Chapter 3
The tiny pill bottle seemed huge in her hands. It was see-through orange and labeled 'Stablon'. It had a warning to not operate heavy vehicles, hence why all her driving practice had been put on hold, and not consume alcohol. Dustin's words had gotten under her skin. Two days of not taking the pills, and her 'personality was back'. Stablon... Doc Owens had said the active ingredient was a four-syllable word she couldn't remember. And that's it. Nothing about side-effects, what it was used for, or anything else than how to ingest it and when to do it. Three times a day, before mealtimes, two pills at a time.
Had they ever told her what they were for? Not that she remembered. After she woke up from the coma, after all the sleepless nights and the splitting headaches, they had put her on this medication 'to stabilize her'. Whatever the hell that meant. Now she had a hunch it was used to counteract any more serious side-effects that came with that antidote they had injected her with. Still, two - now three - days without them and she felt fine. Better than she had in a long time. Doc Owens' words came back to haunt her, how side-effects could materialize years and decades later.
She finally made up her mind and poured the contents of the pill-bottle into the toilet. After she flushed, and made sure all the pills were either dissolving or gone, she refilled the bottle with some old multivitamins from the back of her cabinet that had the same size as the Stablon-pills. Of course she considered calling Doctor Rhines to tell her about the pills, but what had Chief Hopper said about phones? Oh, right, 'expect them to be listening in." Reassuring as that was.
Instead, she wrote the brand on a post-it and put it in her jeans-pocket. Maybe Steve could give her a ride to the hospital and she could slip the note to Rhines. That would leave the young female doctor in potentially a lot of trouble though.
It was a good chance Steve wouldn't give her a ride either. She hadn't exactly been nice to him when he was pining over his breakup with Nancy. And she hadn't been nice to Nancy either. Jamie blew air out her mouth with a puff. Say what you want about the PhysEng-club, but the relationship drama had been kept to a minimum. Because they all - including Jamie - were a bunch of losers, like Dustin had pointed out. Not that he was not following in her footsteps.
"JAMIE!"
Just as she thought of Dustin, came his shrilling cry through the house. It was Saturday, their mom was at some jazzercise, and they were left to fend for themselves at the house. Jamie scrambled through her bedroom door and down to Dustin's room. Knowing that Dustin kept that slimy creature in Yertle's glassed habitat gave Jamie the chills and she was just waiting for it to break free and wreak havoc on the house.
"Jamie, look!"
The shrill in Dustin's voice hadn't been fear, but excitement, as he pointed to the thing called Dart. It convulsed and shifted in the makeshift cage.
"He's growing!"
"Okay, that is not how metamorphis works!" Jamie said, disgusted and intrigued despite herself. He'd gone from rat-sized to cat-sized, in a matter of seconds, shedding skin and slime as he changed. It lurched around in the cage, now on the verge of being too small, chirping and skittering to itself. Dustin covered up the cage with a blanket again.
"Is that my blanket?" Jamie asked, recognizing the tartan patter. She pinched Dustin's side, causing a pained yelp of laughter. "You little shit!"
"I didn't think you'd mind!" he called after her, but she was already stomping down the hallway, eager to get away from that creature. The tartan had reminded her of Nancy again, she wore skirts like that to school all the time. It was a couple of days since she'd hung up on her, so maybe it was time to start rekindling that new friendship. Now that her personality was back and all. A treacherous voice asked if maybe Nancy had preferred Jamie to be all blank and boring, a clean slate for her to project her dead friend's personality onto.
"Oh, hi, Jamie!" said Mrs. Wheeler on the phone, always the pleasant housewife. She'd been very kind to Jamie's mom throughout the divorce. "Oh, Nancy? She said something about a sleepover at Stacy's, a girl's night I think she called it. Strange of her not to invite you, I'll talk to her about it when she gets back. I always raised her to be inclusive and-"
"Oh, that's okay, thanks a bunch, Mrs. Wheeler!" Jamie said quickly and hung up. As far as she knew, Nancy despised Stacy ever since the latter had joined the cheerleading squad and denounced Nancy in public during her 'initiation'. On a hunch, she tried the Byers. Because Dustin hung out so often with Will, the phone number was on quick-dial.
