A pile of gas station junk food was being assembled under the bleachers. A crackling, light thudding sound was prolonged as purchases were tipped out of brown paper bags and onto the floor. Doritos, chocolate bars, Red Vines, pudding pies, fruit snacks, the list went on into pure diabetes territory. It was a rainbow of stomachaches and serotonin.

"Trade you?" Dustin offered, elbowing Eddie in the ribs. He held up a family-sized bag of trail mix, bouncing his eyebrows.

Eddie was tossing a tube of Pringles back and forth between hands. He gladly shoved the chips against Dustin's chest, snatching the bag from him with a smile that was all teeth. How long had it been since he'd eaten? And when had Henderson noticed his affinity for trail mix? Maybe all those times he'd pelted the kid with snapped-off pretzel sticks and peanuts. Eddie stuffed a handful into his mouth and began mentally composing a love song to dried apricots. Food. Finally.

Lucas crouched beside Max, the two of them picking and choosing from the pile and passing, arm over arm, different snacks back and forth between them. They didn't even have to exchange glances or grunts; they seemed to know intrinsically what the other person would want. It was like they shared one set of four limbs. Max's face was wooden and unfocused. Lucas hadn't stopped side-eyeing her in the last few days, but here, now, every time she handed him a Twix bar or a bag of potato chips, his posture got a little more relaxed.

Robin was chewing a Red Vine already, eyes on the redhead and the mini jock, mouth twitching like she wanted to smile. Chrissy stood beside her, or a bit behind her, actually, turning a shoulder to the pile and nodding along to her headset. She'd been quieter than usual, ever since everyone had woken up around 6 AM and gone for a food run. The bags under her eyes were more prominent than before; her hair was falling out of its half-updo. Her fingers kept twiddling aimlessly.

Early-morning air filtered into the gym as Steve and Nancy came in with the last of the groceries. Steve was carrying a six pack of Coke; Nancy had an armful of water bottles. Eddie lost interest the moment he noticed the unbearable lack of alcohol. How was he supposed to be any kind of asset in saving the world without beer? How was he supposed to fully wake up without beer?

"All right, everybody huddle up," Steve commanded, setting down the Coke on the ground at the base of the bleachers. Eddie hadn't heard the term huddle up directed at him since he'd been kicked unceremoniously off the baseball team in elementary school. Wayne had cussed out the coach.

"One sec," Dustin called out, in the middle of wheedling Lucas out of a pudding pie.

"Just take the stuff out here, man, we gotta get organized."

Lucas tossed the pudding pie up as high as he could, making Dustin jump for it. Max led the way out from under the metal structure, dolefully unwrapping a chocolate bar. Chrissy took a bottle of water from Nancy with her head down as they passed, mumbling a quick thank you.

"Here's what we know so far," Nancy began as everyone climbed the benches, getting settled. "Vecna is planning to open four gates around Hawkins. He already made two, and from what we've seen, he's still gonna try for two more."

Eddie loped up the bleachers, ruffling Dustin's hat as he went, until he'd plopped down right beside Chrissy, leaning back against one of the seats above. She was sitting higher than any of the rest, leg lightly thumping up and down. Carver's hoodie smelled less like his cologne and more like that jasmine stuff she appeared to have stashed on her person somewhere. She smiled as Eddie joined her; his legs stretched out so that his feet rested on Sinclair's bench. Her grin looked weak and distracted, limp at the corners. He pursed his lips back in a small smile of his own, breathing in the jasmine scent.

"He doesn't have Max yet," Nancy went on, "or Chrissy, and we can't take the chance he'll try to use one of them again—"

Max interrupted, low and brash. "What do you mean, we can't take the chance? Isn't that what we said has to happen? We can't take him out without somebody distracting him; if I—"

Eddie watched Lucas' frame stiffen up. Right on time, Sinclair said, "Max, there's gotta be something else we can try."

"No," she snapped. "It has to be me."

Chrissy was shifting beside him. Eddie felt his own foot itch to bob up and down, waiting to hear her object, waiting to hear her offer herself up again. But it didn't come. He let his heart rate slow down. Glancing sideways, he saw her glue her eyes to her lap, one hand turning down the Walkman. Something was keeping her unfocused. She might not have even heard Max's case.

