. . .
ใ ๐ฃ. monster hunting
If there was ever a time she felt like taking a monster head-on . . . this was the time.
Decked out in what she could only call a flimsy excuse for protection, staring at what was around three times bigger than the memory of what had etched itself into her brain, and all she wanted to do was throw caution to the wind, yank the spiked bat from Steve's grip, and take a swing at what only days ago would have taken a bite out of her. She wanted to do it . . . in a fit of sudden courage, or maybe rage, oh did she want to do it.
"Rowen shut. Up."
"That thing almost ate my face off!" she whisper-yelled, an accusing arm thrusting through the spore-infested air a little too dramatically.
"Who cares?!" Mike snapped.
"I do!" This time her yell came out fully.
Dart growled, the kids flinched, and just as quickly as she had opened her covered mouth was it doubly covered by a gloved hand she couldn't get away from; though that didn't keep her from grunting inaudible words behind Steve's freakishly strong grip, pinched eyebrows and all, completely oblivious to the way Dustin was removing his mask and cooing to the very creature she wanted to sucker punch.
His choice to take the peaceful route and attempt to somehow calm Dart down to the point of obliviousness per use of food didn't reach her attention until he had begun to do it . . . against the protests of his friends, against the rows of teeth dangerously close to his face. If Rowen had been paying attention to him instead of the fact that Steve had the audacity to clamp her mouth shut by wrapping his arm around her neck and stuffing the bandana she had over her face between her lips, then she probably would have forgone the urge to slam nails into an alien head and drag Dustin back by his backpack instead.
And yet, life was funny . . . that is, if funny meant completely missing a thirteen-year-old successfully attempt to sway a monster's attention down to a candy bar, and being dragged quietly past said monster with a glove over your mouth until you reached a safe distance. If that was what it meant then, yes, life was funny, though Rowen could not and would never find such a statement agreeable.
She found it more agreeable that life was most certainly not funny, and that they would no less find themselves lacking limbs, vital organs, more notably their lives if they didn't run through these freakish, spore-infested blue tunnels as fast as they could before they came face to face with what would most likely be a whole herd of Darts, who unlike him, would not be so easily swayed by sweets.
They would much rather chomp at their ankles, and it only made her run faster, push the kids along quicker.
"Come on, let's go!"
Left, right. Left, right. Left, right. A simple action had become a repeated pattern in her head, telling herself to put one foot after the other just so she was able to think straight, even if only a little. It kept her mind clear . . . but still, it was becoming increasingly hard to focus despite the simplicity of what they needed to do: get out of there, and get out of there quickly.
The tunnels shook then. The kids lost their balance, their running came to a clumsy halt. Clumsy, at least, in Rowen's case. Everyone else had braced themselves, but one misstep and she found herself slammed against a wall, squishy and porous, grimacing at that which stuck to her gloves. It felt more like the inside of a mouth than a tunnel.
Then a growl came . . .
"What was that?"
Then another . . . and another, and another until they formed a chorus of unearthly sounds, echoing just as they did in the junkyard. Only now, she realized, they were much closer . . . They're coming. The demodogs were coming.
"Run . . . Run!"
They made a break for it.
One gloved and goggled body after the other made a beeline for the rope that dangled helplessly in the midst of a blue maze, trailing up to their only means of escape, their only way out of this place, rushing . . . or rather shimmying up as fast as they possibly could.
Steve lifted Max up first, then one boy, then another, until he was left with Dustin. But this gloved and goggled body, to her annoyance, refused to go up before herself or Steve.
"Dustin now is not the time to be stubborn!"
"Now is not the time to be irrational, either! You can climb up way faster than me, I'll only increase you guys' chance of being eaten if I go first!"
"I don't care! Get your butt up the rope, now! Go!"
"Not before you!"
"All right, that's it." With one final statement, Steve lifted him up by his knees as he did with the rest of them, protests and squirms against his bandaged head until Mike and Lucas shouted some sense into their friend and began to help him up.
The thing is . . . even if Dustin had wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, he would still struggle to get up. Even if they were being chased by something so incredibly terrifying, he would still struggle to get up.
