Nancy
"Shit."
Rheum grits the corners of Nancy's eyes, itchy and dry. The skin of her face feels oily, grimy from sleeping in her makeup, and yesterday's curls fall into her eyes as she lurches upright with a stomach-clenching jolt.
Something is wrong.
It's too bright. The quality of light - it's too bright. Too clear, too warm, filtering in through the sheet tacked over the window.
It is not 7:00am.
She twists and seizes up her watch from the bedside table.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" she spits, and Jonathan starts up from the bedding, groggy and concerned, his hair as much a mess as hers and flat on one side from bedhead.
"Wha? What's wrong?"
"It's almost nine," she groans, flinging the covers off and rolling to her feet.
"What?"
"We forgot to reset the clocks - the power went out last night, remember?"
She's running on her toes across the room, Jonathan's soft, old tee hanging loose and comfortable around her frame, her legs bare. The room is in the same state they left it last night - that is to say, a mess. A welcoming, familiar mess, strewn with boyishness, cluttered with the accumulated artifacts and bric-a-brac of eighteen years of life. It's not a particularly foreign sight. Nancy has woken up here nearly as often as in her own bedroom, lately. Warm yellow-ish tan-ish walls; the white-grid bedsheet tacked up over the window as a curtain; the R.E.M. poster beside the bed. Clothes draped over the back of a chair, one of Will's drawings propped up on the dresser, the faded green bedding rumpled and pulled loose from one corner of the mattress.
"Oh, shit," Jonathan agrees vehemently, staggering upright with the kind of angry, sloppy urgency only ever achieved by someone who has badly overslept. He jump-skids directly over the bed, trying to wrestle a pair of pants onto his legs as Nancy yanks yesterday's dress up around her waist. A sharp "Whoawhoawhoa -" and a loud thump informs her, without looking, that Jonathan has gotten tangled in his pants and fallen on his face.
Business-formal dresses; heels; early mornings; coffee runs and forced smiles; ink-stained fingertips, phone calls and jeers. This has been her summer. While Mike has been running around with his friends, giggling with his girlfriend, going to movies and eating ice cream - typical, carefree kid-summer stuff - she's been cooped up in the stuffy back room of Hawkins Post, scrambling back and forth in her loathsome pointy shoes, running errands and answering phones for men in dress shirts and ties.
To be fair, it's not like she didn't sign up for this. And it's gonna get her where she wants to go - it is. It's a foot in the door, as her mother would say. But right at the moment, as she flings her purse and shoes out the window, she envies her little brother. Why can't she be fourteen again, gallivanting around town in jeans and a tee shirt, blowing bubbles and playing in the sprinklers with her girl friends?
The childish thought dissipates as a practiced hop takes her onto the window frame, which bites into her hip for a moment before she lands barefoot on the crispy-sharp grass. Stooping to gather up her shoes and purse, staying low to crouch-run underneath the kitchen window. The summer heat has already started to gather in the air like a tangible mist, pushing past her cheeks as she reaches the car and cranes her neck to watch for her boyfriend.
"C'mon, c'mon," she mutters to herself, hooking first one foot and then the other into her shoes, the heel of one hand braced on the car for balance. Tom's gonna skin her alive if she's late.
Jonathan, at last, whirls out the front door. She flings herself into the passenger seat the very second he unlocks the door, already stirring up the contents of her purse for makeup, using spit, a Kleenex, and willpower to clean up yesterday's smudged and creased eyeshadow. She can touch it up and call it intentional. It'll have to do.
An upbeat Huey Lewis song bounces along at a brisk clip, all electric guitar and keyboard and static as the old car radio sputters to life. Jonathan cranks the car into reverse and swings around with agonizing caution, and she checks her watch again as they finally get going down the driveway.
Joyce managed to talk Jonathan into a haircut a couple months ago, when they started their internship. He has bangs again, now, the way he did when they first got to know each other. He hates it. He's constantly griping about how he can't wait until they grow out and he can sweep them to the side again. He swipes at them now, still blinking away remnants of sleep as they bounce over the long driveway and pull out onto the road.
Nancy can't tell if she agrees or not; with the bangs and the tucked-in work shirts, tie constantly too loose around his collar, and the camera slung around his neck on a thick strap, he looks like even more of a geek than usual. It's kind of endearing, kind of groan-worthy. Then again, she can't say she's been faring much better in that department of late. Her ill-advised perm has gone frizzy and unkempt, especially in this heat, and more often than not they have matching dark circles under their eyes.
"Can you please drive faster?"
"What, you wanna break down?" Jonathan slaps the dash. "We're lucky this thing still drives at all."
Buffing blush onto her cheeks - "I'm serious, Jonathan, I can't be late."
"You mean we can't be late," he retorts, a hint of annoyance creeping into his tone.
"No, I mean I can't be late. They like you no matter what you do."
"Hey, they like you too." He turned to look at her, and the car swerves a bit as he glances back to the road and corrects their veering course with a jerk.
"Yeah, they like that I'm a coffee delivery machine. They don't actually like me or respect me as a living, breathing human with a brain -"
She cuts off to swipe at her eyelashes with mascara and Jonathan's head turns back and forth as he looks between her and the road. "Hey, you just - you just gotta be patient. Okay?" She gives a small scoff, but he keeps trying. "They're set in their ways, you know? But... Once they realize what a gifted writer you are, they'll come around."
She turns with a double-palmed gesture, half-twisting in her seat to address him. "I really don't need a Jonathan Byers pep talk right now. Okay? Just - can you please drive faster?"
He blows out a breath as she paws at the sun visor and flips open the little mirror inside, using it to stroke lipstick along the curve of her bottom lip. "Okay."
The old car swings around a curve, accelerating with a pitiful whine as they race the clock towards the dusty brick corners of downtown Hawkins.
"You think you can follow the clues and solve the case of the missing danish, Nancy Drew?"
The words seem to follow her around as she shreds a pile of papers and then rushes to the next item on her neverending to-do list: coffee.
It's been nonstop. Tom chewed them out first thing when they arrived, and Paul even wolf-whistled from his place at the conference table. Smug bastard. Not to mention that she's hyper-aware that she's wearing the same dress she was in yesterday, which a) is not very professional, and b) only adds fuel to the fire of jeers from the predominantly male staff of the Post, who just love to poke fun at her and Jonathan. At least Jonathan got to mumble some apologies and duck into the darkroom, burying himself in his work behind a Warning! When red light is on, please do not enter dark room sign. Nancy gets no such opportunity. It's days like these that make her contemplate the pros and cons of abandoning journalism altogether and just joining a cult or something. She's dead tired, she's walking funny in the shoes that are starting to chafe, and her scalp feels greasy with oil that he tries to convince herself isn't nearly as visible as she thinks. At 9:42am, today is already a wash. She wants nothing more than to just go home and strip down and step into a piping-hot shower, and not get out for a good long time.
The coffee pot finishes percolating with a disgruntled sounding sputter, and Nancy pours herself a generous dose before getting anyone else's. They're in there guffawing about Lucy Lebrock's breasts, chowing down on the pastries that Nancy had to run and fetch from the café down the block; they can goddamn wait for their coffee.
They wouldn't even listen to her idea about a piece on Starcourt, and how it's stifling the family-run businesses of Hawkins. Bruce just poked around in the donut box and then talked right over her, griping about the absence of his favorite type of pastry.