Nancy was talking again. "If he takes you and it doesn't work, that's three gates and—he'll be that much closer to opening the rift I saw. I don't know, it—it just sounds too risky."

"Plus," Lucas said slowly, deliberately, "you'll be dead."

Steve pointed at him with an upturned palm, glancing at Nancy with wide eyes. His entire pose screamed his consent.

Max ignored them. "This is pointless, we all know it. I have to try. We can't wait, and it can't be anybody else. I'm the only one who's been inside Vecna's mind, all right, I'm the one who saw the Creel house, I'm the one that got away. And—besides, I mean, all he's got against me is the bad stuff. If I can find a happy memory and—just—hide there…I can buy you guys enough time. I'm doing it. End of discussion."

And it was. No one seemed to know where to look. Lucas looked like he wanted to kick something, maybe Vecna. But he stopped arguing. Even Chrissy couldn't have argued with the fact that while they'd both been trapped in Vecna's moldy visions, only Mayfield had made it into the creep's mindscape. If she could go that deep and still get out alive, maybe she was the one to play worm. But none of them wanted to say it. Eddie felt like his skin was lifting up and crawling all over him, thinking of his little neighbor willingly going head-to-head with Vecna while he—what? Sat on his hands? Knocked into another stereo? Ate more raisins?

After a few seconds of silence, Nancy moved on.

"If Max is there distracting him, the rest of us have to be ready the second he's not looking."

"Don't forget his army," Dustin cut in. He was talking around a chunk of pudding pie. "Every vine in that place, all those monsters—the demodogs, everything—it's connected to Vecna; if we don't have a strategy for that, we're all dead."

Eddie leaned sideways into Chrissy's personal space, holding out his open bag of trail mix without taking his eyes off of the debriefers. Like sharing popcorn at a movie theater. Chrissy glanced fleetingly into the bag and gave a single, tiny shake of her head, doing the weak-smile thing again. She looked sort of sick.

"Right. We have to get into the Upside Down totally prepared, and we can't be interrupted, so—" Nancy suddenly paused, eyes stabbing up at the highest section of the bleacher group. "Eddie."

Eddie sat up straight, the picture of a student caught lounging in a lecture. A spray of trail mix hit the lower benches. "Wheeler?"

"When—when I talked to Jason," said Nancy, "back at The Warzone, he—he said something about you and Patrick. He said…he made it sound like something happened between you two—"

"Yeah, uh—" Eddie rolled his eyes heavenward, rubbing his face with a hand. "He was um, he was…behind on paying me for some stuff."

Steve snorted. "So what'd you do, slug him?"

Eddie dropped the hand, glowering. "Uh, no. No, Steve, no, I did not slug him. I used my words."

"Okay, great," Harrington was the one rolling his eyes now, "well then whatever words you used had to've struck a nerve, man, because you're Public Enemy Number One right now."

"Yeah? Bite me, Hair—"

"I'm just saying, I wouldn't be gettin' all high and mighty—"

"Just—stop it, shut up for a second," Nancy interrupted, waving a palm at Steve. "What did you say? To Patrick?"

"He said people who make him lose out tend to lose bigger." Lucas spoke over the end of her question, tone exasperated.

Everyone stared at Sinclair. Eddie's spine tightened. Sure, when you said it out loud in this context, it sounded bad. Like…murder suspect bad. And now everyone was looking from Lucas to him, eyes big and round and indignant. Little snitch. Chrissy had even removed her headphones.

Lucas didn't seem sorry. "I heard 'em talking about it at practice one time." He shrugged a shoulder. "Patrick looked kinda freaked out, but—Jason said he'd front him the money."

Robin wheeled around in her seat beside Dustin, all mouth and hands. "Why would you say something like that?"

"It wasn't a threat, man," Eddie groaned.

"'People who make me lose out tend to lose bigger', are you serious? What is this, the KGB?" Max sneered. She almost looked like she wanted to laugh.

Eddie flipped her off, and when she saw it, she actually smiled a little, returning the gesture. The smirk made her freckles darker. It was cute and it didn't make him any less irritated. "I was saying he wasn't gonna get anything else from me till he ponied up," he explained, scowling at the group in general. "That's all. That's it."

Dustin cursed.

