Chapter 2
Whoever decided to throw a party on a school-night deserved to be shot. Not that she actively condoned violence on Tina Nolan, but at the moment she was not completely against it either. Morning began pretty much how the night ended, with Jamie hanging over the toilet bowl and wrenching her guts out. Her alarm had gone off at 7:00, like always, and she knocked it off the stand so hard it now lay smashed in pieces on her bedroom floor. It did wake her though, kick-starting her bodily processes and leaving her rushing to the bathroom.
Her mom would come wake her up at 7:30 if she failed to show at breakfast and Jamie tried to concoct a believable story to allow her to stay at home for the day. A look into the mirror confirmed her fears. Steve might've taken her home last night, but she had taken herself to bed without removing her make-up and it was smeared all over her face. She could go straight to another Halloween-party, but now dressed up as Minnie the Clown.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door, small hard raps that couldn't be anyone else but Dustin.
"Go away!" Jamie groaned.
The knocking increased. "Jamie? Jamie, open up!"
"Go away, Dusty!"
bang bang bang bang bang
Her little brother's annoying voice penetrated the woodwork, an increasing level of anxiety in his voice. "Jamie! JAMIE! Open up, Jamie, I have to show you something! JAMIE! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME, YOU SON OF A-"
"GO AWAY, DUSTIN!" she screamed for all she was worth.
"No, you don't understand, you have to-"
"GOOOOOOO AWAAAAAY!"
The door rattled - Dustin had probably kicked it. "Ugh, fine! But when I'm famous, you'll be sorry you just ignored me and..."
His voice faded, but she could hear him muttering all the way back to his room. A door slammed. Jamie rolled her eyes. Dustin's early morning dramatics usually concerned some cool invention he'd thought of last night and needed help building or a full-on dream analysis to find out if his pubertal fantasies about some of the girls in his year would ever come true. He always made it seem like an emergency. It usually wasn't.
Jamie wiped at her face with some paper towels, but forfeited and jumped into the shower instead. Every limb of her body was three times heavier than usual, and Jamie hadn't even washed her hair yet when her mom knocked on the bathroom door.
"Honey? Are you okay in there?"
She groaned and tried to drown out the voice by putting her head under the stream of water. The bathroom was quickly filling up with steam, and if she tried, she could pretend she was still asleep and in some dream world of clouds and fairytales.
Another knock. "You got in pretty late last night."
Oh great, a lecture, just what she needed. Jamie scrubbed at her face, still sticky with make-up and sweat. The lecture never came though. Instead, her mom asked carefully through the closed bathroom door: "Do you need to stay home today? I could call the school if you'd like..."
With inhuman speed, Jamie wrenched the shower-knob back to shut the water off. "Yes!"
She waited until both her mom and Dustin had left the house before she emerged from the bathroom. Dustin had grumbled and cursed about not being able to use the main bathroom, but had instead been directed into the guest bathroom in the hallway, which was basically just a cubicle with a toiled and a sink. The Henderson were not as well off as the Harringtons or even the Wheelers, who had one bathroom per bedroom. Her parents always talked about remodeling, to get a second bathroom next to the master bedroom, but they'd never gotten around to it. Then her dad left and now her mom was too concerned about paying the mortgage to even consider doing any remodeling.
With the house empty, apart from her mom's cat, she went through the kitchen to find anything edible that she thought she could stomach. She munched on leftover Halloween candy and eyed the orange pill bottle sitting innocently on the window sill. Doctor Owens had said unwanted side-effects if she mixed those pills with alcohol. No expert, Jamie still thought that what happened last night was just plain old intoxication, not side-effects. She wasn't completely sure if there were any alcohol still left in her system with all the throwing-up, but it was probably best to play it safe. If she waited a day to take the pills, she should be plenty safe.
Even in the solitude of her own kitchen, Jamie's face burned at the thought of last night. She had fallen asleep on Steve Harrington's shoulder, then he must have carried her to his car, because the next thing she remembered was zooming past the sleeping town on their way to her house. He had been talking incessantly too, the whole car-ride, something about Nancy and drinking and...Barb? It was a bit of a blur to be honest. She did remember him cursing out that goddamn punch, wondering what was in it that caused complete personality-changes on all the girls.