"You think you can follow the clues and solve the case of the missing danish, Nancy Drew?"
The Post is cluttered and buzzing in that always-in-use kind of way. Pictures of Hawkins line the walls. Newspaper clippings, maps, photos, graphs and notes are pinned to cork boards. Potted plants wilt on the corners of desks; morning sunlight slots through the vertical blinds, tiger-striping the shelves full of binders, the filing cabinets, the rotating fans that rattle as they stir up the dusty air. The click-and-clatter of typewriters is a constant background noise.
She likes this. This - the office, the atmosphere, the feeling of getting to the bottom of what's happening and getting word out to the people. This is what she wants to do. Or, more specifically, that is what she wants to do. Not this. Not going on donut runs and keeping her back straight and her lips sealed when the men twirl pens between their fingers and discuss the beauty pageant at the fair with a mean shine in their eyes. When she applied for this internship she had grand, childish ideas of trench coats, pocket notebooks, crime scene tape, an official badge. Nancy Wheeler, Hawkins Post. Can you tell me exactly what happened here?
The phone rings. Sudden and shrill, and she nearly burns the back of her hand trying to shove the coffee pot back on its plate before striding across the room to answer it. She catches it on the third ring.
"Hawkins Post."
The voice that answers is faint, creaky - an old woman's voice, sweet and plodding. It's so soft that Nancy almost doesn't catch what she says at first. And then a few of the words register, and Nancy freezes in place. Her pulse gives a hard throb right in the center of her chest.
Intuition, in the past, has served her well. It's saved her life, a time or two. It helped her take down Hawkins National Laboratory. And now, as she strains to make out the gentle, grating tones on the other end of the line, it's whispering, listen up. This is important.
"Um, hold on - I'm sorry, can you..." She scrabbles for a pen and a pad of paper. "Can you repeat that?"
Doris Driscoll, she scratches onto the paper as the woman starts over, 4819 Cornwallis Rd. And underneath, her hand moving so fast it's near-illegible, Disease. Rats.
She rips the paper from the notepad as soon as the words are down, glancing around the office furtively for a moment as Mrs. Driscoll voices her concerns. Hoping against hope that nobody walks in and asks about the call. Gloria, the secretary, is in the restroom; everyone else is in the back end of the building, barricaded comfortably away behind their desks, probably playing with their desk toys and debating sports or something.
Excellent. She doesn't need anybody butting in to steal her story.
She thanks Mrs. Driscoll, sets the phone gingerly down on the hook - and then practically lunges across the room, through the hallway, and bursts through the darkroom door with a cry of, "Jonathan!"
"No, no, no, no!" is his response, hands fluttering over the photos that she just exposed to the light. "Nancy!"
"Sorry - we have to go."
"What?"
"We have to go, come on. No, no, bring your camera - bring the camera."
"What are we -" He backtracks for the camera, slinging it around his neck. "What?"
She grabs him by the hand, pulling him along, buoyed by an enthusiasm she hasn't felt in weeks. She can make an excuse to Tom - this is worth playing the girl problems card. And if they can get the story - if it's good -
"I have a lead."
Will
Trauma has a weird effect on your fight-or-flight system. Will can watch through an entire grotesque horror movie without blinking an eye, on some days - and on others, the toaster goes off and his soul leaves his body.
Jonathan flew out the door with his shirt half-tucked-in and a lipstick stain on his cheek, which their mom rubbed off with her thumb as he tried to wriggle free, saying, "All right, all right - I gotta run, see you later." Joyce retreated with her hands raised in surrender, and she and Will cast each other a conspiratorial glance as Jonathan hauled ass out of the house.
Jonathan and Nancy think they're sneaky. Think being the operative word. The walls of this house are not as thick as they apparently assume.
"Gross," had been Will's comment. And that's what opened up the complaint floodgates. Because the lipstick on Jonathan's cheek reminded Will far too much of another couple, and that conspiratorial glance thawed the iciness between him and his mother somewhat - at least, enough that he's been complaining to her for the past few minutes about a certain best friend and his girlfriend. He's on a roll now, right in the middle of his rant, and Joyce pokes at her plate of eggs as he talks.
He fishes his toast out of the toaster with his fingertips, jerking back a time or two and shaking his burnt fingers. "It's like they never actually hang out with us," he goes on, tossing his toast onto a plate and digging around in the jam jar with a butter knife. The glob of jam evades his efforts and he flips the whole jar upside down with an impatient grunt, scraping out the remnants onto his toast. "I mean - they're there, but it's like the whole time they're just hanging out with each other, in proximity to the rest of us. Like they barely even care about the Party anymore."
"They care," his mom interjects from the table, swirling the dregs of her coffee. "I'm sure they care."
"Yeah, but..." A lopsided shrug. "I dunno. Do they have to be sucking face all the time?"
"Maybe when you fall in love you'll understand," she offers lightly, and Will sets the empty jam jar in the sink with a too-careful precision.
"I'm not gonna... fall in love."
It sounds stiff, even to his own ears, but she drops the subject with a skeptical shrug and an, "Okay."
He's not going to.
It's not technically a lie. You can't do something that's already occurred; what's done can't be undone.
Just because he's accepted it doesn't mean he has to like it.
It's been nearly two years since he first realized - really, truly realized it. And even then he rejected it, shoved it down in a compact, sharp-edged little cube somewhere at the pit of his diaphragm. Tried to forget about it. It took another year for him to revisit that little ingot of recognition, let it out of its steel-cable bindings, acknowledge its existence.
It was awful. Ugly. It hurt. But once he admitted it to himself, he couldn't go back; he couldn't forget again, as much as he wanted to. Something just wouldn't let him tuck it away again, quiet and solitary, forgotten in the simpler, happier times of childhood. Something about what Reagan has been saying on TV. About the slurs graffitied on bridges and carved into the paint in bathroom stalls. About how people whisper about sickness, how everyone is scared of AIDS, how Will's father says it's a gay men's disease, how queer is an insult thrown at enemies in school hallways, how people like him are never in movies. Ever. They never get the guy, they never get kissed while romantic music swells in the soundtrack, they never beat the bad guys, they never save the day, they never fall in love with someone who loves them back, they never win, they never live happily ever after.
Game. Set. Match.
"Hey," his mom says, the scrape of her chair preceding her. "What happened here?"
"I dunno," Will says again as she pads past him to scoop something up off the floor. His stomach clenches when he sees what it is.
There's been a silent, ongoing battle in the Byers' kitchen these past few weeks. Somewhere, somehow, his mom found the picture of Bob that he drew last year. Bob Newby, Superhero, with his Superman pose and his red cape. That one. She dug it out from wherever it had gone - wherever Will had hidden it - and stuck it right up on the fridge for all to see. The first time he walked in and saw it staring him in the face, his throat closed up so abruptly he felt like he couldn't breathe. With trembling fingers, he slid the drawing around to the side of the fridge, where it wouldn't be so visible. The next day, it was back, front and center. He moved it again. Several days passed. Guess what?
He's never brought it up, and she hasn't either. But every time it happens, it brings the tension simmering back, frigid and stomach-twisting. The thing is, it's not like he can really mention it. How can he? He knows all too well that she's still grieving.