Nancy was looking at Eddie with barely-disguised impatience. "Okay, well, whatever you said, as far as we know Jason's still out looking for you. He's convinced you killed Patrick and he's convinced you have Chrissy." She glanced at the cheerleader then, raising her eyebrows. "Right?"

Chrissy nodded. It was so subtle, Eddie found himself leaning forward a bit to ensure she was doing it.

Her mouth fluctuated somewhat; she let it hang open for a moment before mumbling, "We talked."

She seemed to be addressing the entirety of the group; but neither Nancy nor, for some reason, Robin, seemed surprised. Everyone else went mildly ballistic. Lucas seemed loudest; no doubt he knew more about what Carver and the team could be like in high-stress situations like, say, halftime. Or the apocalypse. Max was just cussing a lot, and Steve seemed to be speaking more with his hands than his mouth.

For his part, Eddie felt his stomach flip over. "Sorry?" It was the only thing he said. The others could fill in verbally. His mouth formed that one word while the rest of him processed.

His brain went djent, thoughts shooting out in different directions. Chrissy and Jason had talked, when had they talked? She must have phoned him. Eddie wanted beer. Payphone? How had she been allowed to leave on her own? Why would she call him in the first place? His knee itched. Now the jock would be twice as revved up and three times as unnecessary. Everything was already going to Hell. They didn't need Jason "Good Boy" Carver on their trail as the blonde cherry to the doomsday sundae. The guy had a firearm.

"She was trying to get him to step off," Robin said, somehow louder than everyone else. "It just…backfired a little."

Eddie's torso shot forward, toward the lanky girl sitting below. "Elaborate."

"Well, now he wants you mega dead. Way worse than before. Like, he's pretty much positive at this point that you have his girlfriend on a waiting list to be murdered, so—" Robin glanced at Chrissy, who was making a very pinched, very frustrated face at her. She effectively stopped talking.

Eddie dragged both hands up his face and back through his hair, trying not to curse right next to Her Majesty. The air was thick enough with storm clouds as it was, and she seemed to be getting smaller with every we're-screwed tone that rained down.

"He doesn't know where we are," Chrissy said, now even hoarser than she had been that night in the trailer. She cleared her throat, raising her voice. "I mean—I didn't tell him. So…we should be okay."

"As long as Munson doesn't use any more words…"

Eddie gave Harrington two birds for the price of one.

That night, they were spread out across the gym, snack wrappers everywhere, tools from shop class equally everywhere. Steve was supervising the various projects going on in little clumps. They were making weapons. Crappy, home-made, thrifty demon-slaying weapons.

Lucas and Max were building spears on the bleachers, facing one another and talking too quietly for anyone to eavesdrop. Chrissy, fully out of her element, was handing out water bottles and Robin was periodically making more supply runs to shop class with Steve. Nancy was straddling one of the ground benches, sawing off a shotgun that was almost as long as she was. Definitely illegal. Definitely the most metal thing Eddie had ever seen a girl do.

He had gone with Dustin to the almost-center of the gym, squatting on the floor to hammer nails into trash can lids. It was taking them a lot longer to produce the same amount of artillery as the others; they kept testing it out. Playing. They were playing with the trash can lids. Too hard to hold a shield in your hand and not swing it around a little.

After they'd finished the first two lids, moving onto backups, they were interrupted.

"Can I help?"

Eddie's hammer slipped and the edge mashed his thumb. He let the curse fly out this time. Dustin looked up at him, startled and then laughing.

Chrissy had come back around to sit cross-legged beside him. Well, not directly beside him. She stayed a few feet back, away from the jabbing elbows attached to their hammering hands, but close enough to strike up a conversation. Eddie could still smell the jasmine behind him, thumb jammed sideways in his mouth. The profanity continued behind his eyes.

Dustin handed Chrissy one of the larger hammers and a trash can lid. "Nails're over there," he puffed, nodding to a bag full of them.

Eddie watched her out of his peripherals. Her every moment seemed to push more perfume into the air. She was slow, like her muscles hurt, like she had a fever, and she kept shaking her bangs out of her way. The headphones clattered around her neck. Chrissy laid her trash can lid gingerly on one of the crates they'd emptied from the janitor's closet. She held one of the nails to its mark, raising the tool to start pounding it in.

