When she closed her eyes, she saw Vecna. When she sat down, she could feel spiders crawling up her legs. When she stood up, she felt like she wasn't standing, she was falling over. The ground always seemed to be tipping away from her shoes. Nighttime was awful. Daylight hurt to be under. Her chest kept rushing, like she'd had too much coffee or had been jogging until her lungs revolted.

And it was only Tuesday. Just four days. How was she supposed to survive the next one? Or the next one?

Chrissy pressed her back hard against the metal of the bleacher leg, trying to wake herself up. If she fell asleep, he might come back. If she fell asleep, that thing would take advantage of her rest and he'd show her awful scenes. Slap her up against the ceiling. She'd be dead before she hit the gym floor. Dead, horribly, like poor Patrick was dead. Like that skinny boy from chem class was dead.

Lying down wasn't safe. So at first, she sat up and tried not to think about how completely tarnished her careful sleep schedule had become. No exercise at 4 AM—now she broke in and out of her school at 4 AM, apparently. No apple for breakfast at 6 AM sharp—today all she'd managed to do food-wise was to avoid looking at Sinclair's pile of empty Doritos bags. No bed at 10 PM, no brushing her teeth at 9:50, no burrowing under satin pink sheets at 10:01 on the dot. Tonight, she'd been crouching on the cheer mat that had Mandy Fleming's initials nail-bitten into the corner, a borrowed Walkman blaring in her ears, wide, wide awake.

It became very clear very quickly that if she remained in the gym, or at the very least sitting down, Chrissy was going to drift off. Instead, she'd opted for another night walk around the school. Everyone was so bone-tired from their daring trip to The Warzone that morning, she figured she could slip out unnoticed while they all snoozed.

Unfortunately, Steve Harrington was on duty to watch her, and though he was looking absolutely exhausted, she knew she wouldn't get past him without explaining what she was doing.

"Bathroom," she mouthed to him on her way out the door.

Steve, head drooping against a fist, jerked to attention as she passed him. "Wai'wai'wait, you can't go out there by yourself. Uh-uh."

Chrissy paused, hugging herself, to lean toward him. "I'll be right back, I swear," she hissed.

"Buddy system," Steve said, his whisper not nearly as subtle as hers.

"But it's just the bathroom!"

"Yeah," Steve agreed, eyes wide, nodding hard, "sure, and you're Vecna food, you and Max, so—you're not going anywhere all alone, it's too dangerous. Okay? And—don't girls usually do that stuff in herds anyways?"

Chrissy had no idea how to respond to that. She stared at Harrington, indignant, mouth opening and shutting uselessly. True, the last time she'd been alone in the girls' room in this school, she'd been assaulted by her mother's voice and some very scary feet. But she wasn't anticipating a second episode like that, not with the headset firmly trapping her ears. She didn't need a buddy.

"I don't want to wake anyone up, Steve, please," she said. "I'll just be a second."

He glowered at her, seemingly unmoved by the big eyes she was giving him. That kind of thing tended to work on cashiers, the basketball team, the guy scooping popcorn at the theater. The doe eyes. Her mother once said if a man refused the first time, the second time was always a yes if you had the right eyes. And then she'd laughed, like she was joking, but Chrissy had seen Laura Cunningham's doe eyes at work enough times in the grocery line to know she spoke from experience. Chrissy was, after all, her star pupil. Her only pupil. She'd taught her daughter everything she had.

Steve cracked after a few more seconds. It was probably out of exasperation, not any magic feminine charm, but she got the desired results. "All right, yeah. Fine."

Chrissy pursed her lips, unable to smile, but nodded her thanks. She darted for the halls.

"You got six minutes till I send in the cavalry!" Steve whisper-shouted after her as the doors swung shut. When she glanced back through the window, she saw him setting his watch.

Chrissy was not going to the bathroom.

Six minutes was hardly any time. She broke into a light run, focusing on Uptown Girl in her head, ignoring the long blackness of each corridor and the unsettling way the music drowned out the squeak of her sneakers. She didn't need the buddy system for this. And if someone was going to be sent after her in six minutes, she needed to pick a room far enough away to buy some extra time.