She misses him. Will hears her crying, sometimes, at night when he can't sleep and she thinks no one else is awake. She sits on the side of the couch and watches those dumb comedy shows that Bob used to like. And Will hates it, he pulls his pillow over his ears when she cries because it's one of the worst sounds on Earth, but...
But it's his fault. And he can't forget that. At the end of the day, if it weren't for Will, Bob would be alive. And the last thing he needs is that stupid picture up on the fridge, reminding him.
Now, as his mother crouches by the fridge in a small scattering of alphabet magnets, he averts his eyes from the paper in her hand. Her reproachful glance still registers loud and clear.
"That was a little unnecessary," she grumbles, and magnets start clack clack clacking as she slaps them back up onto the fridge.
"What?"
The paper wobbles audibly in her hand as she waves it. In Will's peripheral vision, it's like a beacon, bright and accusatory. "You didn't have to throw him on the floor."
He looks, finally, as she stands and hovers in front of the fridge. For a moment neither one of them speaks as her hand wavers back and forth. Will she put it on the front of the fridge, right in front of him, or to the side? Neither - she sets the picture down on the counter with an irritated little tut, and Will lifts his hands in a sharp I'm innocent gesture.
"I didn't do that, it probably just fell."
"On its own?"
"Somebody probably just brushed past it, Mom, it's fine," he snaps, and then sighs and bites down on his toast to keep himself from saying anything else. The sharp, somewhat burnt edge of the crust stabs the roof of his mouth.
Neither of them have forgotten yesterday's argument, either, and it hangs over their heads as the silence stretches on. At last Will swallows his bite and awkwardly broaches the subject he's been sitting on since before Jonathan left. The thing he worked on nearly all night, since he couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw spores.
"Hey, so. When do you work today?"
"Not 'till 11:00." Curiosity softens her scowl. "Why?"
"Well, you said we should spend more time together -" Her eyes light up before he's even through with his sentence. "- and there's something you might be able to help me with. You don't know where that old walking stick went, do you?"
Mike
Dark clouds are pulling in on broad, gritty gusts of wind. The red, white and blue bunting flags flutter fitfully over each window of the Wheeler house as, above, the treetops ripple and lash and thunder grinds between the clouds. Out front, Mike's dad is marching nervously back and forth across the grass behind his lawnmower. A yellow slicker flaps around his frame, paired ridiculously with beige cargo shorts. Ted Wheeler never was a particular bastion of high fashion.
Mike just hopes he can get to Hop's cabin before it starts raining.
He's just digging into the clean laundry basket for his own raincoat - it's gotta be here somewhere - when a familiar five-beat knock sounds out at the basement back door. Lucas.
"Hey, what's up?" is Mike's distracted greeting as his friend lets himself in. A bubble of cool, damp air comes in with him, momentarily stirring up the yellow curtains.
"'Sup," Lucas says, and flops onto the couch. He's in a baseball cap and a tank top, and goosebumps dot his arms from the relative chill of the storm front. Mike bats at the bill of his hat as he passes.
"Don't get too comfortable, I gotta motor in like two minutes."
Lucas fixes his hat with one hand and takes a swipe at Mike with the other. "Where are you going? Will said to meet here."
"Huh?"
"On the radio?" He gives Mike an are you stupid? look, and Mike lets out an irritable huff of breath. Where the heck is this thing? Did he leave it upstairs? Did he leave it at the cabin? He's starting to think he may have left it at the cabin.
Caught up in his thoughts, Mike is a beat too late to say, "Wait, why?"
"Don't look at me, I figured you'd know."
"I can't hang out today, I'm supposed to go visit El. Actually, I was supposed to go visit El like half an hour ago, so - ha!"
He dives, coming up with the green coat fisted in one hand. It was halfway underneath the rocking armchair, for some reason. Holly might have hidden it. She does that, sometimes, if she doesn't want Mike to leave. Little menace.
The slight rattle of the doorknob gives them about half a second's warning before, in a rolling billow of cool, storm-charged air, Will appears. His cape - yes, cape - ripples around his shoulders in the sporadic bursts of wind; his hair flutters over his forehead, underneath the hat. The end of his staff thumps on the carpet as he strides in, and thunder echoes, distant and deep, as he pushes the door shut behind him.
Royal purple, floor-length, and spangled with shiny-silver stars, the robe is complete with a shoulder cape and a tall, pointy cone hat. Silver embroidery lines the hems and cuffs. A cassette player and a notebook are tucked under Will's left arm.
Mike recognizes the costume. Of course he does. It's from over a year ago, when the Party dressed up for the Lute of Olaf Orcsbane campaign that Mike put together for Spring Break. Even then, Will was a little less than enthused to be wearing it; it's not exactly authentic, but it was the best Joyce could afford on short notice. Now it's creased and wrinkled, clearly having spent that last fifteen months in a storage box or a closet, only to be unearthed today - for reasons unknown - but it doesn't swallow Will's frame quite as completely as it did last Spring. It actually looks like it fits him, now. The collar of his shirt - red, blue and gray stripes, like a subdued American flag - is peeking out from the wider collar of the deep purple robe, and for a moment Mike wonders if he pulled on the costume just now or if he rode across town in it. Just a wizard casually biking his way through the suburbs, nothing to see here.
"Thank you for meeting me here," Will says, formally - strained, almost, like he's delivering lines in the midst of stage fright. "We have work to do." Then he looks around, speaking normally for a moment. "Where's Dustin?"
"What are you doing?" is Lucas's answer, as Will sets the cassette player on the table with a flourish, drags the cord over to an outlet, and thumbs the play button.
Piping, elven-sounding music bursts from the speakers, like a Renaissance Faire spontaneously manifesting in the Wheelers' basement.
"Uh, Will?" Mike says, bemused.
Will straightens, his fingers fluttering for a moment as he adjusts his grip on the wooden walking stick that he's using as a wizard's staff. "Please address me by my full name," he says, once again adopting that stiff, practiced voice.
Bamboozled is a word that El learned a few weeks ago. Bamboozle: to confound or perplex.
Mike gapes at his best friend, and all he can think to say is, "What?"
The staff bangs on the carpet, once, and Will's voice rises into a theatrical near-shout as he asserts, "My full name!"
There's a high, pink blush coloring the tips of Will's cheekbones, and a glimmer of embarrassment shows through when he shifts his weight, shoulders drawing up tensely. Mike meets his self-conscious gaze, and he can't help it; he smiles. He has absolutely no idea what Will is getting at, but, sure. He'll bite.
"Okay," he concedes, "Will the Wise. Could you turn down the music a little?"
"That is not music," Will says, being Will the Wise again. He seems a little more confident in the role now that Mike has started to play along. "That is the sound of destiny."
He's trying to look very serious, but he cracks after about two seconds, a sheepish smile taking over his face, and his eyes drop. When he looks back up, Lucas speaks up from the couch.
"What is happening right now?"
Mike sighs, his weight ricocheting from foot to foot as he glances towards the door. It's getting darker outside. If he doesn't head out soon he's gonna get caught in the storm, he just knows it. He hefts the raincoat, getting ready to slip it over one arm. "Look, Will, I - Will the Wise. I can't, today. I said I'd hang out with El."