"If I may, Cunningham…" Eddie stepped over to help. He tugged the lid out from under her nail with two fingers, flipping it over so that it was right-side up. When she turned to give him an awkward grin of thanks, he bounced his eyebrows and went back to his own crate.

Chrissy was faster than they were, once she got going. She still moved like her limbs were sore, but the way she hit the nails was angry enough to drown out any screeching muscles. In fact, she was working at it so enthusiastically, Dustin and Eddie both stopped to observe.

It didn't take long for her to notice. She paused, blinking up at them sheepishly. "Sorry," she said, starting to chortle. Eddie shot her a warning stare for the apology, and the sheepishness deepened.

"No, that's great," Dustin assured her. "This way we'll be done before the others. I told Lucas if I finish first, I get his nougats, so—" He gave them both a double thumbs-up and gapped grin. "Back to work, slave." He flapped a hand at Chrissy.

Chrissy full-on giggled at him, blowing a strand of hair away from her face. As she hammered, she said over the noise, "So—you're in Hellfire Club too. Right?"

Dustin paused again, lifting his head. "Uh, yeah. Yeah." He glanced at Eddie, eyebrows shooting to his curls. Hearing a jock genuinely asking about their little group of freaks was an all-encompassing shock to the system. Eddie pitied him, proud to have one such experience already under his belt.

"What made you join?"

"Eddie," Dustin replied immediately.

Chrissy stopped hammering, looking at the metalhead, baring crooked teeth and merry blue eyes.

Eddie spread his arms. "I'm a shepherd."

"He's basically the deadliest DM on the market," Dustin explained, reaching for the nail bag. "Freshman year, Mike and I didn't exactly have anywhere to—you know, go, join up, so. Eddie kinda took us in. Trained us up for battle," he added, affecting an accent.

Eddie winked at him and went back to hammering, having almost completed his second shield. He couldn't fault the kid for some flair; Chrissy's style of listening seemed to bring out the performer in people. Maybe that had something to do with being a cheerleader, something in your blood. Or your smile. He suddenly itched for a pack of cigarettes.

"That's sweet," Chrissy decided, tossing a tired smile between the two boys.

"He's very sweet," Dustin agreed, jabbing a thumb Eddie's way. His eyebrows went up again, but this time there was a light in those beady little eyes that made Eddie pause, smile dissolving.

"All right, hey—less chatting, more pounding, Henderson," Eddie rasped, half-heartedly tossing one of the smaller nails in Dustin's general direction.

They kept hammering in companionable quiet for a little longer, Chrissy obviously making an effort to dial back on the nail abuse. Eddie kept flicking his hair over his shoulders, irritated at the way it got caught in the mallet's claw. Dustin was done before the older two, flipping his shield over a few times to admire the handiwork before breaking the silence.

"I've been thinking about our odds," he said, "and you know what we haven't considered?"

Eddie tilted his head. Chrissy put down her hammer to give Henderson her full attention.

"We need a scouting mission." Dustin brushed his hands off against his pants; they were probably sweaty from all the building. "I mean, out of seven people, only one of us has ever really been inside the Upside Down."

Eddie was already shaking his head, mouth in a tight, straight line. Chrissy looked mystified.

Dustin's voice got louder the more Eddie's head shook. "Think, you guys. We have no idea what's waiting when we go through that gate. Demodogs, demogorgons, those are just one piece of this huge, wigged-out alternate dimension, and One controls all of it. If we do a little scouting beforehand, we can come up with a better strategy for tackling the monsters and killing him and Eddie, will you stop that please, I'm trying to make a point here."

"No way, man," said Eddie. "Not an option. No one's goin' in there without backup—"

"We have backup." Dustin wagged his shield in the air. A nail fell out and came dangerously close to hitting his toe.

"–and you never split up the party." Eddie spread his hands, hammer bobbing a little in one palm. "Basic, novice handbook stuff, Henderson."

"So we don't split up," Dustin countered. "We all go in together. Or we use the buddy system."

Chrissy's hand tightened around the edges of her trash can lid. "But…no matter how many of us go through that…that thing down there—we're still going in blind. I mean—I mean I don't, like, know what you guys know—maybe it's better when you're in a group. But what if we don't…" She hesitated, licking her lips, raising her palms. "What if…we don't all come back out? Even just to look around?"