Oooh, the chocolate was not helping her condition. Stumbling back into the bathroom, she almost hissed at the glaring fluorescent light. That was way too bright for comfort, how had she never noticed that before? Her fingers fumbled to find the light switch, but when she did, she could almost see more clearly in the dark than when the light was on. Probably a faulty bulb. A look into the tall mirror encompassing one entire wall of the bathroom told her everything she needed to know. To keep it short, she looked as bad as she felt. Her usually healthy olive complexion was a ghastly shade of white, almost like Samantha's make-up last night, and her scattering of freckles looked like flies on sweaty cheese. Her curls hung limp by her face, still damp from the shower, and she was not sure if the dark circles underneath her eyes were from make-up she hadn't managed to clean off or just fatigue.
The phone rang, an ear-splitting shrieking noise and Jamie ran out to the kitchen to the wall-hanging receiver.
"Hello?" she barked and swallowed. The running had not agreed with her stomach, and she wondered if she would make it back if she had to vomit again.
The voice on the other end was shaky and female. "Hi, uhm...Is Jamie there?"
Nancy.
"Yeah, it's me." Jamie pinched the bridge of her nose. She checked the clock, Nancy had skipped school today too.
"Oh, good, I wasn't sure you'd be home, it's only third period," Nancy said and her wobbly voice indicated she'd been crying. "Uhm...You haven't talked to Steve today, have you? Only, I tried calling him, but I guess he's in school and..." Her voice cracked completely and Jamie struggled to make out what she was saying through the sobs: "Oh God, Jamie, I think I really messed up last night. I told Steve that our relationship was bullshit and-"
She kept on talking, but Jamie had to put the receiver by her shoulder to keep herself from vomiting all over her mom's linoleum floor. This sounded suspiciously like much of the same content that Steve had talked about during the car-ride home yesterday. She leaned her head back against the wall. Her brain pulsated with painful throbs every heartbeat and her stomach made rebellious motions every time she moved. On top of that, she thought she was coming down with a fever.
Jamie picked the receiver back up and interrupted Nancy mid-sentence and mid-cry. "Nancy? I'm not feeling too good. And to be honest, I don't really care about you and Steve or you and Jonathan or you and any other guy right now. I'm not Barb. Sorry."
She hung up.
That was cruel, but not as cruel as her headache. Jamie shut off all the lights in her house and crawled back into bed.
##
The phone rang again. Jamie laid awake in her bed listening to it ring. Maybe her mom had changed the batteries or something, because she couldn't remember it being this loud. Normally she barely heard it in her room, but now it sounded like it was just next to her on the bed. The house was lay dormant otherwise, Dustin or her mom hadn't come home yet. With a grunt, she got out of bed to answer the phone.
It was the library, calling to complain about a certain Mr. Dustin Henderson, and Jamie "Uh-huh"-ed until the librarian-lady was satisfied and hung up. He'd checked out too many books or something. What a problematic 8th-grader. She rubbed her taut stomach thoughtfully. God, she was hungry. Still lazy, she opted for eating a handful of cereal at once and then downing some milk straight from the carton. The doorbell rang just as she'd flipped the carton upside down to get to the last drops.
She wiped her mouth and checked the clock. It was too early for anyone to be home, so she had no idea who could come calling at their house. Only one way to find out.
"Steve?" Jamie asked, wincing at the daylight and the waft of hairspray attacking her nostrils. It was Steve, with his hair sticking up defiantly to oppose his otherwise deflated demeanor.
"Hey," he said, leaning on her doorway. Behind him, the Beemer stood idle in her mom's usual parking spot. "You weren't in class today. Thought I'd check on you."
"Uh, I'm fine," Jamie said and used the door to support her upright position. Steve's eyebrow rose, but he refrained from commenting the obvious fact that she did not look fine. Neither did he, of course, but at least he'd made an effort. She scoured her brain for something else to say. "Thanks for the ride home."