Chrissy stopped in front of Ms. Kelly's office, groaning when the door's little silver handle wouldn't turn. How many times had she stood in front of this room, wishing it were locked? Wishing it wouldn't open, that Ms. Kelly wouldn't be in today, that she was sick or out to lunch or having some kind of affair with the janitor, anything. Anything so she wouldn't have to go in there and talk about her headaches, her eating habits, her mom. The nightmares. Her rigorous cheer schedule.

Because she shouldn't have needed the school counsellor. Not before Vecna. Not this much.

And now, of course, she couldn't get in. The one time she actually wanted to.

Chrissy stared in through the window. Then her eyes slid back down to the doorknob, clammy under her palm. She squinted.

Something thin. Slides between the deadbolt and the strike. Pops it open.

She could practically hear Eddie's faux-clicking sound echoing past the song in her ears.

Chrissy reached into the back pocket of her jeans, whipping out her credit card. Billy Joel singing in time with the trembling of her fingers—when were they gonna stop shaking?—she pushed the card in between the door and the frame, starting slightly above the handle, sliding it down, down, down….

It worked. She felt it. Chrissy's heart gave a little jolt as the card pushed the handle's bolt back in on itself, just a hair. Just enough to make it disconnect from its pocket. The knob turned. The door obeyed her. She was in.

A heartbeat or two passed before she realized she was grinning down at her credit card. She hadn't done that since freshman year, when her father had first given it to her. For a second, she wondered ridiculously if the card had missed her smile. The little 13-year-old with braces, bouncing up and down at the thought of her own money, seemed so far away these days.

Her hands didn't scrounge for the light switch; it didn't make any difference whether or not she could see. She'd been in this office a million times over the last few weeks. It was hard, looking Ms. Kelly in the eyes. You had to give yourself something else to stare at. Chrissy could've drawn the room from memory by now.

She ripped her headphones down and yanked the pale teal phone off the wall, automatically poking a finger through the loops of the cord the way she did at home. Ms. Kelly's office smelled the same—Windex, cherry mints. Chrissy twisted the wire around her fingertip as she moved to dial, unconsciously watching every shadow.

Right at that moment, the door banged open. Chrissy showed off her extreme penchant for high-flying leaps.

It was Robin. She was standing there in the doorway, gawking at Chrissy in a way she was frankly unaccustomed to. It made her feel like her legs were too long and her hair was unwashed. People didn't usually look at anyone on the cheer squad like they'd grown a third nostril. Buckley's gaze was unflinching, huge and dark blue, and very stressed out.

"Okay, so this," said Robin, "is not a bathroom."

Of course Steve would send his mile-a-minute best friend. Of all the personalities Chrissy might have chosen as Harrington's trusty 'cavalry', the band girl was almost definitely last on the list. It wasn't that she didn't like Robin. She didn't know Robin. She didn't understand her. And this unlikely group of kids Chrissy had found herself locked in with, they were all difficult to relate to. But the one glowering at her, hand flat against the door—she was an even bigger anomaly. Buckley talked more than she breathed, she worried more than she talked, and she dressed like her closet had attacked her. Chrissy had never met a girl who behaved quite like Robin.

She tried to pull herself together. She was sure she was the exact silhouette of a child caught with their fingers in a cookie jar. "I'm—"

"To me it looks like you broke into the counsellor's office and you're using her phone," Robin cut her off. "Is that not what this is? Because honestly, breaking into the school was morally unsteady enough, so—I'm sorry, who could you possibly be calling right now?"

Chrissy inhaled hard, doing her best to keep up. "Don't worry about it. I just need a minute. It's—"

"If you call your parents, they're gonna call the cops," Robin fretted. She was walking into the office now, step by gangly step, fingers scrunched in front of her. She was looking at Chrissy out of the tops of her eyes, like she was approaching a frightened animal. "And if they call the cops, Cunningham, all of this gets shut down. We won't stop Vecna, we won't save Hawkins, we probably won't even get to graduate because we'll all be very, very dead."