Her gaze flicked back of forth between the two of them, open, dreary. There was this wobbly quality to her words, and she was watching them the way you watched someone who spoke a different language, and you'd just tried to speak it and made an idiot of yourself. Waiting for their disinterest, their disapproval.

Eddie rasped, "Exactly," and pointed his hammer at the cheer captain. "Not worth risking anybody's neck."

Chrissy's knuckles visibly loosened around the lid, nodding hard.

Dustin scowled at their dysphoria. "So you're saying we just pass up the opportunity to gain more intel? Even though we agreed we need all the help we can get out there?"

"…Yes."

"Yup."

He wagged his curly head, slow and patronizing. "Chickens. Both of you. All of you. I swear, I'm an island."

"Hey, if you wanna head in there and be a hero, you knock yourself out, big guy," Eddie offered, twiddling his fingers in a wave, smiling sardonically.

Dustin wiped his hands off again, pulling a face at Eddie, and headed toward the bleachers to get his nougats. He left his second shield complete, lying on the ground next to his crate. Eddie and Chrissy watched him go, a new, further relaxed silence folding over them like a blanket. Eddie stretched out a leg to reach the nail Dustin had dropped earlier, dragging it toward him with his shoe to add it to his own arsenal.

Chrissy didn't join him when he returned to the task at hand. Instead, she sat back and grinned at him. It was the largest one she'd pulled out that day, and it refused to be ignored.

Eddie lifted his head and let himself drink in the sight, feeling a confused smirk tug at the corners of his mouth. "You okay?" he checked, and with the words came a slight snort of a laugh.

"You like kids," she said. The pitch of it was surprised, but the way she leaned forward, the way her dull, red-rimmed eyes crinkled with the grin, it was playful. Like teasing. Like Chrissy was teasing Eddie. The gym floor might as well have dissolved into Elmer's glue. Pigs were airborne somewhere.

Eddie rested his elbows on his knees. "Yeah, well, that kid in particular's not as…pestilential as some, so—"

Chrissy picked up her hammer again, running her fingers up and down the handle with no clear intention to use it any time soon. Her smile went closed, her head tilting, she was nodding, hair flopping around, he wondered how it could still smell like peaches when none of them had been near a shower in days—

"What?" he puffed out, looking around as if searching for support. Even her scrunchie seemed to be mocking him. "Did you think I ate freshmen?"

"No!" Chrissy tittered. "No, you just…" She took a moment, blinking a few times. He could see the mental good-girl Polite O' Meter weighing her next few words. Then she finished, "You're full of surprises."

She said it in the same offhand, expository way he would describe the flora and fauna on a new map to Hellfire. Eddie knocked the head of his hammer against an open palm a few dozen times, slow. How was he supposed to respond? Thank you was stupid. You too was more after-school-special than he would ever be comfortable with. Didn't matter what he said; hooded lids and a pursed smile were already directing themselves shamelessly right at her. And she was still beaming back, looking satisfied. Like she'd finally picked out the perfect dress to prom and was trying it on in front of some immaculate floor-length mirror. Almost smug.

Eddie whacked the final nail into his shield, clicking his tongue. "You know uh, my inner circle doesn't consist exclusively of children."

"Okay."

He let his eyes dart up to her while the rest of him faced his work. "I do have other friends."

"Right." Chrissy offered a flopping upturned palm and another, smaller smile, and this one was disturbing because it looked almost pacifying. The way you'd smile at a puppy before throwing it in the bath. "Your band."

"Right." Eddie pulled up the lid to study the number of nails inside, a few beats of quiet sounding out as he did. They could hear Dustin arguing with Lucas on the other side of the gym, something about the race. White noise. "Plus the guys from the séances."

Chrissy practically snorted at that one, nearly dropping her hammer as she chuckled. "But—seriously, I…" she said after a moment of composure, "I think it's great. That you let him in your club."

"Henderson? Yeah, he's a piece of work." Eddie turned to look at Dustin from a distance, watching the latter use every finger he had to undoubtedly explain to Lucas, under no uncertain terms, why he deserved the nougats. "Good kid, though. And don't let him fool you," he added, pointing at her. "He may look like a cherub, but I have never met a bigger ego this side of the Forgotten Realms."

"He likes you, too."

