Wednesday, November 9, 1983. 3:07 pm.
Scully is the first to respond.
"Who's Will Byers?" she asks, brow furrowed. "We're here about a missing girl—Barbara Holland? Some girl named Nancy called it in, do you know where she is?"
The man frowns. "Nancy Wheeler?"
"I think so."
"She's up at the high school with all the other kids. Who'd you folks say you are, anyway?"
"We didn't," Scully says, at the same time Mulder says, "Fox Mulder, FBI." He steps forward and flashes his badge. "And this is my partner, Agent Dana Scully."
Scully gives the man a cursory nod. He looks her up and down before throwing down his cigarette and grinding it under the heel of his shoe. He's a tall man, taller than Mulder and heavier, and as she steps closer she can smell the stale cigarette smoke still lingering on him.
"You are?" she asks when he doesn't offer up his name.
"Chief Jim Hopper," he says, and shakes her hand. His hands are rough, calloused, his voice low. "I'm investigating the disappearance of Will Byers. And up until you all showed up, I didn't know Barbara Holland was missing."
"No one told you?"
"We've had our hands full with Byers' disappearance and his… family," Hopper says dismissively.
"Think the two are connected?" Mulder asks.
"At the moment? No. Teenage girl goes missing around here, it's usually because she's run off with a boy." He frowns. "Though it is Barbara Holland we're talking about…"
"No boyfriend?" Scully asks, raising her eyebrow again.
"It's not my place to speculate, but Barbara's always been a bit… different," Hopper says again, in the same tone he mentioned Will Byers' family. Scully makes a mental note to ask around about Barbara.
"Well, if that's the case, we'll leave you to your investigation," Scully says, and turns to get back in the car.
Mulder jerks his thumb towards the diner. "Know if that place is open?"
Hopper squints. After a minute, he shrugs. "Think Benny's taking a holiday," he says, and before Mulder can respond, turns to go.
In the motel room, Scully's barely set her suitcase down before Mulder turns to her, his eyes shining.
"They're hiding something, Scully," he says, spreading all the files out.
"I'd hope so, or else we came out here when we could've left this to the sheriff," she says dryly, laying down on the bed.
"Did you see his face when I asked about the diner? There's definitely something going on here," Mulder says.
"Mulder, before you get caught up in conspiracy theories can I remind you we still have a missing girl?"
Mulder shrugs. "She probably ran off with a boyfriend."
"Her best friend called us, Mulder. She wouldn't have done that if the girl had just run off with a boyfriend."
"Okay then," he says. "Why don't you go talk to the best friend, and I'm going to do all I can to find out more about this Will Byers."
"I thought they weren't connected." She folds her arms across her chest in that way he's becoming used to.
He stares across the room at his small partner. They've only been working together a few months but in that short amount of time he's learned what makes her tick—science. Logic. Reason. Leave the crazy stuff to him.
And this stuff with Will Byers? He can't tell why, but he feels like it's got crazy written all over it.
Nancy Wheeler stands outside the bus stop, hands shaking as she tries to light a cigarette she bummed off Alice Hayes.
Barbara is missing. Jonathan took photos of her and Steve messed up his camera and all of this is wrong, so wrong.
She coughs and decides to stub out the cigarette, takes her hair out of her ponytail and takes her fingers through before tying it back again.
If Barb were here she'd laugh and tell Nancy she looked like she had sex hair before smoothing and expertly retying her ponytail.
But Barb isn't here.
Nancy shifts from side to side, chews on her bottom lip. Normally Barb drives her home, but Barb isn't here, so on the bus she goes.
A car pulls up in front of the stop, a nondescript gray car, and Nancy shades her eyes to look at it.
A woman steps out of the car, smaller than Nancy, with a shock of red hair (darker than Barb's, Nancy notices), with an air of efficiency around her.
"Nancy Wheeler?" She calls.
Nancy's first instinct is to run. With what happened to Will, and now Barb…
The woman must sense Nancy's fear because she stops right by the front wheel and pulls a badge out of her pocket. "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI," the woman says, and Nancy breathes a sigh of relief.
"Can you come with me please?"
And then it turns sour.
Mulder finds himself in Hawkins' small library, poring over any information he can find on the Department of Energy.
Something creaks near him, and he hears the low tones of the Sheriff from this morning.
He turns off the microfiche viewer and creeps closer, careful not to be heard.
Where has he heard the name Martin Brenner before?
Wednesday, November 9. 9:32 pm
It's dark by the time Nancy's finished telling Dana everything, and her coffee mug is drained. Dana drove by her house so Nancy could tell her mother she'd be out late—just studying, an essay due, you know how it is—before Dana drove her to a diner a little over a half hour away, in a bigger town called Wendview.
Nancy tells her everything over coffee, about her friendship with Barb and Barb's mother's carelessness and her deadbeat dad and nights spent at Nancy's, and even, about Barb driving her to Steve's the night before.
"I should've gone home with her," Nancy mutters. "If I had…"
"You can't blame yourself for these types of things," Dana says sympathetically.
"But she's gone because I went upstairs with—with Steve," Nancy says, and the tips of her ears turn red. "And then there's Jonathan…"
"Who's Jonathan?"
Nancy's face turns like she tasted something sour. "Nobody," she says, too quickly.
But Scully doesn't press the issue. She's worked with girls like Nancy before, she knows she'll tell her when she's ready.
Nancy stares down at the dregs in her mug, wrapping her hands around the ceramic. Scully tries to think of something to say.
How much this girl seems like her, a girl in a houseful of siblings with the weight of everyone else's expectations on her.
Maybe that's why she isn't judging her for Steve. Lord knows Scully did the same thing, at her age.
The pager in her pocket beeps, and Nancy jumps. Scully pulls it out and frowns, then immediately rushes to her feet and signals for the waitress.
"We have to go," she says to the girl sitting across from her. "My partner just said they found Will Byers."