"C'mon," Will says, dropping out of character to take a step closer. His bangs are pinched under the brim of the goofy cone-hat, which almost falls off his head as he looks up slightly to fix Mike with the puppy-dog eyes that have been his secret weapon since kindergarten. "You've been hanging out with her every day for the past two weeks. Can't you take one day?"
"Not every day," Mike counters, but as he thinks back, he's not actually sure if that's true or not. Then a stronger argument occurs to him. "Besides, I haven't even planned a campaign yet. I -" He sighs again, shaking his head. "I have nothing. I'm sorry. Like I said, I'll do it this -"
"Well, that's all right, I planned one."
Mike stops short. His eyes are drawn to the tattered spiral notebook on top of the cassette player, which he knows is full of countless sketches - and, apparently, one Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
Will has never made a campaign before. At least, not fully, not all on his own. He's collaborated with Mike, of course, bouncing ideas back and forth and acting as sounding boards for each other as they sketch and write, respectively. But he's never written a whole campaign.
"You did?"
"You did?" Lucas echoes, and Will nods at them, one after the other.
"Yeah." He shrugs, scratches his nose. "I just figured - you know, I figured you didn't have time to make one, but I did, so..."
The meandering, upbeat notes of the fantasy music fill the silence. Mike looks at Lucas. Lucas looks at Mike. They both look at Will.
The truth is, he's not super in the mood for D&D. Sitting in his basement all day was not what he had in mind for his 3rd of July. He's supposed to be out doing things, going places, seeing his girlfriend. He's just not in the right headspace to be sitting around a table, staring at a board, pretending they're fighting dragons and fording enchanted rivers. Not to mention that his real-life damsel, not so much in distress, is probably sitting by her window right this moment, waiting for him.
But Will did make a whole campaign.
Mike must be making some sort of face, because Will is already smiling hopefully. And when he tosses down his raincoat onto the couch, the smile breaks into a bright grin.
El
They had another fight last night.
It was about the cabin. It's always about the cabin.
She was late for curfew - really late. That's what Hop does know. That's why he was mad. What he doesn't know is that she broke another Party rule while she was at it: she lied. She didn't tell him about the movie, only that she lost track of time with the Party and didn't really notice that the sun had gone down. If you want to be technical about it, that part isn't wrong. It's just, she didn't notice the time passing because she was in a movie theater, with its rows and rows of ruby-red, velvety seats, and its matching red curtains, and the TV screen that must have been as big as an entire building. She bent the truth a little, as Mike would say - she told part of the truth, but not all, and that's a kind of lie too. A lie of omission.
She feels bad. The kind of bad where guilt gets all thick and heavy and aching in your stomach, like you've eaten an entire bucket of candy all at once, and the wrong thing you did won't quit tugging at you no matter how hard you try not to think about it. But what else could she do? He was already mad enough, worried enough about her just from being so late. So, she kept her mouth shut about the movie, and they fought about the cabin instead. About Mike coming over to the cabin; about her leaving it. Mike isn't supposed to be over so often, apparently, but El is also not supposed to be out so much. They're supposed to wait another six months before she can come out and be a normal girl. Another six months.
El kicks at a pebble, misses it, and sends it shooting off down the street with a jerk of her head. If she's not supposed to be around town, and Mike isn't supposed to come over, then how are they supposed to see each other?
"It is important to me that you feel safe." That's what Hop said. And she does feel safe at the cabin. She also feels bored. And trapped. And stir-crazy. That's a word Will taught her a few months ago. Stir-crazy. It's where you can't keep still and you want to move, you want to leave and be anywhere but here.
El is stir-crazy.
Which is why, currently, she's pacing down the cracked and uneven sidewalk squares of Old Cherry Road, her ratty sneakers scuffing along the concrete. Half a block down the tree-lined street, in front of a small white house, is a red-haired girl practicing a hopping kind of kick with her skateboard. Flecks of rain hit the concrete, but the full storm hasn't reached this part of town yet. Her hair and shoulders are a little damp from walking in the drizzle, but she doesn't mind. It helps with the heat.
Mike was supposed to come over today, after Hop went to work. He was supposed to be at the cabin nearly an hour ago, and there was no sign of him - not even a quick radio call, as he's done before, sometimes. Hey, sorry, my mom won't let me leave the house tonight, or, Hey, I got sick, I'll be at home eating jello for a few days. She got worried. So, she broke yet another rule: she went to check on him, in the Void.
And, guess what? He wasn't sick. He wasn't hurt. He hadn't been plucked up off the streets by the Bad Men. He wasn't getting yelled at by Hop. He was in his basement, safe and sound, sitting around the table with Will and Lucas. Will was wearing special-occasion clothes; the other two were dressed normally. They were playing a game.
The scene was familiar, in a stomach-sinking kind of way. Last year, before the Gate, El used to go check on the Party a lot. Daily, almost. It wasn't uncommon that she'd find them sitting around that table, playing that game, the way they were just now. It's just that, now she's not a secret anymore; she's supposed to be part of the Party again. They're supposed to invite her to things like that. And moreover, Mike isn't supposed to ignore her.
Max is so focused on her task that she doesn't look up at El's approach, doesn't even notice her until the skateboard shoots out from under her feet - not El's doing, this time - and streaks down the street. El's foot comes down on the end of the board just as it's about to strike her ankle, and it flips up, nearly hitting her in the leg before she catches it. It's solid, heavier than she expected, and she holds it in both hands as she goes to Max.
"Hi."
Max's eyebrows squiggle up in confusion. "Hi?" She accepts the board, and El scuffs her palms along the sides of the too-hot plaid shirt that falls nearly to her knees.
Max is pretty. El has thought that since the first time she saw her, through the narrow rectangular window of the gym door. Not the way that Nancy is pretty, or the way that women on TV are pretty, but a different kind. With her long, bright hair - red-orange like the best kind of autumn leaves - and her round cheeks and gray-blue eyes. Sailing around Mike on her board, arms outstretched for balance. She was pretty, and El hated her. She was supposed to be the fifth member of the Party - El, not this new girl that could glide across solid ground like she was flying.
She doesn't hate Max anymore. It took her a few months to warm up to her, as Dustin put it - especially since their contact was so limited, with El so often hidden away in the cabin. But Max is part of the Party, and so is El, and that's that. Friends.
It's just, they don't usually hang out alone - never, actually. Which is probably why Max looks so bamboozled when El says, "Can we talk?"
Will
Will isn't nearly as good at DMing as Mike is.
In fact, he feels like he's largely failing.
Will doesn't have Mike's dramatic flair, Mike's energy. He's a little more timid about acting out the campaign the way Mike does; he can't quite bring himself to playact the dialogue, the sound effects, the descriptions. But he has his plan, the notes scratched out in bullet points and diagrams in the back of his sketchbook, and he has Mike's Dungeon Master Manual, and he has the DM screen up in front of him on the table, and he's doing the best he can. He's written some stories before - well, drawn, in comic form - and in some ways, this isn't so different. And as the minutes go by and he settles in a little, he starts feeling a bit more confident. He can't hold a candle to Mike's storytelling, but he has a good imagination, and he delivers the campaign with determination, his dry humor and creativity making up for his lack of loud drama - or at least, that's what he tells himself to dispel the remaining nerves.
