking lot and Dustin, Amy, Lucas, Sarah and Lucas got out. "Thanks for coming, guys. El really appreciates it."

"I never knew what to think of Brenner," Lucas said. "But if El liked her, that's good enough for me."

The funeral was small. It was only the seven of them and a priest who apparently never knew Mallory. Once the service was done, the priest left the group to pay their respects. Amy came up to Eleven and put her hand on her shoulder.

"She was an old woman," Amy said. "She lived a full life." Eleven slowly shook her head.

"No she didn't," she said. Mike was confused.

"What do you mean?"

"She didn't leave a full life." Everyone waited for Eleven to explain further. "She was old, so there was no reason for the hospital to do a thorough autopsy. But I had The Coalition do one. They found a cocktail of hard-to-detect poisons."

"Who would do that?" Lucas asked, even though everyone knew the answer.

"Nine and Ten. Without Mallory, we probably wouldn't have been able to stop them. But she couldn't hurt them anymore, though. They didn't need to kill her. They just wanted cold revenge."

"Well then… what do we do?" asked Sarah.

"I think we're safe for now. It's easier to poison a specific dish in a nursing home than the food we buy at the grocery store, so I don't think we have to worry about that. But I would be careful about eating at restaurants."

"My boyfriend was going to take me out this Friday," Sarah said. "Should I ask him to cancel?"

"I really don't think we can be too safe." The whole group was slowly reaching the realization as to how different their lives would be until Nine and Ten were dealt with.


Chemistry class at Hawkins High School was one of the only classes that combined grade levels, meaning that Edward was in a class with Joyce and Barb.

"Does this teacher sound familiar?" Edward asked as he sat down next to Joyce and Barb. He took out his school schedule and pointed to the last class before lunch: chemistry with Dr. Carter.

"Did our parents have him?" Joyce asked.

"I guess so."

The bell rang, the teacher walked in and the door closed.

"Good morning, everyone," Dr. Carter said. He froze in his steps when he saw Joyce, Edward and Barb sitting in the first row of the class. It took him a minute to drop it, but then he was able to continue teaching. To the three new students, Dr. Carter's teaching style seemed a little strange. To everyone else, it was much different than usual. He seemed very distracted. Maybe a little worried.

He seemed a little startled when the bell ringed, everyone packed up their things and left for lunch as Carter struggled to remember the homework he wanted to assign.

"Joyce, Edward and Barbara, could you three stay behind for a short moment?" Carter asked. They set down their backpacks and waited for everyone else to leave the room. Behind the last person, Carter carefully closed the door and turned to the three kids that stayed. "What are you three doing here?" he asked suddenly.

"What?" asked Joyce.

"I'm sorry, you probably want some context. I know your parents, I was their teacher. I'm still their friend. I saw all of you when you were little."

"And you want to know why we're in Hawkins and not Chicago?" asked Edward.

"If we're getting straight to the point, yes. Sorry if that seems a little strange."

"It certainly wouldn't be the strangest thing to happen to us in the past couple of days," Barb said.

"To be entirely honest, we have no idea," Joyce said. "My parents just told me to pack up then my dad dropped me in Hawkins. They seemed… scared of something." Carter milled around behind his desk for a while. If he wasn't scared too, he was at least uncomfortable for some reason.

"That's all I wanted to ask," Carter said quietly. "Have fun at lunch."


The cafeteria was pretty much full by the time Joyce, Barb and Edward got there. The up-side was that there was almost no line to get their food. The downside was that after they got their food, there was nowhere to sit. They made almost two complete laps of the cafeteria before hearing;

"If you guys are looking for a place to sit, you're welcome here." Joyce turned to see who said that. It was a small, brown haired girl sitting on the corner of one of the tables. There were some people near her, but they were all engaged in a conversation that didn't seem to involve her.

"Thanks," Joyce said, sitting down then sliding along the bench a little bit to allow Edward to sit next to her. The girl that invited them over slid down as well so Barb could sit next to her.

"I'm Mary, by the way," the girl said. "You guys are new, right? We had chemistry together last period."

"Yeah, we did," Barb said, suddenly remembering Mary. She had sat a row or two behind them.

"I'll say that Dr. Carter is usually an awesome teacher. Today was a little weird," Mary said. "And… I am so sorry, but what are your names again? I forgot."

"That's OK," Edward replied. "I'm Edward, this is Joyce, and that's Barb."