But that was just it: they were being chased and he did want to get out of there as fast as possible, but Rowen and Steve were still down there and climbing rope was not his forte, even with all the help in the world. And that was all Rowen could think about, getting him up there where it was safe because those kids came first and those kids deserved to be safe way more than she did.
Hopper said it without saying it: keep them safe, whether in a house with a hand-drawn maze or a labyrinth of tunnels because they had an idea too good to pass up, and that was all Rowen could think about. She didn't even realize how close the demodogs actually were, ushering Dustin to go so she and Steve could climb, as oblivious as she was when a glove covered her mouth.
The kids only continued to yell, shout, tell them to hurry up . . . but she hadn't realized Max had been screaming for her, didn't realize the demodogs were on them until she was suddenly jerked away from the rope, until she yelped because something wrapped around her waist. And for a split second, she thought it had been one of them, until she found that that grip had only kept her from falling on top of them, into a herd that wasn't even giving her or Steve a second glance.
The demodogs were running right past them . . . running and running and running, continuing to come by the dozen; how many of them were there? . . . Not enough for her to compose herself before they were suddenly gone, until there was nothing but little, floating spores and the defining silence that came with the relief that they were still alive. Were they alive?
"Rowen?" Dustin tried. "Steve? . . . Yโyou guys are still alive, righ โ Ow! What the hell, Lucas?!"
"You think they'd be standing if they weren't alive?"
"Oh, and you're so knowledgeable about these things?"
Yup, definitely alive.
"Rowen, are you okay?" Max asked from above, over the arguing that had now commenced right next to her.
"Yeah . . yeah, I think . ." Rowen said; though, admittedly, she felt as if she was somewhere between dazed and ready to fall, finding it hard to breathe, wondering why . . . until she remembered the grip around her middle โ one that had previously been around her mouth. She said, "Steve, I think you can let me go now."
He did so in one embarrassment-fueled movement.
"Steve? What about you?" Dustin's voice was so pent-up with worry that she would have found it endearing had she not been struggling to focus on much of anything, only that she had not been eaten.
"Yeah," Steve breathed, gloved hands eventually resting against his knees. "I'm โ I'm good."
Rowen wagged a gloved hand at nothing in particular. "Why did they, uh . . not . . . you know . ."
Steve lifted his head, saying, "Tear us into bits and pieces?"
"Yeah . ." Rowen squinted behind her goggles. "Yeah, that."
"It was Eleven," Mike said. "It's gotta be. She must've known you guys were still down there."
"How? She โ . . ." she breathed, surveying the blue tunnel and its emptiness. "She's not even here."
"She must've sensed you or something," Dustin tried, turning to his friends. "You know? Like how she found Will last year, in the kiddie pool."
"She can sense people?"
"Ye โ well . . . sort of, I think. It's a long story."
Rowen flung her hands up, though outwardly, it had barely been a shrug. "Why am I not surprised . . ." With one final exhale behind her bandana, she moved towards the rope, tugged at it . . . quickly began to dread it. Having her nerves ransacked with the idea of being that close to turning into monster food and her arms and legs immediately fell limp in a way that resembled jello; not an idle feeling when a rope stood as her only way out.
"You need help?" she heard Steve ask.
"No โ no, I got it . . ." Rowen took in a deep breath, let it out. "I just โ I need a second . . ." at this, she tightened her grip around the rope, then hoisted herself up as much as she could. Rope climbing was not idle and it was clear in the way she grunted under her breath in frustration, struggling. By the time she started having difficulty, she was too far up for Steve to help, though Max grabbed at her arm without a second thought, helped her up the incline until she could dig her feet into the dirt. Rowen plopped onto the field once she reached the top, the muscles in her arms relaxing happily.
Sweat clung to what felt like every inch of her under the set of goggles, bandana, and gloves, and the "gear" was removed with great enthusiasm, discarded somewhere in the dirt behind her as Steve climbed up with much less effort than she.