She got nothing but the answering-machine. Okay. So, either Nancy was at Jonathan's and they were too busy to pick up, or they were somewhere else. That narrowed it down. Not. Sometimes it would've been useful if high-schoolers also used those walkie-talkies her brother and his friends were always communicating by. Speaking of which, they were doing it right now. The crackling voices of Mike and Lucas sounded through the house.
"Dustin!" she shouted, still holding the phone in case she thought of someone else to call. "Turn down the volume!"
It was just last year that she helped Dustin rig up a repeater in the woods between their and Mike's house, so they could all stay in touch at the same time rather than relying on Lucas to repeat the message.
"It's already on one!" Dustin shouted back. Which was an obvious lie, she could hear them like it was coming out of the phone-receiver rather than the walkie-talkie.
"Maybe if we set up some sort of trap, we can catch Dart. You said he liked nougat, right? Over."
"Roger. I'll go by Will's, see what's up. Over."
"TURN IT DOWN, DUSTIN!"
"Hang on guys, it's just my bitch-ass sister. IT'S ALREADY DOWN!"
Jamie slammed the receiver back on its stand. "WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!"
"How did you hear- uah!" Dustin tried to slam the door in her face, but she jumped in before he had the chance. He shrieked his mid-voice change scream and threw himself over his walkie-talkie. "CODE RED! I REPEAT, CODE RE- AARG!"
Jamie pounced on top of her brother's back, wrestling with the walkie-talkie and trying to give him a good noogie at the same time. "THAT - IS - NOT - A - POLITE - WORD, you little sonnofabitch!"
"Dustin, are you okay? Please respond, over!"
Having successfully acquired the walkie-talkie, Jamie settled for using her legs to keep Dustin at bay, and hit the talking-button: "Dustin's a little shit! Over and out!" She pushed the antenna down and gave Dustin a final shove with her legs.
"Dude!" he said and adjusted his shirt that was way up by his elbows. "That was serious! Something's going on with Will."
"Then you should have turned it down!" Jamie showed him the walkie-talkie, one that he'd inherited from her after she'd inherited after their older cousin Jack. "See, you have it all the way up to-" She faltered, seeing where the knob actually was. "-one."
"I told you!" Dustin snatched back the walkie-talkie with a huff. "How did you even hear me all the way out in the kitchen?"
"Because you were talking super-loud," Jamie said in a duh-voice, even if it was laced with hesitation. "Maybe there's something wrong with the volume-button. Lemme see."
Dustin relented the walkie-talkie back to her when she held out her hand. She turned it on, adjusted the dial up to ten and the resounding beep nearly knocked her onto the floor. "AAH!"
"Jesus!" Dustin cried and jumped down to turn the walkie-talkie off. "What's up with you and your doglike-hearing?"
"That didn't hurt your ears?" Jamie rubbed her temples to ease the sharp jolt of pain that had erupted in her eardrums. She flexed her jaw, as to release pressure in her sinuses. "Shit!"
"No, that was just loud, not painful." Dustin stared at her with a puzzle expression. "Stay here."
He darted out of the room, leaving Jamie in a pile of his dirty clothes and comics. A few seconds later, she heard him say: "Can you hear me now?"
"Yes?" she said, wondering why he had bother to just go stand outside the door to talk to her. No answer. "YES?" She puffed and screamed: "YES!"
Half a minute later, he came bounding back inside, completely out of breath. "Dude!"
"Where were you?"
"Across the street."
"Screw you, ass-"
"No! I'm serious! Come on," Dustin said and when Jamie didn't immediately respond, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the room. "Come on, come on, come on!"
"All right, jeez."
He positioned her in the hallway, so she could see out the window onto the street. Dustin himself went outside, closed the door behind him, and turned back to face her on the sidewalk on their side of the road.
"Jamie," he said and if she hadn't seen him standing at least twenty feet away, she would've sworn he was right next to her. He repeated her name and it was obvious from his body language that he was not shouting on the top of his lungs. He took a few steps backwards. "Jamie."
She nodded when he held up his thumb to get a response from her. He continued on, walking backwards, facing her. "Jamie. Jamie. Jamie."
It got further away, but he was still loud and clear. It was downright spooky and she half-suspected him to have placed a speaker in the living room and somehow connected the walkie-talkie to it. The walkie was still in her hand though. He kept going backwards, into the neighbor's yard, saying her name every few seconds. She lost sight of him before she even began to struggle hearing him.