"I'm not calling my parents," said Chrissy. "I'm calling Jason."

Robin cursed. "Are you kidding me?"

"I have to!"

"You so do not have to." Robin yanked the phone right out of Chrissy's hand in one swift movement.

"Stop—"

"Listen, all right, I get the whole dire straits, must phone loved ones thing, believe me, but calling your whacked-out boyfriend is probably like the dumbest thing you could do right now." Robin held up a finger. "Besides calling your folks."

"He's not whacked-out." Chrissy snatched the phone back to her chest.

"He bought a rifle today!"

"We bought spearheads!"

"Yes, but ours are for the good of mankind! Carver's is for the good of—Carverkind."

Chrissy let out a loud, frustrated growl that would've made her mother whip her head around and click her tongue. That's not lady-like, angel, you know that. She held the phone even tighter, leaning back away from Robin. "I-I know this is crazy, okay, I know we're in…like, hiding or whatever, but—I just thought, if I call him…I can explain."

Robin was already shaking her head. "You really think he's gonna believe you?"

"I'm his girlfriend."

A derisive snort echoed around the room. The left side of Buckley's mouth twitched up. "Not to knock the power of true love, but—we're talking demon wizards and—nasty—alternate dimensions here. I've been through this whole freaky Upside Down deal one other time, and I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it."

"I have to try." Chrissy licked her lips, glancing at the waiting numbers and back again. "I can talk him down. I can get him to lay off Eddie."

Robin stilled, narrowing her eyes. "So this is about Eddie?"

Chrissy all but rolled her eyes. "No, it—"

"Because I'm pretty sure he can take care of himself. Don't they have some kind of silverback gorilla face-off every day at lunch? Nobody's died yet."

"Look, he's not thinking straight!" Chrissy snapped over the tail-end of Buckley's sentence. Any patience she had left was rapidly dribbling out of her fingernails, scratching against the phone's shell. "He's just worried about me. He thinks Eddie's dangerous, and—once I tell him he's not, once I tell him I'm okay, he'll…he'll calm down. He just wants to help, he's just…"

She looked at the floor, searching for the right adjective. For every upstanding high school sweetheart, at least in her crowd of friends, there was an unspoken rule that said you should make your significant other look good. Reputation was everything in high school. She wasn't just a cheerleader; she was supposed to be Jason's cheerleader. They'd been prom king and queen together this year, and they'd worked for it. It was hard-wired into her to make sure people knew her boyfriend was the cream of the crop.

But all of that had seemed way more important before all of this. Now there were monsters. Now the end of the world was coming. From the basement. Near the filing cabinets.

So she didn't save face. "…He's scared. He's not like this, he doesn't—do this. He doesn't buy guns, I mean, the most he's ever done is shoot turkeys with his dad in Cloverdale. That's it. He would never kill a person, okay, not even Eddie!"

Robin stared at her. "We don't know each other very well, I get that," she said slowly, "but you have to trust me when I tell you this is a really, really bad idea."

Chrissy did roll her eyes then. She adjusted the headphones hanging around her neck, listening as Robin's words came faster and faster. Buckley seemed more nervous than even she was. She was watching Chrissy's hands on the phone, grimacing like it was a stick of dynamite she was about to cartoonishly chuck at the nearest wall.

"A guy who finds out his girlfriend is missing and—within twenty-four hours gets himself a rifle and targets the loudest nerd he can find, does that sound like a guy who's gonna believe you when you tell him you've been cursed by a big wet demon? Don't get me wrong, I know everybody says he's a stud or whatever, and I'm sure he's very nice under all the sweat and—and bloviation, but—"

Chrissy leaned her head back and interrupted, forcing a firmness she didn't feel. "Okay, would it help if…if I promise not to tell him where we are?"