"Oh, you remember that?" Steve picked at the cuffs of his corduroy jacket. "Funny. Nancy couldn't remember anything from last night - thought maybe that punch was spiked with more than vodka."
Oh God, more Nancy. Okay. Jamie squeezed her eyes shut and listened to the bitterness of Steve's voice as he recalled how she'd come up to him in gym-class, all pissed that he hadn't picked her up that morning, like she wasn't the one who'd broken up with him last night. And for Jonathan Byers, of all people. Come on. To make matters worse, she acted all innocent about it, and then had the audacity to have lunch with Jonathan, sitting atop that beaten up Ford LTD.
"Anyway, what were you doing with that douchebag Hargrove anyway?"
Jamie shifted gears, trying to pay attention now that he was done talking about his girlfriend, ex or otherwise. "What? Who?"
"Billy Hargrove? He practically carried you down from upstairs, you were pretty out of it," Steve said, but he made it sound like a question. A concerned furrow was placed between his immaculate brows. His hand clenched and unclenched on the doorway. "Uh, he didn't...do anything to you, did he? 'Cause I swear to God, I'll bea-"
"What? No! Ew," Jamie said, even the thought of it making bile rise in her throat again. "He just talked and stared at himself in the mirror."
"Uh-huh." No way of telling if Steve believed her, but what did it matter to him anyway? "Are you sure you're feeling okay? You look a little off for it just to be a hangover."
"Think maybe I'm coming down with a flu. Or something. If you don't mind, I'm gonna go back to bed."
"Oh, uhm," Steve said hurriedly as he grabbed the door before she could shut it completely. "Just, uh, have you talked to Nancy at all? Her mom said she wasn't home."
"Bye, Steve," Jamie said with a roll of her eyes and forced the door shut. "Bye!"
She shuffled down the hall, with every intention of just going back to bed, when the door flung open behind her. Twirling, ready to chew Steve out, she was faced with Dustin, who had both hands clamped down on his hat.
"What was Steve Harrington doing here?" he asked with that slight lisp of his that came with the fake veneers. His lip lifted in disgust. "Are you fooling around with your best friend's boyfriend?"
"What, no! They broke up last night, but-" she raised her voice to overpower Dustin's sudden gasp "-we're not fooling around!" As much as to change the subject as to sate her own curiosity, she asked: "What's wrong with your head?"
"Oh! Uh!" Dustin yelped, hands clamping down even harder. He began shuffling passed her, heading for the bathroom. "Bad hair day! Real bad! I - uh - gotta take a shit!"
Jamie backed off and let him slam the bathroom door in her face. "Oh come on, man, that's disgusting!"
"You might wanna stay clear of the hallway for a while!" he called from inside and she shuddered, electing to go watch TV in the living room instead until their mom came home.
"You're gross!"
"You're grosser!"
##
"Hey there, sleepyhead," Claudia Henderson chirped as Jamie came stumbling into the kitchen the next morning. Apparently, she'd passed out on the couch, because she woke up there in her PJ's and covered in a blanket. She grunted, squinting at the harsh sun penetrating the bright blue kitchen curtains, and rubbed her face to get rid of the pattern from one of the throw-pillows. "You were out like a light when I came home yesterday."
"Yeah, I think I might have the flu." Jamie sat at the kitchen table, opposite her brother who was slurping up some scrambled eggs from his plate like he was already running late. She grimaced. "You're gross."
Without missing a beat, he went: "You're gross! You need to take a shower, like, yesterday."
He nodded his head towards her shirt, and Jamie noticed the large sweat-stains permeating around her armpits. She lifted her arm, sniffed and nearly fell off the kitchen chair. Okay, he had a point.
"You want some eggs, baby?"
"Oh, god, yes, please," Jamie said and hurried to get her plate ready. "I'm starving!" She shuffled on some scrambled eggs from the frying pan her mom proffered, and began eating just like her brother without noticing. The kitchen was dead silent and she looked up, mouth full of eggs, to see her mother and little brother staring at her. "What?"