She had half a mind to get up right then and there, climb back into the driver's seat of her brother's car and get as far from that pumpkin patch as humanly possible . . . but somehow the feeling of jelly limbs and overwhelming nerves felt heavier now that she was above ground. They didn't know if it was over โ if things were really over, if Eleven had succeeded in closing the gate; they couldn't unless they had a walkie, of which were neither with them nor at the Byers' house . . . so what was the point of rushing back so quickly? What was the point unless someone was there waiting for them โ . . .
Shit, she thought. Billy. What am I gonna do about Billy?
"Guys c'mon, we gotta get out of here."
She didn't know what she was going to do with her brother; she had no clue, with his unconscious form and his Camaro both at the Byer's, because somehow she and Steve had switched rolls once they climbed out of that giant hole- him alert and ready to go and her half there, half ready to pass out for a multitude of reasons.
Maybe life was funny โ just a little โ because while she was the one still sitting in the dirt, it was Steve who had had a plate smashed over his head.
"Ro, c'mon," Max stood there at her side with two sets of "gear" under her arm, shaking her shoulder, ready to help her up. Rowen didn't need it, but she took her stepsister's hand anyway.
"I'll drive," Steve announced.
"Oh, no no no, I don't think so," she called out, jelly legs and nerves suddenly gone, carrying her away from Max and straight to Steve who, somewhere between collapsing in the dirt and heading for the Camaro, had snatched the keys. Rowen swiped them from his hand.
"Hey โ"
"I'm driving. You're going back to the backseat."
"Rowen, I can drive," he insisted.
"Uh, no, you can't, and you're not. Not when I'd like to live to see tomorrow," she pressed. "Billy beat you until you were raw, I'm surprised you don't have a concussion or something."
"Guys โ . . ."
"Yeah, well, I don't, and you're out of it, so let me drive."
"I'm not out of it, I'm fine."
"Guys!" Dustin shouted.
"What?"
All he did was point a finger at the car, bathed in the glow of the headlights and โ wait . . . why were they getting brighter? Rowen squinted at them, eventually shielded her eyes because the light was so intense- so strangely intense; she had never known them to get that bright, and no one was in the car.
Could it be? They went out as fast as the light had stretched, glowed to the point where the whole field was alight, she supposed. Now it was dark . . . cold, quiet dark with dim headlights, without an explanation. Rowen stopped expecting explanations after Dustin tried and failed to tell the story of Eleven and the 'Upside Down' as simply as he could . . . but she couldn't help but wonder.
"Do you think? . . ." Mike was the one to ask, quiet and still but as filled with hope as she supposed she had ever seen in the few days she knew him.
Keys squeezed under her grip, Rowen said, "Maybe . . ." Setting the lingering jelly feeling aside, she marched towards the driver's side of the car, yanked the door open. "Let's go."
They moved like a unit.
. . .
ใ ๐๐.
9:52 PM
To her relief, though they were the last to leave, they were the first to come back. The Byer's house was all but gone to the world, lights dim per view of the broken window, the front door shut tight . . . and then there was Billy, sprawled out and passed out inside, lying in the spot where they left him.
Rowen was amazed he was still unconscious. "Jesus," she muttered. "How long does that stuff last?"
"What stuff?" Steve asked.
"That stuff in the needle Max stuck him with."
He turned his attention to the girl in question. "You stuck him with a needle?"
"It was either that or let him smash your face in," Max said. Bandanas and bags were dropped to the floor, and she abandoned them to stand next to Rowen. "What are we gonna do with him?"
"Mrs. Byers doesn't have a cellar anywhere, does she?"
"Steve," Rowen hissed.
"What?"
"We could lock him in a closet," Dustin suggested.
"Or drop him off in the middle of nowhere," Mike added.
"What โ guys, c'mon!"
"We could park his car in the pumpkin patch and leave him there."
"Guys!" Rowen spoke over their suggestions, glaring between them. "We are not locking him in a cellar, or a closet, or dropping him off in the middle of nowhere, okay?"
"Why not?" Mike challenged.
"Yeah," said Lucas. "He bodyslammed me into a cabinet, kicked Steve's ass, and almost threw you across the front yard."
"That doesn't mean we should throw him out on his ass."
"That's exactly what it means!" said Mike.
"Well, we're not doing it, okay?"
"Why?"
"Because . . ."