Was he growing feathers? Felt like it. Maybe they were sprouting on his shoulders. He was preening. Eddie ducked his head, tapping a ring against the end of one of the nails jutting out at him. "Somebody's gotta look out for the little lost sheepies in this place," he sighed, like it was a heavy load. Like he was comfortable carrying it. "Show 'em the ropes."

Chrissy wasn't working at all now. She was watching him, resting her arms against the crate in front of her.

"Not these days, though," Eddie continued, shooting another glance at the compass-obsessed youth. He had won his nougats, happily following Harrington out to the halls, chattering the whole way. "These days he's uh—he's kinda given me the inspiration. For a change. Brave little freak."

She didn't ask him to expand. Her eyes sought Dustin too, then back to him, face going full rose-petal soft. It made her look less tiny, less skeletal. Made her lipstick seem brighter. Her voice was softer as she mumbled, "I, um—I have a brother like that."

Eddie waited for more. He knew this already; a lanky, sandy-headed track team member was always waiting outside for her between Hawkins High and the middle school. Once or twice, he'd seen them walk home together when he'd gone out to his van to prep for Hellfire.

Chrissy's mouth went taut and curled up at the corners, a twinkle of affection showing through as she looked down at the crate under her arms. She started tracing the rings on the trash can lid with a thin, dainty finger. "He's…constantly trying things. Things he's never done before. Like, sometimes just because…it's there, you know? Just because he's curious."

He watched her trace the rings, one, two, three times. Slower and slower as she spoke. Her tone was so quiet, he could nearly hear the music still pouring out of the headphones framing her neck. The polish on her nail was chipping off, blue like her eyeshadow had been four days ago. Didn't match now. Didn't matter.

"God, I was always…so jealous of him." Chrissy huffed, glancing at the huge white light above them.

Eddie didn't interrupt, head cocking in her direction. Listening.

"He's never scared of anything." The affection in her gaze flickered out. Any hint of a smile was quickly slipping away, too. "He's never scared to…fail. Screw things up."

His hair swished out of the way as he leaned backward toward her, resting on his palms. Eddie was no stranger to fear. Fear was an old lover. Fear was at his heels every single freaking day of his life. It was lapping at the edge of his brain right now, side-eyeing the shields and that stupid sawed-off shotgun across the room and reminding him what this group intended to do. Reminding him what would happen if they didn't do it. Scared to fail was an understatement.

Chrissy didn't sound like she meant the Vecna hunt, though. Or maybe she did, but not just that. Suddenly she looked like she was the one with something heavy on her back. She was hunched, tugging now at the hem of her hoodie, pulling out creases. Max had told the gang that Vecna wielded people's own 'darkness' against them. Eddie figured Chrissy should have no end of happy, high-price, white lace, cul-de-sac memories to hide in, but she still clung to Billy Joel. And the way she was talking, the failing and the brother and the fear, he could almost believe her darkness was just as hard to shut out as Mayfield's.

Then she cleared her throat, sniffing a bit. "Dustin—he seems like that."

Eddie waited a few heartbeats as Chrissy started tapping away with her hammer. She seemed finished, wholly focused on the shield, but he opened his mouth to respond anyhow.

Suddenly, Robin was there, jogging up to them with a manic slap of sneakers. "Guys," she gasped, "Nance wants us to circle up."

They shoved themselves to their feet, following Buckley to the bleachers, where the rest of the crew was standing in a kind of drunken semi-circle. Eddie watched the back of Chrissy's head, his hands straightening the collar of his vest. The cloud that had been swamping her seconds ago had been vacuumed out—now, it was as if someone had smeared whiteout over her mood. Her back was straight, her steps determined. She was neutral again. Eddie took his cues from her, joining the Scooby Doo wannabes with his face slack.

"Okay," Nancy began when they'd all arrived. She was standing in the center with her notebook open in one hand, the shotgun perched against her hip. It was an intimidating figure that commanded everyone's attention. "I think we've got the beginnings of a plan."

"Eddie—Eddie! Get up! Get up, come on!"

Someone was clapping in his ear. Eddie jerked awake, jumping up so fast he hit his head on one of the bleachers' poles. The cheer mat skidded underneath him. He did not smell nice. He'd been sweating in his sleep. He was going to start sweating again, he was sure, if Max kept looking at him with wild eyes like that. She, Robin, and Lucas were all standing somewhat near him, arms and hands splayed out to calm him.

