Chapter Three: Jealousy, Jealousy

The next morning, Uncle Jack woke me up after a long and loud string of persistent knocking at the front door. He had said it was for me, and I instantly jumped out of bed, not even bothering to change clothes or even brush my hair. I never asked who it was, because I already knew the answer, and I was almost certain Jonathan was about to tell me they had found Will safe and sound last night.

When I got to the door in world record time, I flung it open with a big, hopeful smile on my face only to see the same sad and sulking Jonathan that had been around since yesterday morning. "Hey," he said, taken back by how eager I seemed.

My demeanor fell a little, and I could tell he didn't have any good news yet. "Oh, hey," I said back. "Did I oversleep or something?"

"Uh, no," he stammered, his eyes darting behind me. "Can you come outside for a second?"

I raised an eyebrow at him, a little unsure of what was going on, but I still ended up taking a step outside and shutting the door behind me. "You're scaring me a little," I admitted, sitting down on the steps.

"Hopper came by last night," he suddenly said.

"Hopper? The Chief of Police? Did they find something?"

He shook his head, refusing to meet my eyes. "They want to go look for him at Lonnie's."

"Lonnie as in your dad? Why would they look there? He hasn't even seen Will for the last, like, five years."

"I know," he replied. "But if he's there and a bunch of police come looking for him like he's in trouble, he's going to hide." A beat passed before he finally looked over at me. "He wouldn't hide from us."

My brain finally clicked as I realized what he was suggesting. "Jonathan, we can't just step in the middle of this."

"He's my little brother, and he's missing," his said, his voice now firm and unwavering, his eyes holding mine in a death stare. "I'm not just going to sit around and wait for him to show up."

I let out a breath and broke eye contact, thinking about what he was saying. We could definitely get in a lot of trouble for interfering with an investigation like that, but at the same time, he was right. Will would hide. "Okay," I finally said. "When are we going?"

"As soon as school starts," he answered.

"We're skipping school?"

"We have to. Hopper and my mom can't find out about this."

I paused for a second to contemplate what I was going to say next. "What about my doctor's appointment? My uncle will flip out if I don't show up."

"Ask them to reschedule it for tomorrow."

"How on Earth am I going to convince him to let me do that?"

He shrugged, visibly agitated. "I don't know, Daisy. Make something up, and if you can't come, then you can't come. I'll go alone if I have to."

I scrunched my brow at him and wondered why he was acting so hostile all of a sudden, but I brushed it off as frustration for Will. For a split second, I swore I could see tears forming in his eyes, and my heart broke. I loved Jonathan too much to let him go through any single second of this alone. My hand found his as I reached for some way to comfort him. It was the only way I really knew how. "You're not going alone. Just let me talk to him for a second, okay?" He nodded, and I watched him for a second. He was falling apart. I squeezed his hand before wrapping an arm around his torso and pulling him closer so my chin rested on top of his head. "It's going to be okay."

We stayed like that for a few minutes before I pulled away, deciding I needed to hurry up and get ready before it was too late. I kept hold of Jonathan's hand, pulling him through the living room before reaching my bedroom. He took his usual spot at the foot of my bed as I quickly grabbed some clothes and headed to the bathroom. When I was just a few feet away, I was cut off by my uncle, who seemed awfully suspicious for someone that was supposed to be minding his own business. "Everything okay," he asked me, his eyes flickering over to my bedroom door for a second.

I looked back at my door, thinking of the quickest excuse I could before turning back to face him. "He's had a bad morning." It wasn't technically a lie.

Uncle Jack nodded, but I could tell he knew I was keeping something from him. "Heard anything about Will," he asked.

I did a double take. That was the first time he had mentioned Will going missing. I hadn't even remembered telling him anything about it. "How'd you find out about that?"

"Joyce called after you two left yesterday."

"You talked to Joyce," I asked in surprise. Joyce and Uncle Jack hadn't talked since the last time they broke up two years ago.

"I did," he said. "I even went over there for a while. She's losing it, Daisy." I stood there and looked at him. He was started to get teary eyed right in front of me, and I wasn't sure what to do. I had never seen him so vulnerable before. He was always the strong shoulder that everybody could lean on. "There's nothing I can do to help her. Her kid's missing, Benny shot himself last night, this town is going crazy."

"Benny shot himself?"