"Uh, guys . . ." Max interrupted. They paused upon hearing a stirring, turned to see her staring at her stepbrother, no longer completely limp.
"Shit," Rowen muttered, quickly walking over to where Billy was. "Shit, shit, shit, okay, uh . . . Max! Max, where's the needle you stuck him with?"
"You wanna stick him again?" Dustin asked.
"You got a better idea?" she snapped, to which he raised his hands in surrender, standing with Mike and Lucas who, unlike him, hadn't protested against the idea. Max had already jumped into action, finding the needle and the bottle it had sat next to. Rowen took it, stabbed it into the opening, drew out more of whatever it was that had knocked her brother out, set the bottle aside, then went over to him.
She had only ever seen how someone stuck a needle, flinching at the feeling of it going into her arm rather than doing it herself, then getting ice cream afterward; she was seven then, and she hated needles. She still hated them, and it made it no less difficult as she stuck it into Billy's arm as best as she could.
His incoherent mumbling and shifting stopped within the minute, and he was dead to the world once more.
She let out a breath of relief.
"Still think we should've locked him in a closet or something."
. . .
ใ ๐๐๐.
1O:31 PM
They had resorted to leaning Billy against the side of the couch โ not on it because it was concluded that that piece of furniture was to be saved for Will when he would come back and there was no way her 'douche-bag brother' was gonna bleed all over it. He wasn't really bleeding anywhere, but Rowen didn't bother to point that out.
Nancy and the Byers' came back first, pointed out by Dustin who faithfully peaked through the window which had been patched up with duck-tape and cardboard. They were sweaty, very sweaty, weary and ready to collapse, and had Mrs. Byers not worn a tear-filled smile across her small face, Rowen would have thought the worst because at first glance, Will looked just as limp as Billy.
But he was okay; he was extremely tired and too weak to do much of anything as Jonathan held him in his arms, but he was okay. She understood why Mike thought he would need the couch.
Jonathan was the first to ask about her brother because to him, it seemed, Billy stuck out like a sore thumb; nothing really seemed to escape Jonathan's attention, anyway. Mrs. Byers didn't notice until her son pointed it out, and Nancy was too worn out to care, but the mother took both Rowen's calm explanation and Dustin's rushed one gladly, and Mrs. Byers told her it was okay . . . As long as she got him out of their house.
She planned to. She would have done it already had Eleven and Hopper already been there . . . but she wanted to wait for them, and Mrs. Byers said she didn't want her to leave so soon anyhow.
"I think it'd be better if you waited till Hopper got here," she had told her. "He'll know what to do."
So she did; she waited and waited and it felt like an eternity because the house was silent aside from pointless arguments and a little chatter. Rowen retreated to the kitchen table and Nancy had joined her; they felt comfortable sitting there quietly, for some unspoken, unknown reason that might have been nothing, but might have also been some strange sense of camaraderie, being the only two girls within the same age bracket.
Billy was wrong about her, she thought. He was wrong about a lot of people. Jonathan wasn't a creep, Will wasn't a freak; they just had their secrets to keep in the way he had his own, in the way she had her own. They had gone through things of which they swore never to talk about โ swore to the government by signing papers โ but she supposed that would seem creepy and freakish to someone who couldn't be let in on any of it.
Rowen would admit it aloud, she probably would have been in the same boat as Billy and Tommy and everyone else if she had gone on knowing nothing. She may not have thought Jonathan a creep or Nancy a snob, but she wouldn't have talked to them, wouldn't have given Will or Lucas or Mike a second thought unless Dustin somehow introduced them.
Knowing what to do in regards to Steve or Samantha would not have changed, though she had a feeling โ a selfish feeling โ that being in no way associated with one would have made it a hell of a lot easier to distance herself from the both of them . . . God, she hated that she thought like that. She hated that Billy was right; she was still doing it.
Then again, he was the one who made her like that, made her wary of making friends.
On second thought, waiting for Hopper didn't feel like an eternity, because no sooner after she sat down was she standing back up or answering a question or settling an argument because neither Dustin nor Steve would quit; the latter had gotten hurt . . . again, somewhere between keeping her from falling over and climbing out of the hole with an ease that made her want to throw something at him. Steve had a gash over his ankle and Dustin had tried to clean it, but all that came out if that was flinching and snapping until she told them to shut up and Mrs. Byers stepped in to fix the pitiful attempt.