"Whazzappening?" he grunted, pawing at his eyes. "What's going on?"

"It's Dustin," Max began.

Chrissy came up to join them, roughly combing her fingers through her hair. Her headphones were on, trying to fall off. She stopped beside Robin, looking up at Eddie with a hollow expression. Something about her was fresher, something about her was…neater. Were his senses deceiving him, or had she actually gotten some rest?

Max's voice was quick, clipped. "He's missing."

Eddie's fingers went numb. "Missing?" he repeated, throaty, eyebrows leaping.

Steve's feet hit the gym floor behind him, like he'd jumped from his bed on the bleachers. His hair was an angry bird's nest, flitting out in all directions. "What are you talking about, missing? It's been like an hour."

"I closed my eyes for a second, I don't know, and—when I woke up, he was gone," Max explained.

"You're sure he's MIA?" Steve demanded. "It's a big school."

"I called him on the walkie," said Mayfield. Her mouth and eyebrows were matching, jutting arrowheads of stress and irritation. "He didn't pick up no matter what channel I used."

Evidently, this was proof enough. Eddie saw Steve go rigid, one hand jumping straight to his hairline.

"Maybe the batteries are dead?" Chrissy suggested, practically chewing off her lip.

"Dustin always has batteries." Steve, Lucas, and Max said some variant of this all at the same time. Chrissy's expression pinched in surprise.

Robin threw her arms up. "I'm guessing we all went into some kind of collective sugar coma? How did nobody see him leave?"

"Lucas was on MC Watch," Nancy reminded them, coming under. She'd been sleeping on the second-to-lowest bench, notebook folded across her chest. "Did he say anything to you?"

Lucas looked from face to face, jaw tight. "I…fell asleep," he admitted.

A rainbow of profanity answered him.

"Max woke me up," Lucas went on, talking over them. Sinclair had always been the most straightforward, single-minded member of Hellfire (when he used to show up for campaigns). Whenever the party was in a bind, Lucas went straight for the facts and the strategy while everyone else argued. Clearly the fact that his friend was possibly in danger was more important to him than explaining his mistake away. "Wherever he went, he didn't tell me."

"Kinda hard to tell you anything when you're drooling on the floor," Steve snapped, eyes jumping from the doors to the bleachers' undersides to the windows. It was as if he expected to see little Dustin-sized footprints leading away somewhere into the ether. His chest was heaving—were his arms shaking? The Hair was outright panicking.

"He coulda woken me up!"

"Whatever, Sinclair—"

"It was an accident."

"No, picking you to do night watch was an accident, man—"

"Hey!" Robin snapped her fingers. "There's no time for this, dingus; if Dustin's really missing, we have to go find him before something else does. Hello? Big sick portal thingy right downstairs?"

Eddie's ribs were too tight against his heart. Big sick portal thingy.

"We split up," Nancy ordered, handing Steve a flashlight. "We'll find him faster if we do. Bring the walkie," she added to Max, who immediately turned on a heel to obey.

Eddie didn't hear much of the other instructions. Everything became background noise. The group split into different, smaller groups, like dragging your finger through a dormant raindrop. They spread out across the school, never too far from one another, everyone looking over shoulders and slapping light switches on as they went. If the town of Hawkins saw the school lighting up from the outside, no one thought to care. Steve headed west at a dead run, toward the cafeteria, Robin on his heels. Lucas was shouting for Dustin, checking every classroom. Max could be heard trying the walkie down one of the east halls. Nancy had gone with her, making sure she wasn't on her own.

Eddie did stick his head in a few unlocked doorways, did try the men's bathroom nearest the gym, did bellow Henderson's name at the top of his lungs. But his feet were already doing what some back-burner part of his brain had been screaming at him to do since Robin had cut Steve off in the gym. All the other spots he checked were brief interruptions on his way to the basement.

He didn't slow down for anything, not even to turn on the lights, frame snapping around a final corner. He slammed open the door to the school's underbelly with one arm. "Dustin?" he shouted down the stairwell.

No reply. A very, very distant sound of thunder. Almost an echo of an echo of it.

This was stupid. Dustin was stupid. Pride goeth before your incredibly handsome metalhead Dungeon Master getting chewed on by a pack of demodogs. Whatever those were.