Benny was one of my uncle's closest friends. They had grown up together and had the type of friendship that you could leave for years and still pick up right where you left off the second you come back. That's what had happened when my uncle was a teenager. My grandparents moved him to Colorado before he ended up graduating and taking the two of us back to Hawkins, where Benny welcomed us with open arms. He had even offered us free dinners at the diner he owned just a couple blocks down from our house. My uncle always refused of course, and he made sure to tip him well whenever we did eat there. I never would've thought he'd shoot himself out of the blue.

"Hopper called this morning to let me know," he said solemnly.

Without a second thought, I pulled him into a tight hug as I felt a tear fall from his eye. It was like seeing your parents cry. Hell, Uncle Jack was my parent. I held him for just a couple minutes before he started to pull himself back together. When he pulled away, his tears were gone and he was smiling again, even if it was just a weak grin.

"Hey, I've actually been meaning to talk to you about Jonathan lately."

I raised my brow at him. Since when was he thinking about me and Jonathan? "Yeah? What's wrong?"

He shook his head and avoided eye contact, making the conversation a lot more awkward than I thought it was. "Are you two," he paused, looking over at my door again, "together?"

"What," I laughed. "Why do you think that?"

He shrugged. "You guys have just seemed extra close lately, and I've noticed him looking at you a lot." I made a funny face at him. His brother was missing, of course I'm going to be there for him, and if that meant we were extra close lately, then we were extra close lately. It was nothing more than that. "I just want you to know that you can come to me for anything," he paused, giving me a serious look, "even condoms."

"Oh my god," I groaned, lowering my voice to a whisper just to be safe. "Jonathan and I aren't sleeping together."

"Well I'm just saying, when the time comes—"

"It hasn't," I quickly cut him off. "He's just been upset about Will."

"Well you—"

I pushed past him before he could even finish the sentence. I had never been more uncomfortable with a conversation in my life, especially one that was so unnecessary. There was obviously nothing going on between the two of us…right? I guess the thought of it did keep my wondering. We did spend a lot of time together, and Jonathan had seemed extra worried about me after the incident in the bathroom. No, I thought, shaking my head as if that would rid me from ever thinking about it again. There was no way anything would happen between us, especially during a time like this.

"Hey Uncle Jack," I called out from the bathroom, suddenly remembering why Jonathan had came over in the first place.

His head popped up as soon as I opened the door. "Could we maybe reschedule my doctor's appointment today?"

"Daisy," he started to lecture me.

"I know, I promise I'll go tomorrow. It's just that there's a rally for Will this morning, and Jonathan really needs me to be there for him." Okay, so that one was only half a lie. "I'm feeling a lot better anyway, and I promise I'll go straight to the doctor's if anything happens today," I begged.

He looked me up and down for a second, sizing me up while I gave him the best puppy dog eyes that I could before he finally gave in. "Fine, but you are going tomorrow no matter what. I don't care if the town burns to the ground."

I laughed and wrapped my arms around him in a short hug before disappearing into my bedroom again. When I met Jonathan's eyes, I suddenly felt my face starting to get hot. Had he heard what Uncle Jack had said to me? Or more importantly, was what he had said right? Still, Jonathan greeted me with his usual, "hey," as I shut the door behind me. "You look nice," he then added, catching me off guard for a moment.

I looked down at my outfit, a pair of jeans and a loose sweater that I had gotten for Christmas a few years ago. It was nothing out of the ordinary, so when he complimented me on it, I wasn't sure what to say. "Uh, thanks," I managed to get out. "We should probably leave soon."

He kept looking at my outfit for a second before shaking his head and snapping out of whatever dream land he was in. "Right," he said, just as awkwardly as I had.

Our first stop was the high school, just to make sure we had made an appearance long enough that someone could vouch for us. Jonathan and I hadn't really said anything to each other on the way there, but I guess it was a pretty routine ride for us. He drove me to school every day, so it wasn't exactly new and exciting. I was still a little bit nervous that he had overheard the conversation earlier, and my awkward self also wasn't great at starting conversations on my own, even though it was with the one person that I had always felt safe around. To make matters even more confusing, he had grabbed my hand as soon as we walked into the building. Everyone stared, and it was awful. It wasn't awful that I was holding hands with Jonathan Byers, but it was awful that everyone wanted to gawk like we were escaped convicts. The only person that had the nerve to come up to us was Nancy Wheeler, who I vaguely knew through Will. Her brother Mike had been best friends with Will since they were in kindergarten, so we'd crossed paths a couple times before.

"Hey," she said kindly. "How are you feeling?"

