Chapter 012: Wait A Minute

The funeral was just like any other funeral in the world. Half the town was there to mourn, most of them familiar but some not. One face in particular happened to be Will and Jonathan's dad, Lonnie, who I had managed to avoid. I was still a little suspicious of him, but it wasn't something I was going to badger about in the middle of a funeral. Instead, I did my best to pretend like I was distraught and heartbroken, something I was starting to get pretty good at. As the pastor went on and on about God and tragedies, my mind wandered around the crowd of people. The majority were tear stained and blurry eyed, but there was one particular group that I had to study for a moment. Will's close friends, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, had a very different look on their faces. The three seemed preoccupied almost, like there was something they knew that nobody else did. I cocked an eyebrow as I met eyes with the curly headed Dustin, his gaze lingering for just a moment before he quickly pulled away and threw it to the ground.

The only person in town that I hadn't managed to track down was my uncle. I was so sure that he was going to show up to the funeral, and now that he was nowhere to be found, I was starting to get a little bit worried. Joyce told me she hadn't seen him since the argument with her and Jonathan. It wasn't like him to just up and disappear without saying something to me. I mean, even with saying something to me, he would never be gone this long. That's when I started thinking more and more about what had happened last night. I hadn't even spoken to Hopper since I woke up. I didn't exactly expect him to show up at the funeral, but I was a little bit worried that he hadn't even tried to find me yet. Things started to click as the gears were turning. There's no way that he had managed to get himself and an unconscious sixteen-year-old girl out of a heavily secured laboratory. Somebody had to have found us, which means they would've also had to have found out we saw that top secret portal thing and very likely knew about my powers. Maybe I had somehow gotten both Hopper and Jack in some deep trouble. Maybe the bad guys had them.

I was brought out of my thoughts by a warm hand slipping over mine. People were starting to thin out, meaning the burial was over, and I hadn't paid a single bit of attention to it. I looked over at Jonathan, trailing my eyes up his arm until they got to his dark irises. I stood with him as everyone dispersed, a few stopping to share their condolences with Joyce and Lonnie. The latter offered to meet us at the dinner that the funeral home was hosting, but the two of us quickly turned him down. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my free time around him. As he and Joyce headed back to their cars, I felt Jonathan pulling me back towards the iron fence on the other end of the burial site.

"What are you doing," I asked him as he plopped onto the dead grass below us.

"I'm planning," he replied, taking a sheet of paper out of his pocket. I turned my head to gawk at him, hoping he'd explain a little bit more. It took a second, but he eventually caught the look I was giving him. "What? You don't want to kill this thing?"

I opened my mouth to answer him before stopping myself. I wasn't sure if there were any listening ears nearby, so I decided it was best to take a long look around before falling to the ground next to him. "I have to tell you something," I admitted, seeing the curiosity cross his face and I leaned over and spoke in a whisper. "I saw Will yesterday. The monster found him, and I don't know what happened, but I think I killed it."

His eyes widened. "You killed it? H—how?"

"Hey," a soft voice said from behind me, interrupting any opportunity I had to explain myself.

"Hey," Jonathan replied, looking up at whoever it was.

When I turned around, I nearly rolled my eyes at the sight of Nancy Wheeler. Out of all the people in the world, she had to be the one to show up right now. "Hey," I chimed in, looking back over at Jonathan for an explanation.

"Uh, Nancy's the one that saw the monster in the photo."

She offered me a small smile as Jonathan avoided eye contact. "Jonathan said you've seen it before."

I made a mental note to strangle him before looking back towards her. He knew it was dangerous for anyone else to know about me, and now he was pulling her into it too. "I—uh, yeah, I saw it when I was with Joyce," I said back, trying to see how much he had told her about me. It obviously wasn't the truth, but I also didn't want to reveal too much.

"The night it came out of the wall?"

I nodded. So she did know. "We managed to get away, but who knows where it's going to show up next."

"Somewhere close," Jonathan said, turning towards the sheet of paper he had in his hands. Nancy turned her attention back towards him, taking a seat on the opposite side and focusing on the paper. "This is where we know it's been for sure," he said, pointing towards an X that he had drawn in the corner. "That's Steve's house," he continued, pointing at the next closest X before moving on to the third and fourth, "and that's where they found Will's bike, and that's my house."

"That's all so close," Nancy said.

"Exactly," he replied. "It's all within a mile or something. Whatever this thing it, it's not traveling far."

"Wait, wait, wait," I interrupted, throwing my hand up as things started to click. "There's no way this thing is just appearing out of thin air and just making its way around town. Somebody would've had to have seen it. There's got to be some kind of portal or something."

"A portal," Nancy asked, leaning forward to look at me. "A portal to where?"

My eyes darted to Jonathan, hoping he'd interrupt and save the day, but he said nothing. It was obvious that I was starting to say a little too much and needed to stop. "I'm not sure," I lied, "it's just a theory."

"So you're saying you guys want to go out there," she asked, though it sounded more like a statement.

"We might not find anything," Jonathan said.

"We found something," Nancy replied, gesturing towards me as I tried to retract into my imaginary hermit shell. "And if we do see it, then what?"