His teeth were chattering; he ground them tightly together to stop them. School wasn't cold. It was the hulking, black feeling he got with every step down. He almost didn't want to call out again. Ever since Fred had died in this room, there was something eerie and dripping with unease about the entire area leading up to it. Half the student body had avoided that hallway for a week. He could hear the thunder again, maybe chiming, maybe something else, like wind. Eddie's fist knocked hard against his hip as he turned into the main room.

The gate seemed larger than ever, darker than ever. The vines had gotten longer, fatter, stretching to cover more of the floor.

Eddie turned around, halfway, ready to bolt back up the stairs. No. Nope.

You never leave a member of the party behind.

Screw that little numbskull and his moral code. Screw him and his voice in Eddie's head. The way his big blue bulldog eyes had looked straight into Eddie's face with round, solid, adult determination. His gappy laugh and his bear hugs.

Eddie cursed himself under his breath. He forced his body forward, facing the gate again, cursing and cursing until he was right on the edge of it, one foot carefully placed on either side of a particularly gooey vine.

The stench of the Upside Down wafted up if you got this close. It smelled like everything dead you'd ever smelled in your life. Roadkill, rats in the wall, moldy food. It smelled cold and wet and uninhabitable. No way Henderson had even tried to get this far.

"Hey, if you wanna head in there and be a hero, knock yourself out," Eddie had said. Knock yourself out, what had he been on? Of course Dustin would see that as a challenge. Of course he'd prove his scouting theory right, buddy system or no buddy system, jumped-up little prick.

Just standing over the portal was making Eddie want to vomit right into it. How would Vecna like that? Lil' Eddie puke to add to the décor. A housewarming gift that would stink like digested bottles of Yoo-Hoos.

"Dustin!" He pushed the name out through his teeth, loud as he could, feeling he might go insane if he had to stare into this thing's maw much longer. It was exactly like looking into a pond on a cloudy day; there was the school basement, blue and dark and covered in dust and oozing crap. Upside-down. Obviously. But something about it made you dizzy.

He kept staring, willing some sign of Henderson to come flickering into view. Listening for that Holmes-wannabe tone. Maybe he should've been listening for screaming. Looking for blood. He was gonna be sick, he was gonna warm Vecna's house—

Something was burning his ankle.

Eddie looked down just in time to see one of the tinier, thinner vines tighten itself around his left sock. It retracted like tentacles or cat claws, whipping him flat onto his back in half a heartbeat.

The vine was cold and slimy. He knew that. But the feeling of it soaking through his sock and onto his skin was boiling. Eddie heard himself yelling, heard his voice getting louder and louder, both because it hurt and because rational thought had emptied from his head and all he could do was scream.

He flipped over onto his stomach as the vine dragged him toward the gate's edge, faster than he could comprehend. The slick basement tiles were sliding underneath him, squeaking as his fingers dragged and clawed for purchase and found nothing. The idea of grabbing onto one of the bigger vines did flash into his mind for a second, but instinct told him not to burn his hands too.

His legs went in. His hips. The whole lower half of his body was being successfully sucked into the Upside Down. Eddie slapped his palms down hard on the floor, trying to use his body weight alone to heave himself out. For a moment, it worked. He was stagnant there, hanging with the white-hot vine mercilessly, calmly jerking him down, his arms keeping him up.

Just as he started sliding backwards again, a pair of white reeboks came bounding into his eyeline.

"Eddie!"

Chrissy was suddenly there, on her stomach on the ground, both tiny hands wrapped around his right arm, slightly-black sludge staining the chest of her hoodie. Her face was almost unrecognizable with the scream stretching its features; she was saying something, shrieking something, maybe signaling for help, but no one came and he couldn't have heard her over his own incoherent shouting anyway.

He was saying her name, saying something about getting him out. Maybe not. Maybe he was just yelling.

Chrissy tried to stand, but he was too far into the hole by now for her to reach him without lying down. She gave one final effort, face red and wet, gripping his arm with all ten fingernails digging hard into the leather. She made as if to heave herself to her feet and bring him with her, but her shoes slipped and the vine went taut as if sensing weakness.

It yanked them both through the gate. The cleaner, brighter version of the high school basement was sucked away, improbably far above them. They went falling headlong into the Upside Down.