It took him a couple of minutes to figure out he had no way of knowing if she was still able to hear him or not, and he jogging back inside, face red and sweaty from the exercise. She stared at him, his familiar grin, his lopsided curls, hoping to hear the word: "SIKE!" come out of his smiling mouth.
No such luck.
"Dude. You got super-hearing!"
Jamie and Dustin's dad was an engineer, their mom an accountant. They liked numbers, hard facts and calculated data. Jamie and Dustin were both tinkerers, always trying to figure out how stuff worked and how far they could push the limits of their equipment. Their dad had showed Jamie how to perform an experiment when she was younger, how to record the results and draw conclusions based on the data. She had in turn showed it to Dustin. So, if you put it like that, it was her own damn fault she was sitting in the field with a blindfold and a walkie-talkie.
"Okay, so it's got a range of about one mile with the extra antenna. I'll keep my voice in the same level the whole time and record the distances. You hit the comm-button once when you hear me okay, twice when you start to lose me. No signal, I'll assume I'm out of earshot."
Dustin walked away with his own walkie-talkie, a notebook and a measuring stick. Every 10 yards, he'd say her name and she'd dutifully respond. She was still not convinced this was not some ruse from his side, but doubt had began to seep into her mind. Nothing could explain the sudden increased hearing abilities. No radioactive spider, no lightning strike from a Greek God, no exposure to any illegal chemicals. Okay, so, a supernatural monster from another dimension had bitten her, but that was almost a year ago. Peter Parker had gotten his powers within a week or so.
"Jamie?"
Click
"Jamie?"
Click
Almost immediately, Dustin said in a giggling voice: "Oh, man, this is so cool. My sister has superpowers!"
She did not click for that. Besides, the thing that bit her did not even have ears, so why would her hearing be all superpowered all of a sudden. Made no sense. Okay, Doctor Owens had mentioned unwanted side-effects, but she was pretty sure he was talking about going blind or dizziness, not...this.
"Jamie?"
Click
They'd talked about it extensively, she and Dustin. He was convinced she was developing superpowers. He also hoped it was genetic. His explanation for why she could hear voices over long range, but not, like, the sound of Mews walking around was what he called predispositioned awareness. Humans heard voices better than other things because they had trained themselves to. If she wanted to hear a cat walking, she had to train herself to listen for it. Sounded like a load of horse crap, but that was her brother for ya.
"Jamie?"
Click
"Jamie? I'm at 500 yards now."
She hesitated. He was fading a bit, but she could still hear him. Click click
"Did you just double-click because I told you how far away I was or did you actually struggle to hear me?" Even at this range, she could hear the irritation in his voice.
Jamie rolled her eyes and clicked once.
"That's what I thought."
Sitting there with the blindfold, Jamie realized she could hear a lot of things if she tried to. Wings of birds, cars driving by far away, branches creaking, grass whispering in the wind, plastic wheels rolling on concrete.
"Dustin?"
A girl's voice, about the same distance as Dustin. The plastic wheels stopped.
"Max!" Dustin exclaimed, sounding pleased and nervous and hormonal all at once. Aha. That explained the sound. Her skateboard. Dustin had reached the end of the field and continued onto the parking lot for the old mill.
"What are you doing here?" asked the girl called Max. There was a hard edge to her voice.
"Uh, I'm conducting an experiment, with my sister," said Dustin and Jamie rolled her eyes on his behalf. "What're you doing here?"
"Skating," said Max and there was a thump that was probably her skateboard being placed back down. "I don't see your sister anywhere. What are you experimenting on? Did you find Dart?"
That little shit had told the girl Max about his pollywog. Gosh, boys were all the same. To prevent Dustin from spilling the beans about Jamie's so-called superpower, she held the comm-button in this time and said: "Henderson 1 to Henderson 2, come in."
Immediately, he replied and it was weird when she was hearing him so far off and through the walkie-talkie at the same time. "This is Henderson 2, responding to Henderson 1. Over."
"Henderson 2, please return to base. I repeat, return to base. Over."
Max sounded impressed. "That's your sister? Cool. Billy would never agree to play with walkie-talkies with me."
"You could join, if you want." Dustin nearly tripped over his words and Jamie gritted her teeth.