Jonathan looked over at me, seemingly remembering what I had told him right before Nancy showed up. "We kill it."

"Since when have you been best friends with Nancy Wheeler," I asked as Jonathan slammed the car door behind him.

"We're not 'best friends'," he mocked, "She saw that thing in the photo I took, and she asked me for help."

As he started up the car and pulled away, I had to run a hand across my face so I couldn't roll my eyes at him. Was I jealous? Maybe. Was it justified? Probably. "And so you felt like you needed to tell her all about me," I asked, my voice surprisingly cold and bitter.

"I didn't tell her 'all about you,' I just told her about that thing coming out of the wall." It took him a couple seconds to catch the glare I was giving him. "What's going on with you? You've never had a problem with her before."

"I don't have a problem with anybody. I just don't think you should be telling all of this to the first person you see. Do you understand how dangerous that is? People could die, Jonathan."

Something about that last sentence made everything crash down onto my shoulders all at once. I had tried to avoid the inevitable thought floating through my mind all day. My uncle was missing, and it was highly likely that it was my fault. I had pulled him into all of this simply by association. I never should've went to Hopper, and we never should've broken into the lab. I should've just taken my medication and left things alone. Now my uncle could have been dead, and it was all my fault.

The tears were flowing now, and I'm sure I looked like a complete mess. For all Jonathan knew, this breakdown was coming out of nowhere. I felt his hand slide into mine, but I couldn't register it in my head. So many things were falling apart. "We're going to figure this out. Nobody's getting hurt," he said, but I knew it was a lie.

I shook my head as my ugly crying face intensified. I had never felt such fear and despair come out of my body all at once. "No it's not, it's not going to be okay. This is all my fault."

"Hey, none of this is your fault," he said, his tone serving as a security blanket as I fell apart in the passenger seat. "We're going to find this thing, and we're going to kill it. We—"

"No," I shouted. It was more of a way to stop him from stumbling over my words than to protest the death of that damn monster. "Jack is missing," I finally blurted out.

"What—what do you mean he's missing?"

My body started to tremble from how hard I was crying now. I could barely get a single word out. They sounded more like grunts than they did words. "H-H a-a-and I w-wen to Ha-H-Ha-kin L-lab."

"I—I can't understand what you're saying." Hearing him say that made me feel worse, even though I knew he hadn't meant it like that. The one person I loved the most could be in danger right now, and here I was crying like a lost child in the supermarket. I couldn't even pull myself together long enough to form a coherent sentence, so how was I supposed to save anyone? "Daisy," Jonathan's sweet voice chimed away as I continued to panic. "Daisy," he repeated. It wasn't until I turned my head towards him that I noticed what I was doing. Every light on the dashboard was flickering on and off, the bulbs in the visor lights burnt out and the radio fizzling. If I couldn't control myself, the whole car was going to implode. Jonathan's grip on the steering wheel tightened as his fingers wrapped around mine.

That's when I remembered the vision that I had had with Jack last night; the garden, the unfamiliar faces, the lab, the girl, and most importantly, how he had told me to ground myself. There wasn't much around me that I could concentrate on. I closed my eyes and sucked in a big breath. The only 'thing' I had was Jonathan. I channeled out the static coming from the radio and replaced it with the sound of his heartbeat. The knuckles grazing mine set my body on fire. I felt it course through my body, imagining bright orange rays filling up my bloodstream. I pictured how his skin glistened in the light that shined through his windshield, how his hand gripped the steering wheel. I thought about how his hair stuck to his forehead, the way his eyes would trail down my body, how he made me feel, how he was always there no matter what. He was so gentle to the ones he loved. As our palms whispered stories to each other, I realized that the tears had stopped. When I opened my eyes again, the car was parked outside my house, and Jonathan was staring at me with stars in place of his pupils.

"Hopper and I went to Hawkins Lab last night," I repeated, my voice now strong and clear. "We found some kind of portal."

"A portal to where?"

"The bad place"

I couldn't run to the telephone any quicker. I had to prove to myself that what I remembered had actually happened and, more importantly, that Jack and Hopper were okay. Jonathan had let me go only after he knew I wasn't going to have another meltdown and blow the neighborhood up or something. The only thing I could think about the entire time was this very phone call. It was the closest thing to comfort that I could get right now.

With each ring, I held my breath until someone finally answered. His voice sounded urgent and exhausted. "Who is this," he mumbled.

"Well a hello would've been nice," I said sarcastically. "Jack's missing, and I think it has something to do with Haw—"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he interrupted.

"What? You don't remember the whole breaking in thing? Or when I blasted those gu—"

"No," he replied curtly, once again cutting me off before I could breath another word about it.

I pondered for a moment, unsure what to say. He was being incredibly weird all of a sudden. "Uh, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Just," he paused, "don't call here again," he said right before the line went dead.

I stood there for a couple seconds, trying to comprehend what had just happened and why it had happened. He seemed so different that I wondered for a moment if that had even been Hopper on the phone, but it had to have been. I found myself staring at the phone. Don't call here again, I repeated in my head. It didn't seem right. Something strange was definitely going on, and I was going to get to the bottom of it.