She had headed for the fridge soon after.
"No, no, Mrs. Byers, don't open it! There's a demogorgon in there. I'm preserving it," Dustin had told her. Mrs. Byers didn't question it, but she began to move around as if she had things to do.
She wouldn't listen to Jonathan's pleads to sit, wouldn't listen to her or Nancy, and kept hurrying from one place to the other. But three eventually moved to stop her, said that they would take care of things because none of them really wanted to sit, and Mrs. Byers needed to; she looked as if she was about to pass out.
But she didn't. Rowen sat down with her and soon enough the mother was patching her up the same way she patched up Steve.
Something had cut Rowen's forearm in the midst of running through blue tunnels and squishy floors and trying not to breathe in tiny, white spores; and she had tried to hide it when she initially felt it, a lot later than she expected, but understood because of how much adrenaline had been pulsing through her. It had begun to wear off by the time they all started filing back into the Byers house . . and Mrs. Byers โ as much as Rowen had hoped against it โ . . Mrs. Byers was perceptive, good at spotting cuts and bangs and bruises.
She was a mother, she noticed these things. She made Rowen sit down again and let her see, let her clean her arm even though it was not as bad โ not nearly as bad as what others had gone through . . . But Mrs. Byers made her. She made her stay still and made her extend out her arm and oh, how Rowen wished she could just pick up the cut on her arm and put it on the other . . because now her bruise was in full view.
Mrs. Byers saw it, and turned her wrist around. "What's this?"
Rowen tried not to flinch under her grip when she asked, she really did. "Oh โ it's . . it's nothing," she said quietly. "One of those vine things caught my wrist."
She could feel Mrs. Byers's gaze pierce through her like needles, pricking at her forehead, making her wish she wasn't there at that moment. A silence squeezed itself between them for a moment โ all too similar to the one that had sat itself between her and Hopper a week ago โ . . but the mother did not press for more answers, and Rowen felt more relieved than she would like to admit. Mrs. Byers gave her a gentle squeeze as if to say not saying anything was alright, and turned her wrist back around, continued to dab at the cut farther up her forearm.
Somehow no one else had noticed. Somehow, though Rowen felt her heart pound and tried so hard to put on her best poker face even though she was drained and jelly-legged and tired . . somehow, even though she had thought she had fooled Mrs. Byers, she had missed the way that concerned kind of gaze only mothers had had remained.
That was when Hopper and Eleven came back, when Steve and Dustin were talking over each other, Lucas was perusing the drinks on the counter, and everyone else was either trying to rest or have a conversation themselves. The pair was bloodier than Steve and Billy combined, and Rowen was the first to notice them.
She began to clear the table as Mrs. Byers finished wrapping her forearm, stood again, stopped resting once more to usher them into the kitchen. Nancy went for the antiseptic wipes, began to hand them to her brother because who else was going to take care of El?
Apparently Rowen, because the moment Mrs. Byers had seen the girl, bloody-nosed and sweaty, she brought her right to the table and blocked Nancy from ever reaching said antiseptic wipes. Rowen had begun wiping at El's nose before she even realized she was doing it; and El, too tired to argue, simply let her. She paused before she did anything else, though, even if the remaining makeup around the girl's eyes was bleeding and smudged and nearly gone, and the rest of her face was peppered with something she had hoped was just dirt.
"Do you want me to take the makeup off?"
El squinted at this. "Make up?" she drawled as if she had never heard the word before. Just like pinky-promise.
"Yeah," Rowen said, gesturing to her own eyelids, ". . the stuff around your eyes."
A look of tired realization washed over Eleven's face. She nodded meekly . . . though it was clear that she was not at all used to the tugging at her eyes when Rowen wet a washcloth and tried her best to be gentle. Eventually, all of it was gone; all the black eyeshadow and blood and dirt that clung to her skin washed off to leave a baby-face Rowen wondered if she would ever grow out of.