"Can I do a perception check to see if there's anything else in the room?" Mike says. He's sitting back in his chair, one foot propped up on a crossbeam under the table, and his pencil flips between his fingers. He's been nicely playing along, but without much enthusiasm.
"Roll."
The die clatters. Crit fail. Lucas grimaces.
"It's a room," Will reports, and the corner of Mike's mouth twists up as he snorts.
"Guys, I think I figured it out," Mike says in a goofy voice, "We're in a room!"
"No," Lucas gasps sarcastically, and it sets off a smattering of giggles from all three of them. And that seems to be the tipping point. Because once they've started laughing, the smile remains on Mike's face, and it gets easier and easier to dissolve into laughter as time goes by and they're caught up in the social momentum of being ridiculous with your best friends.
Side A of the cassette runs out, the music falling silent with a hiss of white noise and a click, just as they're getting into the belly of the cave. Will consults his rough sketch of the scene he planned.
"It kind of skitters sideways up the wall, a little like Thing from the Addams family and a lot like something you wouldn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole."
Mike sits forward in his chair, a spark of interest lighting up in his dark eyes as he reaches out to jostle Lucas. "Ooh, wait, is this the thing the villagers were complaining about?"
"Uh, yeah, because something the size of a hand could destroy a whole tower, Mike."
Will goes on, "It opens its mouth and - oh, I don't know. Mike, make a noise. What noise does it make?"
Mike unleashes an ungodly screech that leaves Lucas collapsing onto the table with helpless, heaving laughter.
"Beautiful," Will laughs, a hand jerking up to catch his hat as it almost falls off his head yet again. Rain is plinking against the side of the house, audible now that the music has gone silent, but inside it's dry and cozy and familiar. And for the first time today - maybe the first time this whole summer - Will feels almost like things are back to how they're supposed to be.
Almost. Dustin's conspicuous absence casts a shadow over the otherwise merry atmosphere, as does the fog of vague disinterest that hangs about Mike and Lucas's expressions. But that's all but gone, now, and all at once Mike opens his mouth and -
"Well, my friends, it seems strange things are afoot. Have at thee, tiny cave demon!"
Ah, Will thinks, fondly, as Mike gets into character with an easy grin, There he is. There's Elric Maelgrim the Just, Flamecaster, Guardian of the Bridge. And just like that, Will's inner Cleric is alive and kicking, rising easily to the surface at the glimmer of his best friend. Will the Wise and Elric the Just, side-by-side once again, at last.
Jim
She's in the window when he pulls up out front.
She's perched on a stepping stool, on her toes, balancing as she pins up the banner that reads, SALE! Discounts 50-70% off! Through the ghostly reflections of the town in the window, he can just make out her figure. The curve of her torso, still slender despite the years that have passed. The fringe of her hair flowing over her shoulders in messy waves. The jeans that don't exactly do her a disservice. She catches sight of him through the window as he gets out of the car, and he returns the little wave she sends his way.
Downtown Hawkins is in a touch of trouble. It's the mall, see - Starcourt. It's eating up so much of the business that there's hardly a customer to be seen in any of the shops in town. At first everyone said things would calm down, given some time. Folks would tire of the novelty of the mall and everything would go back to normal. But it's been months, and store owners are way past antsy, past nervous, and getting near panicky. There's a town hall meeting planned for next Tuesday at 6pm, and as Chief of Police, Jim will have to attend.
It's rotten business. All of it. Of course they're right - the mall is killing the small businesses. Such is the nature of this grand, godforsaken country. The worst part is, there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. Starcourt is too entrenched in the town, now. The mayor and his well-to-do posse like it; they like the money it brings in. They like that it makes Hawkins look more with-the-times than it really is. From the second Mayor Kline cut the ribbon at the mall's grand opening, Hawkins' fate was sealed. Nothing short of a miracle or the apocalypse could take down Starcourt.
It's shitty all the way 'round, but it's life. And his job isn't to keep mom and pop shops open, his job is to keep people safe. Unless the mall grows teeth and starts eating people, there's nothing he can do.
He expects this to be the topic of conversation inside Melvald's - Joyce has been preoccupied and glum, these past few weeks, worried about losing her job like so many others. Instead, from the moment he walks inside, she's going on about Will - not that that's a surprise. Will is a frequent subject of discussion, when it comes to Joyce, and Jim can relate. He has El, after all.
El, who is the reason he's here right now. And once Joyce has talked herself in circles about her youngest for a little while, it's Jim's turn.
"10:32pm," he reiterates, when it seems like Joyce isn't quite grasping the immensity of his frustrations. "That's not just late, that's - that's deliberate. How do you accidentally miss curfew by two and a half hours? And you know what she did? You know what?"
Joyce quirks an eyebrow, infuriatingly aloof. As the mother of two teenagers, she has a tendency of regarding his parental woes with some amusement. He, on the other hand, doesn't find it nearly as funny.
"She slammed the door. Right in my face. She hasn't done that since -" He skims a hand through the air, estimating a timeline. "Since last winter."
"Teenagers," Joyce tuts.
"It's not just that," he protests - although, it's that too. He's never had a teenage daughter before. Sarah... Well, Sarah never quite made it that far. "It's Mike. It's them. They're together all the time."
"Will was home late, too," she murmurs, still rolling price stickers onto packages of hair clips and hanging them up on their display.
But Jim is on a roll, a rant developing as he stands up from the shelf he's been crouched on. "I need for them to break up, or I am gonna lose it. I mean, I am just gonna lose it, Joyce."
She points a finger at him as she goes around the corner of the aisle. "That is not your decision."
"They're spending entirely too much time together. You agree with me about that, right?"
"Well, I mean, they're just kissing, right?"
"Yeah, but it is constant. It is -" He breaks off with a grumble, scrubbing the pads of his fingers over his eyes. He's going in circles. And then, as he paces around the corner to catch up with her, his brain catches on the piece of information he missed in his tirade. "You said Will was back late?"
She sighs, her cheeks puffing out, and nods. "Around the same time, yeah. 10:30."
Her shoe strikes something and her hair falls over her face as she looks down at the plastic magnet that she just sent rattling across the aisle. A small jumble of them are scattered on the shiny tiles of the floor - cheesy fridge magnets in the shapes of bananas and carrots and apples. She kneels and begins scooping them up into a little pile. When she speaks again, her voice is different. Lower, tighter.
"Hop."
He goes to squat next to her, his ears pricking at the tone. She's been preoccupied since he walked in. He figured it was just work-stress, worrying over the fate of her job, but now there's something more urgent in her eyes when she finally looks at him.
"You're gonna think I'm crazy." She sticks a smiling plastic slice of pie onto the display board, only for it to fall right back to the floor. The same thing happens to the Hawkins 30th Annual Book Fair! magnet. She frowns over them for a moment, then shoves them aside with a mutter of, "Cheap junk."
"Joyce," he says seriously, as she slides to the floor to lean against the opposite shelf. "I know you're crazy."
Normally this would earn him a playful scoff and a light kick, but she just hugs herself and looks towards the front of the store. Aside from her Pinto and his Blazer, the parking spaces are empty. Rain taps on the front windows and runs down the glass in rivulets, leaving strange, warped shadows on the ground, but it's still stiflingly hot. The AC unit has been straining and chugging since he walked in, completely unqualified for the task of keeping up with this record-breaking season. Jim settles onto the floor across from her, their legs stretching out side-by-side across the aisle like a dam across a stream. She still has one of the magnets in one hand, and she fusses with it as she works up to whatever it is she's going to say. He waits.