"Nothing!" her mom said quickly, effectively shutting off Dustin. "You just - just eat your eggs, honey."
"Thish ish delicioush!" she said between mouthfuls and poured herself a glass of OJ that she finished in one big gulp. Dustin and her mom was having some sort of silent conversation, filled with hand gestures and pointed looks, but Jamie was too focused on her food to care. Eggs down, she sat back in her chair. Maybe she ate too fast? The room was kind of spinning now.
She jolted at her mom's cool hand resting on her forehead. "You don't have a fever. How are you feeling? You look a little...pale."
"You look like a corpse," her brother supplied generously.
"Dusty!"
"What?"
"I just need a shower," Jamie said and cleared her plate into the dishwasher. While she was at it, she put back everything into the fridge too, and wiped the counter hastily. "Don't worry about driving me, mom, I can take my old bike."
"Uh..." was her mom's reply, as the other two Hendersons just stared at Jamie cleaning up. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I need the fresh air. Don't wait for me," Jamie said and smiled brightly, causing the sweat droplets on her face to pile atop her top lip. Wiping them off, she leaned to kiss her mom's cheek and then her brother's. "Love you, bye."
She bounded off into the shower, not noticing the stunned looks she left in her wake. Sweaty, but freezing, she opted for a hot shower. Her hair needed a bit more attention than she was willing to give it to cooperate, so she just pulled it back into a ponytail to get it out of her face. A few curly ringlets escaped to hang around in her face, the result of a hazardous fringe she had tried to pull off a year or so ago, and she blew them out of her eyes every few seconds. Only five minutes after her shower, she was sweating again, even though she was still cold to the touch. She felt fine though, just a little dizzy, but after missing an entire semester before summer she didn't want to get any more absences to her name.
Figuring some deodorant would keep her from sweating through her shirt, she piled the stuff on under her arms and under her B-cup sized breasts and any other place she could think that sweat would amass. Her mom and brother had left while she was showering, but had left a pre-packed lunch for her that she grabbed to put in her backpack. The bike was a bit rusty, but still serviceable, and she made good time to Hawkins High, getting in five minutes early for first period.
A couple of girls upfront were turning around to look at her, before dissolving into whispers right away. They were ones Jamie vaguely recognized as not quite part of Carol's group, but hopeful hangarounds, ready to do Carol or Tommy H's every bidding. The third time they turned around it was getting kind of old, so Jamie made a rude gesture involving both mouth and hands their way. The blond - Patty? - gaped in shock, but Jamie just shrugged and raised her eyebrows in an open challenge. No takers.
AP English started with some silent reading, allowing those who hadn't done their homework some time to catch up. The book was heavy and depressive, and Jamie read the same sentence eight times before making sense of it. That jolt of energy that had come with her mom's eggs this morning was fading quickly, like a draining battery, and she had to fight for each word to get into her skull. Like tiny ants, the letters danced and shifted on the page, so much it was making her dizzy and she had to close her eyes.
"Missss Henderson," Mr. Terrence, a heavyset guy with thick black Beatles-hair and a beard, snapped and jolted Jamie back to reality. "Are you still with us?"
"Uh-huh," she said, clearing her throat and straightening in her chair. The girls whispered to themselves again, while the rest of the class settled for snickering in their seats.
"Okay then, the passage we just read, what category of writing would you say it is an example of?"
"Uhh..." Jamie stared, looked around to see if Nancy was there to help, but failed to see the sharp face of the eldest Wheeler-kid. What had she just been reading? What was the question? "It's - ah - uh - written in first person, so I guess it's some sort of personal anecdote?"
Mr. Terrence beamed brightly, small glittering teeth inside his heavy beard. "Good guessing, Miss Henderson, that is absolutely correct. Okay, so, what is the author indirectly referring to in the phrase 'so unfortunate as to not hear'?" He moved on to someone else. Jamie breathed again. Terrence was seldom cruel, but he had been on her case this semester. This was probably the first question she'd managed all year.