Robin stammered to a halt. "Uh, yeah," she huffed, "yeah, that'd be a huge help. And maybe don't mention the fact that Vecna is trying to kill you, or that there's a place called the Upside Down, or that you're planning on going in there with a bunch of crazy people to save the world. That would be an even bigger help. That would be just stellar. Oh my god, this is so stupid—"

Chrissy gave her a look, wide-eyed and irritated, punching in Jason's number without glancing away. As it rang, she felt her heartbeat start to gather speed. Not the way it had when she and Jason were in the talking stages. Not the way it had when they were finally going steady, sliding into place as the town's It Couple like perfect little cardboard puzzle pieces, and he called her every evening just to say goodnight. Her body hadn't responded to young love like that in nearly a year. No, this time it was because she was afraid.

What could she possibly say to him? She didn't know where to begin. She didn't know what to address first. He bought a rifle? He was trying to track down Eddie with the rifle? He must be out of his mind with worry. And if he'd told the boys, if he'd told the team she was in some kind of awful trouble, it wouldn't be long before every well-to-do suburban parent in Hawkins heard the news. Chrissy Cunningham was missing and might be dead. Eddie Munson was also missing and probably with her. Probably killed Patrick. Probably killed Fred. Jason had a rifle. Chrissy felt her heart go even faster, felt the spiders on her ankles again, felt her lungs struggling to do their job.

Everything was so out of control. She wasn't used to this. She wasn't used to a lack of control. Every part of her life was neat and tidy and polished. Every day made sense. Not anymore. Why had Vecna picked her? Why was she standing there holding Ms. Kelly's stupid teal phone, waiting to tell her boyfriend not to shoot Hawkins High's resident super senior?

"Hello?" Jason's voice made her head go deathly silent. He sounded distracted, ragged.

"It's Chrissy." It was all she could think to respond with. Hello sounded too normal. No, too weird. It had been strange enough hearing him say it. Like she was interrupting CNN.

Instantly, he got louder. "Chris? Chrissy—"

Evidently, he was loud enough to be heard through the phone. Chrissy saw Robin wince out of the corner of her eye.

"It's okay, I'm fine—"

"Where are you?" Jason asked. He was breathing hard. Actually, he sounded like he was hyperventilating.

"I'm fine," repeated Chrissy. "I promise—"

"What in the hell is going on, Chris, I mean—" He backtracked. She could almost picture his nostrils flaring. "I go to your house and you're not there. Your mom says you're at the lake, I call Sam, she's got no clue, what—what happened? What happened to you, where did you go?"

He seemed to be trying to outrace Robin. His words ran over one another, slamming into Chrissy with so much emotion and so much panic, she felt her own breath coming in gasps, matching his. She'd never heard him sound like this. Not even before his first game as team captain, the week after the fire at Starcourt. She remembered squeezing his hand and telling him he'd do great and the team believed in him. She remembered him squeezing back but not looking at her, fixing his eyes on the opposing team. Getting "in the zone". They'd won and even though the boys accredited the victory to Jason, even though he soaked it in and let them shower him with praise, he'd told her privately that he couldn't have kept his cool that night if it weren't for her. He'd said they'd only won because of Chrissy.

He didn't tell her those kinds of things much anymore, not outside of big school speeches. Just a longstanding relationship drifting into complacency, drifting into normal, losing its edge and its flowery language. But she knew she could still placate him. She knew she could still cool him down. Maybe she'd always have that power. Not like her dad, who seemed to have lost his at some point during his marriage.

"Did you—" She cleared her throat, turning so that her back was slightly to Robin. Having someone stare her down, listening to her side of this tense conversation, was very little comfort. "Did you tell her? My mom, did you tell her I wasn't…that I wasn't at the lake?"

"What?" Jason's voice went breathier. He was getting impatient. "What are you talking about?"

Chrissy was impatient too. "Jace, did you tell my parents I wasn't with Sammie?"

There was a pause that seemed to last a year. He rarely heard that harsh tone from her. She could hear him exhale, hard and long. "No. No, I didn't tell 'em. Of course not."

Chrissy let out a breath of her own, letting her eyes slide shut for a moment. He'd covered for her. How had he known?

