Chapter 5
"Hello ladies" Dustin said. He smiled at Max and El and then cleared his throat in dramatic fashion. Then his bravado, with his smile, fled and he looked at Mike. "Mike?"
"What?" Mike shook his head. "You said you were the spokesperson."
"But you're more suited to the job in hand" Dustin said out of the corner of his mouth. "It should be you."
"Spit it out" Max said belligerently.
Lucas stepped forward. "You should go home" he said directly to Max. "And El, you need to go home with Jonathan." He looked at Dustin, Mike and Will. "Right guys?"
The three of them were shuffling around in the dirt, a bit like chickens, staring intently at the ground, but there was a general murmur of assent.
Max jumped down from the bonnet of the car. She glared at Lucas who took a step back and then she glared at them all. El jumped down too.
"Are you serious?" Max said. She was fuming with rage. Her cheeks flushed red. "You better explain yourself?" She crossed her arms.
"Mike?" El was waiting for him to look at her, but he still seemed fixated on the ground. "Mike?" she said again.
Mike shrugged. "I'm scared for you okay" he said quietly.
"Are you freaking kidding me?" The red flush on Max's cheeks had spread to her ears. "Seriously Mike, you're scared for El?"
"I told you they wouldn't like it" Lucas mumbled.
"It doesn't matter!" Mike said in frustration. He looked at Max. "Yes, okay. I am scared for El." He finally looked at her and smiled sheepishly. "It's true" he said. "I am scared for you and I don't want you to go looking for Hopper. We don't know where he is or what sort of danger he's in and last time…" He paused and looked at Max. "Last time, Billy died and I don't want you to die."
"She's not gonna die Mike!" Max said angrily.
"You don't know that!" Mike glared at her. "How can you even say that?" He looked at El and it bothered him that he couldn't work out what she was thinking. "I'm sorry" he said, "but Joyce was right, you should go home with Jonathan."
El felt a prickle of irritation. "But Will's one of the boys right, so he gets to stay I suppose." She crossed her arms, mimicking Max.
Mike looked at Will. "Actually, I think Will should go too."
"What?" Will looked at Mike in surprise. Mike shrugged awkwardly.
"I'm sorry Will, but you're always looking over your shoulder here. I know you. You don't feel safe and you should go home."
"Well said" Dustin said.
"Bull crap" Max said coldly. "The only way we've beaten this before is because we've worked as a team."
"But we're not trying to beat anything this time" Lucas said quietly. "Joyce just wants to go and find out if Hopper is still alive."
Max stared at Lucas. She felt betrayed.
"I don't need anyone making decisions for me" she said coldly. "Billy was my brother and I know he was a jerk, but if anyone has a right to be part of this, whatever this is, it's me." She paused, sighing and shook her head at Lucas. "I don't need protecting" she said.
"Neither do I" El looked at Mike. "I've never needed protection" she said pointedly. "I'm not going to die Mike, and I am not going to be sent home like a child if there's a chance Hop needs me."
Mike felt a deep flush in his cheeks. He wanted to protect El, because he was scared of losing her, not because he didn't believe she was brave or brilliant and that if she set her mind to it, she could do anything.
"Just answer me this" he said. He stepped closer to her and stared into her eyes; he waited until she looked back. "When you saw Hopper before, you said it was different, that you couldn't reach him right?" El nodded. Everyone was listening. Mike took her hand and gently squeezed her fingers. "And you also said that you had felt something else there, something bad…" He stopped. "You said it scared you and that you thought it was waiting for you." El nodded again, just a slight inclination of her head. "If Joyce can't find him, will you go back to look for him?"
El didn't answer; she was scared of what she had felt, but she couldn't just sit by and do nothing, even if it meant she might be in danger.
A door slammed and Nancy walked out of the house holding the newspaper; she leant against the car despondently.
El withdrew her hand from Mike's grasp and turned away from the intensity of his gaze.