"Henderson 2, I repeat, return to base, you little shithead."
"That sounded more like Billy," Max said with a laugh and the skateboard rolled a bit back and forth. "You better go back to her. I'll see you at school."
Dustin's voice was dreamlike. "Yeah. Bye!" Dustin's voice grew louder by the second, he was on his way back. "What the hell, dude, you just screwed up my chances to talk to Max without Lucas there."
Jamie took off her blindfold and laid flat back on the field. With a grin, she clicked once.
"You son of a bitch!"
Back home, they ate dinner in front of the TV, a rare weekend treat. Their mom usually insisted on eating dinner together by the kitchen table - they were still a family, even if their dad didn't live there anymore. But in the weekends, the rules were a bit lax. Jamie couldn't stop staring at her mother though. It was like she was waking up from a second coma and suddenly noticing everything around her. She remembered that her mom joked about losing 70 lbs by worrying about Jamie when she was in the hospital (and that she could stand to lose about 7o lbs more), but Jamie hadn't really noticed how gaunt and thin her mother actually looked. Okay, she was no Karen Wheeler or Joyce Byers, who were all angles and hipbones from nature's side. But she was a lot thinner than Jamie could remember.
Claudia Henderson had tried to lose weight ever since giving birth to Justin, and she went on these kicks every once in a while where she drank nothing but diet shakes or ate from small plates only. It seemed like the diet that stuck, was the 'worry-about-Jamie'-diet. Maybe now when she was better, her mom would gain back a pound or two. Jamie hoped so. Even her mom's naturally rosy complexion was looking a little pale.
Of course, that night it could've also be because Mews didn't show up for his nightly kitten meal. The cat rarely strayed far from Claudia, since she was the one feeding him, but tonight he was nowhere to be found.
Dustin knocked on her bedroom door after dinner and let himself into her room before she could answer. His cap was off, leaving his curls bouncing wild and free atop of his head. Jamie had the same ones, only the longer version, saving her a fortune in perms each year curly hair was in. He sat on the floor by her bed and whispered so their mom wouldn't hear.
"I've been thinking," he started and Jamie shifted so she laid more comfortably. Dustin never was one for short and sweet talks. "This superhearing of yours, it manifested at the same time as your personality came back."
Without meaning to, Jamie looked at the pill-bottle on her nightstand. "Uh-huh."
"Which was around the same time you went to the Halloween party."
"Yup."
"And you did not have sex?"
"Dustin," Jamie groaned and flipped so she laid on her back. "No, I did not have sex and even if I did, it would not be something I'd discuss with my baby brother."
"Fine, fine. But did you or didn't you?"
Jamie swatted at his head. "Why are you even asking me that, dipshit?"
"Because we need to figure out what triggered your superpower! In X-Men, it's usually linked with puberty, but you got your period like three years ago-"
"Oh my God. How do you know that?"
"-so that's not it. I would've guessed it was the Demogorgon-bite from last year, but that doesn't make sense because that's literally a whole year ago. No, it was something that happened at the party, we just need to figure out what."
"It's a pretty shitty superpower though. Like if you could choose, you wouldn't ever have superhearing as first pick."
"You might have other powers, we don't know that yet. Superstrength. Maybe you can fly. Turn invisible. We have to run tests."
"Wouldn't we have realized if I could fly?"
"Would we? It wouldn't have kicked in before you needed it."
"Are you telling me I gotta jump off the roof tomorrow? Because if I break my leg, that's on you."
"Maybe we can start by lifting dad's old weights in the basement. Not like he's using them anymore."
Jamie picked up on the bitterness and gently rubbed her brother's curls. She hesitated, realizing she could see as clearly in the dark as she could in daylight. Every strand of hair on Dustin's head shone differently and if she concentrated, she could hear his pulse going steadily through his body. Well, she might as well tell him. "I - uh - I had some spiked punch at that party."
"And?"
"And it made me really sick. Like really sick, so sick that I forgot to take my pills for a couple of days."
Dustin turned with his huge blue eyes open wide. "You haven't been taking your meds?"
"No, not-"
"You've been telling mom you have!" he gasped.
"I know, I know, but- uh. It's like I'm waking up again from a long, strange dream and I think taking those pills would make me fall asleep again, you know?"