He held her back after class to give her the semester-assignment the others had gotten yesterday. "You know the drill, Henderson. Sleep in class and I will wake you up with a question. All right? If you're unwell, you stay at home. Speaking of which, you're looking a little pale. Do you need to see the school-nurse?"
"What? No, I just need some air," Jamie replied, practically swaying on her feet. It was like she'd burned through her breakfast while biking over here and now she was all shivery and dizzy again. She stuffed the assignment into her backpack and trekked down the hall to her locker. It was a free period now, one that she usually spent in the PhysEng-club, but the thought of going in there and listen to the guys rave about some movie they hadn't invited her to made her guts churn. She could just hang out at the library, get a head-start on this assignment. Or just lie down somewhere, her vision was blurring in front of her.
The semester assignment was supposed to prepare them for writing college applications: write a personal essay about overcoming an obstacle. Pssh. The sheet listed examples that made it clear that obstacle could mean anything, a breakup, a tough season in basketball, an injury, a paralyzing fear...
Teeth and darkness. Her mind went there in an instant. A million glittering teeth and that dark, forbidden world awaiting her beyond the slimy portal. Left leg tingling, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe as she made her way down the crowded hall. Every time she moved, her jeans would rub against the scarring, the thousands of teeth-marks that still marred her skin. She saw the creature in every shadow, every dark corner of a room, every open closet - waiting for her. It had tasted her flesh and in turn injected her with its poison. It had her scent.
Both legs grew heavier and her breath became shallow. Maybe she should see the school-nurse after all? Jamie blinked and tried to focus on the moving shadows, they all blurred together, as did the noises. Sweat pooled on her forehead, on her upper lip and on her chin. Still she was freezing cold. Had she taken her medication today? With a guilty pang, she realized she hadn't. It hadn't even crossed her mind, she had been feeling so great at breakfast and now she was close to pas-
"Watch it, Coma Girl!"
Tommy H shoved her into a row of lockers. His crowd snickered as her shoulder hit the metal with a bang, sending lightening strikes of pain up through her spine. Her footing gave out and she slumped to the floor, eyes rolling back into her head. The snickering stopped.
"Oh my God! Is she okay?"
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit!"
"I didn't see, did she hit her head? Is she alive?"
Someone grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her while still on the ground. "Oy, Henderson, wake up! Jesus, stop playing, wake up!" The hands dropped her. "Fuck! I think she's dead. think I killed her!"
A low gravelly voice cut through the fog. He barked orders at the others: "Jesus Christ, go call an ambulance! Come on, get outta my way, I know CPR."
Footsteps bounded away. A new someone kneeled next to her and laid her flat. He opened her eyelids, found nothing, and listened to her shallow breathing until he was satisfied it was still there. "She's breathin'. Come on, give me a hand, let's get her over to her side."
"Why?" New hands grabbed her by her jeans and shirt, all struggling to work together to shift her so she laid sideways instead of flat on her back.
"So she won't choke on her own-"
Just then, Jamie's eyes flung open and her stomach heaved. Vomit spewed out of her mouth, most of it landing squarely on Billy Hargrove's combat boots. The girls squealed and moved away to avoid getting hit. Jamie moaned and slipped back into semi-unconsciousness.
The voice sounded both annoyed and exasperated as it finished: "-vomit."
##
The sterile hospital room was kept dark for her comfort. The light from the corridor seeped through the cracks on the door, and some machines blinked on and off, accompanied by the occasional beep. It smelled of soap and old people, just as she remembered it from before summer. It wasn't the same room though. Before summer, she'd had her own bathroom and everything, where the nurses helped her clean up until she was strong enough to stand on her own.
Outside, in the bright corridor, her mom talked with doctors and she knew Dustin sat desolately on one of the hard chairs, waiting for the okay to go inside to see her. But that was outside. Inside, it was cool and dark and quiet. Her own bubble of nothing. It was weird, she wasn't scared of the dark. She was just scared of shadows.