"Barb like Barbara?" asked Mary.

"Um… yes," Barb replied. "Why?"

"It's just that… Barbara is kind of a famous name around here." Mary began speaking with her best ghost-story voice. "About thirty years ago, there was a girl named Barbra that went to this very school. She went to a party one night, then mysteriously disappeared. Never to be seen again." Barb nodded a little bit. In the first grade, everybody got an assignment to ask their parents where their name came from. When Barb asked her mother, she heard that exact same story, but with a little more sadness. "But of course, that's only the second most famous story in this town," Mary continued. "The most well known is the story of Will Byers: the boy who came back to life." Joyce could tell that Mary was having fun introducing the group to all the strange happening of Hawkins in the past, but she interrupted her anyway.

"We know that story," said Joyce. "He's my uncle." Mary's mouth fell open.

"Really? What's he like?"

"I've never met him. Nobody's seen him since a couple months before I was born."

"Oh… I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's not your fault. Plus, can't miss someone if you don't know them." Joyce said that when people asked about her uncle even though she knew it wasn't true. Despite never having met Will, she still missed him very much.

"But that would make you either Elle or Jonathan Byers' daughter. Right?" Mary asked.

"Elle Wheeler," Joyce corrected.

"She married Mike?" Mary asked. It was beginning to get weird, how much Mary already seemed to know about Joyce's family. "My mom told me that everyone in the school expected them to get married." It got a little less weird when Joyce learned that Mary's mom knew her parents in high school.

"Why do you know so much about Joyce's family?" Edward asked.

"I've lived here my whole life. My parents have lived here their whole lives. Not too much has happened around here since Will Byers disappeared and the couple years of strangeness that followed."

"What do you mean 'couple years of strangeness that followed'?" Joyce asked. She knew most of the story from when her uncle disappeared, but hadn't heard of anything that happened after that.

"I don't know. I wasn't around then. If you really want to know, you'd have to ask my mom," Mary said, taking a bite of a french fry.


The phone on Eleven's desk started ringing promptly at 6PM that afternoon, which was strange. Very few people had that number, and most of the ones that did usually just called Eleven on her cell phone. She tried to think for a moment who could be calling, but when nothing came up, she just picked up the phone.

"Hello?" she asked. She tired to sound powerful to whoever might be on the other end, but some of her uncertainty showed through.

"El? It's Peter Carter," Carter said from the other end of the line. Eleven felt relieved, it turned out she didn't have to be scared.

"Hi!" Called another, very familiar voice through the phone. "It's Elizabeth. I'm here too."

"Hi, guys. To what do I owe the pleasure?" Eleven asked.

"Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be all that pleasurable," Carter said. Eleven was beginning to get an idea of what her old teachers and mentors were calling about. "Why are Joyce, Barb and Edward in Hawkins? And I think I saw Alice here too." Eleven sighed. She really should have warned the Carters beforehand.

"That's not all. Hunter and Edward are there too."

"Yes, but why?" asked Elizabeth.

"Nine and Ten escaped from prison." Eleven gave that last sentence a moment to set in with Carter and Elizabeth. "The Legion is back on the rise. They very nearly overthrew The Coalition on Friday. We moved the kids to Hawkins in secret to try and protect them." Eleven thought really hard about whether or not she should say the next bit of information. In the end, she remembered all the things that the Carters already knew about and decided that the more they knew, the more effectively they might be able to help. "Also… the Demogorgon isn't dead." There was a moment of dead silence on the phone.

"What?" asked Carter. "What did it do to you?"

"I don't know. I think… it might have saved my life."

"Why would it do that?"

"I don't know. But when The Legion was taking over The Coalition, it showed up and got rid of all the Legion members."

"I haven't been in this for a while, but I don't think it was trying to save you. I think it was attracted by you as well as all the blood I'm assuming was there..." Carter was right, there was a lot of blood left over from the struggle by the time Eleven got there. "...I really think you just got lucky that it didn't go after you."

"Every other time I've seen the Demogorgon, it's just brutally gone after everything in its path. This wasn't anything like that. It wasn't random either. It was… careful. Selective."

"All I'm saying is that I would be careful. I wouldn't just start to think that the Demogorgon is somehow your ally."


A/N: If everything goes right, this should be uploaded right after I move back to America. My schedule remains very very busy so expect my uploads to become a little inconsistent. Thanks, everyone for reading and please leave a review! I really appreciate anything and everything you have to say.