"I mean, think about it, Chrissy. I tell your mom and she calls the cops? Who do you think's gonna be the first person they come after? I can't help you if I have to deal with the nutjobs down at the station. Everybody knows they're just chasing their tails half the time, ever since Hopper choked." Then Jason paused again. When he started back up, he was full of sharp edges, stern. "So you gonna tell me why you're not sick in your room right now?"

"I-I…" Suddenly she couldn't formulate a thought. Her mouth was frozen. What was she supposed to tell him? Chrissy turned around again, making eye contact with Robin, a silent plea for help.

Robin's entire face was glued to the scene in front of her. Her whole body was straining to hear. It would have been funny if Chrissy weren't spazzing out. Robin's eyebrows were planted firmly against her hairline. Apparently, she wasn't going to be of any kind of assistance.

Chrissy squeezed her eyes closed. He was her boyfriend. They'd been Yin and Yang since freshman year. He'd understand.

She took the plunge.

"I can't tell you."

Robin's hands flew to her hair, mouthing a great big what? She mouthed something else, too fast to decipher.

Well, no going back now. She couldn't explain the visions, and she couldn't explain the monster hunting her, and she couldn't explain the monster hunters she was now in league with. And she wouldn't lie to him. He didn't deserve it. A little blind faith was called for.

Jason's response was just as animated as Buckley's. "You…you can't tell me?"

"I'm sorry, I know, I—" Chrissy waved furiously at Robin to get her to stop moving around. "Jason, please—it's not a big deal. I'm gonna be gone a few days—I needed to let you know, so—"

"Chrissy, where are you?"

He was shouting. He was shouting at her. He sounded scared, furious; it was different from the tone he used when he was pulling the team into a bloodlust frenzy before a game. It was the voice he used on Eddie in the cafeteria, the voice he used on the hobo making catcalls at her when they were out at the diner on date night. It was deep and rude and in-your-face. She tried to remind herself he was acting purely out of concern for her, but she couldn't ignore the particles of dread that tickled her spine and cheeks when she heard it. It had never once been directed at her before.

She couldn't help it. She flinched. She knew Robin saw it; she knew Robin could hear him, and now she was embarrassed as well as horrified. This was going to complete crap, all of it, and she'd barely been on the phone for five minutes.

"I can't say!" Chrissy sucked in through her nose, counting to ten. Before she got to three, she had rallied enough to say, "Listen, I, I shouldn't have lied to you. I'm sorry. But I promise you, I swear—I'm okay." I'm not okay. Vecna wants to kill me. I almost lost my eyeballs in the trailer park. "I can't explain right now, but…you just have to trust me, Jace, I'm fi—"

"No, cut the crap, Chrissy, this is serious." He kept up the snarling, he kept up the angry, angry tone she'd never come under before. "Patrick was murdered last week—"

"I know—" Chrissy felt a lump, a traitorous rock, swelling in her throat.

"—murdered, okay, so you tell me where you are. This isn't some game. I don't hear from you in two days and then I find out you've been lying to everyone? Tell me now. Are you stuck somewhere?"

"No—"

"Are you by yourself, I mean—did you—this isn't like you, Chris, you have to tell me what's going on."

Now he sounded like he was fighting a lump of his own. She had never, ever, ever seen Jason Carver cry. Not once. They'd known each other since kindergarten. He was totally, off-the-wall panicking. And could she blame him?

"Jason, I'm safe!" How could she make him hear her? "Trust me, I'm trying—"

"What about the Freak?" Jason was talking fast again, talking too loudly, too fast, too angry over her. "What about Eddie, is he part of it?"

Some of the fog of emotion untangled itself from her brain. This was what she'd called about. Not comfort. Not relief. Not an ear to cry at. The thought of that had gone out the window the minute they'd told her Jason was shopping at The Warzone. This was duty, not pleasure. Jason gunning for one of the members of this impossibly-brave group of adolescents would throw everything, everything off. And she was the only person who could stop it.

Chrissy had the wherewithal to swallow the lump, the brains to shove a little imitation-confusion into her voice. "Eddie?"

Robin was now leaning so far forward; she looked like one of those sippy-chicken desk toys.