"There's nothing" Nancy said. "We've gone through the paper a hundred times, but there's no mention of Hopper or anything remotely connected to him, so…" She looked around at everyone and smiled ruefully. "For now, we do nothing."
There was no sound except for a fly buzzing around mournfully. The door opened again and Jonathan walked out. He leant against the car next to Nancy.
"What's going on here?" he asked sensing the tension. He looked directly at Will who looked a bit lost. "You okay?" Will nodded. "We'll leave soon, okay?" Will glanced at Mike and nodded again.
"I'm sorry" Nancy said in general. She looked at El. "We'll keep trying, I promise." She sighed heavily. "We just need someone who can decipher hidden codes…" She stared at nothing and a gentle breeze wafted over them all and flicked through the pages of the newspaper.
"You guys…" Dustin seemed to grow in stature as an idea occurred to him. He suddenly snatched the newspaper out of Nancy's hand. "Don't go anywhere" he shouted. He ran to his bike and within seconds, had mounted it and was pedalling urgently away. Lucas called after him.
Everyone looked at everyone else. "I'll go after him" Lucas said. He glanced at Max. "like the man said, don't go anywhere!"
Mike called after Lucas, but he too was gone, swallowed up in the dust.
Joyce walked out of the Wheeler's house. She looked towards the assembled kids and lit the cigarette that she was holding between her fingers. She was glad to be out of the house; she sensed Mrs Wheeler didn't like her very much. She tried smiling, but it fell short and ended with a grimace.
She went straight to El and put her arm around her shoulders. She took a drag on her cigarette and went to speak, but she had nothing. She sighed heavily and blinked away the tears that threatened to spill out. She was supposed to be the strong one, but without Hop holding her up, she didn't feel strong.
"I'm sorry" she said quietly.
El leant into Joyce, accepting her comfort.
"It's okay" she said, but her mind was whirring. She would try and find him herself. It didn't matter that she might be in danger and it didn't matter what Mike thought or any of them thought. Hop had given her a home and his love, and she missed him every day. If he was out there somewhere, in pain and alone, she would do everything in her power to find him. She tried to disband the troubling thought, that when it boiled down to it, her power was now unpredictable and if she was faced with whatever that thing was, that was lurking in the shadows, she wasn't sure she would be able to fight it.
The noise of dripping was driving him nuts and the hunger was making his stomach cramp, but it was the thirst he couldn't stand. His lips and tongue felt swollen and his throat felt on fire. His whole head felt like a taught balloon and he began to genuinely fear that his eyes were going to explode out of his head.
He looked at the wall that was wet with moisture and groaned. He struggled with his binds, but they were tight around his wrists; he could feel the rope cutting through his flesh. He slumped forward in the chair he was sitting in. He was exhausted.
They kept asking the same questions. They wanted El and they were certain he could call her to him, but he wasn't sure he could. In his troubled dreams, he thought of her and imagined he saw her too, but she never seemed to know he was there, not since the first time. He had thought he was dying and suddenly there she was. She was calling him, and he reached out to her, and then he found himself reviving and she was gone.
Now, since they saw him recovering, despite the beatings, despite depriving him of food and drink, they were watching his every move and he was too scared to sleep. What if he called her without realising it?
He tried licking his lips, but his tongue was like sandpaper. 'Eventually I will die' he thought. 'Again'. He recalled an explosion and being in hell with flames tormenting his body. He had said goodbye to Joyce. He had taken a moment to look at her and realise he had missed so much time with her; she saw it too. He saw her love and it filled his heart, despite the flames and the agony of their touch.
But then he had woken up into a whole new world of pain.
A door opened and two people walked in. A man, he thought, wearing a formal suit, not a uniform and behind him… was it a woman? Hopper lifted his head, but it was so heavy, and his eyes were misty; faces were blurred and detail impossible to decipher.
"They're not taking very good care of you are they Mr Hopper?" The man's voice wasn't Russian. Hopper squinted, but he still couldn't make the man out. He walked closer. "Are you interested in making a deal?"
"Water" Hopper said. He thought he could make out a smile on the man's face.