"You'll think I'm crazy," she says again, a shallow inhale lifting her sternum under the blue Melvald's shirt. She chews on it for a few more moments before finally spitting it out. "But I think the lab... I think something is wrong."
"The lab?" His eyebrows lift in genuine surprise. Out of everything she could have said, that was not what he expected. "The lab what?"
She's still staring out at the front windows, tension hardening the planes of her face. She shrugs. "I don't know. I just - something is weird. Don't you feel like something is weird?"
Like a stuck record, he says, "The lab?"
She's moving all at once, scooting forward to get closer to him, hugging her knees to her chest with one arm like a kid as she gesticulates with the other. The soft uncertainty in her voice has dried up completely, leaving something far more familiar. Determination. "Last night - no, listen. Last night, I was waiting for Will, and I -" She struggles, face twisting up as she searches for words. "It was like I -" Her fingers snap. "The power went out! Remember?"
"The blackout, yeah." It affected the entirety of Hawkins. Goddamn new power company can't do their jobs for shit. He had to use his flashlight to move around for a couple minutes, until the power came back up.
"The power went out, and it was like I could just feel it. Like how it felt in that place, remember?"
He knows she means the Upside Down, and just like that it starts to make sense. The blackout, the lights flickering and dying, the darkness.
"Joyce."
"No. I know what you're thinking, and that's not it. It's not just me, it... We've been having all these power fluctuations, and now the blackout, and I've been having dreams -" She cuts off and rubs her lips together like they're dry, resting her chin on her knees for a moment.
"You've been having nightmares?" The again is on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't say it. She glares at him, ready to defend herself, but he shakes his head and switches tracks. "Joyce, I've been watching that place like a hawk. Okay? If anyone was going in or out of there, I would know. It's been quiet, I promise you."
It is important to me that you feel safe. Those are the words that almost came out of his mouth - most likely because they're still fresh in his mind from when he said them last night, to his daughter. But saying them to Joyce is a little different - a little harder. It suggests things that he's not quite willing, or ready, to say aloud. So, instead, he says, "I want you to feel like you still have a home here."
Her eyes flicker to his, guilty, and her feet shuffle on the somewhat grimy tiles.
A week ago, he entered the Byers house to find several pamphlets and business cards for real estate agents and moving companies on the kitchen table. She hid them away under a pile of mail before either of the boys got home, but Jim saw it - and she knows he did. It's nothing official - yet. She's just poking around, looking at some options, thinking things over. That's how she brushed it aside when he asked.
She considers this. Straightens her hunched shoulders. And shakes her head. "Something's wrong. I can feel it." She presses a fist to her chest, eyes hard. "I know it."
Jim would like to say that he's learned a lot in the past two years. Things about Hawkins; things about the government; things about other dimensions and monsters and survival, things he never would have dreamed existed in a million years. And one of the most important things he learned, through all that: Joyce Byers' instinct is not something to be taken lightly.
He doubted her once. And he was wrong.
"Okay," he says, and her face twitches in surprise. "So, we go check it out."
"What?"
"The lab. We go check it out." She blinks at him, and he says, "If it's nothing, it's nothing. And you can have some peace of mind."
"But... if it's not?"
"Then we can be glad you spoke up. When do you get off today?"
El
She should not be here, but she lets Max lead her by the hand anyway. Off the bus, through a crushing crowd and a steady, cool drum of rain, towards the front doors of the big, angular tan building.
It was because El told Max about Mike. About how he ignored her in favor of playing D-and-D with the rest of the Party, and they never even invited her. About how she felt so trapped and suffocated in the cabin.
"That sucks," had been Max's response. And then, after a moment of silence, "Well, do you wanna hang out? I mean, with me? I was thinking about getting ice cream. I'll get you some from Scoops if you want."
"What about Mike?"
"What about him? There's more to life than stupid boys. C'mon, it'll be fun."
She didn't agree right away. She chewed on her lip, looked down at her lap. "I can't... I'm not supposed to be in public."
"Okay but... says who? Seriously, El, it can't be healthy to be cooped up in that musty old cabin twenty-four-seven. And plus, it's a shopping mall. It's not like there are government agents staked out in J.C. Penney waiting for you to show up. And nobody would even recognize you if they did see you, anyway. You look totally different now."
And so here they are.
Last night, El barely got a glimpse of the mall before they hurdled into Scoops, out of breath, ready to sneak into the movie theater. Now, she's smack-dab in the middle of it. It's blinding. Buzzing. Overwhelming. She doesn't know where to look; every direction is so full of color and movement and light that it hurts her eyes. Voices and music. Little kids shrieking, adults chattering, teenagers yelling and laughing. Pink and blue fluorescent tubes winding around the lip of the upper level, which hangs out over the main court. Sun glaring off of the glass roof far above. Lights studding the ceiling like diamonds - dark green leafy plants everywhere, like a forest brought inside and contained to neatly organized pots. It smells like shiny-new-plastic-paint, and perfume, and sweat, and like all the best foods in the world. Pretzels, popcorn, ice cream, hot dogs, candy.
"So, what do you wanna do first?" Max laughs when El doesn't respond, too busy staring around with parted lips. "You've never been shopping before, have you?"
El shakes her head wordlessly, inching closer to her friend, feeling exposed and stared-at in the bustling midst of the crowd. It's hard for her to talk, sometimes, when she's around a lot of people, and she can feel herself clamming up.
Max shrugs. "Well, then I guess we're just gonna have to try everything."
But El has to go sit down on a bench for a couple minutes, curling up and half-hiding her face behind her knees, adjusting to the volume and the crowd. Max sits beside her on the edge of the bench, fingers wringing together, reaching out once or twice only to change her mind and withdraw her hand before it makes contact.
When she feels better, El lowers her shoes to the glossy-shiny floor and decides, "Clothes."
It's the only thing about shopping she really knows. People on TV go clothes shopping sometimes. And, once in a blue moon, Hop will bring home a big pile of clothes from the thrift store and she has to try on each and every single one, to see what fits. El feels like she knows how to go shopping for clothes.
So, first it's the shiny red store with white letters that spell, the gap. And she was wrong - she has no idea how to go shopping for clothes. Because here, apparently, you don't just try on whatever there is until you find something that isn't too big or too small. Here, there are all sizes of everything. She darts between the shelves and racks of shirts and pants and dresses, hats and scarves, all different colors and patterns, with Max drifting along in her erratic wake. In the middle of the store, surrounded by a rainbow of soft fabrics, El turns to her friend.
"What do I choose?"
"Oh, uh." Max blows out her cheeks and sticks her hands in the pockets of her shorts. "I don't really do a lot of fashion. I guess, just... Choose what you like, okay? Whatever makes you feel like you."
"Like me?"
"Yeah." Max is looking at her with a strange expression - something a little sad, maybe. It's gone in the next second as she looks around at the candy-colored displays. "Not eleven. Not Hopper's daughter. Not Mike's girlfriend. Just you."
"But how do I know what's me?"