Dustin grabbed the pill-bottle of her nightstand and read the name aloud. "Sta-blon. What the hell's it supposed to do?"
"I have no idea," Jamie said and snatched it back. "I've been taking it ever since I woke up from the coma."
"What if the pills have been suppressing your superpowers?" Dustin lisped, too excited to sit now. "What if it was the bite that gave you powers and then the government-assholes tried to hide them from you by making you take these pills? That's why they're running tests on you each week! HAHA! It was the bite! That makes so much sense!"
Jamie did not exactly share his excitement, but a sense of foreboding passed through her when she saw Dustin's face change from excited to thoughtful. He dashed out from her bedroom and down the hall.
"Hey! Where're you going?"
"I'm gonna have Dart bite me!"
She sprang up from her bed and followed him. He was already folding up the leg of his jeans, stumbling across the room to Yertle's tank at the same time. "What? I got bit by that thing from the Upside Down, not by some newly discovered pollywog!"
"Mike and Will said Dart is from the Upside Down!" Dustin exclaimed happily, like he had not metaphorically poured a bucket of ice water down her back.
"WHAT?" she yelped. No need to keep their voices down, their mom was outside looking for Mews. "You knew that thing was from the Upside Down and you brought it here?! IN THE SAME HOUSE AS ME?!"
"Look, I told Dart that I would look after him, before I knew he was maybe from the Upside Down," Dustin explained and tried to balance his leg up by the tank. "Now, if I get bit we'll have superpowers together and-"
Jamie grabbed hold of Dustin's wrist before he could yank off the blanket that covered Yertle's turtle tank. She must've gripped it harder than she intended as he winced in pain. "Are - you - insane?"
"What, you're the only one that gets to be a superhero?"
"We don't even know that it was the bite that gave me this power!" she cried out, dragging her brother away from the tank. Tears were threatening to spill over in her eyes. "The only thing we do know is that it landed me in a coma for three months! It took a whole team of scientists to find a cure, and that was highly experimental as well. You know what, maybe that was it? Maybe it was the antidote that gave me superhearing, not the extremely painful and poisonous bite from a creature from another dimension!"
"Dart's small, it won't hurt too much," Dustin argued. He tried to yank his arm back, but she held onto it. "If there's even a small chance I'll get powers, I'm taking it!"
"No, you're not!" Jamie said and wrestled him further away from the dresser. She grabbed both wrists and leaned down to look directly into his eyes. "Listen to me, Dusty, you can be a hero without superpowers! Being kind to people, helping them, that's a real hero. It has nothing to do with superstrength or flying or turning invisible. Dustin! Do you understand, Dustin?"
He had stopped struggling. Instead, he stared over her shoulder at the turtle tank, face white and eyes wide. She turned slowly, seeing that their struggling had somehow torn off the blanket. The tank was broken - and empty. The only thing left was slime and bits of skin. Another metamorphism. Dart had grown.
"Jesus Christ, don't touch that," Jamie said with a shiver as Dustin picked up a piece of skin that dripped with goo. Whatever had broken through the tank had to be the size of a small dog, maybe a terrier. The thought of something like that - from the UPSIDE DOWN, no less - running loose in the house made her want to cry.
Dustin looked sick. "Can you hear him?"
The idea to listen hadn't even struck her. She swallowed, and tried to tune out all the regular noises. If she tried, she could hear pretty much anything inside the room. Her own breathing, the slight vibration in the air as the hair on her arm rose, a smattering squelching sound, like something with a lot of teeth eating something wet.
It came from behind Dustin's armchair, in the corner. She nodded her head that way and in synch, they moved slowly, picking up makeshift weapons as they went.
"Dart?" Dustin asked gently, but now Jamie could see the trail of slime and something wet and dark that could only be blood leading from the cage to the corner. The content chewing noises continued. Slowly, ever so slowly, they both peered their heads over the armchair. It was like a tiny headless dinosaur, tearing off bits of flesh from a body covered in blood and orange fur. Their mom's cat.
Dart sensed them, because it turned around to face them with that tiny bulb-like head. It made some bobbing moves before the head erupted into a small version of that flower-petal monster that haunted Jamie's dreams. It shrieked and Jamie...froze.
Teeth and darkness swallowed her.
Thank you for reading! Please review if you have time :)