The young curly-haired woman fumbled through putting a stack of TV dinners into her grocery store shopping cart. You couldn't go wrong with the usual, after all. The green boxes of Marie Callender's lasagnas and fettucine alfredo were something of a comfort food that were a staple in twenty-year-old Belinda Cunningham's fridge.

Beanie. She hadn't gone by Belinda in years, she practically forgot to answer it at times. Beanie adjusted the worn out Ohio State sweatshirt she wore, since the sleeves had been mussed up by the cardboard boxes being stacked onto them, then made to exit the freezer aisle when her path crossed the path of a couple - Nancy and Steve Harrington.

"Hey there, Beanie - been a while, hasn't it?" Nancy asked warmly? The curly haired woman in her early fifties now still had a vitality and a spirit to her, as did her husband. It was a small wonder that the pair, who had stayed in Hawkins for practically their entire lives and had even raised a young son who had gone to high school with Beanie and gone off to college, remained very much the same as ever.

It hadn't always been easy. Beanie didn't remember what others referred to as a curse that existed on the city of Hawkins, only that her dad had lost his sister, Chrissy, because of the curse, and Nancy had lost the boy she had been dating - a young man by the name of Jonathan Byers - in the final stand against the creature who brought the curse down upon them. It was only in the aftermath of Jonathan's death that Nancy and Steve had rekindled their romance, but in the years that followed, they had grown into a strong, loving family even in light of such tragedy. Few people, actually, knew their family nearly as well as Beanie Cunningham did.

"Hi Mister and Missus Harrington," Beanie said with a polite smile, walking over and giving each of them a fond hug. "How are you?"

"Oh, come on," Steve said giving her shoulder an affectionate shake. "You and Jonny pretty much grew up together, you don't need to be so formal."

Beanie grinned bashfully and gave a dry laugh, rolling her shoulders slightly. She and Jonny Harrington had grown up best friends, had started a lemonade stand to raise money for their first telescope and pinky promised they'd both be astronauts one day. They staged simultaneous hunger strikes until their parents allowed them to go to space camp. Indeed, they had been the best of friends and had assumed for their entire lives that they would simply remain inseparable, all the way up to the eventual inevitability that they went up to space together. But Jonny had gone off to study aerospace engineering in Chicago, while Beanie was... in Hawkins.

It wasn't that she wasn't doing alright for herself - Beanie had graduated at the top of her class, and had taken college credits in high school so that by now, she already had a bachelor's degree and a steady job as a research study coordinator at Marian University. She had a car, and her own small townhouse in one of the newer subdivisions that had been popping up around Hawkins. In most ways that people cared about, Beanie Cunningham had a life that was stable, a course that was set, even if she had taken little to no risks getting there. It was reliable and safe, just like everything in her life had been.

Nancy, however, saw right through the brave face that Beanie put on and knew, woman to woman, that it was duty and responsibility and even guilt that held her back from the things she wanted to do - that held her back from being in Chicago with Jonny, living out their dreams of studying aerospace engineering and designing rockets and machines that would bring a little piece of them out of Hawkins and up to the stars. Nancy knew what it meant to be held back by guilt, and a part of her quietly mourned the thought of the young girl she had seen grow up alongside her own child go through the same thing.

"We're driving out to Chicago in a couple weeks to go visit Jonny," she pointed out with a grin. "He said there's a pizza place right near his dorm that he thinks you'd love, and he'd tell you about it himself if you'd answer your phone once in a while. You should come with us to go see him."

Beanie again gave a nervous chuckle and opened her mouth to answer, but was relieved at the sound of the bell over the front door of the grocery story clanking violently as the door swung open and another familiar face entered that she had known her entire life here in Hawkins - Dustin Henderson. He practically stumbled over his own feet as he hurried over to reach them, panting loudly.

"Guys - guys, we need to get out there. Right now. Right freaking-"

"Whoa, whoa, hold on, Dustin," Steve said, placing his hand out to hopefully get Dustin Henderson calmed down enough to make a modicum of sense. "Out there?"

The words didn't mean anything to Beanie, admittedly, but the glance shared between Nancy, Steve, and Dustin was enough for her to realize that for them, this meant something very specific. Dustin let out an exasperated noise as though frustrated at his own inability to put everything into words, and he briefly pressed his hands to his forehead and took a deep breath, shaking his head before finally stating. "They're back."