Jonathan immediately dropped my hand as soon as he saw her, now nonchalantly using it to pin the last square of the missing poster his mom had asked us to hang. "Oh, hey," he said, a little flustered.

"Hey, I'm feeling a lot better," I said, but my voice came out a little too soft, and they had already brushed me out of the conversation.

"I just," she started to say, a little flustered, "I wanted to say," she stopped again, now looking at the ground before glancing back up at Jonathan. "I'm sorry about everything that's going on. Everyone's thinking about you."

My eyes trailed behind her to find the group of 'everyone' that she was referring to, and none of them seemed very sincere to me. Carol and Tommy H., the 'it' couple of the school, were standing next to the one and only Steve Harrington, who was easily the most desired guy in Hawkins, but I had never seen the appeal. He was arrogant and mean, and I had no idea how he managed to score the bright and big brained Nancy Wheeler. The only one who looked even somewhat sympathetic was Nancy's best friend Barb, who I didn't know very well, but I knew she didn't belong in that group either.

"Bite me," I muttered under my breath.

"It sucks," Nancy continued, either not hearing what I had just said or choosing to ignore it.

"Yeah," Jonathan scoffed, his eyes trailing to me for a second before going right back to Nancy, who was now standing in an awkward silence.

"I'm sure he's fine. He's a smart kid," she said just as the bell started to ring. "I have to go. I've got a chemistry test."

"Yeah," he replied.

"Good luck, you two."

With that, she turned around to rejoin her friends, and I couldn't help but feel a tinge of jealousy. The way that Jonathan had acted around her was weird. Sure, he was never really the most talkative or expressive person on the planet, but he seemed flustered. It couldn't have been because he's nervous around girls. He's around me all the time, and I'm a girl, but maybe it's different. Maybe he had a crush on her, and I was just here to watch it all play out in front of me while I figured out my own feelings. Maybe I was 'one of the guys' in his eyes, and he would never even think about me being his girlfriend. Wait, did I want to be his girlfriend? Was I jealous of Nancy Wheeler? What the hell is going on?

I pondered for a second, watching Jonathan skim through the poster one more time before deciding he was satisfied. He grabbed my hand again, and my heart fluttered. Just as I was about to say something about it, I had been cut off by the PA system making some announcement about an assembly for Will tonight. Jonathan started to pull me towards the door in the middle of the announcement. I looked back for just a second, making sure that Nancy had seen us holding hands, accidentally meeting the eyes of her boyfriend instead. His expression was clouded, so I couldn't quite understand what he was thinking, and frankly, it didn't matter, because Jonathan was pulling me out the door so fast that it felt like my body got left behind

"Okay, what's wrong," I asked once we were back in the car. He slammed his door shut behind him, not saying a word. "Jonathan," I said, but he didn't answer. "Jonathan," I repeated again. He still didn't answer, just started the car up and peeled out of the parking lot. "Okay Speed Racer, you're going to have to tell me what's up with you at some point. This is like a two-hour drive, and you know I will say your name the entire time until you answer me and tell me what the hell is going on." He still didn't say a word. "Jo—"

"I hate him," he finally shouted, punching his steering wheel as I jumped at the sudden outburst. "I hate him, and I swore I'd never see him again. If he did this…If he took Will…" he trailed off. I stayed quiet, not sure what to say. I'm also not sure there's anything I could say, so the best thing to do was just let him get it all out. I put my hand on his leg to help ease the tension, but he pushed it off immediately, catching me off guard. "Don't do that to me," he said, his eyes never leaving the road ahead of us.

"Do what?"

"That," he scoffed, gesturing to my hand but still not looking at me.

"I was just trying to—"

"Comfort me, I know," he interrupted. I didn't say anything back. I was too frozen to even know how to reply. "It's just that you do stuff like that, and it's confusing, and I don't know what it means. We're not kids anymore."

I studied him for a moment, not sure what he was talking about and why showing him affection was a big deal all of a sudden. "I don't understand what you're trying to say."

He let out a frustrated sigh. "I heard you and Jack this morning, okay?" My face immediately flushed, turning bright red as soon as the words had left his mouth. "He was right when he said I've been looking at you a lot lately. I don't know what changed, but it's like I see you in this whole new light. You're the only reason I've stayed sane this whole time. You've always been there for me, you like the same things as me, you're pretty," he stopped talking just as we got to a red light, his eyes lingering up and down. "I—I think I have feelings for you, Daisy."