She stood when she finished, gave El a tired smile, and trailed over to the sink, rinsing off all that black and brown and blood. She heard footsteps approach her right, looked to see Eleven there again . . . though she was not looking at Rowen. She was looking at the hand Rowen let rest on the counter while she used the other to hold the washcloth under the warm water . . water. Rowen never wanted to shower so badly.
El raised a tentative hand, gently pushed at Rowen's sleeve with her finger. It had only been half-hiding her old bruise, and, somehow, with a gut-wrenching realization, Rowen had realized the younger girl had seen it earlier and was coming to inspect it in some way.
El's brows furrowed. "Hurt . ." She had been quiet, but Rowen caught it all the same.
Rowen looked down at it. "Oh, yeah . ." she said, a little gentler in her response this time. "Yeah, one of those vines got me . . but I'm okay."
She had not realized upon first meeting how intense Eleven's doe-eyes could be. When they had talked in the parking lot, it had been Rowen who was curious and Rowen who was asking questions . . . Now, however, the roles were switched, and El stared up at her with a look that made Rowen want to cave then and there, somehow, without a care for what everyone else thought.
El looked from her, to the bruise, back to her again. "Promise?"
That one word made Rowen's eyes burn and threaten to gloss over. She was so tempted to simply collapse in one giant fit of exhaustion and emotional turmoil per the last few days . . . but she didn't. She felt another one of those feelings, one that was warm and comforting and heavy and emotional all at once; like the others, but not at all. She had never wanted to be so honest and yet keep up a brave face so much at the same time. She had never wanted to cry so suddenly . . . but she didn't. She pushed back her tears before they could even begin, swallowed that feeling like she swallowed all the others, and nodded, said, "Pinky promise."
A small smile accompanied the doe-eyes and the babyface . . but that care never disappeared from Eleven's face. She nodded and left her, was ushered next to the couch by Mike and Lucas where they all sat in a little huddle. Together.
Rowen turned off the sink and wrung out the washcloth, made sure her sleeve was pulled down. She trailed behind her and headed for the hall, caught Hopper's gaze for a moment and somehow felt that he had been watching their interaction the whole time, because that look he had the night he offered her her job was there on his face again, and she had to make an effort not to cower under it, simply look away as she disappeared through the hall to the bathroom.
Rowen was surprised he didn't ask about Billy.
. . .
ใ ๐๐ฃ.
1O:55 PM
It took him until Joyce mentioned it to notice that Rowen's brother was in the corner, until she had gone outside because she didn't feel like sitting in a kitchen littered with glass and broken plates and the reminder of how both got there, even if El had asked her to. He thought of how El might like to see her more often before he decided to stand from a chair that was doing more harm than good.
His arm was wrapped in bandages and half his shirt was ripped open, and Joyce had ordered him to sit, but he got his coat and told her that he should talk to Rowen anyway. Joyce let him go.
Rowen was smoking; she had taken his lighter and one of his cigarettes from the coat he now wore and somehow he hadn't noticed. He didn't mention it, rather closed the door and tugged his coat further around him.
"You wanna tell me why your brother is sleeping against the Byer's couch?" he asked.
She didn't flinch upon hearing his voice, only muttered, "Passed out."
"What?"
"He's not sleeping, he's passed out."
The chief lifted his head as if to say "ah", though no sound escaped his mouth, no words left him until she heard a shuffle, looked to see him stuff his hands in his pockets. She was surprised he still kept his coat on. She felt like she was burning up. "You want to tell me why?" he asked.
"Not really." Boards of the Byers' porch creaked under his feet as Hopper shifted, eventually moved to sit down beside her. She sighed. "But if you're wondering why Steve is covered in bandaids, it's because they got in a fight."
"Do I want to know why?"
Rowen huffed, "No."
Hand around his side, Hopper took a moment to sit back from the way he leaned against his knees, looked over his shoulder to the front door before saying, "Seems he got what was comin' to him."
"Oh, no, that wasn't Steve," Rowen told him. He raised a brow in question, and she continued, "The uh โ . . You know that stuff that Mrs. Byers stuck in Will to keep him unconscious?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, Max. She, uh . ." Rowen gestured with her free hand. "Stuck him with it."