"Who's back?" Nancy asked, stepping forward quickly and planting her hands firmly on Dustin's shoulders, determined to get her answer even if she had to shake it out of her younger brother's friend whom she had known for the greater part of his life. "Dusty, you answer me right now, who's back?"

Dustin's frantic movements calmed, and though he didn't supply her with an answer aloud, something in his gaze directly into Nancy's eyes seemed to somehow be an answer just the same. She paused and looked up at Steve with a gasp and gave his arm a stern yank. "Come on, you heard him, let's go!"

And with barely a word to Beanie, the three ran off into the darkening evening. Beanie, unable to help her curiosity, hesitated only long enough to give them a brief head start before leaving her shopping cart full of TV dinners and rushing out to her little black Toyota parked outside. Something was afoot in Hawkins, and she would be damned if she was the last to know.

Dustin and the Harringtons arrived at a forest clearing at the edge of town - one that held significance for them because it had been where they were standing at the moment that they realized they were about to enter perhaps the greatest fight of their lives to save Hawkins from the evil that dwelt in the Upside Down. At that time, there had been more of them, and in the time since, many had moved away from Hawkins to get away from the memories. Some moved on with their lives. And the Byers boys...

Will and Jonathan Byers had been lost to the Upside Down, like so many others, in the final fight.

But Dustin. Steve, and Nancy arrived in the clearing now just as the sun was sinking below the horizon to find three people emerging from the distance whom they thought they would never see again. The first, a young woman in a cheerleading uniform with a kempt ponytail and bright, hopeful eyes. The second, a thin young man with long, wild curly hair. The third, a girl with short red hair and glasses, staring in confusion at her surroundings and shedding the thick jacket she wore which was too warm for the Indiana summer she had just walked into.

"Barb!"

Nancy let out a choked sob as she darted forward and without hesitation, wrapped her arms around the short-haired girl, whose eyes widened in confusion as she jumped away from the embrace. "Who are you?" she asked, her face contorting questioningly. "How do you know my name?"

"It's - it's me," Nancy said, stepping back and gesturing to herself by placing her hands on her own chest. "Oh my god. I know... I know I don't look the same but -"

"Nancy?" Barb asked, taking another step back and glancing her over with a shocked expression. "You're - you're -"

"You've been gone a long time, Barb," Nancy attempted to explain though her voice quavered nervously. "I can't believe you're back..."

"I don't get it," Barb said, shaking her head fervently. "This doesn't make sense. I was... I was out by the pool. And you were with -"

Barb looked out past Nancy, and her expression turned grave at the sight of the Steve Harrington. Barb remembered now, she had been alone by the pool, and Nancy had been in the house with him. Whatever all of this was, was because of that moment, the last moment that she could remember with any clarity. And now, in spite of that, for whatever reason, her best friend was now a grown woman, showing up here with him. Her expression hardened.

"Hey Barb," Steve said with a plaintive, wide gesture of his arms and a nervous chuckle. "Long time no see! You haven't... aged... a bit..."

"H-Henderson?"

The tense interaction was interrupted when one of the other figures emerging from the distance squinted and cocked his head at the sight of Dustin, making a vague pointing gesture before a wide grin burst onto his face while he laughed in both recognition and disbelief. "That can't be you. Mine eyes deceive me."

"Eddie!"

At this, Dustin barreled forward and practically tackled the other young man into a bear hug, holding on tightly and not even bothering to hold back the fact that tears were streaming down his face. "You're back. Holy shit, you're back!" Dustin said with a slightly hoarse voice before pulling away and looking back at the girl behind Eddie, who looked on sheepishly. "And Chrissy!"

"Hi - oh!" she said with a slight yelp, surprised by the fact that Dustin swept her up into a hug in his excitement as well. "Wow, hi to you too, Dustin," she said with a hesitant laugh, knowing that she really had hardly known him at all.

"What on God's green earth," a voice nearby began, starting off slightly muffled as its source stepped out of their car, "is going on here?"

Beanie Cunningham, having followed along despite not having been invited, looked on at the unusual set of reunions occurring before her eyes and found her eyes immediately drawn to the face that she had only recognized from photographs: her aunt. Chrissy Cunningham. And Chrissy, upon looking at the girl who had just approached, immediately saw a young woman with her brother's eyes and gently covered her mouth with a small gasp.

"I feel," Eddie interrupted, walking with a flourish into the center of the group before removing his leather jacket and laying it on the ground by Beanie while his voice lilted in an almost inappropriately whimsical, sing-song cadence, "as though you may want to have a seat for this one. It's a bit of a doozie."