A doctor entered, sending a temporary beam of light inside the dark room. She was young, short and plump, looking like she could have been related to Jamie's mom. Her hair was back in a low pony and she carried a clipboard and a disarming smile. Jamie hadn't seen her at the hospital before, so she figured she was new.
"Hi, Jamie," the doctor said and refrained from turning on the lights. She opted to sit next to the bed instead of the plush armchairs over by the wall. "I'm Doctor Rhines. Remember, I came by earlier to run some tests on you?"
Jamie shook her head. She didn't remember even getting to the hospital.
"Okay," Doctor Rhines said softly, in a kind voice. "The young man who came with you explained that you fell over, that you might have hit your head. Does your head hurt anywhere in particular?"
She shook her head.
"Okay. Your results came back and we couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. Only, I talked to your mom and she said you're on some kind of medication. I couldn't find anything about it in your medical record - do you remember the name of the pills you're taking?"
"No, not really," Jamie answered truthfully, all thoughts of the so-called young man forgotten. Panic built inside her, like an icicle growing in her stomach. The government-doctors had put her on that medication, figures it wouldn't feature in her public records. "It's just after this...accident last year."
"Yeah, I heard, you were...in a coma for quite some time, right?" Doctor Rhines had a soft and pleasant voice. Good bedside manners, in contrast to the other doctors Jamie had met. "Must've been scary. Still, passing out like that can be a side-effect of whatever pills you're taking. Maybe you can call me this week to tell me what label says on the bottle? Then we can work out some alternative that won't make you all dizzy and out of breath like that."
Jamie nodded in the darkness. "Sure."
Doctor Rhines looked over her shoulder, at the door to the corridor, before she leaned closer to Jamie. She smelled of synthetic cherries, probably her shampoo. "There are some other things on your record that I would like to discuss too. There's a lot of-"
The door slammed open, revealing a smiling Doctor Owens who barged in and flicked the light switch on. Jamie recoiled, but managed to keep her eyes open in the glaring brightness. He might have been smiling, but he did not look happy.
"Well, Miss Henderson, you gave us quite a fright, huh?" he said jovially before descending onto Doctor Rhines. He talked like he had ran here and was already running late to his next appointment. "Hello, I'm Doctor Sam Owens, Jamie's physician. How do you do?"
"Doctor Iris Rhines," the younger doctor replied, shaking the man's hand. "Do you work at the hospital?"
"No, no, no," he said with a bright chuckle. "I work up at St. John's, the private clinic up by Hawkins Labs. Jamie's my patient there."
Doctor Rhines met the smile calmly. "Oh. Okay. Maybe you can tell me what kind of prescription Jamie's on. I can't seem to find any mention of it in her records."
"That's because there's no prescription! We got young Jamie here on plain old B12s, hoping to get her iron-levels up and about again. I talked to her mom about adding in some omega 3-capsules as well, some fatty acids is probably just what she needs."
"Is that so?" said Doctor Rhines and looked at Jamie, who in turn looked away. If Doctor Owens and his government-backed team wanted her prescription to stay out of the spotlight, she was not going to risk her or her family's safety by revealing it. The two doctors stood there for a while, smiling politely at each other, until Doctor Owens finally asked to get a minute alone with his patient.
Doctor Rhines complied, but not before telling Jamie to pull the emergency cord if she needed anything.
"Well, then, Jamie," Doctor Owens said when they were alone. "You know what I'm gonna ask you."
"Yes, I've been taking my medicine," Jamie replied dutifully. She tugged at the hospital bracelet. "Some stupid brute at school shoved me into some lockers before, I think I hit my head and passed out."
"Just a high-school bully, huh?" Doctor Owens asked as if Jamie hadn't just described a violent assault on her person. "How are you feeling otherwise?"
"Fine."
"Did you tell the good Doctor Rhines anything else?"
"No?"
"Okay, that's good," he said and smiled, even if it did not quite reach his eyes. "Too many cooks and all that..." The idiom was solid, because Jamie obviously wasn't a person to him, rather than a boiling concoction he was tasked to keep an eye on. His watch seemed more interesting to him than Jamie. "Well, it's been a busy day kid, I'll tell you that. Go home, get some rest, okay?"