"Stuck him?"
"Yeah."
He leveled a look at her. ". . . with a needle."
"Yup."
Silence sat between them long enough for Rowen to exhale a cloud of smoke. Then . . Hopper suddenly wheezed out a laugh, grinned, though only for a moment because laughing made something in his side tense and hurt; he clutched at it, this place underneath his coat.
"You okay?"
He nodded. "Yeah . . yeah, I'm good. Demogorgons are just . ."
Rowen smiled to herself, muttered around her cigarette, ". . Yeah."
Hopper searched through his pocket, pulled out a cigarette along with his lighter, soon puffing out a cloud of smoke himself. Eventually, he asked, "What was your brother doing here in the first place?"
"He, uh โ . ." she swallowed. "He said our dad sent him . . to find Max. I think they thought she snuck out."
"Did she?"
". . Kind of," she admitted, biting her lip in thought. "But, I mean, I could tell them she didn't. That she just forgot to close her window or something and was here with me the whole time . ." She took in another deep breath, nodding to herself. ". . babysitting."
Hopper nodded himself, slowly. "It could work," he mused.
"Yeah . . ." she mumbled. "That wouldn't explain why he's all beat up though."
"Does it matter?"
Her mouth fell open, closed. "He's already gotten in enough trouble since we got here. My dad sent him to find us. If he finds out he got in a fight instead โ . ." Rowen cut herself off, flung her hand up from where it rested on her knee. "Well, you get the picture."
The chief's mouth pressed into a thin line, one hand occupied by the hair tie around his wrist. "Well . . ." The blue piece smacked as he pulled on it, let it go in thought, out of habit. "I am the Chief of Police. I could come with you and smooth things over."
"No!" Rowen blurted before composing herself. "Uh, no, that'll just make it worse . . . No offense."
The corner of his mouth turned up, not quite a smile whether from not knowing what to do or just the simple fact that he was worn out, too tired to really do anything except listen.
"You know, Joyce wouldn't mind if you and Max stuck around. I mean, I know you said your dad hates cops, but I could still take your brother back while you two get some rest . . . not as a cop," Hopper assured, ". . . just as someone who walked in on him getting in a fight."
"It'll just make it worse, Hopper . . ." Rowen told him again. "I want to stay," she admitted. "believe me, I'd love to save it for tomorrow, but . . . but it'd be better if I go home now before it can get any worse. We're in deep shit as it is."
For a while, the only noise that broke their silence was the muffled sounds of the boys talking amongst themselves, chattering or arguing, or both; she expected Dustin to be the cause of it. Hopper didn't utter a word until he stubbed out his cigarette under his boot, told her, "You'll be all right."
She didn't say anything for a while, flicking at her nails, biting the inside of her cheek until she eventually nodded. "Yeah . . . I'll think of something."
Out of habit, Hopper moved to squeeze her shoulder the way he had done with Jonathan, the way he did with Joyce and Mike and others whose faces he could barely remember, names he couldn't remember at all. His hand stopped in mid-air, held there, but she didn't see it. Hopper thought against his habit and stuffed his hand back in his pocket. "You uh . . . you don't have to come in tomorrow, all right? Or the day after that, if you don't feel like it. Stay at home, take some time to rest."
She met his gaze for a moment then, nodded again. "Thanks."
He smiled that time, tight-lipped and tired, stood to his feet. "You should come inside before Joyce tries to drag you in."
"I will . . . in a minute."
. . .
ใ ๐๐ฃ.
11:22 PM
Rowen didn't like the idea of leaving. She didn't like the idea of doing anything that would eventually lead her back to her dad, face to face, expecting an explanation whether she liked it or not. Max didn't either; she could see it in the way she messed with her hair and tapped her shoe against the floor of the house when it came time for them to leave, when Hopper helped Rowen drag her brother into the passenger seat of his car.