Max follows El's line of sight to the aqua-blue, flowy shirt being modeled by an expressionless life-sized doll. El smiles. The sprinkling of shiny silver squiggles remind her a little bit of Will's special-occasion clothes in the Void.
Max steps forward and takes one of the blue shirts from the pile below, holding it out to El. "You try things on."
And they do. Well, El does. Max, not so much, except for a hat or two. But El could do this for hours. She tries the loose-fitting blue shirt - a blouse, apparently - and she tries a flat yellow hat that looks like a pancake, and red-striped seatbelts that hold your pants up if your belt isn't up to snuff. She tries a white button-up shirt with matching pants and a mustard-yellow belt as wide as her palm and then some. Max tries on sunglasses while El discovers something labelled romper. It's black, with bursts and swirls of color from collar-to-hem, and El very nearly declares, this one.
That is, until her eye catches on the yellow shirt.
Red next to black is a friend of Jack, she remembers, lifting the shirt from its pile, but red next to yellow could kill a fellow. But what about yellow and black?
It's soft, bright yellow, snaked all over by meandering geometric patterns of black.
She nudges Max, holding up the shirt. "Can we find some pants seatbelts for this?"
Max blinks at her for a few seconds before her chin dimples with a repressed snort of laughter. "You mean suspenders?"
They were nearly caught sneaking El's outfit out of the store. Max has a little allowance money, but she wants to save it for ice cream - and besides, she didn't have enough for the shirt, suspenders, and the pair of loose, sturdy black pants that El chose to go with it. Oh, and the red-white-yellow metallic belt, but that technically came with the pants. She's not supposed to use her powers in public, but the cashier would have seen them if she hadn't distracted him at the last second. While he lunged to catch the falling display of frilly scarves, they made their escape, El's new outfit rolled up and stuffed under her overlarge flannel shirt.
It's only the one outfit, and it's not like they're stealing from people - really, they're stealing from a big company, like Max said. Companies have so much money, they won't even notice that one little outfit is gone. It won't hurt anyone just this once. Max snags a plastic shopping bag out of a trash can to carry the clothes in, and they head for the upper level.
They do pay for their photos at the Flash Studio, though, where the friendly man behind the camera demonstrates poses for them and tells them that they're gorgeous and stunning. El even convinces Max to put on a few of the props - a feather boa that's probably the softest, fluffiest thing El has ever touched; some big pearl earrings that clip on, pinching their earlobes; lacy gloves and big, crinkly bows on headbands. Max doesn't like the props as much as El does, but she begrudgingly lets El drag her through the poses, and by the end they're both laughing and out of breath.
They run between stores. Window shopping, Max says. Where you look at everything but don't actually buy anything. Exercise mats, lipstick, records, shoes, TVs, toys, perfume, jewelry. There's even a car - a whole car, inside the building. There's a drawing to win it - a sort of game of luck, like tossing dice. They're too young to win, though - and besides, El can't be going around writing her name down on things, announcing her existence.
By the time they reach Scoops Ahoy, their pictures tucked away in the shopping bag next to El's outfit, El is shaky and sweaty and frazzled in the best way. Her fingers are hot and trembling, her cheeks sore from smiling so much, and her head rings with the noise of the mall. But it's quieter in here, where the air is colder than the rest of the mall, and only a few people are sitting around tables eating ice cream. A song about blue jeans is playing over the speakers.
Steve is here, arguing about something with the freckled, sarcastic girl behind the counter. El smiles at him. She doesn't know Steve very well, but she likes him okay. He was there on the night of the Gate. He helped the Party. Will told her about it. And a friend of Will's is a friend of hers. His eyebrow quirks up when he sees them, and he points a big spoon at El.
"Aren't you supp-?"
"One scoop of rocky road, please," Max says, loudly, and then turns to El. "What about you?"
Rows of huge, multicolored tubs of ice cream behind a frosted-over glass shield. Too many choices. Tired and overwhelmed, El lowers her face. She wants to reach out and grab Max's sleeve, like she does with Mike sometimes, but Max's sleeves are short - and besides, she might not like El doing that. Will likes hugs, and Dustin ruffles El's hair a lot, and of course there's Mike. But Max and Lucas don't do many touches.
"Anything," El says.
Max thinks. "Strawberry? Everybody likes strawberry."
She was wrong. The song isn't about blue jeans, it's about a girl named Blue Jean. A girl with a police bike and a turned-up nose.
"Strawberry," El echoes.
Max counts out her money and Steve hands two napkin-wrapped cones over the counter. El accepts hers with an excited little hop, recovering from her moment of shyness. She likes these kinds of cones. Hop brought her one, once, as a surprise. They're called waffle cones, like Eggos, and they're nice and crunchy once you've eaten the ice cream out of them.
"Mm," El hums, a little surprised at how good the first taste is.
"See?" Max says as they leave Scoops. "What'd I tell you? There's more to life than -"
Steve
"Stupid boys," El giggles as she and Max disappear around the corner.
Steve is not entirely sure that El is supposed to be at the mall. But she was here yesterday, and she's with the Mayfield kid, so it's probably fine.
Anyway, he's got bigger problems. Namely, that this is the suckiest summer ever.
"And another one bites the dust," Robin crows as Steve's attempts at flirting drive away yet another reasonably cute college girl. "You are oh-for-six, Popeye."
She traces a bold, black line down the mini whiteboard she has appropriated and labelled for this purpose: You Rule vs You Suck. She's working upside-down to add the tick mark to the right hand column, and her blonde-ish-brown-ish bangs fall into her face as she looks up at him with a smirk.
"Yeah, yeah, I can count," Steve says, leaning against the counter to face her where she's leaning through the window of the back room.
"You know that means you suck," she reports cheerfully, and his head bobs in a nod.
"Yep, I can read, too. It's this stupid hat. I am telling you, it is totally blowing my best feature."
"Yeah, company policy is a real drag."
Robin is a cute girl. Yeah, he said it. She's cute. She's got that freckles-and-frizzy-beach-waves kind of warm attractiveness to her, mixed with a personality that's very hard to miss, even at first glance. Lined eyes, chain necklaces, BandAids on her knees, hair chopped blunt just above her shoulders. Never short of a barbed comment or witty comeback. Always chewing on her nails or a pen or a waffle cone. Front teeth just a little too big. Bracelets up and down her arms. A scrappy little nobody.
"You know, it's a crazy idea, but have you considered..." She sucks on those buck teeth, pinning him with a calculating stare. "Telling the truth?"
"Oh, you mean that I couldn't get into Tech and my douchebag dad's trying to teach me a lesson, I make three bucks an hour and I have no future? That truth?"
But her attention has shifted. She's spotted a fresh wave of free entertainment. "Hey, twelve o' clock."
Brenna Stratlin and Jennine Flemming. Both cheerleaders - or they were, before they graduated this past school year. Brenna's fiery curls bounce as she flicks them out of her eyes, and Steve spins to face his coworker again.
"Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Okay, uh... I'm going in. Okay? And you know what?" With a firm swipe and a toss, the stupid sailor hat is gone. "Screw company policy."
"Oh my God, you're a whole new man," Robin deadpans.
"Right?" Steve spins, startling Jennine. "Ahoy, ladies! Didn't see you there. Would you guys like to set sail on this ocean of flavor with me? I'll be your captain. I'm Steve Harrington."
Steve is oh-for-seven.