He left, only for Dustin to enter. Her younger brother obviously hadn't been given the okay to go inside, as he darted through the open door and shut it quickly behind him. At least his sunny expression was genuine, unlike Doctor Owens' smile. It disappeared quickly though, replaced with a serious grimace.
"Are you pregnant?"
"WHAT?" Jamie spat and sat up in the bed. "You little shit! No! Why would you ask me that?"
"Because," Dustin started and Jamie could tell this was going to be one of his long explanations again, "Patricia in my class heard it from her sister who heard it from her friend that you were going steady with Will's brother but you got dumped by him - Will's brother - and then you hooked up with Max' brother at Tina's party before you went home with Steve and that you got pregnant and you puked on Max' brother's shoes because of morning sickness and now everyone wants to know if the baby is Jonathan's, Steve's or Max' brother's."
"There are too many possessive pronouns in that statement," Jamie said when recovering from Dustin's lisped story. "Who's Max?"
"Oh," Dustin said and his sunny grin reappeared. "She's this total badass from California. She beat my high-score at Dig Dug with like 100 000 points and she rides a skateboard and we asked her to join our party."
"Sorry, Max is a girl?"
"Yeah, her real name's Maxine, but she gets mad if you call her that and punches you in the arm so it leaves a bruise," Dustin explained, as if speaking from experience. "Her brother's a shithead. He tried to run over me and Lucas and Mike."
Jamie's head still reeled at the pregnancy-rumors, but got dragged back by Dustin's last sentence. "He tried to WHAT?"
"Like the day before Halloween me and Lucas and Mike went biking home and then he came driving like 200 miles per hour and we had to dive into the ditch so he wouldn't hit us." Dustin shook his head like that was old news, instead of just two days ago. "Anyway, I got something more important to tell you."
Jamie stared at the smaller and slightly more masculine version of herself. "More important than some high-schooler trying to kill you?"
"Yeah," he said matter-of-factly. He hefted his backpack up, zipped it open to reveal the ghost trap, only now it was shaking slightly and held shut with a large piece of duct tape. Dustin grinned widely, veneers gleaming, before he placed the box on the foot of her bed. "I discovered a new species. I call him Dart."
"Wait, there's something inside there?" Jamie asked in horror, because she had thought the big reveal was how he rigged the box to shake like it contained something. Not that it actually contained something! "Alive?"
"Yeah, I found him rummaging through our garbage the other night," Dustin said distractedly, as he was looking around the hospital room. "Ah." He went to the cabinet and returned with a bedpan.
"Do you know what that is?"
Dustin looked at the bedpan and shrugged. "Huh? No, I just wanna be prepared in case he runs off again. Are you ready?"
Without waiting for her reply, he flicked the switch and the box opened. Jamie leaned closer in morbid curiosity. What the hell was that?
The size of a small rat, the creature was dark and slimy, looking somewhere between a slug and a lizard. It had no eyes, no ears, just this tiny little circle of a mouth, that turned her way when she made a noise. It reminded her of a troglodyte, from one of Dustin's many D'n'D-campaigns. It made a chirping noise that made every hair on Jamie's body stand up to attention.
"Cool, huh?"
"It's hideous," Jamie said, but still stared. As if the thing had understood her, it turned its head towards her again and opened its mouth to shriek thinly.
"Don't listen to her, Dart. I think you're awesome," Dustin whispered to the creature, giving Jamie a hard glare. Apparently, looking at the thing gave him some comfort. He looked up with his grin back in place. "He likes nougat."
"I bet," Jamie said and reached over to flick the switch, effectively trapping Dart back inside the trap. "If he escapes at the hospital, we're screwed. This place is huge."
Dustin nodded, believing her. Truth was, it made her uneasy to look at. Nothing particular, not that she could place her finger on, but after last year, she was a bit wary of new species found around Hawkins. The box wiggled and shook, Dart did not like being locked up like that, but Dustin didn't seem to notice as he prattled on about it being a new kind of terrestrial pollywog, no matter what Will and Mike said (he refrained from telling her exactly what Will and Mike had said) and that he was going to name it - the species - after himself.