Goodbyes were awkward; half of them were preoccupied, no one really knew what to say. Mrs. Byers had wanted them to stick around because she could see how Rowen dragged herself along and how Max dragged herself along, said that she could make some space for them to stay over and get some sleep . . . And oh, did Rowen want to say yes; she wanted to say yes and sleep in a house that didn't make her skin crawl and make her want to get out as much as she possibly could. She wanted the idea of breakfast in the morning with other people even if she barely knew most of them because, even with that knowledge, she still felt more comfortable around them. She had half a mind to think it was that sense of comradery that made her feel that way, of having done something with these people that she could not share with anyone else that made her want to stick around.
Nevertheless, whether it did or not didn't matter. Billy was still there, knocked out, and she had to get him home- had to get Max home, because neither of them were eighteen and neither of them could leave the house for long periods of time without raising questions. She was eighteen and yet somehow she couldn't do so either.
Besides, Billy wasn't exactly welcome there.
Rowen changed her mind; life was funny, in such a turnaround, despicable way that she couldn't help but laugh because it was so ridiculous โ funny . . . so, so funny.
๐ก๐ค๐:
She waited until Billy woke to drive the rest of the way home, to drive all the way back to Cherry Road from someplace at the side of the road. Max had helped her with an explanation by then, for their parents, carefully concocted because since the moment they became stepsisters, they had both learned how to lie. Whether they did it well depended on the person . . . When it came down to Neil Hargrove, all they could do was cross their fingers and hope a miracle would happen.
Billy woke in a daze; he woke up in a state of dizziness quickly turned to confusion, then eventually to anger upon remembering what had happened. After everything, he was still fuming . . . but Rowen wasn't about to take any of it.
She didn't yell at him; she didn't have to. The drug made him mellow even in his anger and that mellow translated into being unable to yell or scream or do anything that wasn't the mother of all angry expressions. She told him again: she had been babysitting and Max had come along with her. And she didn't care if he didn't believe her, because she had Hopper and she had Mrs. Byers and they were both ready and willing to answer the phone and save her ass, because like Dustin had said: no one else could know.
๐กโ๐๐๐:
They came home to the living room lit and the television on, his chair occupied; she expected it.
"So . . . who's gonna tell me why you're just getting home at midnight?"
Rowen was the one, and she told him. She told him about the babysitting and about Max coming with her and that she should have called before she left the station so Billy would have known where they were, and Susan would have been saved from a night of anxiety โ because she had, indeed, been anxious. Very anxious. She came into the living room within a minute, in a robe with her hair tied up because she had been trying to sleep, but couldn't really. Max was corralled into her room immediately with kisses and hugs and she barely had time to say sorry, even if she wasn't, before she was sent off to change and told to go to sleep.
It wasn't hard to believe that Mrs. Byers occasionally took the late-night shift at her job, her second job, because she was a single mother with two boys and needed the money. A single mother who had almost lost her son last year and was paranoid over leaving him alone when his brother was with a friend and had lost track of the time. Mrs. Byers came home at midnight, she told him, that the mother had let her sleep because she was too sweet to do otherwise.
And Billy? . . . Billy didn't show up until around ten past eleven. Ten past because the Byers' house was all the way on the other side of town, hard to find and hard to get to. By some miraculous miracle, it wasn't hard to believe.
It wasn't hard, because it played on the things that Billy had once done in San Diego. What was hard was making it seem as if Billy wasn't at fault for any of it.
Rowen was ready to take all the blame, all the rage if her dad had any left; she had been since she climbed out of that hole. And she made it seem as if it was all her . . . but that hadn't even phased him. He kept going back to Billy, going back to how he should have paid more attention because Rowen had a proper job and a proper job meant her responsibility would be elsewhere; not on Max, because that was Billy's responsibility now.
๐๐๐ข๐:
Neil was too tired to do anything but speak in a tone that was so familiar. They had been gone for hours and he didn't even try to care โ as if she expected anything else . . . so disappointed, so reprimanding. And yet, at that moment, it almost felt worse than anything he would've done had he been awake enough.
๐๐๐ฃ๐:
Rowen almost wished she had let Hopper come with them, that he had explained everything for them even if her dad hated cops, sheriffs, the whole bunch . . . because even if he had been angry, Hopper would have been there after, and maybe then he would have squeezed her shoulder in the way he almost did on the Byers porch.
. . .