He sucks.
Which is why, when Dustin appears at the counter with his eyes wild, his raincoat dripping, and his curls all on end like Einstein, Steve immediately drops his ice cream scoop and calls, "I'm going on break!"
In the back, Dustin slams his armful of books down on the rickety table. He's been talking at a million miles per hour since his initial approach, and Steve can barely get a word in edgewise, let alone understand what he's saying.
"So I thought maybe it had something to do with geometry, or maybe trigonometry, because, yanno, degrees, but I'm not gonna be in trigonometry for like another two years, and anyway, it would have to be referencing something, and then what about the sun? The solar whatever? Where does that come in? So then I was thinking, degrees, sun, maybe it's about temperature. So I was checking in -"
"Wait, wait, wait, wait." Steve has been waving his hands through the air, trying to get Dustin to slow down. "Okay, first of all, maybe take a breath. Yeah? Secondly, what are you talking about?"
From his seat at the table, behind the array of library books that he's already opened and started to cross-reference, Dustin looks up at him. "I said, I picked up some coded government chatter on Cerebro."
"You... what?"
He explains over a bowl of mint chocolate chip. The Cadillac of ham radios, set up on the hill behind Winze Street. The Party jumping ship after the movie. The late-night broadcast. The code.
"If they had been there they would have heard it for themselves," Dustin says, mashing his ice cream into a soft paste with the back of his spoon. "But they weren't, so they don't get to partake in the mystery. We get it all to ourselves."
"Lucky us." Steve turns the tape recorder over in his hands. They already listened to Dustin's recording - a short string of scientific babble that could have come from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. "How do you know it's government?"
"Uh, who else is it gonna be?"
Dustin rolls his eyes and scoops a bite of mashed ice cream into his mouth, and Steve huffs out a silent laugh through his nose. Gotta love fourteen-year-old logic.
"What channel did you say it was?" he asks, trading the tape recorder for the radio, fiddling with the dials.
"Uh, here." Dustin leans across the table and adjusts the frequency. "Right here. But we're not gonna be able to pick it up without Cereb-"
"... new batch of IDCDs awaiting transport to the Key. Over."
The female voice, rough with a smoker's rasp, is one whole big question mark - but the man that answers her is familiar. A cool, smooth alto with a touch of northeastern inflection to the syllables. The same voice that gave the code on Dustin's recording.
"Roger that. Over and out."
The channel goes quiet except for the hiccup of static, and Dustin points at the radio as if Steve could have missed it. "That! There! Did you hear that? I told you, government. Gotta be. That's the same... huh." He leans back in his seat, frowning. His green Camp Know Where '85 hat slips down over his forehead and he pushes it back with a knuckle. "The Supercomm on its own should not be able to pick up on anything from very far away."
"So that means it's coming from here?" Robin says, making them both jump and twirl around in their seats. She's leaning so far through the partition that the frame of the window is biting visibly into her stomach, creasing her striped blue sailor shirt.
"Hey, private conversation," Steve says, twirling a finger in a signal for her to turn around and get lost, but Dustin is already saying, "I guess it must be. These radios are kind of shitty, honestly, I mean, I can barely reach Lucas's house from mine on this thing."
The radio gives a sharp squeal of feedback static and they all lock eyes on it, waiting. But no one speaks up.
At last, Steve ventures, "But... where inside the mall would that be coming from?"
Nancy
"It started last night," Mrs. Driscoll says in her soft, nasally voice. She has a deliberate, dumpy way of walking, stomping along at such a slow pace that Nancy has to walk haltingly to keep from overtaking her. Mrs. Driscoll's polka-dotted red umbrella bobs up and down with each heavy step. "Woke me up out of a dead sleep, you know. Scared the bejeesus out of me, I'll tell you. Like nothing I've ever seen before. And I have seen a lot, honey, I have seen a lot."
"And you live here alone?" Nancy's pencil scratches over her notepad. Jonathan is holding their own umbrella over both of them - a fact that Mrs. Driscoll tittered at when she first stepped outside to greet them.
"Yes. Jack, my husband, he passed away - what is it, now? Ten years ago."
"Oh, um, I'm... I'm so sorry."
Is she not being very professional? Was that insensitive? She feels like she's doing everything wrong, and she wants so badly to get this right. This could be her big chance. Her heart is racing. Jonathan, beside her, has his hand on his camera - ready to start documenting the situation. If they ever get there.
"Oh, don't be," Mrs. Driscoll says. "I kinda like the quiet. Or, at least, I did. This way. You know, you look very young for reporters."
Nancy's heart seizes in her chest, but Jonathan thinks on his feet. "We get that a lot."
Mrs. Driscoll rounds the back corner of the house, leading them through the sodden yard and towards the fringe of thick Indiana woods that backs up to the house. Jonathan meets Nancy's eyes. He wasn't entirely jazzed about this plan to begin with, and he looks even less so now.
"Look, I just - I just don't know if this is such a good idea," he had said as they climbed into the car, having made their clandestine escape from the Hawkins Post.
"Really? Because I feel like it's the best idea I've had all summer."
"Look, all I'm saying is, what's the harm in asking?"
"The harm in asking is that Tom will say no. We ask for forgiveness, not permission. And if this story's as good as I think it's gonna be, then Tom won't care. In fact, he'll thank us."
"Or the old lady is nuts and the story blows up in our face and Tom fires us."
"And then we never have to work at this shithole again."
Now that they're here, her cavalier optimism has run a bit dry. The house is a run-down but clearly well-loved wooden structure on the old end of town, with lace curtains in the windows and windchimes hung up from the eaves. A pile of chopped wood is built up at the side of the house, the chopping block beside it. Somebody else must come by to chop wood for her - a grandson or helpful neighbor, maybe. Nancy can't imagine this sweet, round old woman lifting a hatchet. Fat as she is, she looks like a stiff breeze could push her right over.
"That's where they went," she says, halting abruptly. Her pointing finger sweeps down, from the woods to the ground, and Nancy sees what she's talking about immediately. There's a path. A very small, very clear path through the wet grass - as if dozens upon dozens of little bodies marched away single-file into the woods. But wherever they were all going, they're gone now.
"I have never seen rats act that way. Never, not once in my years. All marching along, one after another, hundreds of them. Like little soldiers. And the noise..." She shivers like a rabbit. "Like something out of my nightmares. I'll tell you. You know, I read an article in National Geographic once - you like that magazine? Yes, I love it. So many wonderful pictures. I just love the pictures of the baby penguins, all fuzzy. Like little cotton balls. Did you ever see those articles? Anyhow, I read an article in National Geographic once about a disease that affects ants. Makes them wander off from the colony, whole groups of them, makes them insane. And I thought, there's no way healthy rats would act like this. This has got to be some sort of disease. You really should have heard them. I'll tell you."
"And they all went off into the forest?"
"That's right."
Nancy shares a commiserating glance with Jonathan. As creepy as this is, there's not a whole lot they can document. It's pitifully lean evidence to work with. Jonathan hands over the umbrella, squats, and starts snapping a photo or two of the little path, just to have something - when Mrs. Driscoll puts her free hand on her hip.
"Oh!" she says, her glasses flashing in the light as she cranes her neck to beam up at Nancy with pride. "I almost forgot. I caught one of the little fuckers."