Jamie listened with half an ear, just in case he dropped another bomb like before, and tried to wrap her head around the rumors surrounding her in school. She'd told the PhysEng-club that she was going to Tina's party with Jonathan, so that's where that came from. She wondered which of the guys had told which girl to impress her, but it had still leaked. It was no longer a love triangle, more a five-sided polygon involving her, Nancy, Steve, Jonathan and that Billy Hargrove-guy that she still mentally referred to as California. Who had tried to kill her little brother. Hah. He deserved every bit of vomit on his shoes and then some.
She realized Dustin had finally shut up and now sat beaming on the edge of her bed, the rumbling Ghost Trap between them. As a big sister, that shit-eating grin always gave her the urge to smack him upside the head and she did.
"What?" she barked as he yelped and rubbed his head.
"Nothing," he said, still grinning. Jamie narrowed her eyes and reached to smack him again, but he was too fast and avoided the blow. "Jesus! I just like that you're back, that's all."
"We saw each other this morning, dipshit."
"Yeah, I know, like physically you've been around since before summer, but, like, personality-wise..." he trailed off, an unusual occurrence when dealing with Dustin. Her eyebrows rose as he tried to find the right words. "Like yesterday, you yelled at me through the bathroom door. You haven't done that since last year!"
"That's bullshit, I yell at you all the time. Because you're a little asshole all the time," Jamie said with crossed arms.
"Yeah, no, you haven't, not since..." Dustin looked over his shoulder at the completely empty room. He still whispered the last two words: "The Incident."
"That's not true, I-" Jamie started and scrambled for an example. Okay, when had she yelled at him last? They always fought and swore and wrestled with each other. As Dustin had proclaimed when he was around six, it was his duty as a little brother to be annoying. Jamie thus found it her duty as a big sister to put him in his place. He was a growing boy, but she still had a couple of inches and a few pounds on him, making it an easy match whenever it got physical.
"See?" Dustin proclaimed when Jamie stayed silent for too long. "I told you. You haven't. But now you're yourself again. Maybe the hormones caused by the pregnancy jumpstarted your spiritual healing process."
"Oh shut up," Jamie said and shoved at his shoulder. Whenever Dustin watched late-night TV aimed at middle-aged women, he got some funny ideas in his head. "I'm not pregnant! Not unless I'm having the second coming of Jesus anyway."
"You're still a virgin?" Dustin asked and ducked quickly from the blow Jamie lashed out at him. "You're such a loser."
"Shut up, success is not measured by how fast you can lose your virginity."
Dustin shrugged and looked down on his trap. "Maybe not for girls..."
"Not for guys either. Thinking like that is why high-school guys are always pressuring both each other and girls into having sex before they're emotionally ready. Sex is between two consenting adults who want to share something intimate and physical with each other!" She had to raise her voice because Dustin had placed both his hands over his ears and started to sing "LA LA LA LA LA" to drown her out. He had no issues talking about sex, but became weird about it when it was coupled with love. Grinning, she kept it up: "SEX SHOULD BE ENJOYABLE FOR BOTH PARTIES, WHICH IS MORE LIKELY IF THEY BOTH CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER'S FEELINGS AND EXPERIENCES! SEX SHOULD BE SAFE AND FUN- Oh hi, mom!"
Dustin paused his 'lalalala'-ing to turn around and smile at their mom. "Hi, mom!"
Claudia Henderson had paused in the doorway to contemplate her two young spawns. She blinked and shook her head. "Jamie, please lower your voice, we can hear you all over the hospital."
"Yes, mom."
"I'm serious, there could be someone saying good bye to their loved ones down the hall."
"Yes, mom."
"And Dusty, your sister is absolutely right, and when you're ready to have that talk-"
"LA LA LA LA LA!"
Thank you for reading. Hope you enjoyed, and please leave a review if you did/didn't!