"Eddie Munson, Chrissy, is he in on this?" The lump was obviously not a problem for Jason anymore. Now his tone was low, hushed, practically vibrating with fury. "Did he hurt you? You know what he said to Patrick, I told you, that prick's dangerous—"

"He's not dangerous—" Chrissy stopped dead, cursing under her breath. (Her mother didn't like her to cuss. That made it taste better.)

It was like a flip switched. Jason was shouting again, cursing just as she had, a booming string of profanity that made her skin crawl. "I knew it, I knew this was Eddie—"

Suddenly they were the exact picture of her parents, voices violent and raised, sentences jumping over one another. It was like playing hand-stack with your words.

"No! No, it's not, it's not Eddie, this has nothing—"

"—swear I'm gonna kill that creep—"

"—ith him, stop—" Chrissy felt her hands return to that maddening shaking, "—seriously, Jason, it's not—"

He cursed again, so forcefully she yanked the phone away from her head. "—it, Chrissy, where are you?"

The line went dead.

The office was so quiet. She could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips where she clutched the phone. Chrissy turned, head jerking left to right, trying to understand why her boyfriend was no longer yelling into her earlobe.

Robin was holding Ms. Kelly's scissors, standing over one half of the phone cord. The other half dangled from Chrissy's right hand.

"Sorry," whispered Robin, who was obviously not sorry at all.

Chrissy stared at the phone, feeling a little numb. "He wouldn't even let me talk."

"Yeah," Robin huffed, plucking the phone from her hand and slapping it back into its place on the wall. She tossed the scissors onto the desk. "Well, you were backing yourself into a corner there anyway. I mean—uh, no offense. It's just, you couldn't tell him anyway, so—" She glanced at the cord on the floor. "And…now there's vandalism on my criminal record. Again."

Chrissy's eyebrows knit, turning to fully face the band girl. She ignored the welcoming urge to change the subject by addressing the fact that 1. Robin had a criminal record and 2. the phone wasn't the first thing she'd vandalized. Instead, she said, "This is insane. He's really not like this, I don't…"

Robin made a very obvious show of closing her own mouth with a snap. She pursed her lips, spreading her fingers.

Chrissy sighed, shoving a splash of hair off her shoulder. "I was just trying to make sure he didn't do anything crazy."

Buckley rocked backward a little on her heels. "Okay, just—thinking out loud here, but um, he's not like this and you making sure he doesn't do anything crazy really…don't go together."

Chrissy shook her head. "I never should have called him."

To her credit, Robin didn't say I told you so. Instead, she slid past Chrissy and shot an anxious look at the severed telephone, starting, "I don't exactly have a ton of experience having a boyfriend—"

Chrissy fixed a look of pure, innocent, polite surprise on her face and took her turn biting her tongue.

"—actually, zero experience, but—" Robin paused, squinting, "—from what I've seen, people who love each other can generally predict what the other person's gonna do, you know, reactions."

Chrissy tried not to let the implication sting. She tried to shake off the sound of Jason shouting at her, at her, rageful, cutting her off at every turn. Just like home. "And…I was wrong," she finished for Robin, swallowing a scoff at how quiet her voice had gotten. "Twice."

She was wrong about Jason believing her. And, worse, she was apparently wrong that he wasn't "like that".

The boy who'd bellowed at her moments ago, refusing to listen, was definitely like that. At least in that moment. At least when things were this high-stakes, this horrible. She hadn't been able to convince him Eddie wasn't trouble; she hadn't even been able to cool him down. He bought a rifle and he really, truly intended to use it. On a person. And she couldn't soothe away his screaming. Chrissy stood in the counsellor's quarters and wondered if this was how her father felt, at least one hour of every day. She hated that she had a personal experience to compare it to. She hated that she had to ask.

Robin was looking at her with a much softer expression, maybe the softest she'd worn since they'd met. She put one hand on Chrissy's arm and the other on her opposite shoulder, propelling her gently toward the door. "Come on. Steve's probably going full wig-out by now."

They shut the door to Ms. Kelly's office behind them, walking slowly back to the gym.